Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
The New York Times Magazine has an interesting article about reclaimed water (“A Tall, Cool Drink of…Sewage“). Reclaimed water is basically toilet water which has been recycled to the point where it is safe to drink. In many dry areas–such as my home of Southern California–the water supply is dwindling. To counter this, San Diego…
What happens to seized drug money? According to the Economist, in Montgomery County, Texas the sized drug money was used to fund the beer and liquor needs of the district attorney at their local county fair. The funds were also used to purchase a margarita machine. Looks like seized illegal drugs were used to fund…
A recent paper by Kitchener et al. (HSR 2008) investigates the actions of one nursing home chain to find how they maximized their profits. The authors find that Sun Healthcare Inc. employed three strategies to maximize shareholder value: rapid growth through debt-financed mergers; labor cost constraint through low nurse staffing levels; and a model of…
Forbes reports that “California is perpetually portrayed as suffering from a shortage of water. Case in point: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently declared a statewide drought, telling citizens to prepare for rationing.” As any economist would tell you, the solution to the water shortage problem is simple: raise the price of water. The largest culprits of…
The N.Y. Times reports (“Concerned about costs…“) that Congress is trying to impose new restrictions on physician-owned, for-profit hospitals. The legislators fear that these hospitals 1) drive up costs and 2) provide poor quality. Legislators worry that when physicians own the hospital, they may have more of an incentive to order more procedures to increase…
A recent paper in the May 2008 edition of the Journal of Health Economics by Carpentera and Stehr finds that mandatory seat belt laws save lives. “…we find consistent evidence that state mandatory seatbelt laws – particularly those permitting primary enforcement – significantly increased seatbelt use among high school age youths by 45–80%, primarily at…
As mentioned in previous posts, most health insurance in the France public health care system involves significant copayments. While this helps to reduce the moral hazard problem, it may prevent poor individuals from utilizing the care they need. In 2000, France introduced free complementary health insurance plan which covers most out-of-pocket payments for the poorest…
Many doctors claim that the medical malpractice system is broken and needs to be fixed. Doctors have high malpractice insurance premiums and often practice defensive medicine to protect themselves against lawsuits. To help alleviate this problem, many politicians have asked for some sort of tort reform. Tort reform can be generally categorized into 4 types…
Can we think of issues related to violent crime as basically similar to that of a contagious disease? This is the question an article in the N.Y. Times Magazine (“Blocking the Transmission of Violence“) attempts to answer. Violence may spread like an epidemic; murders lead to revenge killings, which lead to more revenge killings. Stopping…
Throughout its history, Medicaid provided health insurance for the nation’s poor. It did this by reimbursing providers on a fee-for-service basis. In the 1990s, however, California and other states decided to let private insurance companies bid for the right to provide services for Medicaid patients. These HMOs would receive a fixed per patient per month…