Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
One of the key benefits of the UK health system is that everyone has access to care. However, is care provided equally to all people? A paper by Matias et al. (2024) examines whether or not there are any inequalities in waiting times by socioeconomic status for women diagnosed with breast cancer in England and…
Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir-ritonavir) is effective at preventing hospitalization and death from COVID-19, but few people use it. A paper by SteelFisher et al. (2024) surveyed 1,430 American adults to find out why. Their survey revealed patients had a lack of awareness of the treatment as well as misinformation about the treatment (among those who were aware…
Could COVID-19 be more efficacious than effective? This could be the case if individuals receiving COVID-19 engaged in ‘risk compensation’. In short, without a COVID-19 vaccine, individuals may have refrained from travel and engaged in social distancing. After a COVID-19 vaccine, these same individuals could have been more likely to travel and less likely to…
Perhaps according to a report from Stat News: A groundbreaking clause in a new deal between the Department of Health and Human Services and the pharmaceutical company Regeneron marks the first time the Biden administration has directly used its leverage to challenge drugmakers’ list prices, experts told STAT.The contract between Regeneron and the government requires…
More likely according to: Lepinteur et al. (2023): The theoretical effect [of risk aversion on COVID-19 vaccination] is ambiguous, as both COVID-19 infection and vaccination side-effects involve probabilistic elements. In large-scale data covering five European countries, we find that vaccine hesitancy falls with risk aversion, so that COVID-19 infection is perceived as involving greater risk…
Results below from UNESCO data. Presented without commentary. HT: Marginal Revolution
That is the title of a very interesting paper by Casey Mulligan (2023) [NBER WP version]. The full title includes the phrase “Peltzman revisited”. This refers to a paper by Peltzman (1973).When speaking of the 1962 “Drug Efficacy Amendment” (EA) to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act a key piece of research was Peltzman…
Interesting paper from Ziedan, Simon and Wing (2023): The contraction in health care consumption at the start of the pandemic provides insight into central economic questions of waste and productivity in the U.S. health care system. Using linked mortality and Electronic Medical Records, we compare people who had outpatient appointments scheduled for dates in 30…
Some COVID-19 news updates. 66.5% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. 12.09 billion doses have been administered globally, 5.74 million COVID-19 vaccines are administered each day. Only 17.6% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose. There have been approximately 550 million cases of COVID-19…
As the COVID-19 pandemic struck, policymakers looked to researchers to both predict the future trend of the pandemic as well as examine how different policy options would impact society. Both epidemiologists and economists rose to the challenge, creating a variety of models to help inform policy decisions. How did the models developed by economists and…