Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Every year, the Congressional Budget Office projects how the federal budget will look over the coming decade. For the coming decade, the numbers look grim. Federal deficits in CBO’s baseline average $1.2 trillion per year and total $11.6 trillion over the 2020– 2029 period…Those deficits would average 4.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Other…
The the health and economic of serious mental illness (SMI) is often overlooked by the health policy and some provider communities. One key question is how how can we quantify the economic burden of SMI. Further, how can we reduce this burden. Much of my research has looked at how medications can improve health and…
In the news, deaths from overdoses of opioids, heroin and fentanyl have been in the spotlight. Rightly so. Opioid deaths in the U.S have risen to almost 50,000 people in 2017, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. However, deaths from methamphetamines is on the rise as well. In fact, many individuals who die…
A number of medical studies have touted the benefits of medical marijuana. But who actually uses medical cannibis? Some statistics from Boenhke et al. (2019) provide the answer: While conventional wisdom hold that medical marijuana is frequently used for glaucoma, in practice, this medical marijuana is much more likely to be used to treat other…
The repeal of the individual mandate may have begun to appear in the uninsurance statistics. According to figures from Gallup, insurance rates rose to 13.7%, up from a recent low of 10.9% in Q3 2016.
Siegel et al. (2019) present a review of cancer incidence and mortality statistics in American over recent decades. Their key findings were: Over the past decade of data, the cancer incidence rate (2006‐2015) was stable in women and declined by approximately 2% per year in men, whereas the cancer death rate (2007‐2016) declined annually by…
According to a recent study in Health Affairs by Hernandez et al. (2019), the answer is ‘no’. The authors use pricing data from First Databank and pharmacy claims from UPMC Health Plan between 2008-2016 to track trends in drug prices over time. They found that the costs of oral brand name drugs increased 9.2% per year…
Continuing my series highlighting key trends from 2018, I summarize a post from Aviva Rutkin of The Conversation identifying key demographic trends in 2018. These include: Decreased U.S. life expectancy. For the third year in a row, life expectancy fell in the U.S. The reason for the increase? Increased mortality rates among working age adults due to…
That finding is according to an article [Martin et al. 2018] by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Office of the Actuary’s (OACT). Total nominal US health care spending increased 3.9 percent to $3.5 trillion in 2017, slowing from growth of 4.8 percent in 2016..Slower growth in health care spending in 2017 was mainly attributable to…
Pharmafile has an interesting article on the “Economics of Mental Health”. The article has a number of interesting statistics: The cost: “Mental health issues have been estimated to cost the world economy $2.5 trillion each year. To put that into perspective, the United Kingdom’s gross domestic product (GDP) was $2.6 trillion in 2017.” Costs extend…