Health Care the nation’s #1 priority

According to a recent Christian Health Association poll, healthcare ranks at the top of most Americans’ priority lists.  Excluding Iraq, 29% of individuals believed that “providing affordable health care” was the most important issue facing America.  This was followed by “Ensuring homeland security” [22%]; “Reducing government spending and taxes” [19%], “Improving public education” [13%], and…

Gates gives $105m to study public-health programs

According to the Wall Street Journal (“Gates Grant Targets Health Gauges“), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated $105 million to the University of Washington to establish an institute to measure the impact of public-health programs. The new institute which will be created will focus on quantitative measures of health and will be headed…

Tax Paris Hilton, not Britney Spears

Jason’s Furman’s blog post on The Economist‘s Free Exchange blog not only has a clever title, but makes a clear argument against an estate tax and in favor of a inheritance tax. Philosophically, this amounts to taxing those who inherit wealth (Paris), but not those who general the wealth (Britney). He cites a paper by…

Ultimate Buy and Hold

What is the optimal asset allocation?  Of course the answer to this question depends on where you are in life and your tolerance for risk.  A retired person who is 70 years old likely should have a higher percentage of their assets invested in money market funds and bonds than a 35 year old with…

State Health Care Rankings

New rankings are available detailing the quality of care received in different states. The Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHQR) gives some State Snapshots based on National Healthcare Quality Report. My home state of Wisconsin is ranked #1 according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (“State is No. 1…“). The Commonwealth Fund also has a…

Vaccination Externalities

Externalities are a basic concept in the economics of health care. Yet actual ACIP policies do not pay significant attention to externality issues. The rationale for vaccination recommendations often doesn’t consider strategies to target sub-populations, such as school children, that are most likely to generate negative externalities by spreading the disease. A paper by Boulier,…

Empirical Findings on P4P

Pay-for-performance (P4P) is one of the latest hot topics in the health policy world. Yet it has not been conclusively answered whether or not P4P incentives affect the quality of care given. Meredith Rosenthal and Richard Frank review some of the more compelling empirical studies in their April 2006 paper in Medical Care Research &…

Economics and QALYs

The New York Times (“…the Money Value of a Person’s Life“) has a non-technical article describing how economists value a year of life.  One standard methodology–the quality-adjusted life year (QALY)  is discussed. “The idea of QALY is to put a value on treatments that may not save lives but improve them. For example, if a…