Why is health journalism is often wrong?

One of the reasons is that health-related academic research is often wrong.   Biostatisticians have studied the question of just how frequently published studies come up with wrong answers. A highly regarded researcher in this subfield of medical wrongness is John Ioannidis, who heads the Stanford Prevention Research Center, among other appointments. Using several different…

Are screening subsidies enough?

The answer is ‘no.’ For instance, consider the case where breast cancer screening is subsidized, but you are uninsured an breast cancer treatment is unaffordable.  What is the value of breast cancer screening?  It is probably pretty low since if you find out you have breast cancer, there is not much you can do about…

What is the Negative Binomial Model?

Many research questions require healthcare economists to measure the effect of various patient, physician or market-level characteristics on specific health events.  Oftentimes, these events are discrete in nature.  For instance, doctor’s visits, ER visits, and hospitalizations are all discrete events. To properly estimate the effect of certain characteristics on a discrete event, count models are needed.  The…

The Effect of Medicaid P4P on Nursing Home Quality

Over 10 million Americans need long-term services and supports to assist them in life’s daily activities.  Of these, 1.6 million reside in a nursing home. Nursing home care, however, is expensive ($74,800 per year) and and quality is highly variable. To improve the quality of care, many states have begun adopting pay-for-performance (P4P) programs for nursing homes. Between…