More Misc Health Econ Posts

A series of links to video clips from a documentary on Money Driven Medicine. Yeah, its a money driven world. Medicine is no different. If only doctors could do less and get paid more, all the problems would be solved. Oh and those money grubbing insurance companies need to stop grubbing and give more to doctors.

The difficulties of finding evidence of Adverse Selection.

Does extending insurance reduce mortality? Two from marginal revolution. Here. Here.

Misc Health Posts

1. Adults need vaccinations too.

2. Health spending is 17.3% of GDP.

3. Texas tries to address HIV among African-American women.

Viz Wars

Booze

The Economist covers the temperance movement in the UK. Its not that surprising that British Pubs would push for a minimum price in an attempt to reduce competition from supermarkets. However I was shocked to see the different rates of cirrhosis and liver disease incidence across EU countries. See the graph below.

Health Subsidy

via MarginalRevolution:

James Kwak gives us his back-of-the-envelope estimate:

The median family household had income of $62,621 in 2008, which means it has a marginal tax rate of 15%. (We’re pretty close to the 25% threshold, so I’ll use 20% in what follows.) So without the exclusion, the typical family plan would cost about $16,000 in pretax dollars, not $13,000; the exclusion gives the median family a discount of 20%. Only about 60% of people get health insurance through an employer plan, so the average discount across the population is only 12%. Given that the price elasticity of health care is almost certainly a lot less than one (if you double the price, demand won’t fall in half), the overconsumption due to the tax exclusion must be less than 12%. Yet our per-capital health care expenditures are more than 60% above those of any other advanced country.

In other words it matters, but not as much as many people claim.

Jobless Recovery Interview

My interview with Joy Cardin is here.

Transplants

UW Hospital has improved kidney transplant outcomes enough to get referrals from OptumHealth again. Story here.