Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
What happens when your the government is run by those tax-and-spend, dovish, universal health care loving, welfare promoting big government Democrats? Is there a difference when the low tax, hawkish, drug company pawns, anti-equality, small government Republicans take over? Few would question that there are significant ideological differences between the two parties and that federal…
The enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) in less developed countries is currently a topic of much public debate. Whether it is protecting the copyrights of Western recording artists or preventing `copycat’ technology goods, OECD countries are attempting to compel less developed countries (LDCs) to enforce IPR in their country. No area of IPR enforcement…
Reuters reports (“Too few…“) on the problem that U.S. adults not receiving necessary vaccines. “Only 2 percent of U.S. adults last year got a shot that can protect them from painful bouts of shingles, health officials said on Wednesday in a study that shows what they call unacceptably low rates of adult vaccination against a…
The latest edition of the Health Wonk Review is up at e-CareManagement.
Want some more information on the presidential candidates views on healthcare reform? The Healthcare 08 website has an interesting “PoliGraph” showing where the candidates stand. Candidates are characterized according how government driven and how important health care issues are. The graphs include issues such as: overall health care reform, drug prices, the uninsured, and stem…
The latest special issue of Health Economics is very interesting. It looks at healthcare cost and quality metrics across nine European countries using clinical vignettes from the HealthBasket dataset. The nine countries included in the project were: Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. The vignettes were used in order to…
An interesting article (“Sudden Death…“) at the Covert Rationing blog addresses the poor care given to cardiac patients in hospitals. Dr. Rich states that: “…hospitalized patients who have cardiac arrest (sudden loss of cardiac function due to the onset of a heart arrhythmia known as ventricular fibrillation) are often not receiving defibrillation (an electrical shock…
Who has the best Economics blog of 2008? The Bayesian Heresy makes their selections. Topping the list is the UCSD professor Jim Hamilton’s Econbrowser blog. In 2006, the Bayesian Heresy named the Healthcare Economist as the #2 Specialized Economics blog.
Richard Posner and Gary Becker, two preeminent economists, discuss some of the presidential candidate’s plans for healthcare reform. Posner laments that the U.S. spends 16% of GDP on healthcare, but only has 37th best healthcare system according to the World Health Organization. What is to be done? Most candidates promise to reduce costs and increase…
Two years ago, the Healthcare Economist blog was born (first blog post). While readership was slow at first, over the last 6 months of 2007 this blog averaged over 12,000 unique readers per month. I want to thank these loyal readers for your support, commentary and timely criticisms. I aim to bring more quality information…