EconTech

Congress Pushes Curbs on Doctor-Owned Hospitals
The N.Y. Times reports (”Concerned about costs…“) that Congress is trying to impose new restrictions on physician-owned, for-profit hospitals. The legislators fear that these hospitals 1) drive up costs and 2) provide poor quality.
Legislators worry that when physicians own the hospital, they may have more of an incentive to order [...]

Via Cowen:
What should be an allowable non-profit?

In a ruling last December that sent tremors through the not-for-profit world, the Minnesota Supreme Court said a small nonprofit day care agency here had to pay propery taxes because, in essence, it gave nothing away.
…Almost 88 percent of overall nonprofit revenues in 2005, the most recent year for [...]

The Puzzling Consensus in Favor of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act
The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which bans certain types of genetic discrimination by employers and insurers, passed the House by a vote of 414 to one, and the Senate by a vote of 95 to zero. That means it’s a good idea, right? Wrong.
Suppose an [...]

Apparently, it doesn’t get funding:
Why Medicine Should Care Less About ‘Sick,’ More About ‘Normal’
If you had died 50 years ago, your body would have stood a pretty good chance of serving science. In the 1960s, autopsy rates at US hospitals exceeded 50 percent. Pathologists weren’t necessarily looking for what killed people — they were taking [...]

Jason has a series of post that are worth reading if:

You think universal payer systems exclude the market
You call universal health care ’socialized medicine’
You think universal payer systems do not have down sides

I will update this post as more countries are listed. So far he has (in alphabetical order):

Canada
France
Germany
Great Britain
Greece
Japan
Spain
Switzerland

These are clearly written up [...]

I have heard old-school physicians and physicians from lesser-developed countries complain that younger American physicians do not know how to practice medicine without all the fancy equipment we have. This would imply that older equipment couldn’t be reused as readily due to physician reliance on the newest available products.
I have written before on what I [...]

I mentioned the other day that I have been far from impressed by the statistical savvy of much of the biology and medical communities. Way, WAY too many statistics are thrown at the medical community for their level of statistical training.[1]  Even then, this seems like this is something they should catch. On the other [...]

Sometimes I wonder why we even bother with insurance. Well, to be more precise, it would be good to know exactly how much we are paying for how much risk reduction (as individuals). We (sometimes) know how much we are paying, but how many of us know what our risk profiles look like under each [...]

I agree with what is being said here to a very large extent. Of course, the policies being put forth by Obama and Clinton do not create a single payer system; do not get pulled into that fallacy. Nevertheless, if government payment really is so much more efficient than private payment, then it would not [...]

Jason over at Healthcare Economist seems to think this is a good idea. I have to disagree with the specific instantiation described here (going solely on Jason’s description). Besides the obvious problem, pointed out by Jason, that most people have way too little expertise in medicine to properly document their health history, making that history [...]

Every economist knows how important prices are. Lots of information can be backed into that one little scalar. Yet, in some areas, they just aren’t available. Certainly, a number of activities in ‘corrupt’ countries will cost a great deal more than their posted price due to tips, bribes, etc. This adds a great deal of [...]

The article itself seems interesting. Jason’s summary is below. I want to make a point on the meta-issue here. This type of study is not possible without proper documentation and recording in a compatible electronic format. The cost of collecting the non-electronic data is simply too high. I have said before that EMR will allow [...]

That is how the question is posed, but I want to analyze the data from a slightly different angle. What are the marginal benefits of the new machine over the old one? I suspect not particularly great. What happens to the old machine? I have no idea, but the answer to this question is of [...]

Richard Eskow Talks to David Cutler

Eskow writes:
Richard Eskow: Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama have each presented detailed proposals for health reform. The Clinton and Edwards plans include health mandates, which require Americans to obtain health care coverage or face (unspecified) sanctions. The Obama plan does not include mandates.
Health mandates are popular among many [...]

I’ve said it before, there are forms of knowledge production other than science:
Eternal Medicine

Most fans of modern medicine do not realize how similar in appearance was ancient medicine:
While the Greeks left a vast legacy of medical texts in a familiar language, we know of only 12 from the time of the pharaohs - written [...]