Need I say more?
The United States Medicare program is forbidden, by law, from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies. This was part of a negotiation that was reached at the time that the government, under the leadership of George W. Bush, created Medicare Part D, to cover prescription benefits for Medicare recipients. The pharmaceutical industry was quite worried that government…
The percent of Americans without health insurance has dropped precipitously in the last few years, thanks in large part to the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. This is especially true in those states that, in accordance with the law, expanded Medicaid eligibility. Here is a picture of some recent data: This is really good news,…
Cass Sunstein just posted a really nice write-up of the calorie count research I was lucky enough to conduct with Steven Dallas (now a law student at Duke) and Peggy Liu (a marketing Professor at University of Pittsburgh). Thought I’d give you a flavor of the write-up: A provision of the Affordable Care Act that…
I realize that I do not have the most focused blog in the world. Some people blog about nothing other than, say, capital punishment or new developments in whiskey. I write about psychology, behavioral economics, ethics, the doctor-patient relationship, health policy, political partisanship… a relatively wide range of things, but topics often linked by the…
Generic meds are supposed to be relatively cheap; multiple companies can make the same molecule, leading to price-lowering competition. But that’s not always what happens in the US market. Look at the prices of these generics, in the US vs Canada: We need to take regulatory or legislative steps to reduce the price of generic…
Great picture from a NEJM article showing a continuing reduction in American tobacco consumption, a decline that accelerated during the Obama years. (Irony – Obama was a smoker during much of that time!) My question – What would this look like if you added in all the people using e-cigarettes?