Health

Healthcare Economist Unbiased Analysis of Today’s Healthcare Issues

  • Links
    by Jason Shafrin on April 26, 2025 at 1:20 am

    Only ⅔ of FDA-approved biosimilars have launched. Measles outbreak continues. UnitedHealth profits fall. Super-Earths. ‘Bone Collector’ caterpillars. NFL Draft comes to Green Bay.

  • Is international reference pricing coming to the US?
    by Jason Shafrin on April 25, 2025 at 2:26 am

    Perhaps this is what President Trump is exploring. Reuters reports: Drugmakers have been warned that the Trump Administration is considering linking U.S. medicine prices to lower amounts paid by other developed countries, according to two company sources who called the option the pharmaceutical industry’s top concern.Both sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said…

  • Pharma CEOs: ‘European drug prices are too low’
    by Jason Shafrin on April 24, 2025 at 3:56 am

    At least according to CEOs from Novartis, Sanofi and AstraZeneca. Reuters reports: European drugmakers are urging the EU to allow higher medicine prices, warning that without stronger investment incentives, the bloc would fall further behind the U.S., where tariff threats have triggered a wave of pharma investment announcements. AstraZeneca Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot said…

  • Why don’t people buy natural disaster insurance?
    by Jason Shafrin on April 23, 2025 at 4:54 am

    That is the topic of a paper by Katherine Wagner (2022). The paper won the 2025 American Economic Journal: Economic Policy best papers award (despite being published 3 years ago). In her paper, Dr. Wagner uses data from 20 US Atlantic and Gulf Coast states between 2001 and 2017. Housing valuation data come from Zillow…

  • Quantifying the Impact of Medicaid Expansion
    by Jason Shafrin on April 22, 2025 at 5:01 am

    How did Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act impact health insurance coverage, cost and mental health? That is the question asked by Andreyeva, Rochford and Marthey (2025). They use 2011-2019 data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to examine outcomes for Americans aged 26–54 with at least one child living in the…