Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
I have written previously about the need for distributional cost-effectiveness analysis (DCEA) which would increase the value of treatments who improve the health for individuals who currently have the worst expected quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE). I’ve written about this in AJMC and Health Affairs among other places. One key question many individuals may have is…
That is one approach being explored in Philadelphia according to an article in Kaiser Health News. Using funding from Temple University, two Pennsylvania Medicaid health plans, and some grant funding, the Template University Health System: …launched a two-year program last year to help 25 homeless Medicaid patients who frequently use its emergency room and other…
That is the title of an article in AJMC co-authored with Meena Venkatachalam. An excerpt is below: While decision-makers traditionally have ignored the issue of inequality, academic researchers have already developed tools to quantify a treatment’s value from reductions in inequality. Two common methods for doing so are distributional cost effectiveness analysis (DCEA) and multiple-criteria…
Bütikofer and Salvanes (2020) in The Review of Economic Studies: This article examines the economic impact of a tuberculosis control program launched in Norway in 1948. In the 1940s, Norway had one of the highest tuberculosis infection rates in Europe, affecting about 85% of the inhabitants. To lower the disease burden, the Norwegian government launched…
The answer comes in an interview my colleague Meena Venkatachalam and I had with the American Journal of Managed Care. Check out the full intereview here.
The Milwaukee Bucks–my home town sports team–yesterday boycotted Game 5 of their NBA playoff series. This historical event serves to bring attention to the inequalities African-Americans and other minorities face in our society. In health care, disparities also exist. As I mentioned in my Health Affairs blog piece with Meena Venkatachalam, COVID-19 has highlighted these…
Azar et al. (2020) use electronic health record data to examine differences in COVID-19 hospitalization rates by patient characteristics. The authors find that: …compared with non-Hispanic white patients, nonHispanic African American patients had 2.7 times the odds of hospitalization, after adjustment for age, sex, comorbidities, and income. These findings echo similar COVID-19-related conclusions across California.…
There have been numerous articles (e.g., Krugman in the NY Times) stating that disparities in life expectancy is growing. It is known that income inequality has grown in recent decades but some claim that health inequality is also growing. Janet Currie argues that the truth is not as bad as you think in a forthcoming article…
For the past few years, some economists have claims that increases in income inequality are due to increased cost of employee benefits such as health insurance. For instance, let’s say that health insurance cost $10,000 per worker. Workers with a wage of $20,000 have total compensation of $30,000 including benefits, and workers with wages of…
Numerous media outlets and academic studies have demonstrated that in the last few decades, income inequality has grown. However, not only are poor Americans making relatively less money compared to their richer peers in recent years, but poor individuals also have not experienced the same survival gains as the rich. Louise Sheiner reports on a…