Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
In a recent NBER working paper (“Tradeoffs“), authors Christopher Afendulis and Daniel Kessler, pose an interesting question: should the physician who is diagnosing you also be the one who provides treatment? On the one hand, a physician who both diagnoses and provides treatment has a financial incentive to recommend to the patient that they should…
Since Easter just passed yesterady and we are still in the midst of the Passover holiday, today I decided to blog on the economics of religion. No, this title is not an oxymoron. A Businessweek article from 2004 (“Economists are getting religion“) cites the Economics of Religion as an emerging field. One of the leading…
I have recently finished the latest draft of a working paper titled “Operating on commission: Analyzing how physician financial incentives affect surgery rates using nationally representative household data.” It should be interesting to readers who wonder how financial incentives affect specialist care provision. Below is the paper’s abstract. Any comments regarding the paper’s contents would…
This week’s edition of the Health Wonk Review is posted at the Health Affairs blog.
The San Diego Union-Tribune recently reported (“Doctors balk…“) on pediatricians concerns regarding the rising costs of vaccines. The article begins: “The soaring cost and rising number of new vaccines, doctors say, make it increasingly difficult for them to buy the shots they give their patients. They also say that insurers often don’t reimburse them enough,…
I recently came across an interesting idea based on the HousingMaps model: have individuals report their own illnesses in order to have a better idea of public health. This is the plan for the start-up Who is Sick? website. The site aims to provide health information to the public by tracking and monitoring current and…
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…