Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
A few weeks ago I was able to attend Till von Wachter’s presentation on his working paper “Mortality, Mass-Layoffs, and Career Outcomes: An Analysis using Administrative Data,” co-written with Daniel Sullivan. The authors investigated whether or not losing one’s job affects mortality rates. There could be many reasons why losing one’s job may affect mortality.…
There is an interesting article in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine (“What’s the one thing…“) regarding how some business leaders and Democratic politicians are uniting to fight for universal health care. The CEOs want to be relieved of financing a safety net for their employees (i.e.: health insurance and pensions) and the left is…
The Economist‘s Free Exchange blog has some interesting commentary on income inequality and health (“Healthy, wealthy and wise“). The post talks about Angus Deaton’s Spring 2003 NBER Reporter Commentary. In the Reporter, Mr. Deaton states the following: “[In a study by Christina Paxon and I], We focused on the idea that health is determined by…
Many analysts believe that medical costs can be contained by having the government run the health care system. The Ludwig von Mises Institute disagrees with this; in fact they believe that while Medicare and Medicaid “…provided a basic welfare program that covers most persons aged 65 and older as well as all needy individuals,” these…
Today, guest blogger Lindsay Oldenski will give her opinion about Alan Blinder’s recent comments regarding free trade and American job losses. Ms. Oldenski is an economics PhD student at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD) and specializes in topics related to international trade. Rethinking Free Trade? By Lindsay Oldenski According to a recent Wall Street…
The Cavalcade of Risk is posted at The Sentinel Effect website.
I’m off to Arizona today to watch 3 Milwaukee Brewers Spring Training games between Tuesday and Thursday. My blogging will resume on Friday.
Tyler Cowen has interesting piece in The New York Times (“Abolishing the Middlemen…“) in which he states that a single-payer system’s cost savings from the reduced administrative and overhead cost may be illusory. The article’s arguments are sound and are similar to the one’s I made in the post titled “Medicare’s (true) Administrative Costs.” The…
An interesting post by Arnold Kling (“Doctors, Pharmaceuticals, and Statisticians“) reports on a randomized clinical trial which demonstrated that on average, angioplasties have no incremental health benefits once the patient is placed on multiple medications such as beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, statins and blood thinners. Dr. Kling writes: “Doctors think that they add value by giving…
Muhammad Yunus is not only one of the pioneers of the microcredit industry as the founder of the Grameen Bank, he is also a Nobel laureate. The World Health Care Blog is currently covering the World Health Care Congress Europe 2007 and has an enlightening video post of some of Dr. Yunus’s comments regarding health…