Posts Tagged ‘health economics’

The Absurdly Profitable Business of Prior Authorizations

March 15, 2024 — Prior authorizations are a driving force in the burnout of physicians, denial of medical care, and the profitability of health insurance and pharmacy benefit plans. By one estimate, healthcare providers spend $35 billion every year on chasing down prior authorizations so that their patients can receive the care they need – whether that is a […]

Scarcity, Greed, and Drug Pricing in an Election Year

March 10, 2024 — For many of us, it’s just too painful to think about. But a rerun of the 2020 presidential election is coming and drug pricing is likely to be a big talking point for both of the major candidates. President Biden is talking about corporate greed while former President Trump is talking about reviving an executive […]

Pretending to Keep the Cost of Treating Obesity Down

March 4, 2024 — Today marks the start of Obesity Care Week and all over the globe, this is World Obesity Day. To mark this day, dozens of advocates from all of the major organizations that care about improving the standard of care for obesity have converged on the U.S. Capitol for dialog with policymakers about opening the pathway […]

The Rise of Forced Choices Between Money and Health

February 18, 2024 — Who knew that financial toxicity was a thing? Perhaps like us, you have merely thought of it as the financial burden of healthcare – without assigning it the status of a medical complication that dysfunctional healthcare causes. But recent publications are making it ever more clear that people living with chronic diseases are having to […]

Disease Burden from Exposure to the Chemicals of Plastics

January 24, 2024 — Scientific publications keep sending us signals that all of the plastic we are heaping into our lives may be eating away at our health. Just this month alone, two new publications have us thinking about the disease burden that may result from exposure to the chemicals of plastics. One, in the Journal of the Endocrine […]

Is Drug Pricing Policy Really Poised for Change?

December 10, 2023 — Something’s gotta give. In health policy, angst about drug pricing is a constant. Businesses that spend billions to discover and develop new drugs need prices that will be sufficient to pay back the costs incurred for the drugs that succeed, plus the costs of many more that fail. But those prices drive ever higher costs […]

With Better Obesity Care, Will People Need Less Healthcare?

November 22, 2023 — The economics of healthcare bedevil us. Spending on it, with occasional interruptions, goes up year after year. Some countries spend less to get more, but the story is universal. The better we get at healing our health problems, the more we seem to spend on healthcare. In the case of obesity care, medical research has […]

Who Benefits from Pharmacy Benefit Managers?

November 15, 2023 — A trip into the world of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) is enough to make our heads spin. It leads us to wonder: exactly who benefits from pharmacy benefit managers? The answer is not clear, but it seems obvious that patients in need of affordable medicine do not. In Search of a Fair Deal The biggest […]

The GLP-1 Windfall for Pharmacy Benefit Managers

October 24, 2023 — We have grown tired of the mindless repetition of a $1,350 monthly list price for Wegovy in endless news reports about the great expense of this very important new drug for obesity. Not because the drug isn’t expensive. But because that list price is not an accurate representation of what the drug really costs. So […]

Cause and Effect, Waist Circumference and Health Costs

September 17, 2023 — OMG. How can we possibly cope with the costs of treating obesity with these expensive new obesity meds? This question seems to be on the lips of many who pay for health plans. But a new study in Nature Communications turns that question on its head. How can we afford to continue withholding effective treatment for […]