Health Care Finance

  • Read more: Wednesday @ 8pm – Thomas Pogge: Effective Altruism or Mobilization for Institutional Reform?

    Wednesday @ 8pm – Thomas Pogge: Effective Altruism or Mobilization for Institutional Reform?

    Harvard High-Impact Philanthropy presents Effective Altruism or Mobilization for Institutional Reform? a lecture by Thomas Pogge Director of the Global Justice Program and Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs, Yale University Wednesday, October 9, 8 PM Sever 214 Professor Pogge will discuss whether some institutional reform efforts may be as effective or more effective…

  • Read more: Economics, Morality, and End of Life Care

    Economics, Morality, and End of Life Care

    By Nathaniel Counts Over a quarter of Medicare spending goes toward a patient’s last six months of life.  This monopolizes limited resources, both in the hospital and in the federal budget.  Much of the blame for this overspending is placed on institutional incentives or medical training for promoting aggressive end of life care, but some…

  • Read more: The Spillover Effect of Medicare FFS on MA Negotiations

    The Spillover Effect of Medicare FFS on MA Negotiations

    By Jeremy Kreisberg The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released an assessment of two illustrative versions of premium support for Medicare.  The report is interesting for many reasons, but I want to focus on one issue that Austin Frakt at The Incidental Economist raised. Among the assumptions in the report, CBO “estimate[d] that in most…

  • Read more: HBR/NEJM online forum on health care innovation

    HBR/NEJM online forum on health care innovation

    By Nicholson Price For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, there’s a great ongoing online forum over at the joint Harvard Business Review and New England Journal of Medicine Insight Center on Leading Health Care Innovation.  It’s online at HBR here, and will feature an ongoing series of posts about innovation in high-value…

  • Read more: National Health Law Transactional Competition

    National Health Law Transactional Competition

    By Christopher Robertson Our friends at Loyola University Chicago’s health law program just announced the Fourth Annual L. Edward Bryant, Jr. National Health Law Transactional Competition.   “Three-person teams of J.D. students will prepare a legal memorandum that summarizes their legal and business advice for a hypothetical health care client. These students will then appear in…

  • Read more: Coupling Genetic Counseling to Test Coverage

    Coupling Genetic Counseling to Test Coverage

    By Michael Young As debates surrounding genetic patent rights begin to settle, new questions and disputes have started to emerge around insurance coverage for genetic testing.  For the first time, a U.S. health insurance provider (Cigna) has decided to require evaluation by an American Board of Medical Genetics or American Board of Genetic Counseling certified…

  • Read more: Antitrust Implications of Reverse Patent Settlements

    Antitrust Implications of Reverse Patent Settlements

    By Ryan Abbott Last month the US Supreme Court rendered its decision on the reverse payments question.  The Court held in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc. that reverse payment settlements in patent infringement litigation may violate antitrust laws, and therefore, these settlements are not immune from antitrust attack.  Actavis, a generic drug manufacturer, settled…

  • Read more: The Tylenol Debate: Can Hospitals be Sued for Excessive Markups on Medications and Devices?

    The Tylenol Debate: Can Hospitals be Sued for Excessive Markups on Medications and Devices?

    By Alex Stein Steven Brill’s TIME MAGAZINE blockbuster article, Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills are Killing Us, uncovers the CHARGEMASTER: a publicly undisclosed pricelist accountable for what we see in hospital bills. What we see there doesn’t look good: it includes acetaminophen sold for $1.50 a tablet (you can buy 100 of those for the…

  • Read more: Thoughts on Myriad

    Thoughts on Myriad

    By Ryan Abbott While awaiting the torrent of academic commentary on this case that is no doubt forthcoming, for now I thought I’d highlight a few interesting aspects of today’s unanimous Supreme Court decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, 569 U. S. ____ (2013). Briefly, this case concerned whether genes can be patented….