Category: Uncategorized

Most health technology assessment (HTA) bodies measure treatment value as benefits from reduced patient morbidity and mortality and weigh these health gains against incremental changes in treatment cost. The limitation of this approach, however, is that it may ignore broader societal value. For instance, if patients have improved functional status, caregiver time and cost burden…

The book The Right Price: A Value-Based Prescription for Drug Costs is a fantastic book for individuals interested in understanding why value-based drug pricing makes sense. It is a bit more technical and more detailed than the average health policy book, but there are few formulas or detailed methodological explanations. Rather, the book provides a…

Do male physicians earn more than females? And if so, by how much? This is the question posed by a recent paper by Whaley et al. (2021). The authors use data from Doximity, an online professional network for physicians. Doximity includes information for more than 70% of US physicians, including data partnerships with National Plan…

A white paper from Cannon and Pohida (2021) calls for applying “public option principles” to Medicare. Who would have thought that the Cato Institute would call for a public option? Well in fact, the do not really call for a public option. The proposal should be called introducing a voucher system into Medicare. Under the…

This is what a study by Whaley et al. (2021) aims to find out. Many employers have introduced rewards programs as a new benefit design in which employees are paid $25–$500 if they receive care from lower-priced providers. Our goal was to assess the impact of the rewards program on procedure prices and choice of…

Traditional cost-effectiveness measures measures treatment value based on how it affects your health. Health is often decomposed into longevity (i.e., survival) and quality of life while alive. However, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen argued that improvements in one’s life should be based on capabilities (a.k.a. opportunities, freedoms, advantages) to perform desired tasks rather than more abstract…

Many of us who are patients have the unpleasant experience of navigating the complex world of drug utilization management. This includes determining what formulary tier a drug will be on, if there are any prior authorization requirements and what our copay will be. The burden also falls on physicians in that they need to justify…

Rise in mental health tele-visits. Inequality, conspicuous consumption and health expenditures. Treating serious illness at home. Why do scientists lie? BMI and income.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. Mark Twain

How did COVID-19 affect mortality rates and how did that vary by racial and ethnic groups? Using January 2011 – April 2020 data from the Census Bureau’s version of the Social Security Administration’s Numerical Identification (Numident) database, a paper by Polyakova et al. (2021) find significantly higher all-cause excess mortality rates for minority groups, particularly…