We study the trade-off between bureaucratic costs and reductions in moral hazard induced by managed care tools in healthcare…. Prior authorization reduces a drug’s utilization by 26.8%. Half of marginal beneficiaries are diverted to another related drug, while the other half are diverted to no drug. These policies reduced drug spending by $96 per beneficiary-year (3.6% of drug spending), while generating approximately $10 in paperwork costs. Revealed preference approaches suggest that the net cost savings exceed beneficiaries’ willingness to pay for foregone drugs.
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
Tuesday Links
- Last week’s most disturbing headline: “Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s health director hired by CDC.”
- Contributing to the infant formula shortage: over-regulation, restrictive trade barriers and ridiculous welfare rules.
- The time cost of care may be greater than the money cost of care, and may make care not worth it.
- Why ChatGPT could make bioterrorism a lot easier.
- The downside of personalized medicine: Patients can face the agonizing decision to forgo treatment or suffer financial ruin. (NYT)
Monday Links
- After a heart attack your odds of survival are greater when the heart surgeons are away from the ER.
- Spending down assets in the last years of life? Only 1 n10 seniors has purchased long term care insurance.
- Scott Adams has a solution for male loneliness: get an AI girlfriend.
- 45% of all adults say they are interested in weight loss drugs.
- “At nearly one in three births, our rate of cesarean section deliveries is considerably above the 10 to 20 percent level that public health experts consider an acceptable benchmark.”(NYT)
- Where your ham comes from. It’s so awful, I couldn’t finish reading it.
Saturday Links
- In defense of drug decriminalization: what Oregon and Portugal got wrong: Jacob Sullum and Jeffrey Singer.
- Biden’s attack on Short-term insurance is not only bad policy, it’s cruel.
- Cato: Extend OTC status to all birth control pills, not just one.
- Why it ls hard to know whether you own your own cells.
- If you give people a free 10k, what will they do with it? HT: Tyler
- Dylan Scott asks: Why doesn’t health insurance pay for more mental heath therapy?
- I answered this question more than two decades ago: here, here and here.