Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Robert Fogel has a very well-written, well thought-out piece in The American on the topic of Forecasting the Cost of U.S. Healthcare. The article breaks down the forces affecting the future cost of medicine into five categories. The section below list each category which Dr. Fogel’s arguments and my comments mixed in. A likely continued…
From a NCPA report. From 1960 to 2006, GDP grew at 2.27% per year. Over this time period, GDP increased cumulatively by 174%. From 1960 to 2006, national health expenditures (NHE) grew at 4.79% per year. Over this time period, NHE increased cumulatively by 721%. For more details, see this chart.
Scientific American has an article ranking countries based on how conducive they are to biotechnology innovation. The criteria are based on what is best for biotech firms and not necessary what is best for society. The rankings are based on the following metrics: Intellectual Property (IP) protection. In this ranking, more IP protection is considered better. For…
One question that plagues health economists is estimating the price inflation of medical care. The output measured in these indices should be “health,” but this is often difficult to measure. Typically, economists simply look at the price increase of different inputs (e.g., the cost of a doctor’s visit, the cost of pharmaceuticals, the cost of…
Watch the relationship between GDP/capita and Life Expectancy evolve over time: Gapminder World.
“Although the evidence was mixed for the 1980s and it is difficult to pinpoint when in the 1990s the decline began, during the mid- and late 1990s, the panel found consistent declines on the order of 0-2.5% per year for two commonly used measures in the disability literature: difficulty with daily activities and help with…
The California HealthCare Foundation has a great document summarizing many useful Health Care Cost Statistics (see full text or fact sheet). Some of the highlights: Health Care spending as a percentage of GDP is projected to grow 16.0% of GDP in 2006 to 19.5% of GDP in 2017. Average health care spending per capita was…
In her California Healthcare Foundation report, Katherine Wilson does a nice job describing the health insurance market in California. A little over health of individuals received health care from their employer or themselves (56%), a quarter of individuals receive health insurance through public programs, and 19% of Californians are uninsured (see chart). The private health…
Everyone knows that health insurance is getting more and more expensive. But how can we measure how expensive it is? A paper by UC-San Diego professors Richard Kronick and Todd Gilmer creates an “affordability index” to measure this. The affordability index is equal to the per-capita, non-elderly health spending divided by the median income. In…
Since the early 1980s, age-adjusted cancer mortality rates have been falling over time. Is this due to better screening, better treatment, or healthier behavioral factors? Is this progress cost-effective? Are we really winning the war on cancer? A paper by Culter (2008) tries to answer this question. First it is important to note that there…