Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
The 2005 Deficit Reduction Act aimed to reduce Medicaid entitlements as one means to reduce the national deficit. One portion of the bill changed eligibility rules for the elderly to qualify for Medicaid payment of nursing home (NH) expenses. In the May edition of the Journal of Health Economics, authors David Grabowski and Jonathan Gruber…
One of the biggest advances statistical modeling in the last 30 years has been the use of the bootstrap. For those interested in learning about the bootstrap in more detail, a good place to start is an article by UCSD math professor Dimitris N. Politis which I will summarize here. For more detailed information, one…
There is an interesting article (“Unintended Consequences“) from February 2000 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine in which author Dr. Lawrence Casalino gives his view of how measuring physician quality impacts care. Dr. Casalino cites many unintended consequences of implementing an quality measuring system including 1) more paperwork, 2) the fact that certain…
This week’s edition of the Cavalcade of Risk is up at Colorado Health Insurance Insider.
Laurence Baker is a health economist at Stanford’s Center for Health Policy. Much of Mr. Baker’s work has dealt with how HMOs have affected care levels. Today I will briefly review three of Baker’s articles: HMO Penetration and the Cost of Health Care (AER 1996) In this paper, Baker and Corts look how HMO market…
Why is it taking so long for the medical industry to adopt information and communication technology? Is it a good thing that it is taking so long? This is the question addressed by an interesting and non-technical NBER working paper by Michael Christensen and Dahlia Remler (“ICT in Chronic Disease Care“) What is Information and…
Generic drugs dramatically reduce the cost of pharmaceuticals to patients. Can generic medical devices reduce the cost for hospital administrators? Matthew Holt of The Health Care Blog interviews Richard Kuntz, CEO of Generic Medical Devices. Mr. Kuntz wants to reduce the cost of the implants, surgical implementation, and supplies used in medical care. The company…
What exactly is Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposing in his health care initiative unveiled early this year? Below I briefly summarize his press release, as to what the reforms will entail and then follow with some of my comments. Individual Mandate All individuals must have a minimum level of insurance. Children Children of families whose income…
The VA has often been held up as an example as to why a centralized health care system works well. An interesting post from The Sentinel Effect looks at a North Carolina’s The News & Observer column (“VA Overselling its medical care“) stating that the VA system results are not as good as they claim.
Do you live in California? Are you interested in health care issues? Then you may be interested in the Cal Health Reform website. The website has links to various health reform proposals including a summary of Governor Schwarzenegger’s health reform initiative. There is also a brief powerpoint presentation from health economist Jon Gruber of M.I.T.…