Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Here are some inspirational quotations for some motivation at the beginning of your week. “The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.” —Lee Iacocca “Success comes to the person who does today what you were thinking about doing tomorrow.” —Unknown
On Friday I attended a job market talk by recent Harvad PhD graduate Filipe Campante. Mr. Campante’s job market paper discussed how the equilibrium level of redistribution changes as inequality in a society increases. The author sensibly assumes wealth is distributed in a according to a Pareto distribution. Individuals choose a tax level in order…
Check out Merrill Goozner’s early look at President Bush’s health care plan, which will be unveiled on Tuesday during the president’s state of the union address.
Here’s an article from The Onion which will bring some levity to your Friday. “According to The Economist…“
The Manhattan Institute’s Center for Medical Progress has some interesting articles on health care policy. The Center “…is dedicated to articulating the importance of medical progress and the connection between free-market institutions…” One paper of note is by Vernon, Santerre and Giaccotto (“Are Drug Price Controls good for your Health“). The authors examine the Medicare…
With so much negative news on how ‘our health care system is failing,’ it is nice to see that “failure” may be an overstatement. According to the USA Today (“Cancer Deaths Drop“), the American Cancer Society reports that cancer rates have fallen for the second straight year. This is great news. The National Center for…
The latest edition of the Cavalcade of Risk is up at David E. Williams’ Health Business Blog. Check out an interesting post at InsureBlog which asks why there are so many uninsured when Medicaid supposedly covers most individuals who earn less than 2 times the poverty line. I also enjoyed the clever idea of Bryan…
The latest oxymoron to come across my desk is ‘Libertarian Paternalism.’ Richard Thalar and Cass Sunstein (2003) claim that people often make choices that are not in their best interest. The authors “…emphasize the possibility that in some cases individuals make inferior choices, choices that they would change if they had complete information, unlimited cognitive…
The Economist magazine (“Pyramid power“) has an interesting article on how to get reading glasses to poor individuals in third world countries. Below are two excerpts: Government health clinics are understandably preoccupied with life-threatening maladies and urban optical shops typically shun simple reading glasses in favour of costly, high-margin prescription glasses. But this neglect takes…
Over the past week, I have discussed California’s proposal to extend health insurance to all individuals. Today, I will examine—in my mind—a superior plan developed by former Republican Rep. Curt Gielow. According to a concept paper from the Wisconsin Health Plan website, the reforms will have the following impact: “All eligible Wisconsin residents receive a…