Friday afternoon Comic
Here’s an entertaining comic from PhD Comics.
‘For the first time I found myself truly caught between my own needs and those of my patient.’
This is how a very interesting article (“P4P is changing me“) in Medical Economics begins. The essay won an award in the 2006 Doctors’ Writing Contest. The author of the story is a physician who has been under much financial pressure of late; a divorce, med school loans, a mortgage, alimony and child support were…
Social Networks and Access to Care
On the news yesterday that Microsoft purchased a 1.5% stake in Facebook for $240 million, social networking appears to highly valued commodity. “…[T]he strength of social networks among Mexican-Americans is positively related to access to care.” Is this true? That is hypothesis that a recent NBER working paper by Roan Gresenz, Escarce and Rogowski attempt…
Cavalcade of Risk #37
The latest edition of the Cavalcade of Risk has been posted at Hill’s Personal Finance blog.
Lifetime Benefits of Medical Technology
Revascularization (bypass surgery or angioplasty) have been frequently used procedures to treat patients who have experienced a myocardial infarction (MI). These procedure are expensive, but are supposed to enhance longevity. Do they? This is the question analyzed by David Cutler in his NBER working paper titled “The Lifetime Benefits of Medical Technology.” The problem with…
King of all media
The Healthcare Economist has expanded to radio. For those in the Pensacola, Florida area, you may have heard my appearance at 1:15pm Central time on Rick Outzen‘s “IN Your Head Radio” on 1620 WNRP. During the interview, Rick and I discussed the pros and cons of S-CHIP as well as the Dutch health care system…
San Diego Wildfires from a San Diego Resident
As most of you know who have been reading the news, the wildfires in San Diego, my home, have been causing much devastation. According to San Diego’s NPR station KPBS, an “estimated 245,000 acres burned and 1200 homes destroyed in San Diego County” (reported as of 10:09am Pacific time). Over 250,000 individuals have been evacuated…
Cure for Cancer: Use an expensive placebo…not a cheap one!
Give a patient a pill and they will feel better. Give the same patient the exact same pill and tell them it was purchased at a wholesale discount, and these same people won’t feel as good. At least that is what a study by Shiv, Carmon and Ariely (2005) found. In three experiments, the authors…
Catastrophic Payments for Health Care in Asia
An amazing collection of data has been performed by van Doorslaer et al. in their 2007 Health Economics paper “Catastrophic Payments for Health Care in Asia.” For 14 Asian countries, the authors categorize all charged services, free services, and income-related fee waivers. Further the paper examines the frequency and magnitude of out-of-pocket payments for medical…
Quotations of the day
“Un libro abierto es un cerebro que habla; cerrado, un amigo que espera; olvidado, un alma que perdona; destruido, un corazón que llora.” Proverbio Hindú Nada de lo que el hombre ha sido, es, o será, lo ha sido, lo es ni lo será de una vez para siempre, sino que ha llegado a…