Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
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…
That is the question answered in a paper by Autor et al. (2022). Some background on PPP: Congress enacted the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which provided uncollateralized, low-interest loans of up to $10 million to firms with fewer than 500 employees—loans that were forgivable on the condition that recipient firms maintained employment and wages at…
In many markets, however, we observe that lower income individuals do not purchase the most generous forms of health insurance. For instance, despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act–which provided subsidies to lower income individuals to purchase relatively generous insurance–some individuals preferred the less generous Association Health Plans (AHPs) also known as “skinny” health…
This is something I knew very little about and thus Bald et al. (2022) NBER working paper was fascinating to read. They describe the key tension of foster care: failing to put at risk children in foster care may expose them to abuse or neglect; however putting too many at risk children into foster care…
The 2022 winner of the John Bates Clark medal is Oleg Itskhoki. Each year, the medal goes to the American economist under the age of 40 who made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. Below is a summary of his research from the American Economic Association (AEA) website. One key finding is…
Based on analysis from National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs), multifactor productivity (MFP) in the health care and social assistance sector declined by 0.4% per between 1987 and 2018. On the other hand, the economy as a whole experience a 0.9% increase in MFP. With new technology, telehealth, gene therapies, treatments going generic, is it…
According to a paper by Rodriguez et al. (2022), the answer is ‘yes’. They use data from the 2017–18 National Survey of Healthcare Organizations and Systems (NSHOS), to determine if a physician practice has a “robust set of care management capabilities.” The specific capabilities that were used to determine whether the health system was robust…
Interest rates in the U.S.–as measured using the Fed Funds Rate–have been effectively 0% since the start of the pandemic. In fact, the last time the Fed Funds Rate was over 3% was way back in 2008. With year-over-year inflation in January 2022 hitting 7.5%, it is likely that interest rates will rise. Anyone cal…
What would you prefer: Option A: Flip a coin with where if it lands heads you win $20 but if it lands on tails you get $0 Option B: Win $10 for certain If you prefer option A, you are risk loving; if you prefer option B you are risk averse. If you are indifferent…
Standard quality approach compares the difference in QALYs which is a function of survival and quality of life during each survival period. Consider the comparison of treatments A and B, where treatment A is the novel treatment and treatment B is the standard of care. Under the QALY based approach this is calculated as Where…