Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
How did health care prices change over the past 2 decades. That is the question a paper by Papanicolas (2024) aims to answer, comparing US prices to those from Australia, Canada, France, and the Netherlands between 2000 and 2020. Before we get to the results, we first need to determine what types of price indices…
Many researchers are interested in how cost sharing impacts health care utilization, cost and patient outcomes. This is especially true as high-deductible health plans (HDHP) have become more common in the US. In 2023, 29% of covered workers in the US had a HDHP. One helpful type of data for analyzing HDHPs is claims data.…
FDA on AI. Rural hospital closures on maternal and infant health. Price caps for obesity drugs? One framework for fair drug pricing. Iterative approach to model-based decision making in health.
Modelling health care cost is often problematic because are distributed in a non-normal manner. Typically, there are a large number of $0 observations (i.e., individuals who do not use any health care) and cost distribution that is strongly right skewed among health care users due a disproportionate number of individuals with very high health care…
A de facto number that is used by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is £30,000 per quality adjusted life year (QALY). Some recent literature (Martin et al. 2023) argues for a lower cost-effectiveness threshold (£15,000/QALY or less) based on their marginal cost per QALY (MCPQ) estimates. Alternatively, a paper by Sampson and…
Medicaid policies vary from state-to-state. With the advent of new, GLP-1 medications (and others) to treat obesity and overweight, there are potentially significant health benefits to be gained. However, are State Medicaid Agencies actually covering these medications? This is the question asked by Liu et al. (2024). They use data from public state Medicaid formulary…
The future of economics. Hacker attack on health data. Where is air pollution highest in low- and middle-income countries. 5.8m children have long COVID Underrated: the HPV vaccine.
That is according to Feedspot’s “70 Best Public Health Blogs and Websites” ranking. Healthcare Economist came in at #15. Check out the other top-ranked blogs and websites here.
Perhaps so according to the health policy editor at the Guardian. He writes that as NHS has grown weaker, private medical insurance is becoming a more attractive option. The long delays for NHS care that are now endemic – and cause so much worry, risk and harm to those left waiting – are not going…