Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
A policy paper by the HHS describing proposals to promote choice and competition in health care. Before getting into policy recommendations, however, it outlines how increased provider consolidation has lead to less choice. One recent study by Gaynor et al. …found that the mean HHI [Herfindahl-Hirschman Index] across MSAs in the inpatient hospital industry increased…
I recently started reading a fascinating book Reputation and Power: Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA by Daniel Carpenter. As I read through it, I will be highlighting interesting points throughout. One key point is that while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates pharmaceuticals in the US, how it does so influences…
The the health and economic of serious mental illness (SMI) is often overlooked by the health policy and some provider communities. One key question is how how can we quantify the economic burden of SMI. Further, how can we reduce this burden. Much of my research has looked at how medications can improve health and…
Bayesian analysis is increasingly common in health economic research. To apply Bayesian models, however, you need to select a prior distribution. How do you select your prior? Andrew Gelman (of the excellent Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science blog) provides some advice on selecting a prior on the stan-dev GitHub website. I review some…
Prescription drug price board in MD. Opioid use disorder in WV. Legal cannabis market in Africa. Good resource: KFF State Health Facts Withdrawing ACA lawsuit in WI.
According to a paper by Wen et al. (2019) in this month’s Health Affairs, a large number of people with mental health issues. Using data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health for the period 2014–16, we found that people with behavioral health and other chronic health conditions were more likely to be…
Last week, a federal judge blocked Arkansas and Kentucky from requiring individuals to work in order to receive Medicaid benefits. Prior to that decision, 9 states had been approved to implement Medicaid work requirements. At first glance, a work requirement does not make a lot of sense. If you are very sick and on Medicaid,…
Hospitals jump into telehealth. The cost of dementia. Are certificate of need (CON) laws needed? Myth of FFS and overprovision? Opening Day content: Born a Brewer and ‘Not today’
One of the challenges of single payer systems is that individuals do not have a choice of insurance. If you don’t like the single-payer plan, too bad. Free marketers would argue that in the commercially insured market, threat of competition ‘insures’ (pun intended) that health insurers are efficient and not funding fraud, waste and abuse.…
Today at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) 2019 Annual Conference, I attended a session titled “Medicare Formulary Updates Impact. How will proposed recent rulemaking affect formulary design? Some answers are below. CMS 2020 draft call letter Improved access to opioid reversal agents. The CMS 2020 draft call letter would place opioid reversal agents…