Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
There is a law which states that drug companies must sell drugs to Medicaid at their the lowest price. It turns out the Merck was selling drugs to hospitals at a steeper discount than what they were giving to Medicaid. Merck will pay $399 million for overcharging in Philadelphia and $250 million for overcharging in…
Is the current medical school curriculum optimal in terms of teaching doctors-to-be how to best practice medicine? DB’s Medical Rants blog says no. “One cannot really understand most diseases if one cannot correlate the physiology. We should focus our anatomy teaching on the big issues, not the 3rd branch off the 2nd artery (hopefully you…
Typically, economists when economists look at the health insurance market, they focus on the insurance side of it. By this I mean to define insurance as the purchase of a product which will reimburse the buyer in the case of an adverse event. However, one must also look at the concept of protection. Protection is…
Merrill Goozner has an interesting post (“Unfair and Unbalanced Wonkery on Mandates“) arguing that insurance mandates aren’t good policy (I agree with him on this). For the record: I’m opposed to mandates for two reasons. First and foremost, they’re bad politics. Americans don’t like to be told to do anything. They especially don’t like unfunded…
According to CNN, the FBI “is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information — from palm prints to eye scans.” Maybe this will increase security, but will the government take advantage of this knowledge? “People…
Government provided health insurance may have advantages, but one of the drawbacks are that these programs are expensive. According to the Boston Globe (“Subsidized care plan’s cost to double“), the cost of the Commonwealth Care program will increase from $158 million in 2007 to 1.35 billion by 2011 mostly due to increased enrollment. Enrollment is…
According to the Telegraph newspaper (“Don’t treat the old…“), “Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.” Should you be denied coverage because of lifestyle choices or because you are ‘too…
Diarrheal disease is a leading cause of childhood mortality in many developing countries. The best treatment when diarrhea strikes is to give the patient Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS). Who provides better care for this disease, public or private providers? A paper in Health Economics by Waters, Hatt and Black (2008) looks at data from the…