Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Thomas Schael, ex-commissioner at the Public Health Authority of Naples, led the implementation of a system that produced annual drug expenditure savings of €20m. How did he do it? Eye for Pharma has a revealing two–part interview. The first thing Schael did to reduce the cost of pharmaceuticals in Italy was to improve the efficiency…
What is health insurance like in China? A 2011 paper by Zhong in Health Economics provides a nice overview, which I discuss in today’s post. Between the 1950s and the end of the 1970s, three primary insurance schemes covered almost all Chinese citizens. Cooperative Medical System (CMS). This program existed in 90% of Chinese villages. …
In April 2006, Ontario instituted the Diabetes Management Incentive (DMI) that increased payments to physicians that provided high-quality diabetes care. Did the incentive improve payments quality? According to a paper by Kantarevic and Kralj (2012), it turns out that the answer is yes, but the magnitude of the change depends on the type of physician.…
Many liberals laud Europe’s government-run health care sectors as a model to emulate. In particular, Great Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) often is seen as the ideal single payer system. In reality, however, the British government itself does not supply all services. A study from the Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU) describes the gradual…
It turns out that capitalism was not the cause of Russia’s current (largely alcohol-related) mortality crisis. From an NBER working paper by Bhattacharya, Gathmann, and Miller (2012): Political and economic transition is often blamed for Russia’s 40% surge in deaths between 1990 and 1994. Highlighting that increases in mortality occurred primarily among alcohol-related causes and…
The global burden of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) is distressing. “[A]n estimated 130–170 million persons (2%–3% of the world’s population) are living with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection [1]. This infection, particularly in its chronic form, is associated with sizable morbidity and mortality. More than 350 000 deaths are attributed to HCV infection each…
A recent J Health Econ paper describes the changes to the system of public health financing in Indonesia. Today, I review this article. Public Health Expenditures in Indonesia In the Suharto Regime, district health offices implemented centrally determined policies, and “a large network of public health clinics (puskesmas) was set up to deliver primary outpatient…
Almost one in five South Africans have HIV. South Africa is the country with the most individuals living with HIV (5.6 million); it also has the most HIV deaths annually (310,000). Despite these grim facts, there is some good news. The Economist reports: “Although the number of South Africans living with the disease continues to…
One stop on my vacation was Barcelona, Spain. Barcelona is well known for amazing architecture, in particular by Antoni Gaudí. One other modernist site I visited was El Hospital de Sant Pau. Designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, the hospital is a World Heritage Site. Altough part of the hositpal is being converted into a museum, other parts…
“The proportion of men collecting disability benefits at older ages varies greatly across countries — for example, more than 35 percent of 64-year-old men in Sweden and more than 25 percent of those in the Netherlands are on DI, versus 10 percent or less in Belgium, Italy, and Spain. Does this reflect differences in the…