Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Why were drugs not included in Medicare in 1965? And the answer is, because drugs didn’t matter. They were not all that good, and they didn’t do a lot… We now see pharmaceutical care as the heart of treating someone; not so then. Steven Grossman, Executive Director – Alliance for a Stronger FDA It’s amazing…
Hatch Waxman turns 40. FDA: Integrating RCT into routine clinical practice. Cost of care under Medicare vs. Medicaid. The Less-Efficient Market Hypothesis. Semaglutide and COVID-19. Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science turns 20.
While opioid overdoses have been rising for decades, trends in most recent times provide us a glimmer of hope. NPR reports: For the first time in decades, public health data shows a sudden and hopeful drop in drug overdose deaths across the U.S.“This is exciting,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute On…
What are the key elements for reporting your objective, attributes, experimental design, survey design, data collection process, econometric analysis, and results? A paper by Ride et al. (2024) conducted a Delphi Panel expert elicitation survey to create the DIRECT checklist for discrete choice experiment (DCE) studies in health. The checklist is pasted below. If you…
That is the title of a fantastic editorial from Olivença et al. (2024). A lot of people when they look at pharmaceutical prices think they are ‘too high’ or ‘too low’. But the question is, too high or too low relative to what? What are our goals in pharmaceutical pricing. The editorial clearly articulates the…
A paper by Qato et al. (2024) quantifies the degree of of pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) market concentration. Across all payer types, the PBM market was highly concentrated, with an HHI [Herfindahl Hirschman Index (HHI)] of 1972…the HHI was lowest in commercial insurance (1940), with 90 PBM participants, and highest in Medicare Part D (2399),…
AI use in cancer pathology workflow. Minnesota Starvation Experiment. Does it pay to complain about medical bills? Government to implement Aged Care Taskforce recommendations. KFF compares Presidential candidates’ health policy positions.
When exploring what type of career to pursue, legendary strength Coach Dan John believes that you’ve found a career if and only if you can answer the following 3 questions: Do you love it? Are you any good at it? Does anyone need you to do it? If the answer is ‘yes’ to all 3…
Conventional wisdom holds that it takes 17 years from medical innovation to adoption in the real-world. However, with advances in information technology, perhaps adoption timelines have shortened. A paper by DiCicca et al. (2024) examines how new clinical trial evidence on breech births impact practice patterns. Specifically, they note that: Using the United States Birth…
Who was Harold Hotelling and what did he contribute to the field of economics? A paper by Gaspard et al. (2024) in the Journal of Economics Literature provides some background on his life, his research and pros and cons of his research contributions. Today I summarize some of his key contributions to the field of…