In 1998, Medicare enacted the sustainable growth rate (SGR) which would slowly bring down Medicare physician compensation. However, each year, it gets reversed by Congress. Now, instead of a gradual decline, the implementation of SGR would result in a 21.2% pay cut for Medicare docs.
Before the Thanksgiving holiday, however, [...]
Episodes of care are defined as the bundle of medical treatments used to treat an illness over a specified time period. Because all treatments are bundled together, these episodes have been thought to provide a superior unit of analysis in pay-for-performance (P4P) systems. In fact, Oxford Health Plan pioneered episode [...]
Are foreign-born individuals more likely to be literate (in English) than native born Americans? One would think not, but consider the following information:
Robinson (1950) computed the following two pieces of information: the percent of the population who are foreign-born, and the percent who are literate. Robinson observes that states with [...]
Two important stories for you to read. Two things to be thankful for:
How giving thanks improves your health. Packers beat Lions: 34-12. [...]Who does health care reform affect? Charles Kroncke and Ronald White organize individuals into the following four major stakeholder groups:
First-party patients. The patients who seek care. Second-party providers. These include hospitals, physicians, nurses, physical therapists, dentists, and pharmaceutical companies. Third-party payers. The payers are generally either private insurance companies or government programs [...]Some links to tide your over to Turkey Day.
House vs. Senate Reform Bills: A graphic comparison. Physician’s cost to interaction with health plan: over $23 billion. Early Detection Does Not Equal Prevention. Daily Lesson Plan: [...]One laudable goal is to improve medical quality while reducing cost. One way members of Congress have proposed to accomplish this is to use episode groupers in order to provide feedback to doctors regarding their resource use. None other than Max Baucus has advocated this (see p. 45 of this [...]
The CMS’ Office of the Actuary estimates the impact of the House health care reform bill on insurance coverage 10 years in the future:
One can see that the number of uninsured drops dramatically, but there will still be over 20 million Americans without [...]
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they know about what they imagine they can design.”
F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit. [...]Economist Tsung-Mei Cheng has developed three Universal Laws of Health Care Systems. These are:
No matter how good the health care in a particular country, people will complain about it. No matter how much money is spent on health care, the doctors and hospitals will argue it is not enough. The last reform always failed.Source: [...]
Life is full of questions:
What is the meaning of life? Which company will become the next Google? Is getting rid of medical underwriting the right thing to do? Should you risk choosing a business name that can be confused with a cuss word?This blog carnival answers some of these questions [3, [...]
America’s Health Ratings 2009 report ranks states according to overall healthiness. Mississippi is the least healthy state and Vermont is the healthiest state. The ranking methodology is available here.
The following states are the least healthy (starting with the least healthy):
Mississippi Oklahoma Alabama Louisiana South Carolina Nevada Tennessee Georgia West Virginia KentuckyThe following states are the most [...]
According to Eisenberg (Medical Care 2002):
“Although physicians’ professional fees represent only one fifth of health care expenditures, they are responsible far decisions that govern the way that as much as 90% of each health care dollar is used.”
One way to change behavior is to give physician feedback. Here’s how [...]
“Despite the spectacular failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, some economists insist that Fannie and Freddie need to be kept in place but somehow, just made safer. This optimistic advocacy—which assumes that Fannie and Freddie are like airplanes that need better landing gear—is in spite of the fact that [...]
T.R. Reid’s book The Healing of America looks at the best parts of health care systems around the world. In France, one of the most interesting aspects of their health care system is the pricing mechanism. Prices are regulated by the government and almost every doctor charges the same [...]
A paper by Thomas, Grazier, and Ward (2004) analyzes a variety of risk adjustment software products. Using these six risk adjustment products to calculate physician efficiency scores, they found “moderate to high levels of agreement were observed among the six risk-adjusted measures of practice efficiency.” However:
“And even though our [...]
According to a N.Y. Times editorial, the Congressional Budget Office has consistently underestimated costs savings from a variety of institutional changes to Medicare. For instance:
Medicare enacts the prospective payments system (PPS) for reimbursing inpatient hospital stays.
The CBO projected total Medicare spending will rise to $60 billion in 1986. Actual Medicare [...]The Social Security Administration’s Office of the Actuary projects Medicare costs up to 75 years in the future. How much of your taxable income will be going to pay for Medicare in the next 10, 25, or 75 years? Take a look at this chart.
By 2085, [...]
A Health Reform Bill passed in the House despite declining support among the American people. The Kaiser Family Foundation has a nice summary of what is included in the bill. Today, I will review who wins and who loses from different aspects of the bill.
Individual Mandate.
Winners: High [...]Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz have a nice list of the Ten Most Important Rules of Writing Your Job Market Paper. However, these tips can be used for almost any type of non-fiction writing. Some of my favorites include:
Rule #1: You will probably not have a Nobel Prize winning [...]
Most economists begin to learn about health insurance market with the classic models developed by Rothschild and Stiglitz. In these models, individual risk and characteristics are measured along a single dimension. Insurance contracts pay a lump sum amount in the case of a loss. In the real world of health [...]
Today we will discuss how the tax code affects health care.
Tax exemption of employer-provided health insurance. “In 1943, the Internal Revenue Service (ruled) that employees could exclude the value of employer-paid health insurance premiums from their taxable income. In 1954, Congress excluded by statute the value of employer-purchase health insurance [...]The largest provider of medical services in the United States is Medicare. Forty five million Americans receive Medicare. Out of this total only 85% are elderly (aged 65 or older). Disabled individuals, individuals with end-stage renal disease or Lou Gehrig’s disease are also eligible for Medicare coverage.
Medicare has 4 parts. [...]
The Wall Street Journal has a revealing article concerning why the production of H1N1 vaccines has moved at such a slow pace. The reasons include:
Foregoing additives. The green movement doesn’t like additives in anything, but removing additives–called adjuvants–from vaccines has a cost. ”An adjuvanted H1N1 vaccine being used in [...]
