Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
TechDirt has an interesting article (“The Doctr Is In“) about Dr. Jay Parkinson. Dr. Parkinson started a boutique clinic in which patients pay for services out of pocket. Unlike most boutique practices, patients can email or instant message the doctor about any medical questions from 8am to 5pm, or in the case of medical emergencies…
The latest edition of the Health Wonk Review is up at the Health Affairs blog.
Do students who attend better schools preform better academically? This is tautologically correct, but not very informative. What would happen if we randomly moved students from low quality schools to high quality schools? Would they do better? Using the results from Chicago Public Schools randomized lotteries of elementary studies, Julie Cullen–my dissertation adviser–attempts to answer…
In classical economics models, supply and demand curves create a unique market price. Anyone who has shopped around for a good deal, however, knows that there is often significant price dispersion, even for homogeneous goods. For instance, gas prices can often vary greatly within a single neighborhood. On Monday I attended a seminar by Matthew…
There is an interesting article from the Techdirt blog about “How patents skew medical research.” The blog post states “The monopoly power granted by patents pushes all research money into only things that can be patented, ignoring other possible cures, even if they can be both profitable and quite helpful.” The post includes an example…
Who has a better health care system: Canada or the U.S. Michael Moore would vote for Canada. Libertarians would side with the U.S. A new NBER working paper by June O’Neill and Dave O’Neill concludes that the two systems may produce more similar health outcomes than was previously believed. History of the Canadian System The…
The 120th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance is up at My Retirement Blog. Included in this edition of the carnival is my review of the classic book A Random Walk Down Wall Street.
Local governments provide a variety of services which are highly valued by their residents. From police protection to waste disposal, from snow plowing to utility meter reading, the local government is charged with providing the infrastructure necessary for a smooth functioning economy and a high level quality of life. But should local governments outsource these…