Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
From an interesting book Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller. Debugging: Moreover, vacuum tubes made it possible for these digital computers to be reprogrammed. Mechanical gears such as those in a bombsight could only perform a single type of calculation because each knob was physically attached to levers…
As I do every Memorial Day, I highlight some recent news about the health care system serving our veterans, Veterans Affairs (VA). First off, VA is starting to use social determinants of health, and health-related social needs when conducting hospital discharge planning. VA deputy assistant IG Julie Kroviak: “…there’s a citation in the report where…
The answer is ‘yes’ from a paper by Lin et al. (2024). Using 2009-2013 data from the Massachusetts All-Payer Claims Database, the authors measured physician–hospital integration within an accountable care organization (ACO) based on the proportion of primary care physicians (PCPs) in an ACO who billed for outpatient services with a place-of-service code indicating that…
Potentially so, argues Adam Fein of Drug Channels. There are two mechanisms for this. First, for drugs not covered in the maximum fair price negotiations, Fein argues that drugs with high list prices and large rebates would lead to more net savings compared to drugs with lower list price and rebates in part because in…
What is it? The BIOSECURE Act is a bill seeks to stop firms that receive federal funds from using select Chinese service companies. These include the genomics firms BGI, MGI, and Complete Genomics; and WuXi AppTec and WuXi Biologics. These firms are deemed by the bill as foreign “companies of concern”. Why does it matter?…
Technology is amazing. From The Economist: Fourteen years ago, Melanie Reid, a journalist, fell off a horse and broke her neck. The injury to her spinal cord left her paralysed, limiting the function of her four limbs and torso—a condition known as tetraplegia. For more than a decade her left hand was incapable of either…
The above is the title of a helpful primer from Kenney and Keast (2024). I summarize some key points below. Provide an overview of the pharmacy contracts between stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem. How did the rise of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) impact pharmacy contracting? The Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) Act of1973 spurred the growth…
From Habla et al. (2024): Using a representative survey with 1317 individuals and 12,815 moral decisions, we elicit Swedish citizens’ preferences on how algorithms for self-driving cars should be programmed in cases of unavoidable harm to humans. Participants’ choices in different dilemma situations (treatments) show that, at the margin, the average respondent values the lives…
Rise in reported US maternal mortality rates largely due to change in measurement ChatGPT 4o and Khan Academy. FDA clinical trial snapshots: 2023. Do some Medicaid beneficiaries even know they are insured? Do PBMs reduce prices?
Could COVID-19 be more efficacious than effective? This could be the case if individuals receiving COVID-19 engaged in ‘risk compensation’. In short, without a COVID-19 vaccine, individuals may have refrained from travel and engaged in social distancing. After a COVID-19 vaccine, these same individuals could have been more likely to travel and less likely to…