The Boston Globe reports: Call it the ‘Partners Effect:’Elite hospitals are paid much more for care that is often no better than average. It is the best kept secret in Massachusetts medicine.…Behind the rankingsTo walk the gleaming corridors of Partners’ flagship hospitals is to tour a Hippocratic Hall of Fame: Dr. William Morton first demonstrated […]
Tilman Tacke and Robert Waldmann A health care system is efficient when an increase in spending results in significant improvements in the health of a population. We test the relative efficiency of public and private health care spending in reducing infant and child mortality using cross-national data for 163 countries. There are two remarkable findings: […]
Robert Waldmann I guess I should give permalinks although they are consecutive posts. In random order, he asks who should be on the energy team. I have already expressed my view on this issue. I think the Reality Based Community should be the energy team. He asks “Where is Joe Stiglitz ?” I add what […]
rdan This Gallup poll rates nurses as the most ethical. Of course bankers have taken a hit to new new low for this series. Labor Union leaders best business execs, car salesmen, and congress. I suppose one could play with perceptions, but it is fun for liberals playing with a two edged sword. Voters are […]
rdan Big Think has a video clip on Lawrence Summers and the current crisis. Note that home loans becomes the center of the storm. Of course, understanding value by the “market” is a key in my opinion, and gets to be harder the further from “cash” we go.
rdan An op-ed by Marjorie Cohn, Jurist in Forum details the further developments with Guantanamo detainees. Finally, on November 20, in a stunning development, U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon ordered the government to release five Guantánamo Bay detainees “forthwith.” Finding that the government failed to prove the men were “enemy combatants,” the judge, […]
Robert Waldmann Tries to answer. Drum summarizes better than Waldmann Last year Christina and David Romer wrote a paper that attempted to quantify the effect of tax changes on economic growth. I read it at the time and didn’t understand it. I read it again a few minutes ago and I still don’t understand it. […]
by reader coberly WHY BILL GATES GETS SOCIAL SECURITY for Aaron In a recent thread reader Aaron asserts in his confident way that “if Trump, Soros, and Redstone get Social Security “then in can’t be an insurance policy for poverty in old age. These three are not poor yet they qualify for social security.” To […]
by: Divorced one like Bush As we watch the “team” Obama is putting together and the discussions regarding how reflective of progressive ideas they are vs same old, same old, I thought I would add to the hunt for Obama’s true identity. These are comments from his policy positions regarding development of our living environment […]
Robert Waldmann reads Eric Dash and Julie Creswell who argue that Citibank took insane risks holding CDOs on its books, because of a failure of the fixed incomes risk management team, reckless ‘short termism’ and two amazing mistakes. The two alleged mistakes are that they trusted the ratings agencies and that they assumed that the […]