Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
A Minnesota bill would expand the MinnesotaCare Medicaid system to incorproate a public option. The public option would reduce uninsurance rates, but would also have some negative impacts on providers. An FTI report (“Evaluating the Potential Impact of a Public Option on Minnesota’s Hospitals and Patients“) reviews the implications of the public option in Minnesota.…
That is the title of a new working paper written by myself, any my FTI Consulting colleagues Sabiha Quddus and Suhail Thahir. The abstract is below. Some policymakers have called for weakening of intellectual property protections for vaccines and other pharmaceutical products, with the aim to reduce the price and improve access to existing medical…
As I do every year, I take today to highlight some health care news related to the military and our veterans. VA disability claims backlog grows. “The Department of Veterans Affairs anticipates that its claims backlog, defined as those older than 125 days, will grow ‘potentially up to 400,000’ in the next year, largely the…
Consumer perceptions of oncology trial endpoints. Rural upbringing increasing likelihood MDs move to rural areas. Pain in the US. Cost sharing, prior authorization, and specialty drug utilization. Drug affordability panel?
On the one hand, home infusions can reduce cost; on the other hand, there may be some safety issues. A Modern Healthcare article provides an overview: Around 900 providers and 1,500 pharmacies offer home and specialty infusion therapy to 3.2 million patients annually, according to estimates from the National Home Infusion Association. Clinicians travel to…
A paper by Westrich et al. (2023) examines payer perceptions of five different value frameworks. Value frameworks of interest included: American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Value Framework, Drug Pricing Lab’s Drug Abacus (formerly Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Drug Abacus), Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) value assessment framework and evidence reports The…
More likely according to: Lepinteur et al. (2023): The theoretical effect [of risk aversion on COVID-19 vaccination] is ambiguous, as both COVID-19 infection and vaccination side-effects involve probabilistic elements. In large-scale data covering five European countries, we find that vaccine hesitancy falls with risk aversion, so that COVID-19 infection is perceived as involving greater risk…
Some stats from Citeline’s Pharma R&D Annual Report 2023. And by company sorted by pipeline size as of January 2023:
AI in the operating room. Estimated annual Medicare spending on Alzheimer’s drug. On remote work: “The Power of Proximity to Coworkers” Price vs. cost. Issues with publicly available price data. On the definition of a timely diagnosis: “Our health care system assumes the diagnostic journey begins when the patient is first seen by a clinician…However,…
On May 10, the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on “Examining Policies that Inhibit Innovation and Patient Access“. You can view the testimony here. I summarized submitted Congressional Testimony with the help of ChatGPT below. Actual testimony submitted is also referenced below as well. Mr. Tony Gonzales, National Early-Stage Advisor, Alzheimer’s Association.…