According to Modern Healthcare magazine, medical ambulances charged between $26,000 and over a half million dollars for each individual flight in North Dakota over the past four years. The prices averaged around $60,000 which is extremely steep given that almost…
Blog Archives
Criminalizing drugs makes about as much sense as criminalizing depression.
Which has a greater cost to society, depression or addiction? The estimated burden on America is similar. The White House reported in 2014: The economic cost of drug abuse in the US was estimated at $193 billion in 2007, the…
Posted in Health, Public Finance
Marijuana decriminalization vs legalization
Americans tend to be conservatives in the sense that we tend to be risk averse. We don’t want to change our system unless there is a really good reason. In the case of our current policy towards marijuana, there is…
Failures of Obamacare and possible reforms
Jon Walker wrote a wonderful critique of Obamacare that Kevin Drum published in pieces so I’m copying it below so that it is all in one place. 1. State control combined with zero direct incentives for the states to make…
Posted in Health
Rolling out a new kind of “death panel” claim to try to scare senior citizens
Before becoming president, Donald Trump was a long-time proponent of single-payer health insurance (aka Medicare for All). That shouldn’t be surprising given that Trump was a liberal Democrat for most of his life until Obama was elected and then Trump’s…
Posted in Health
OTC hormonal birth control is a simple way to cut costs and improve health
On the one hand, deregulating the market for the pill would improve health, lower costs, reduce abortion, and eliminate a political football. On the other hand, it would reduce incomes for physicians and drug manufacturers, a small passionate minority thinks…
Posted in Health
Optimal pricing of cancer drugs
The Nobel Prize for medicine went to cancer researchers this week who developed immunotherapy drugs that can be miraculously effective, but as Julia Belluz reports, the prize is also a reminder of how expensive the cancer treatments they developed have…
Posted in Health
