Flu Shots May Have Little Mortality Benefit in Older Adults

Over the years, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has greatly increased the scope of the population for whom it recommends to receive an influenza vaccination.  Currently, ACIP recommends that all children 6–59 months old, all health care workers, and all persons aged over 50–in addition to many other groups–should receive an annual…

Breast Cancer information

For information on breast cancer symptoms, diagnoses, treatments, and recovery options, BreastCancer.org is a great resource.  BreastCancer.org is “…a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing the most reliable, complete, and up-to-date information about breast cancer.” The American Cancer Society also has reliable information on breast cancer. More resources are also available at Breast Cancer Hope forum. …

Neo-Laffer Curve

The Laffer curve is a compelling economic concept.  It claims that government revenue as a function of tax rates is shaped as an inverted-U.  This means that, at first, raising the tax rate from zero will increase tax rates.  However, there is some tax rate which maximizes government revenue (but not necessarily social welfare).  When…

Banzhof power index

Why do the Orthodox Jews have so much political power in Israel? Why are third parties in the U.S. so weak? These phenomenon can be explained by the Banzhof power index. The index is calculated as follows. Let us look at the Israeli election in 2003 for the Knesset. Here are the voting results of…

Time Allocation in Primary Care Visits

A new study by Tai-Seale, McGuire, and Zhang (HSR 2007) analyzes how primary care physicians allocate their time in a typical office visit. The authors use data from 392 videotaped office visits conducted in three settings: 1) a salaried group practice in an academic medical center (AMC), 2) a managed care group (MCG), and a…

More on convenience clinics

Much has been written on this site about the growth of convenience clinics (see posts on July 25, April 26, and April 17).  The Economist’s Free exchange blog adds to the discussion (“A spoonful of monopoly…“).  It warns how the AMAs monopoly powers may be a threat to convenience clinics such as Medical Marts. “The…

Pharma News

Fentora Deaths In “The killer drug,” Joe Paduda of Managed Care Matters discusses how four deaths caused by the off-label use of Fentora have had Fentora-manufacturer Cephalon in crisis control. Mr. Paduda claims that Cephalon is known for aggressive marketing to physicians regarding the of off-label uses of their pharmaceuticals. Why would Nigerians boycott a…

Utility Function

Sean Carroll, a physicist at California Institute of Technology, has some interesting comments regarding how economists use the utility function in a post titled “So what have you been maximizing lately?“  For instance, here are his musings on ‘rational choice’: If the job of science is to describe what happens in the world, then there…