Variation in State Health Care Expenditures
How have medical expenditures varied over time and across states? That is the question being asked by Johnson et al. (2022) in a recent Health […]
HC Statistics
COVID-19 news and stats
Some COVID-19 news updates. 66.5% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. 12.09 billion doses have been administered […]
Findings from 2022 Medicare and Social Security Trustees Report
Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds came out with their annual report on the state […]
Cancer Mortality Among Black Individuals in the US
Cancer is the 2nd leading cause of death in the US, just behind heart failure. Yet in recent years, we have seen that improved prevention, […]
Will health care spending as a share of the economy fall?
In the short-run, the answer is likely ‘yes’. As COVID-19 (hopefully) slows and if economic growth remains strong, health care spending will fall as a […]
Antimicrobial resistance caused 4.95m deaths
That is the title of an editorial by Ramanan Laxminarayan published in The Lancet this week. Part of the rationale from this commentary is a […]
Healthcare and Life Sciences Industry Outlook: 2022
My colleagues at FTI have a new white paper out surveying health care leaders on trends to expect in 2022. The data come from a […]
Overview of FDA Drugs Approved in 2021
In 2021, the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) approved 50 new drugs, either as new molecular entities (NMEs) under […]
Nurse employment and wage trends
Recent news articles have spilled much ink about the current nurse shortage. According to Pew, due to nursing shortages “Hospitals nationwide are canceling nonemergency surgeries, […]
Causes of Death 2015-2020: Where does COVID-19 rank?
A paper by Ahmad and Anderson in JAMA last spring examined trends in the causes of death in the US. Below are the charts in […]
Do Blacks’ higher incarceration rates impact their mortality rates?
According to a study Bovell-Ammon et al. (2021) in JAMA Open, the answer is ‘yes’. The authors use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of […]
Alternative Payment Models: Where are we now?
Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network (HCP LAN) is dedicated to moving the health care system from volume-based, fee-for-service reimbursement, to alternative payment models […]
In 2020, health care made up nearly 20% of GDP
From CMS’s office of the Actuary as reported in Health Affairs today: US health care spending increased 9.7 percent to reach $4.1 trillion in 2020, a much […]
Characteristics of neighborhoods with high and low COVID-19 vaccination rates
What do the vaccination rates look like in the largest U.S. cities? In these cities, how do the characteristics of individuals in neighborhoods with low […]
Quantifying patient administrative burden
Previously, I wrote about how the US healthcare system imposes $90 billion of costs on physicians related to drug utilization management. According to a study […]
Statistics on health care labor
On this Labor Day, below find some interesting statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) on health care wages […]
2021 Medicare Trustees Report
The 2021 Medicare Trustees Report–formerly known as the “Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal […]
How much is your life worth?
In a previous post, I answered this question from the perspective of government agencies: According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the answer is $10 million. Other […]
Are drug prices higher in the US than in other countries?
Conventional wisdom holds that the prices of pharmaceuticals are higher in the US than in other countries. But is that really the case? And if […]
COVID-19 vaccination update
This weekend I received my second COVID-19 vaccine. While I certainly feel lucky to live in a country with ample vaccine supply, other countries are […]
Highlights from MedPAC’s Spring 2021 Report
Here are a few highlight’s from the March 2021 report on Medicare Payment Policy from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). Leading causes of death […]
Excess deaths due to COVID-19
Using data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and US Census Bureau, Woolf et al. (2021) find: Between March 1, 2020, and January […]
US adult life expectancy falling for those without a college degree
That is the finding from a study published by Anne Case and Angus Deaton this week in Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). […]
COVID-19 and racial disparities
On the eve of Martin Luther King Day, let us take a quick look at the impact of COVID-19 by race/ethnicity. CDC reports rates of […]
Large decline in cancer mortality
Last year, I published a paper that showed that cancer mortality rates fell by 24% between 2000 and 2016 and further that new cancer drugs […]
COVID-19 now a top 3 leading cause of death in US
That is the conclusion from Woolf et al. (2020) in JAMA this past week. The authors examine rates of COVID-19 mortality in the US between […]
COVID-19 and Reductions in Cancer Mortality
That is the topic of a commentary I wrote with co-authors Joanna MacEwan and Farzad Ali, titled “Does COVID-19 Threaten the Progress Pharmaceuticals Have Made […]
Health care spending as a share of GDP rises to 17.7%
In a paper by Martin et al. (2020) in Health Affairs, CMS’s Office of the Actuary (OACT) has its annual health care spending estimates for […]
Why does the US spend so much more on health care than other countries?
If we break down the numbers, it turns out that medical costs–rather than pharmacy cost–are the key drivers of differences in health care spending per […]
Comparing health care for older adults across 23 countries
How well do different countries take care of their elderly and near elderly populations? A study by Macinko et al. (2020) provides some useful statistics. […]
Spending on specialty drugs: 2010-2017
Specialty drugs are often injectibles, biologic drugs, or other drugs that require specialized administration, handling, or ongoing clinical assessment. Specialty drugs are often more expensive […]
Healthcare spending by age: An international comparison
We all know that health care spending per person in the US is highest among all countries. But are these results consistent across age groups? […]
Quantifying the digital divide
Telemedicine and video-conferencing are helping to bridge the gap in access to care during the COVID-19 pandemic. These approaches, however, only work if patients have […]
More opioid negative externalities: Pediatric opioid poisoning
Some people use opioids as a recreational drug. If people choose to ruin their own life, that is their problem. Others take opioids when prescribed […]
Fentanyl tops drug overdose death rates
RAND has an interesting report titled “The Future of Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Opioids.” What is truly startling is the rise in deaths due to […]
Health care battle: US vs. England
A new study by Choi et al. (2020) compares the health of individuals aged 55-64 in the US compared to England. They use data from […]
What explains the decline in COVID deaths despite the rising number of cases?
Take a look at these two graphs. The first gives the number of new COVID-19 cases from John Hopkins University. It is a scary graph. […]
