Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
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…
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…
The latest edition of the Health Wonk Review is up at David Williams’ Health Business Blog.
“Energy and persistence conquer all things.” – Benjamin Franklin
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,…
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 &…
The New York Times (“…the Money Value of a Personâs 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…
This Sunday’s New York Times’ Magazine has a bunch of interesting, non-technical articles about income inequality. Should we globalize labor too? “[Development Economist Lant Pritchett] likens the limits on labor mobility to ‘apartheid on a global scale.’” The Inequality Conundrum. Roger Lowestein discusses the age-old debate between equity and efficiency. Larry Summer’s Evolution. “The history…
Help a graduate student with their dissertation by completing the following survey: The News Media and Immigration Attitudes This survey is designed to help us understand what Americans like you think about immigration and the news media. We are very interested in your thoughts on this matter and greatly appreciate your participation. Click here…
How do medical expenditures affect mortality for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients? Avi Dor, Mark Pauly, Margaret Eichleay and Philip Held try to answer this question with data from 12 developed countries (“ESRD and Economic Incentives“). The authors end up finding that increased expenditures on ESRD have no statistically significant affect on mortality. The correlation…