Health Wonk Review: Yogi Berra Edition
In honor of the beginning of the baseball season, Health Accesss Weblog presents this week’s Health Wonk Review with a Yogi Berra theme.
Author: Jason Shafrin
Health Insurance in an Experimental Market
Using real world data is fraught with complexity. Wouldn’t it be nice to randomly change government regulations and see how people react? A paper by Stephen Rassenti and Carl Johnston use a laboratory experiment to do just that. In the experiment, survey participants are in charge of running a firm. The firm must decide if it will provide…
Costing Methods
How do hospitals estimate the cost of different inpatient stays? A paper by Clement et al. (2009) reviews 3 techniques: Microcosting. “With microcosting, a detailed list of each component of a patient’s care is created and costed separately for each facet of a patient’s hospitalization. Given the level of detail, microcosting is generally considered the…
Why is ‘health status insurance’ better than ‘health insurance’?
If you get sick and have a non-group health insurance plan, your premiums will increase. When you think about it, this really doesn’t make much sense. The concept of ‘health insurance’ is that it is supposed to protect your assets in the case where your health deteriorates. John Cochrane proposes one solution: the creation of…
Should a Government Health Plan compete with Private Health Plans? A Rebuttal
Last month, I blogged about allowing a government-sponsored health plan to compete with private insurers. Joe Paduda gives one argument in favor of a public health insurer that any economist would love: increased competition. “The reality today is that almost every market is already dominated by a very few health plans, so much so that…
Front-Line Staff Perspectives
As an economist, I conduct most of my analysis based on the quantitative data. However, qualitative data should not be overlooked. A paper by Tucker et al. (2008) looks at how the front-line hospital staff evaluates quality issues. Some examples of their findings are: The largest number of operational failures occurred in the equipment/supply category.…
“All the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated”
The N.Y. Times has an interesting profile of Freeman Dyson, a man who claims that global warning may not pose a grave risk to civilization. Dyson agrees with the scientific consensus that: Rapidly rising carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere are caused by human activity, The world is getting warmer, also due to human activity Using…
Think Aloud: A tool for experimental economists
Are people irrational? Many economic experiments have shown that people often make seemingly irrational or paradoxical choices. An article by Ryan, Watson, and Entwistle (Health Econ 2009) probes whether or not people really are irrational using discrete choice experiments (i.e., pick option A or option B). What they found is that some of the “irrational” behavior is often…
Comparison of Pharmacists and Primary Care Providers as Immunizers
This week my paper on Pharmacists as vaccinators was accepted for publication by the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Benefits. Co-authored with John Fontanesi, Jan Hirsch, Sarah Lorentz, and Debra Bowers, “Comparison of Pharmacists and Primary Care Providers as Immunizers” examines whether pharmacists are productive and efficient vaccinators. The abstract of the paper is below. The…
Can Health Care Reform Save the Economy?
In the run-up of real estate and stock market prices, demand for labor in the construction, real estate, finance industry was high. With the drastic drop in real estate and stock market prices, the demand for loan officers, construction workers and investment bankers has dropped. Individuals who have been laid must find a new job.…