Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
In the US, opioid abuse has become and epidemic. However, in the past year, there is some hope that this epidemic is starting to reverse. Opioid deaths have fallen by 16.9% in the past year. Why have deaths fallen? According to The Economist, no one is sure: One possibility is a supply shock…the amount of…
A paper by Kowal et al. (2023) does in fact measure the disparities in health outcomes. To do this, they use data from the American Community Survey (ACS), the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) and the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) to estimate differences in life expectancy (LY), quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE), and disability-free life…
ISPOR Europe kicks off this week in Barcelona, Spain. In honor of ISPOR, I will summarize some key attributes of the Spanish health care system based on a 2024 report from the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and the Instituto Aragones de Ciencias de la Salud. Country overview Population: 48.4 million (as of…
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) allows the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to negotiate drug prices. However, CMS can only negotiated drug prices 9 years after drug approval for small molecules and 13 years after approval for large molecules. Why the difference? Do biologic treatments produce superior health benefits for patients? This is the…
That is the title of a KFF article published last week. The results are based on KFF’s 2024 Employer Health Benefits Survey. They write: For KFF’s survey of 2,142 randomly selected companies, officials from those with 500 or more employees were asked how much of the rebates negotiated by [pharmacy benefit managers] PBMs returned to…
In the U.S., health insurance premiums are tax deductible–if paid through out of pocket expenses–but out-of-pocket expenses are not. However, there are exceptions to this rule. These include two often-used tax-favored accounts: Flexible savings accounts (FSA). These accounts allow employees to set aside a portion of their pretax income to cover qualified medical expenses; however,…
On this Labor Day, how is healthcare evolving for workers and firms? First, healthcare spending is on the rise, with costs increasing more than inflation. Fox Business reports on a new Aon study which says that: …employer health care expenditures are projected to surge 9% in 2025 to more than $16,000 per employee, markedly higher…
One key aspect of many medications is that they not only help people feel better, but often these medications can help them re-enter the workforce, work more hours, work more productively, or all of the above. However, when evaluating new treatments for diseases that impact older Medicare beneficiaries (≥65 years), should we take into account…
An interesting study from Miquel Serra-Burriel et al. (2024) examines the impact of genericization on drug prices across 8 high-income countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, UK, and US). The authors used 2011-2020 IQVIA MIDAS data across 505 novel originator drugs. They found that: Price decreases were statistically significant over the 8 years after…
Are wealthier people healthier? If so, how strong is this relationship? Does it vary across countries? That is what a paper by Kyriopoulos et al. 2024 aims to answer. They measure health and wealth using a “concentration index” (CI) which is calculated as follows: CI is estimated with reference to the concentration curve, which illustrates…