Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
According to the Daily Mail (…obesity epidemic…) the NHS could give “vouchers to the overweight to spend on healthy food in supermarkets” or cash prizes to those who manage to lose weight. The UK could also mandate cooking classes in school and more time for physical education classes. The UK report on obesity states: “We…
There is an interesting article at Forbes describing that the housing boom is not the only bubble that may need to burst. Scans per thousand insured people went from 85 to 234 in the U.S. between 1999 and 2007. Author David Whelan describes what happened to one radiologist in Connecticut after Medicare and HMOs cut…
Hybrid cars are supposed to save the environment, but they will also increase traffic. How can this be? Example 1 Let us suppose that Hybrid Harry has a hybrid car which gets 50 mpg. Gas-guzzler Gary has a truck which gets 20 mpg. Both Harry and Gary live in San Diego and have relatives in…
There is a law which states that drug companies must sell drugs to Medicaid at their the lowest price. It turns out the Merck was selling drugs to hospitals at a steeper discount than what they were giving to Medicaid. Merck will pay $399 million for overcharging in Philadelphia and $250 million for overcharging in…
Is the current medical school curriculum optimal in terms of teaching doctors-to-be how to best practice medicine? DB’s Medical Rants blog says no. “One cannot really understand most diseases if one cannot correlate the physiology. We should focus our anatomy teaching on the big issues, not the 3rd branch off the 2nd artery (hopefully you…
Typically, economists when economists look at the health insurance market, they focus on the insurance side of it. By this I mean to define insurance as the purchase of a product which will reimburse the buyer in the case of an adverse event. However, one must also look at the concept of protection. Protection is…
Merrill Goozner has an interesting post (“Unfair and Unbalanced Wonkery on Mandates“) arguing that insurance mandates aren’t good policy (I agree with him on this). For the record: I’m opposed to mandates for two reasons. First and foremost, they’re bad politics. Americans don’t like to be told to do anything. They especially don’t like unfunded…
According to CNN, the FBI “is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information — from palm prints to eye scans.” Maybe this will increase security, but will the government take advantage of this knowledge? “People…
Government provided health insurance may have advantages, but one of the drawbacks are that these programs are expensive. According to the Boston Globe (“Subsidized care plan’s cost to double“), the cost of the Commonwealth Care program will increase from $158 million in 2007 to 1.35 billion by 2011 mostly due to increased enrollment. Enrollment is…
According to the Telegraph newspaper (“Don’t treat the old…“), “Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.” Should you be denied coverage because of lifestyle choices or because you are ‘too…