- More on America’s unusually short life expectancy: the absolute gap is mostly overdoses, homicides, and car accidents.
- What’s wrong with BBB lite?
- Should uncompensated house work (including child care) count as part of GDP? Peter Thiel vs. Arnold Kling.
- David Henderson and Casey Mulligan: Why Biden is virtually engineering a recession.
- Jason Shafrin on Grossman’s classic human capital model of the demand for health care.
Author: John C. Goodman
How Does US Health Care Compare to Other Countries?
A paper from Samuel Preston and Jessica Ho delves into this:
- “The US appears to screen more vigorously for cancer than Europe and people in the US who are diagnosed with cancer have higher 5-year survival probabilities.”
- There is a similar, though not quite as strong, pattern with cardiovascular disease — it is treated more aggressively on average in the U.S., and survival odds are better.
- A detailed survey of prostate cancer evidence shows that “The combination of earlier detection and aggressive treatment in the US has produced greatly improved survival chances for men diagnosed with prostate cancer.”
- Similarly for breast cancer, America does more early screening and more aggressive treatment with the result that “the US has experienced a significantly faster decline in breast cancer mortality than comparison countries.”
Tuesday Links
- Jeffrey Singer: More on Monkeypox Deja Vu
- Having bombs explode around you when you are young affects your mental health later on. Why do researchers conduct studies like this? Nothing else to do?
- Is anyone truly resistant to Covid?
- Court: drug companies can’t help Medicare enrollees pay what their insurance doesn’t cover either with copay coupons or through charities. (paywall)
- The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that extending Obamacare subsidies would cost about $45 billion next year and $495 billion over a decade. (WSJ)
Monday Links
- Good news: The FCC is cracking down on robocalls.
- The case for Novavax.
- Lancet study: rising global temperatures since 2000 have caused 116,000 more heat deaths annually, but also led to 283,000 fewer cold deaths.
- The doctor doesn’t know best: health insurers and pharmacy benefit managers are switching mental health patients from a prescribed medication to one that may not work as well.
- How well does Paxlovid really work?
- Why is America’s mortality rate higher than that of other nations? Study considers every possibility except the obvious one: our population is heterogeneous. Last time I looked, Americans of northern European descent have the same life expectancy as northern Europeans.