Category: Uncategorized

Shirley Svorny and Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute have a long history (see here) of criticizing government licensing of physicians and other health care providers (e.g., nurse practitioners [NPs], nurses). Their proposed alternative has been to allow private entities to certify the competence of practitioners. They claim that private entities would increase competition by…

In the news, we often hear of pharma companies dramatically raising the price of off-patent but sole-sourced drugs. For instance, Martin Shkreli–formerly of Turing pharmaceuticals–raised the price of Daraprim, an antiparasitic drug, from $13.50 to $750 per pill. Is this a common occurrence or is the news media blowing it out of proportion? A recent…

Kamala Harris on health. COVID data quality. African-American views on US health policy. Impact of treatment advances on lung cancer mortality. Trends in deaths of despair.

In theory, single payer systems are the best approach to deal with existential threats or pandemics. The strengths of single-payer, top-down approaches are that having most funds–and potentially most workers–within a single entity can lower coordination cost and lead to a more effective response. The key drawback of single payer, top-down systems is they typically…

Talking to kids about coronavirus. FDA on RWE.  Should pharmacists be able to order labs? Health policy econometrics: DiD vs. SC vs. IFE vs. GSC COVID-19 for startups.

Access to care in rural areas is often a problem. Some studies have found that rural residents are less likely to seek preventive care such as vaccinations in part due to the need to travel long distances to get primary care. Even if rural residents do access their primary care physician (PCP), however, are they…

Cocaine making a comeback? Supplier-induced demand in France and Germany? Infrastructure and beer in the Congo (DRC). Do at-home braces work? Coronavirus spreads.

Despite what conventional wisdom says, a paper by Chen et al. (2019) indicates that the answer may be ‘yes’. The adjusted price per median LYG [life year gained] of a drug increased by $6129 (P = .14) each year from 1995 to 2012,…whereas the adjusted price per mean LYG increased at a markedly slower rate…

That is a claim by a recent JAMA article by Shrank et al. (2020). The Incidental Economist has a nice video explaining their findings. Of the $760 billion in total waste, the largest component is administration and billing, costing $266 billion. There is an easy way to eliminate most of this waste: eliminate insurance. If…

The central proposition of the Grossman model (Grossman 1972) is that health can be viewed as a durable capital stock that produces an output of healthy time. It is assumed that individuals inherit an initial stock of health that depreciates with age and can be increased by investment. The model is similar to human capital…