Plain Sense Economics

In honor of the first week in our Healthcare Economics class, and the beginning of a 6 week session on healthcare via OLLI, here is an interesting report from The New York Times.
National health spending rose a slight 3.9 percent in 2010, as Americans delayed hospital care, doctor’s visits and prescription drug purchases for the [...]

The pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, watched its main source of revenue and profits, Lipitor, lose its patent protection this week, and now faces competition from generic equivalents. In 2010 Lipitor was the second highest selling prescription drug with $5.2 billion in sales in the U.S. alone. (source: Drugs.com). Now, in the next year, prices of the [...]

This article is for my past students in healthcare economics. You heard me rant that while expanding coverage to millions of uninsured Americans is important, there also needs to be a parallel effort to control costs. The extension of benefits will increase costs significantly, even if we take into account some (minor) savings from earlier [...]

In Principles of Macroeconomics we compare the dueling strategies of John Maynard Keynes and supply side advocates. Keynesian strategies rely on government spending to stimulate demand during recessions. Supply siders argue that we should reduce tax rates, and let income earners (individual and corporate) keep more of what they earn, thereby increasing their incentive to [...]

Gregory Mankiw posted this question on his blog:
You are a utilitarian social planner. You have a limited number of H1N1 vaccines. How do you allocate them? Do you (A) give them to specific groups, such as high-risk populations, or (B) sell them to the highest bidder and rebate the revenue lump-sum to everyone? If you [...]

al’-le-gory – a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.

This story ran on NPR’s Morning Edition – October 21.
Pet health care is now crossing the same magic threshold that human health care crossed decades ago: It’s getting good, and it’s getting [...]

For political junkies the next several weeks should be very interesting, as the Senate and House (and various splinter groups within each chamber) try to construct a healthcare reform package that works and will garner enough votes.
No one from Washington has called me – asking for my preferences, but in the interest of illuminating both [...]

The Senate won’t reach agreement on healthcare reform before taking their summer recess. The main obstacle seems to be Blue Dog (fiscally centrist or conservative) Democrats worried about the impact of reform on the federal deficit. It is a legitimate concern. Here’s how the issue can be framed using our basic tools in economics.
Demand Side: [...]

Hundreds of supporters attended and performed at two benefit concerts this weekend here in Ashland. The money was being raised to help a local, beloved musical leader who has a degenerative and terminal neurological disease. The efforts will probably raise well in excess of $20,000. That won’t come near to paying his accumulated medical bills, [...]

Perhaps as a fitting sequel to our discussion on rationing healthcare, comes an op-ed piece in the Washington Post by Alain Enthoven and Denis Cortese. The authors point to the need for reform on the supply side of healthcare, as well as improving access on the demand side.
[...T]hese programs [technology, preventive care, and effectiveness research] [...]