Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Bob Laszewski has a great posts on 5 false “solutions” to reduce health care costs. These are: EMR: Making electronic medical records universal will greatly improve health care quality, but the impact on cost will be minor. Better quality care can reduce iatrogenic injuries and reduce cost, but the cost reduction–if any–will likely be small…
Many economists and public plicy researchers have found that cigarette taxes reduce smoking. This means that cigarette taxes must be good for your health…right? A study by Baum (2009) claims that cigarette taxes may improve health, but not by as much as previously thought. The paper finds that increasing the cigarette tax decreases smoking, but…
Do people gain weight after marriage? A paper by Jeffrey and Rick (2002) says yes. Using data collected from 2528 workers over a 2 year period, the authors estimated the effect of marriage and divorce on weight gain. They found the following: Getting married increases BMI by 0.70 for men and 0.96 for women. For…
Wal-Mart increases real incomes by lowering prices. The purchasing power increase makes buying fresh fruit and vegetables more affordable for the average consumer. At least this is what Charles Courtemanche and Art Carden found. HT: Marginal Revolution
A Health Economics paper by Timothy K. M. Beatty finds that “households who make more frequent, smaller food purchases buy healthier foods than households who make fewer, larger purchases. These households are more likely to purchase foods with a lower share of total calories from fats, saturated fats and a larger share of calories from…
The New York Times writes that its “Better to Be Fat and Fit Than Skinny and Unfit.”
The BBC recently reported that a Durham University professor David Hunter is claiming that obesity is such a problem that its “…threat to our future health is just as significant as the current security threat.” What is Dr. Hunter’s solution? He said that bigger warning labels, changes in the taxation of “unhealthy” foods, and even…
Pierre Dubois of VoxEU has a suggestion to reduce obesity rates: a junk food tax. Dubois claims that a junk food tax of 5% would reduce junk food consumption by 15% and thus reduce obesity. While junk food is not healthy, it offers the most calories per dollar. Thus, a junk food tax would fall…
The WSJ Real Time Economics blog reviews a paper by Michael Lechner which finds that “sports-playing adults saw a boost in income of about 1,200 euros per year over 16 years when compared to their less active peers. That translates into a 5-10% rate of return on sports activities, roughly equal to the benefit of…
There is much evidence that has shown that over time for most developed countries, people have been getting fatter. Obesity rates are especially high in the U.S., but a trend towards increased obesity is similar in most developed countries. Are obesity rates “too high?” In a recent NBER working paper, Philipson and Posner argue that…