Friday Links
HESG Winter 2023. Use AI to search books…with source material! Is ChatGPT left or right-wing? Dr. Smartphone. UK ‘Netflix’ payment model for antibacterials. Managed Care Year-End Recap.
Month: January 2023
Why is finding new indications for existing drugs so important?
The primary reasons is that it is much faster and less expensive to repurpose an existing drug for a new disease than trying to identify a new therapeutic agent. A paper by Islam et al. (2021) explains why: Available information. A repurposed drug has an extensive portfolio of knowledge relating to human pharmacokinetics, bioavailability and…
Inflation Reduction Act already impacting life science R&D decisions
That is the takeaway according to a November-December 2022 survey by PhRMA of 25 large pharmaceutical manufacturers. Among respondents, it was clear the IRA price setting provisions are already impacting, and are expected to have a growing impact on, R&D plans moving forward:• 78% expect to cancel early-state pipeline projects.• 63% said they expect to…
Quotation of the Day: The cost of low numeracy
A recent report stated that the cost of adult low numeracy ‘can be counted in lost earnings — the £25 billion…would be added to our collective pay packets if numeracy skills could be levelled up’. That is about £1700 per person per annum.,, A large-scale study of adults with colorectal cancer in the UK and…
Links
Social return on investment. Economic impact of health inequity. CDC’s $3 billion investment. 2022 AEA Awards. Health Affairs: top podcasts of 2022.
Reducing the bias from on the inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW)
When using observational data, assignment to a treatment group is non-random and causal inference may be difficult. One common approach to addressing this is propensity score weighting where the propensity score is the probability that a person is assigned to the treatment arm given their observable characteristics. This propensity is often estimated using a logistic…
The evolution of PBMs over the past 2 decades
A ViewPoint by Richman and Adashi in JAMA this week provides a nice overview of the pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) marketplaces as well as some considerations for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to consider. Below I summarize some of the developments in the PBM market in recent decades. Of particular note is that PBMs have…
Why was there a slowdown in Medicare spending growth over the past decade?
That is the question posed by Buntin et al. (2022). The authors used data from the 2007-2018 Medicare Master Beneficiary Summary File and then ran a regression adjustment to control for patient demographics (i.e., age, sex), number of chronic conditions (none, 1-3, ≥4), and whether the individual had Part A or Parts A and B…
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Options for CMS price negotiation. Magic mushroom medicine. CBO’s options for reducing provider reimbursement. Orthopedic surgeons and private equity. New Alzheimer’s drug. Value-based payment and US health spending.
What was the impact of regulating markups for US health insurance?
Part of the Affordable Care Act mandated a medical loss ratio (MLR) for health plans in the individual and small group markets. What this means is that if the MLR is 80% and insurers charge $100 in premiums, plan enrollees must receive $80 in services on average. If they do not (say they only receive…