HPHWD

"Austin Frakt and Aaron Carroll, who offer wonderfully helpful health policy analysis on their blog..."

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 13:01:28 +0200

“Austin Frakt and Aaron Carroll, who offer wonderfully helpful health policy analysis on their blog The Incidental Economist, wish that we could just debate the issues, without getting into the people presenting positions. I appreciate their preferences. But it can’t be done.”

- Bad Faith and Civility, Health Care Edition - NYTimes.com

Open Health Data: Open Health Data: An International Snapshot

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 04:43:53 +0200

Open Health Data: Open Health Data: An International Snapshot:

openhealthdata:

Open Health Data Qualitative Overview from Eugene Borukhovich

The 2009 Digital Britain Report described data as ‘an innovation currency’ and ‘the lifeblood of the knowledge economy.’ We are now in 2013 and while there is tremendous buzz around open data in general,…

(via Smoke Free Movies: Our Ads)

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 07:41:22 +0200

(via Smoke Free Movies: Our Ads)

"2004: Songwriter Melissa Etheridge has breast cancer. That’s bad news. But there’s good..."

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 16:32:03 +0200

“2004: Songwriter Melissa Etheridge has breast cancer. That’s bad news. But there’s good news too, Bachmann tells the conservative education group EdWatch: maybe the cancer will give her time to reflect on her sinful lifestyle: “Unfortunately she is now suffering from breast cancer, so keep her in your prayers. This may be an opportunity for her now to be open to some spiritual things, now that she is suffering with that physical disease. She is a lesbian.” In the same speech, she alleges that “almost all, if not all, individuals who have gone into the lifestyle have been abused at one time in their life, either by a male or by a female.””

- Michele Bachmann Said What?! | Mother Jones

Inégalité de santé (by Parti de Gauche)

Thu, 30 May 2013 21:29:17 +0200

Inégalité de santé (by Parti de Gauche)

"Before I can explain what the news means, I need to make a crucial point: Obamacare is a deeply..."

Mon, 27 May 2013 12:26:09 +0200

“Before I can explain what the news means, I need to make a crucial point: Obamacare is a deeply conservative reform, not in a political sense (although it was originally a Republican proposal) but in terms of leaving most people’s health care unaffected. Americans who receive health insurance from their employers, Medicare or Medicaid — which is to say, the vast majority of those who have any kind of health insurance at all — will see almost no changes when the law goes into effect.”

- The Obamacare Shock - NYTimes.com

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Mon, 27 May 2013 02:13:50 +0200

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"This helps to explain why 12 percent of all Americans believe that the ACA already has been..."

Sat, 25 May 2013 11:37:53 +0200

“This helps to explain why 12 percent of all Americans believe that the ACA already has been scrubbed. Every time a commentator mentions “health care reform” and “repeal” in the same sentence, the words will sink into that morass of half-truths and fictions that we call “the conventional wisdom.””

- The 37th vote to repeal health care reform: Why?

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:41:08 +0200

Genetic screening for breast cancer | Stats Chat

Wed, 22 May 2013 02:13:04 +0200

Genetic screening for breast cancer | Stats Chat:

“A round-up of some worthwhile links on Angelina Jolie and BRCA1.”

"Williams reports on what oncologists say about cancer drugs in “The Price of Drugs for Chronic..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:08:40 +0200

“

Williams reports on what oncologists say about cancer drugs in “The Price of Drugs for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML); A Reflection of the Unsustainable Prices of Cancer Drug.” The article, which was published in the journal Blood, includes candid comments from more than 100 experts They tell us that:

Many costly treatments aren’t worth the money
New treatments with tiny orno benefits often cost a multiple of existing therapies
Despite their reputation for penny-pinching, health plans are often not aggressive in negotiating price
Patients are already suffering mightily from high costs –and it impacts quality of life and survival as well as financial health
Society as a whole cannot afford to pay the high prices charged for so many of the new therapies

(I’m reminded of “A Very Open Letter from an Oncologist published on HealthBeat in 2009.) It’s encouraging to see more oncologist stepping forward to telll the truth about cancer drugs…).

As Williams observes these insights “come from people who know what they’re talking about and who have traditionally been sympathetic to drug makers and unperturbed about costs.”

”

- Health Wonk Review: Oncologists Tell the Truth about Cancer Drugs; Will There Be Enough Plans to Choose From in the Exchanges? What Does Oregon’s Research on Medicaid Tell Us? And More … | Health Beat by Maggie Mahar

"Via HuffPost/Pollster, Democratic pollster Mark Mellman offers his overview of where public opinion..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 19:17:31 +0200

“Via HuffPost/Pollster, Democratic pollster Mark Mellman offers his overview of where public opinion currently stands on the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). Mellman cites figures of roughly 30% (Fox News poll) and 33% (CBS/New York Times poll) of Americans favoring full repeal of the ACA. These percentages, though far from a majority, are higher than the 25% of U.S. voters who favored repealing “all of it” in the 2012 exit polls.”

- Health Care Polls: Mellman on State of Obamacare Public Opinion

(via CBO says deficit problem is solved for the next 10 years)

Thu, 16 May 2013 02:57:27 +0200

(via CBO says deficit problem is solved for the next 10 years)

Seen at LeMonde.fr.

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:23:00 +0200

Seen at LeMonde.fr.

"So, where does this leave us with regard to the Oregon Health Study? I have no idea, actually. I am..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 07:38:18 +0200

“So, where does this leave us with regard to the Oregon Health Study? I have no idea, actually. I am no expert on the bowels of Medicaid, and as I live and work in an extremely underserved region with devastating health inequities, far be it from me to claim that access to Medicaid in insignificant. In fact, as I argue at length, we need to be very careful in the implications we draw from the above evidence. First, it does not imply the moral insignificance of expanding access to health care services. No matter how we structure society, people will fall sick, and I have no hesitation in saying that we ought to care for them. But we should not confuse this ethical proposition with an empirical counterfactual, viz., that in a world in which we did expand such access we would see significant improvements in overall population health. Second, beware the false choice fallacy. There is no contradiction between collective action on the SDOH and expanding access to basic health care services.”

- The Oregon Health Study and the Medicalization of Health Policy | Inequalities

"If you thought U.S. doctors would never accept evidence-based medicine, consider this: Just last..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 07:10:52 +0200

“If you thought U.S. doctors would never accept evidence-based medicine, consider this: Just last week, in a stunning about-face, the American Urological Association(AUA) announced that it no longer recommends routine annual PSA testing for men under 55.”

- PSA Testing: An About-Face | Health Beat by Maggie Mahar

"Launch of the ACA’s controversial Independent Advisory Board– a panel charged with recommending..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 07:10:28 +0200

“Launch of the ACA’s controversial Independent Advisory Board– a panel charged with recommending ways to curb Medicare inflation — has been delayed until 2016. Does this means that the IPAB’s critics have won?”

- The Independent Payment Advisory Board and Medicare Spending: New Research Suggests a Change in Our Medical Culture | Health Beat by Maggie Mahar

Offsetting Behaviour: Reason to love NZ #58: A functioning health care system

Tue, 07 May 2013 06:01:23 +0200

Offsetting Behaviour: Reason to love NZ #58: A functioning health care system

"The key question here is how we should marginally revise our beliefs, or perhaps should have revised..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 06:00:53 +0200

“The key question here is how we should marginally revise our beliefs, or perhaps should have revised them all along (the results of this study are not actually so surprising, given other work on the efficacy of health insurance). For instance should we revise health care policy toward greater emphasis on catastrophic care, or how about toward public health measures, or maybe cash transfers? (I would say all three.) One might even use this study to revise our views on what should be included in the ACA mandate, yet I haven’t heard a peep on that topic.”

- A few remarks on the Oregon Medicaid study

"One of the metrics used to measure health outcomes is the five-year survival rate… what..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:36:59 +0200

“

One of the metrics used to measure health outcomes is the five-year survival rate… what proportion of patients are still alive five years after they are diagnosed with breast cancer? Said differently, we are interested in the length of time between the time of diagnosis and the time of death. There are two ways to improve this metric, by delaying the time of death, or by moving earlier the time of diagnosis. The former is difficult to achieve, and requires genuine progress in medication. The latter is very easy! If we screen younger people, we will move the time of diagnosis earlier. Without any medical progress, we will make the five-year survival rate fall. This phenomenon is known as lead-time bias.

Expanding screening to younger and less vulnerable populations has another effect, which I discussed in Chapter 4 of Numbers Rule Your World. The marginal person who gets diagnosed will be less ill than the average person - Orenstein tells us that the form of disease most commonly diagnosed in younger women (DCIS) ought not even to be called “cancer”. Add less ill people to the population of ill people will automatically improve the survival rate, again without any medical progress. This phenomenon is known as length bias.

”

- Screening screening - Numbers Rule Your World