The Healthcare Economist notes that you are more likely to die in a New York hospital than one in London or Paris. But London is less safe for “avoidable” mortality. (I believe the English translation of that is “Dying when you shouldn’t have had to do so.) Unfortunately, there is no solution to the problems […]

By: Divorced one like Bush From this story at Common Dreams comes the news that Senator Obama has chosen Jason Furman as an economic advisor. The story notes Mr. Furman’s fame for his defending of the Walmart model. The one that states Walmart is helping the less fortunate. I don’t buy it in the big […]

Mark Duggan and Fiona Scott Morton published a paper at NBER with this general conclusion: Using data on product-specific prices and quantities sold in each year in the U.S., our findings indicate that Part D substantially lowered the average price and increased the total utilization of prescription drugs by Medicare recipients. Our results further suggest […]

The other point from my earlier chart on health care spending worth noting is that in the PCE data health care accounts for around 20% of consumer spending. In contrast, medical care only has a weight of 6.2% in the CPI. Since health care prices generally rise some two to three percentage points faster then […]