Health Wonk Review is up

Recent articles

• Will competitive bidding work in Medicare?

  February 9, 2012 in Medicare

  In my opinion the answer is yes.  A book by Coulam, Feldman and Dowd also would agree with me. Recently, Medicare began a competitive bidding process for durable medical equipment.  Is it working?  According to the Wall Street Journal, the answer is no. “Normally when the government wants to buy something, it asks companies how [...]

• Hot Links

  February 8, 2012 in Current Events

  Check out these interesting articles as we head toward the weekend. How much do you know about Medicare? Coming apart. Rents in Beijing higher than New York? Patients=sheep?  Docs=dogs? Governmental business is increasingly important. And one more late addition: 1-2-3-4-5.

• Why are there so few vaccine suppliers?

  February 7, 2012 in Contagious Disease, Pharmaceuticals, Regulation, Supply of Medical Services, Vaccinations

  In many cases, only a handful of suppliers produce vaccines for a given disease.  In fact, for several vaccine types the U.S. has fewer suppliers than countries with a smaller market and a higher level of government purchase. One reason for this finding could be strict government regulation.  All vaccines must be approved by the [...]

• Have States made any progress towards implementing Health Exchanges?

  February 6, 2012 in CHIP, Health Reform, Medicaid

  The answer depends on the state. Today, I examine an Urban Institute research paper that looks at this progress in more detail. Dividing States into 3 Group The most advance States fall into Group 1 (CA, CO, CT, DC, HI, IN, MA, MD, NV, OR, RI, UT, VT, WA, WV). These states have either enacted [...]

• Celebrity Product Endorsement in the 1800s

  February 3, 2012 in Books, Quotation

  “The first customers bough pairs of telephones for communication point to point: between a factory and its business office, for example.  Queen Victory installed one at Windsor Castle and one at Buckingham Palace (fabricated in ivory; a gift from the savvy [Alexander Graham] Bell.” from The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James [...]