Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Forbes came out with its list of richest people in the world. Bill Gates tops the list, but we don’t care about that here at the Healthcare Economist. Which people in the healthcare industry are the richest? The top 5 include: 44. Dilip Shanghvi (India): $20 billion 96. Patrick Soon-Shiong (US): $12.2 billion 99. Stefano Pessina (Italy): $12.1 billion 149.…
Globally, measles is a significant killer of kids and the threat is growing in the US as vaccination rates decrease. Citing a Global Burden of Disease study published in the Lancet, Wonk Blog reports that in 2013 measles killed over 82,000 children under age 5. This puts measles as #7 on the list of the top causes…
What is happening with US healthcare spending? A recent Health Affairs article from the National Health Expenditures Accounts Team summarizes the latest trends. In 2013 US health care spending increased 3.6 percent to $2.9 trillion, or $9,255 per person. The share of gross domestic product devoted to health care spending has remained at 17.4 percent…
Politico.com has an interesting series of articles titled Obamacare 2.0, which examines different perspectives on how to improve the Affordable Care Act. One common theme in about half the articles is that the ACA does not do enough to cut healthcare spending. The rise in healthcare spending over the past few decades has been significant. In…
CMS Office of the Actuary (OACT) projects that the slowdown in healthcare spending will not last. From an article in Health Affairs this month: In 2013 health spending growth is expected to have remained slow, at 3.6 percent, as a result of the sluggish economic recovery, the effects of sequestration, and continued increases in private…
Health Economists often use the cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) metric to answer this question. QALYs are used to measure not only the additional years of life from a treatment, but also the quality of life. For instance, you may prefer to live 1 year in perfect health to two years in a coma.…
Between 2000 and 2007 annual health expenditures in the US grew by 6.6% per year. Between 2008 and 2011, however, the growth rate was only 3.3 percent per year. Are structural changes (e.g., the ACA) helping cause the slowdown? According to Dranove et al. (2014), the answer is likely ‘no’. The authors use new data…
PwC’s Health Research Institute projects what is going to happen to health spending in 2015. According to their annual report, Medical Cost Trend: Behind the Numbers: At first glance, the health sector [in 2015] appears to be reverting to historical patterns of bouncing back as the nation recovers from the economic doldrums. Whether spending more freely because…
A large body of research (including my own) indicates that there exists significant regional variation in medical spending. What is the source of these differences: differences in the prices paid per service or differenes in the amount of healthcare services used? The conventional wisdom is that Medicare does a better job of controlling prices, and…
Many times I have been asked whether the Affordable Care Act is a good thing. The 1 sentence answer is: “Yes, because it expands health insurance coverage to more Americans, but no because it adds many layers of regulation and does little to slow cost growth.” This last point is rearing its ugly head. Sally Pipes…