Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Which one is easier to use? The answer to this is clear: Amazon. Of course, health insurance is a much more difficult product for people to understand than most good at Amazon. However, many policymakers may have underestimated the amount of customer service new enrollees in Healthcare.gov need. The Washington Post reports: Just 13 percent of assistance…
Jennifer Salopek has posted the July edition Health Wonk Review: Polar Vortex Edition at Wing of Zock.
Don Boudreaux describes comparative advantage using an interesting example. HT: Marginal Revolution
Most people think that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has focused on decreasing uninsurance rates by creating health insurance exchanges, providing subsidies for health insurance premiums for these exchanges, and expanding Medicaid. The ACA also has affected a number of other segments of the health care industry. Less well known is that the ACA also affected…
In 2003, China introduced the New Cooperative Medical Scheme(NCMS), a health insurance scheme for the rural population. What is the NCMS? Hou et al. (2014) describe the NMCS as follows: As a voluntary and heavily subsidized scheme, it has seen extremely rapid growth of coverage in comparison with most new schemes in developing countries. By the…
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reviews and approves all drugs. But what criteria does the FDA use to evaluate new drugs? Namely that they are effective (i.e., improve health outcomes) and safe (i.e., have limited adverse health events). In a 2007 guidance document from the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) and…
Obamacare and 2015 insurance premiums. Avoidable deaths. Science in the cloud. Are homicide rates really declining? Is the price of health care decelerating? Toilet sans water. Revitalizing the art of the physical exam.
In 1995, Newt Gingrich claimed that Medicare would end. He stated that “going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it — voluntarily.” Was he right? In the one hand, Medicare total enrollment and spending is rising and the program still has widespread political support. On the other…
RJ Weiss presents this week’s round-up of risk-related posts, with a heavy emphasis on risk, from cyber liability to under-reserving.
Upcoding occurs when physician or hospitals artificially increase the patient’s severity of illness. For instance, a hospital may record additional comorbidities. In Medicare’s inpatient prospective payment systems (IPPS), Medicare reimburses hospitals more for caring for patients who are sicker. Some health policy experts worry that electronic health records (EHRs) will decrease the cost of documenting…