Healthcare Economist Unbiased Analysis of Today’s Healthcare Issues
- A deeper dive into drug revenue and costby Jason Shafrin on July 22, 2025 at 3:56 am
Many people don’t understand why pharmaceuticals cost so much money. Don’t pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money? The answer is ‘yes’, but only if the drugs are successful. A paper by Wouters et al. (2024) found that: Based on data for 361 of 558 new therapeutic agents approved over the study period (median follow-up…
- What’s in the UK’s Life Sciences Sector Plan?by Jason Shafrin on July 18, 2025 at 3:05 am
Yesterday, the UK government released it’s Life Sciences Sector Plan (LSSP). The British government summarized the provisions as follows: 1. Unlocking NHS data to find new cures. Up to £600 million investment to build the world’s most advanced health data system – helping scientists develop better treatments faster. 2. Speeding up clinical trials. Cutting red…
- Two approaches for measuring treatment value under uncertaintyby Jason Shafrin on July 15, 2025 at 4:59 pm
That is the title of my new paper in the Forum for Health Economics and Policy (FHEP) and the subtitle is “Estimating Insurance Value and Risk Preferences in Neurology.” This work is co-authored with Kyi-Sin Than, Jacob Fajnor, Jaehong Kim, Elizabeth Mearns, Stacey Kowal, Thomas Majda and Jakub Hlávka. First, the research uses a multiple…
- The increasing health and economic cost of natural disastersby Jason Shafrin on July 15, 2025 at 4:06 am
On this blog we most often talk about health care issues related to chronic and acute conditions, health behaviors and public health. However, there is another dimension that is vital to health: avoiding natural disasters. Unfortunately, natural disasters appear to having an increasing impact in the US across the past decades. Between 1980-2024, 16,941 people…
- Linksby Jason Shafrin on July 12, 2025 at 1:18 am
FDA: Fast-review vouchers to be tied to lower US prices Why FDA rejects drugs (in their own words) Kaiser Health News on prior authorizations. Measles: 1,288 cases in the US this year Impact of ChatGPT on language.