- A Bloody Waste: Why is the Red Cross turning down healthy blood that is being thrown away?
- Uvalde follow-up: While most people think that police have a duty to attempt to protect people from harm, the law has been clear—cops have no such duty.
- Coffee keeps you awake. Can it also keep you alive?
- Drug cartels in northern Mexico are kidnapping doctors to tend to gang members wounded in battle.
- Capretta on Medicare Part B: the government’s contribution to the SMI Trust fund will be $6.0 trillion over the period 2022 to 2031, reaching the equivalent of about 30 percent of all individual and corporate income tax receipts at the end of 75 years.
Author: John C. Goodman
Do Higher Priced Hospitals Deliver Higher Quality Care?
This NBER Working Paper says it depends on whether there is competition.
In markets with more hospital competition, going to higher-priced hospitals raises spending by approximately 53 percent and lowers mortality by 47 percent. By contrast, in concentrated hospital markets receiving care from a high-priced hospital also raises spending by 54 percent, but has no impact on patient outcomes.
And the higher spending in competitive markets is worth it:
Such hospitals spend approximately $1 million per life saved. Assuming that the individuals in the research sample live for another nine years, this is cost effective relative to the Environmental Protection Agency’s $8.7 million benchmark estimate of the value of a statistical life.
Unfortunately, the trend in the overall market is for more concentration and less competition.
Wednesday Links
- Cato: Laws criminalizing the possession or sale of “drug paraphernalia” lead to avoidable diseases and death.
- Blahous: To make Medicare solvent, we need a 26% increase in the payroll tax or a 20% cut in benefits.
- Sherry Glied (who has a history of being wrong on health policy matters) says it’s time to get rid of HSAs.
- A Trump rule that would have automatically scrapped health agency regulations if they weren’t assessed every 10 years is axed by Biden’s HHS.
- More than 8 in 10 hospitals are flouting a federal rule requiring them to publish their prices.
The Family Glitch
Obamacare law says that health insurance at work is “affordable” if the employee has to pay no more than 9.5% of his wages for self-only coverage. If it is affordable, neither the worker nor his family is entitled to subsidized insurance in the (Obamacare) exchanges. The Biden administration wants to change that rule administratively (without Congress) to deem health insurance “unaffordable” if the premium for the entire family is greater than 9.5% of wages.