Links
How CADTH thinks about equity. FDA-approved pharmaceuticals for dogs. State Freedom Index. Ho-hum: another $10 billion deal in pharma. Sociopath or saint?
Month: November 2023
Patients love Medicare Advantage, but do providers?
Just this year a majority of Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan. While these plans are popular with patients, I recently wrote that some rural providers are refusing to accept Medicare Advantage due to low reimbursement. A recent article from Kaiser Health News finds that provider frustration with Medicare Advantage is spreading to…
Recommendations for incorporating equity into HTA evaluation
Many health policy experts–including myself–have noted that treatments that help reduce health disparities may be especially valuable whereas those that exacerbate inequalities may be somewhat less valuable than predicted by standard cost-effectiveness analysis. A key question is, health disparities over what dimension(s)? Is it race? Income? Education? O’Nell et al. (2013) developed the PROGRESS framework.…
Why does the UK pay less for medicines?
According to the OECD, In 2021 the U.S. spent $1,432/capita on pharmaceuticals compared to only $517/per capita in the UK. The UK’s figure was slightly higher that Poland and Norway, but less than Latvia, the Slovak Republic, Portugal and Romania. How does the UK spend so little on drugs? Many people focus on the efforts…
Quotation of the Day
We ought not be ashamed of appreciating the truth and of acquiring it wherever it comes from, even if it comes from races distant and nations different from us. For the seeker of truth, nothing takes precedence over the truth, and there is no disparagement of the truth, nor belittling either of him who speaks…
Thanksgiving Links
Be prepared to say “Go”. Dana Farber to build stand-alone cancer center in Boston. Robots will pick fruit in the future. Proximity to fast food and weight gain. Pharma CEOs summoned to the Hill. mRNA patents being disputed. Mental health and being grateful.
Childhood cancer deaths plummet in the past 2 decades
That is the finding from a CDC report released this month. Mortality rates fell by 24% between 2001 and 2021. Specifically, the cancer death rate for youth ages 0–19 years was 2.75 per 100,000 in 2001, but decrease to 2.10 per 100,000 in 2021. The analysis uses data including (i) cause of death data from…
Impact of changing the retirement age on health and labor market outcomes: A case study from Italy
As individuals live longer, governments and employers are considering increasing the age at which individuals become eligible for either public or private pensions (e.g., Social Security). Why this fiscal impacts of changing the retirement age has been well-studied, the labor market and health outcomes are less well-known. A paper by Serrano-Alarcón et al. (2023) examines…
Variation in health care spending in the US
Patients assigned to different primary care providers in the US have different levels of spending. This is not surprising, but to what degree is this result driven by variation in health care utilization compared to prices? A paper by Mehrotra et al. (2023) aims to answer this question using 2018 claims data from a large…
How do PBMs make money?
A helpful article from Mattingly et al. (2023) describes history, business practices, economics, and policy for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Part of this article explains how PBMs make money. They claim there are three primary avenues. Rebate retention. Plan sponsors pays the list price of the drug net of rebates and discounts received. PBMs are…