Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Without a doubt, medicine has made tremendous gains over the last decades and even more progress when viewed across centuries. Often to treat diseases, physicians and researchers identify a single or primary pathway that is causing the disease. Maybe there is a gene mutation which causes an abnormality. Maybe there is a bacteria or virus…
How do you do cost effectiveness the right way? Peter Neumann–a colleague of mine at Precision Health Economics–edits a book to explain how to do just that. Neumann and Gillian D. Sanders, Louise B. Russell, Joanna E. Siegel, and Theodore G. Ganiats have produced a second edition of their classic text Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine. The…
Andrew Soloman has an outstanding article the Guardian discussing the intersection of literature and medicine. He his article about literature on medicine saying saying: Medicine can contribute to literature; narrative practice can strengthen medicine. It behoves writers and doctors to learn each other’s fluencies, because their disparate approaches can add up to singular truths. Of particular…
According to one former police officer, the effect of drugs themselves are not the main cause of violence: …drug users aren’t responsible for violence–high people just want to enjoy their high. Drug violence is business violence….the largest causes of drug murders are territorial disputes over market share. If no one will help you defend your property–you can’t trademark…
“First, you push on your territories, where you have no business to be, and where you had promised not to go; secondly, your intrusion provokes resentment, and resentment means resistance. Thirdly, you instantly cry out that the people are rebellious and their act is rebellion…Fourthly, you send out a force to stamp out rebellion; and…
I recently read a very interesting book by John Goodman titled “Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis“. Whereas President Obama’s Health Reform plan focuses on increasing access to medical services by expanding the government’s role in the medical marketplace, Goodman advocates reducing regulation and adding flexibility to the health insurance and medical markets. The book is…
“Baggy two-piece suits are not the obvious costume for philosopher kings: but that, in theory, was what the apparatchiks who rule the Soviet Union in the 1960s were supposed to be. Lenin’s state made the same bet that Plato had twenty-five centuries earlier, when he proposed that enlightened intelligence gives absolute powers would serve the…
In honor of the start of the NBA playoffs… “After personal fouls, points scored per minute have the largest impact on minutes per game. The result directly contradicts the rhetoric from coaches. Again, coaches tell players to focus on something besides scoring. Players, though, can see that the most effective way to get more playing…
You may have seen on Amazon or near the UPC of your book an ISBN. What is an ISBN? Can it be any number? Why does the Healthcare Economist care? Answers are provided below. What is an ISBN? According to Wikipedia: “The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based…
The 1950s was a time of unprecedented technological advances in the science of medical care. In 1955, epidemiologists at the University of Michigan developed a polio vaccine. These advances lead the federal government to increase funding for research. Between 1955 and 1960, Congress increased the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from $81 million…