Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
The Second Anniversary edition of the Cavalcade of Risk has been posted at the always informative InsureBlog. Two especially interesting posts from Cato-at-Liberty and Colorado Health Insurance Insider discuss the individual–compared to the group–health insurance market.
This post will review Han Bleichrodt‘s lecture regarding the micro foundations of using QALY based utility functions. QALYs Many health economists use a QALY model to describe a person’s preference over health states. For instance let (q1,…qτ) be an individuals health profile from year 1 to year τ. The QALY model assumes that utility is…
Below is a summary of Don Kenkel‘s lecture regarding the Economics of Substance Abuse Use. General The World Health Organization and the United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) have statistics on the number of drug users around the world. They claim that in 2002 there were 2 billion alcohol users, 1.3 billion smokers, and…
A week ago, we looked at Nichol’s 2003 paper regarding LAIV for healthy working adults. Today we will review the rest of the literature regarding the effectiveness and the economic impact of influenza vaccination for working-aged adults. The seminal work in the literature is written by Nichol and colleagues in the October 1995 edition of…
As a teacher’s assistant at UCSD, I often see undergraduate students selecting courses based on how easy the professor grades rather than on the amount of knowledge they will be able to glean from the course. Why is this? Arnold Kling gives a four main reasons in his “College Customers v. Suppliers” post on the…
Today, most news sources’ headline story was “The Day without Immigrants.” From Los Angeles to New York to my hometown of Milwaukee, thousands marched to protest proposed immigration laws. NPR’s Marketplace radio show (“One home, Two nations“) has a wonderful portrayal of two friends–Francisco Castro and Luis Molina–and their decision of whether or not to…
One of the largest healthcare risks in many countries is war. Between 1980 and 1992, El Salvador experienced a violent civil war between the right-wing military government and the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Mari para la Liberacion Nacional) communist guerrilla forces. The conflict began to boil over in 1977 when armed forces arrived at Universidad Centroamericana…
For the next week I will be headed to Ciudad Romero in the department of Usulatan in El Salvador to assist the local population through their NGO La Coordinadora del Bajo Lempa (Lempa is for the Lempa river which runs near the town). Directed by La Coordinadora, I will work on social justice projects such…