The value of adherence information

A study titled “Estimating the Value of New Technologies That Provide More Accurate Drug Adherence Information to Providers for Their Patients with Schizophrenia” was just published in the November edition of JMCP.  This is work with co-authors Taylor T. Schwartz, Darius N. Lakdawalla, and Felicia M. Forma.  The abstract is below.  Go check it out!  …

Obamacare Death Spiral?

Health insurance premiums are projected to increase an astronomical 25% for plans in the health insurance exchanges. Some pundits claim that these increases represent that Obamacare is crumbling or in a death spiral. As premiums rise, healthy people flee the market. This leaves insurers with only more sick individuals which leads to premium increases. More…

Chocolate Bar

A truly amazing and uplifting story from Kind World from WBUR about a boy with Glycogen Storage Disease Type 1b, his friend and the Chocolate Bar Book. LANTZ: Dylan is 10 years old now. But this story starts when the boys were in first grade. Dylan’s mom Debra Siegel was driving her son home from…

Extended Cost Effectiveness Analysis

Cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) examines whether treatment benefits outweight treatment costs on average for a given patient population. A 2016 paper by Verguet, Kim and Jamison examine the concept of extended cost effectiveness analysis (ECEA) which applies cost effectiveness methodologies to health care policies. The policies are evaluated over 4 domains: (1) health gains; (2)…

Bad news for Obamacare?

Premiums are rising.  HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell stated: Building a new market is never easy,” she told the group at HHS headquarters. “We expect this to be a transition period for the marketplace. Issuers are adjusting their prices, bringing them in line with actual data on costs.” Burwell’s comments foreshadow the higher premiums expected when…