Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
One of the biggest news stories this year is the collapse of the subprime mortgage lending market. Why did this happen? How much do we really know about subprime lending? A working paper by William Adams, Liran Einav and Jonathan Levin examines the subprime market for automobile loans. The authors find that liquidity constraints are…
A New Yorker article (“The Checklist“) recounts Peter Pronovost’s efforts to improve the delivery of medical care. One of his simplest ideas was to invent a 5 step checklist to reduce line infections: Doctors are supposed to (1) wash their hands with soap, (2) clean the patientâs skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic, (3) put sterile drapes…
It’s decision time for Medicare Part D purchasers. Seniors have until December 31st to make their Part D choice and this decision is not a painless one. The Marketplace Money radio program recently reported (‘Deciphering Part D‘) that “the most popular policies have increased their prices substantially, especially Humana and United Healthcare, the ones that…
The New York Times came out with its list of the Ten Best Books of 2007 on Sunday. Here’s the list.
For those of you in the operations research side of the medical care world, you may recognize an interesting textbook by Peter Mears title Quality Improvement Tools and Techniques. The book is a good reference tool, but is a little difficult to slug through. It has so many graphs, outlines, quotations, that there is little…
On Wednesday, I reviewed a paper by John Cawley and Feng Liu about the mechanisms by which maternal employment can affect childhood obesity. It turns out that Cawley and Liu aren’t the only ones interested in this issue. A recent working paper by Fertig, Glomm and Tchernis investigates the same question. The authors use time…
The latest edition of the Cavalcade of Risk has been posted at Joe Paduda’s always insightful Managed Care Matters.
A general result in the obesity literature, is that higher female labor participation rates lead to higher obesity rates in children. For instance, the 1996 Welfare Reform act (PRWORA) increased work requirements for low-income mothers and thus increased labor participation and likely childhood obesity. One question which has not been resolved yet thorough which mechanisms…
The N.Y. Times ran an interesting pair of articles Sunday regarding how economists “got it wrong.” Conflict of Interest Ben Stein (in “The Long and Short of It at Goldman Sachs“) comments on the economic analysis conducted by economist Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs. Dr. Hatzuis concludes that the sub-prime mortgage ‘crisis’ will not only…
A recent Yahoo! News article (“Half of U.S. Doctors mum…“) uncovered some disturbing findings regarding physician practices in the U.S. For instance: “They found that 46 percent of physicians surveyed admitted they knew of a serious medical error that had been made but did not tell authorities about it.” “Doctors are also surprisingly willing to…