Medicare Advantage enrollees experience lower rates of hospital admission and lower rates of expensive and ineffective medical procedures in the last few months of life.
Category: Health Reform
Wednesday Links
- Life expectancy for men in the U.S. falls to 73 years — six years less than for women.
- Noah Smith lauds Singapore but neglects to mention Medisave accounts.
- What discount rate should be used in evaluating changes in health policies?
- Should medical screenings be based on cost/benefit analysis or on the patient’s willingness to pay?
- A tribute to Vernon Smith – long time friend of the Goodman Institute.
- Does the case for a free society depend on the existence of free will?
Should Employers Fund Rare Disease Research and Therapies?
Included in Friday Links (November 10) was the title, “Would coverage for gene therapies make employer-based health insurance unaffordable?” That raises an important question: How much should employers (and employees) be required to pay for hyper-expensive therapies very few people need? A related question: should the purpose of employee health coverage be to recruit and retain workers or fund rare disease research and therapies?
Tuesday Links
- Tyler Cowen: “Classical liberals are increasingly religious.” I don’t think this is new. I think it has been true for a long time. But I don’t know why.
- ACO failures: study of Medicare patients with depression or anxiety finds a 24 percent decline in treatment visits and no discernible improvements at twelve months after enrolling in an ACO.
- Syphilis cases in newborns is ten times what it was a decade ago. In 40% of the cases, the mother had no prenatal care.
- Infant mortality rises for the first time in 20 years.