Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
On this blog we most often talk about health care issues related to chronic and acute conditions, health behaviors and public health. However, there is another dimension that is vital to health: avoiding natural disasters. Unfortunately, natural disasters appear to having an increasing impact in the US across the past decades. Between 1980-2024, 16,941 people…
FDA: Fast-review vouchers to be tied to lower US prices Why FDA rejects drugs (in their own words) Kaiser Health News on prior authorizations. Measles: 1,288 cases in the US this year Impact of ChatGPT on language.
Myself and Kristy Piccinini, PhD from FTI Consulting published a new commentary in The Evidence Base titled “Perspectives from the Healthcare Economist: Why CMS/AHIP’s prior authorization changes won’t hurt payers.” Dr. Shafrin and Dr. Piccinini share their insights in this Guest Column examining the implications of recent CMS/AHIP prior authorization reforms and why these changes are unlikely…
Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out. John Wooden
Conventional wisdom holds that orphan drugs treat rare (by definition) and more severe diseases. Because they treat diseases with significant unmet needs, their health benefits per person are large. But are they really? Does conventional wisdom align with the evidence? To answer the question myself and colleagues at FTI Consulting, including co-author Marie Steele-Adjognon, conducted…
Trends in cost-related non-adherence. Optum Rx reduces reauthorization requirements. Changes in insulin out-of-pocket costs over time. AI and billable hours. Value in Health to include ‘Plan Language Summaries’
Catastrophic healthcare expenditures (CHE) are highly problematic for families are are unequally distributed throughout society. However, how can we quantify the incidence, intensity and inequality of CHE in a society? A paper by Ogwang and Mwabu (2025) provide one methodology by using the Watts poverty measure and adapting it to measure CHE. We first describe…
That is the title of my latest paper in JMCP with co-authors Jaehong Kim, Shanshan Wang, Moises Marin, Slaven Sikirica, and Mariam Anderson. The study abstract is below. BACKGROUND: Patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D) have a greater than 50% lifetime risk of developing comorbid chronic kidney disease (CKD). Glycemic control can reduce diabetes-related complications…
Based on a recent study in Nature Aging as summarized in the New York Times: Inflammation is a natural immune response that protects the body from injury or infection. Scientists have long believed that long-term, low-grade inflammation — also known as “inflammaging” — is a universal hallmark of getting older. But this new data raises…
Renaming schizophrenia: why, how, and what next? COVID-19 winners and losers. Labor market (not supply chain) caused COVID-19 inflation? Medicare Advantage dental benefits. NC eliminating parking minimums.