A report published in Health Affairs estimates that Medicare Part D spending will rapidly increase in the coming years. The reasons are both good news and bad news. Basically, new drugs in the pipeline and an increasing array of specialty drugs will drive spending growth. From 2009 to 2018 spending on Medicare Part D drugs increased about…
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
What if Future Voters Could Vote?
An interview with Alex Tabarrok:
Future residents don’t have the vote, so we prevent building which placates the fears of current homeowners but prevents future residents from moving in. Future patients don’t have the vote, so we regulate drug prices at the expense of future new drug innovations and so forth. This has always been true, of course, but culture can be a solution to otherwise tough-to-solve incentive problems. America’s forward looking, pro-innovation, pro-science culture meant that in the past we were more likely to protect the future.
Drug Maker’s Copay Assistance Ended Up in Drug Plans’ Pockets
A while back I wrote about drug company copay assistance programs. The purpose of these is to entice patients to use higher-cost brand drugs by blunting health plan incentives for enrollees to choose lower-cost drug options.
Friday Links
Surgeon quality matters. HT: Tyler
Where health care research misses out.
The healthcare system tracks data on people who are patients, not on people when they aren’t. We’re not looking at the people when they don’t need health care; we’re not gathering data on what it means to be healthy. I.e., the “missing patients.”
Medicare is paying doctors to be woke.
Senate votes to revoke Biden’s preschool (Head Start) mask mandate. (7 Democrats voted with all the Republicans)
Apple employees to Tim Cook: Making us go back to work is racist.