Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
A few years ago, changing federal laws to lower drug prices was a key political issue. Some proposed allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices from drug manufacturers and others recommended allowing U.S. citizens to import drugs from lower-priced developed countries such as Canada. These policies would certainly reduce drug prices, however, lower prices could also…
What is it great for? Censorship. A book called The Pirate Organization quotes a spokesperson for an intellectual property lobby in Denmark: Child pornography is great! It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that we can…
The episode may also serve as a reminder that the more layers of regulation we put on commerce, the less resilient is the system when something goes wrong. – Jim Hamilton For Californians (like myself) who want to know why gas prices spiked more than 50 cents in about a week, you can read a…
There has much debate in the Presidential debates about IPAB, the Independent Payment Advisory Board. IPAB can make cuts to Medicare spending, but the question is whether any of these recommended cuts would ever actually be enacted, since Congress can reverse any IPAB recommendation. According to an article in The Hill, the answer may be…
Governments in emerging markets want their citizens to have better drugs. The big pharmaceutical firms are keen to sell to them. But they are fighting bitterly over the terms. – The Economist. Should emerging markets compel companies to sell drugs to them? As an economist, I am by nature averse to government coercion. When people…
A July 2012 IOM report recommends changing state laws to allow “nurse practitioners and physician assistants to practice to the full extent of their educational preparation.” Based on information from the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (AANP), not all states currently allow permit NPs this flexibility. Currently 16 states and the District of Columbia (see below)…
Is tele-medicine/internet-medicine the wave of the future? Or do these alternative treatment methods just make it easier for patients and providers to engage in fraudulent and/or unsafe behaviors? In response to concerns about tele-medicine’s effect on patient safety, many states have begun prohibiting physicians from prescribing drugs without conducting a prior physical examination. In fact,…
China standard is living as funds from export industries eventually trickle down into the earnings of (some) ordinary Chinese. Where are the Chinese spending their newfound wealth? In part, the answer is self-beautification procedures. According to the Economist: “China performs more cosmetic surgery than any country except America and Brazil. Almost 1.3m licensed procedures were…
Why aren’t physicians more supportive of home births and midwifery? The answer is that it eats into their market share and reduces their income. “[In the 1970s] feminists argued that medical care needed to be demystified and women’s lives demedicalized. They maintained that childbirth was not a disease and normal deliveries did not require hospitalization…
In many cases, only a handful of suppliers produce vaccines for a given disease. In fact, for several vaccine types the U.S. has fewer suppliers than countries with a smaller market and a higher level of government purchase. One reason for this finding could be strict government regulation. All vaccines must be approved by the…