Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
That is the questions Peter Neumann and David Kim (2023) answer in their JAMA research letter published today. They use 1990-2021 data from the Tufts Medical Center CEA Registry. The results are summarized in the graphs below. First, we see the use of a explicit cost effectiveness threshold increasing over time, from only 45% of…
That is the question that a recent study by Tisdale et al. (2021) aim to answer. They first look at the top 250 Medicare Part D drugs in terms 2016 total spending based on the 2016 Medicare Part D Prescriber Public Use File. Drug characteristics were identified from the 2016 FDA Orange Book. The authors…
At drug launch, treatments have some benefit and cost. However, drug prices may change over time. Additionally, treatment benefits may rise or fall depending on how well efficacy translates into effectiveness and how well physicians learn to manage adverse events. Mattingly and Love (2020) provide a case study of how cost-effectiveness analysis can change over…
According to a February 2019 report, the Council of Economic Advisors proposes to improve health insurance markets through three key policies: Eliminate the individual mandate Permitting more small businesses to form Association Health Plans Expanding short-term, limited-duration insurance (STLDI) plans The report claims that these changes will generate $450 billion in social surplus over the…
That is the question of interest of a new study by Snider et al. (2018) in Value in Health. The authors use six reviews by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) that forecast the likely national spend on specific drugs or drug classes as case studies. Their study compares these forecast to subsequent…
The Second Panel on Cost Effectiveness in Health and Medicine made a number of recommendations of how to improve cost effectiveness analysis (CEA). Yet, CEA is far from “solved”. In a recent article by Neumann et al. (2018), the Second Panel identifies seven CEA areas where additional research is needed. This include: CEA and perspective:…
What happens when you have missing data? Many people recommend using multiple imputation (see Briggs et al. 2003; Faria et al. 2014; Gomes et al. 2013; Hunter et al., 2015; Hughes et al., 2016). This approach, however, generally assumes that data are missing at random. Missing at random could be interpreted as the probability that health…
The Innovation and Value Initiative (IVI) – a collaboration of academics, patient advocacy organizations, payers, life sciences companies, providers, delivery systems, and other organizations dedicated to finding scientifically credible approaches to measuring value in health care – today released a report examining imbalances in cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) across pharmaceuticals, medical/surgical treatments, and mixed procedures. The report, Expanding Cost-Effectiveness…
The answer is ‘yes’ according to a report by the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) titled Reforming Biopharmaceutical Pricing at Home and Abroad. Innovations such as new drugs often reduce the price of health even when the new drug is very expensive relative to other goods. Consider the example of a patient diagnosed with HIV…
The WSJ reports: President Donald Trump named Tomas Philipson, an economist at the University of Chicago who has specialized in health-care policy, to the three-member Council of Economic Advisers on Monday. More information is in this White House press release. Dr. Philipson is one of the founders of my current employer, Precision Health Economics. I…