Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Difference in Difference (DD) is a commonly used empirical estimation technique in economics. Let us take a hypothetical example where a state (Wisconsin) passes a bill which makes employer-provided health insurance tax deductible. Let us also assume that in the year after the bill passed (year 2) the percentage of firms offering health insurance increased…
When you want to buy a used car, what is the first thing you do? For many, the first step is to look in Kelley Blue Book to see how much one should pay for the desired used car. Now there is a ‘Blue Book’ for real estate: Zillow.com. The San Diego Union Tribune reports…
Large firms offer more generous health insurance to employees…right???? While it is true that large firms are much more likely to offer insurance to their employees, small firms are actually more likely to offer insurance in which they pay for 100% of the costs. A December 2005 paper by Zawacki and Taylor (“Contributions to health…
As of 2002, approximately 41 million people were on Medicaid. That is approximately 14% of the population of the United States. Who are the people on Medicaid? We can generally divide the people who receive Medicaid into four categories: 1) poor adults, 2) elderly who can not afford Medicare co-payments or deductibles 3) children and…
General Electric (my employer between 2002-2004) unveiled an interesting program named ‘Bridges to Excellence.’ This program will compensate participating physicians up to $50 per patient in exchanged for instituting IT systemts for patient records, electronic prescription writing, etc. GE estimtates that the $50/patient figure will be about half of the projected savings from the project. …
A RAND study published in the American Journal of Managed Care (“Varying Pharmacy Benefits With Clinical Status: The Case of Cholesterol-lowering Therapy“) claims that managed care administrators may be able to vary pharmaceutical co-payment amounts by risk group in order to reduce cost and improve health outcomes. Thus study looks at Cholesterol-Lowering pharmaceuticals. Co-payments are…
In general, I am not in favor of health care which is controlled by the federal or state government. I do not believe that the Canadian or British systems are the best methods to administer medical care to a nation’s citizens. Below I will argue that equity concerns do not justify centralized health care, but…
Conventional Wisdom holds that financial aid helps poor students afford higher education. This is certainly true. However, does financial aid truly help the entire distribution of poor families in the United States. A study by Hansen and Weisbrod in their 1969 book Benefits, Costs and Finance of Public Higher Education seeks to analyze how financial aid is distributed…
The American Medical Association (AMA) is a national physicians organization founded in 1847 by Nathan Smith Davis. While, the AMA exists explicitly to serve the interests of physicians, politicians often seek advice from the AMA when setting health care policy. Conventional wisdom is that the AMA is dedicated to providing the best care for patients. …
The Kaiser Family Foundation has performed their 2005 Employer Health Benefits Annual Survey. Some interesting trends: We can see the trend that employees are offered conventional health less frequently over time. On the other hand, four out of five employers have choosen to offer a PPO plan to in 2005. Three out of five workers…