House threatens to defund Obamacare

The house has passed a bill that would defund Obamacare.  Although passage in the Senate is unlikely, this marks a significant roadblock to implementing the Affordable Care Act and could cause a government shutdown.  The New York Times reports: The Senate is expected to reject decisively a House bill that would delay the full effect…

A positive trend on HIV

In 2011, the worldwide prevalence of HIV and AIDS was 34 million.  In that same year, 1.7 million people died of HIV or AIDS. However, the growth in HIV may be slowing.  Al Jazeera reports: Globally, new HIV infections are down by 33 percent since 2001 and have been more than halved among children. But…

Productivity Spillovers: The Case of AMI

The Healthcare Economist has written a lot about the fact that there exists significant regional variation in health care spending.  Is this due to a provider cultural norms?  Or are other factors at play? A paper by Chandra and Staiger (2007) claim that productivity spillovers may explain this results.  I summarize their proposition in more…

Can you inherit a mental illness?

According to this JHE study by Johnston, Schurer and Shileds, the answer is ‘yes’. Importantly, we estimate an intergenerational correlation coefficient in mental health of 0.190, which means that a one-standard-deviation decrease in maternal mental health (measured when the cohort member was a child) is associated with a 0.19 standard deviation decrease in the child’s…

Thursday Links

Are cigarette taxes too high? The CDC’s $54 million ad campaign Could you owe money by taking an Obamacare subsidy? Similarities between healthcare and higher education. Rating Shakespeare plays: ((($rating – 1)/4) ** 2) * log($raters)