Daily Policy Digest
Health Issues
| Stifling New Cures: The True Cost of Lengthy Clinical Drug Trials The enormous cost and risk of Phase III trials create incentives for researchers and investors to avoid work on medications for the chronic conditions and illnesses that pose the greatest threat to Americans... |
| Employment-Based Health Benefits: Trends in Access and Coverage, 1997-2010 Between 1997 and 2010, the percentage of workers offered health benefits from their employers decreased from 70.1 percent to 67.5 percent... |
| Health Care Reform Isn't Entitlement Reform Two years after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the program's trustees are reporting that the seniors' health program is on a glide path to insolvency... |
| Thirty-Day Readmissions: Truth and Consequences Only a small proportion of readmissions at 30 days after initial discharge are probably preventable, as the primary drivers of readmission rates are outside the control of the hospital... |
| Medicaid Block Grants and Medicaid Performance With almost 60 million people enrolled, state expenditures on Medicaid have increased from 0.2 percent of total state tax revenues in 1966 to an estimated 21 percent in 2005... |
| Comparative Effectiveness Research: A Slippery Slope to Health Care Rationing Cost-effectiveness recommendations can quickly turn into medical care rationing as a body that is charged with limiting spending becomes autocratic... |
| Studies Question the Pairing of Food Deserts and Obesity Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation found that living close to supermarkets or grocers did not make students thin and living close to fast food outlets did not make them fat... |
| Prescription Drug Delays in Canada Health Canada took longer to approve new drugs than regulators in Europe from 2006 to 2010 and longer than the American Food and Drug Administration in six of the last seven years studied (2004 to 2010)... |
| Health Care Pricing Still a Struggle for Consumers About $36 billion could be saved annually if the 108 million Americans with employer coverage did some comparison shopping on more than 300 common medical procedures... |
| Is Higher Health Care Spending "Worth It" in the Case of Cancer? Five-year relative survival rates from cancer diagnosis appear to be higher in the United States, relative to Europe, for most solid tumors... |
