Tag Archives: Health care

In Die Mittelländische Zeitung, a Swiss doctor criticizes Switzerland’s preparations and response to Covid-19. He points to Lack of preparation by political decision makers Misleading communication by federal health officials Their apparent lack of awareness of academic work on the topic Arrogance in Switzerland and the West vis-à-vis China and other far eastern countries Sensationalist scare mongering in the media Calls for systematic infection of groups that are less at risk Informative...

In the NZZ, Thomas Hürlimann reviews his experience as a patient in Swiss and German hospitals. Top: Stans, Prof. Dr. Bachmann. Flop: Baar, Berlin Friedrichshain.

In the NZZ, Thomas Hürlimann reviews his experience as a patient in Swiss and German hospitals. Top: Stans, Prof. Dr. Bachmann. Flop: Baar, Berlin Friedrichshain.

A blog post on Random Critical Analysis argues that high wealth (proxied by high consumption) rather than GDP explains US health care expenditures. Total per capita health care spending increases as wealth increases because people actually demand more goods and services (volume) per capita and because it is relatively labor intensive sector that does not enjoy the productivity gains found in some other sectors of the economy, i.e., overall costs increase through both volume and price...

Can we be honest and say that many of the reductions in value, quantity and quality are actually instances of fraud? Yesterday, I showed how Consumer Prices Have Soared 160% Since 2001 for everything from burritos to healthcare. This enormous loss of purchasing power is not reflected in the official measure of inflation, which claims inflation is subdued (1% or so annually). But price inflation doesn’t necessarily...

It is a very interesting discrepancy: Health Care Costs Have Fallen By 0.6%  On one side, Swiss Statistics regularly publishes the consumer price index. In this statistic health care prices have fallen by 0.6% against the previous year: one major reason is the stronger franc that allowed for buying health equipment at lower price abroad. We should remind that Swiss Statistics uses these effective prices for inflation...

The probability of Republican Donald Trump winning the U.S. presidential election on November 8 seems remote at the moment—economists on Credit Suisse’s Global Markets team put it at less than 10 percent. So if it did happen, it would come as a major surprise for financial markets. The last time that kind of seemingly low-likelihood event came to pass—during last June’s Brexit vote—most investors were caught wrong-footed. So how might they best prepare for something as unexpected as President...

In an NBER working paper, Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, and Atul Gupta document similarities between healthcare for humans and pets in the US: (i) rapid growth in spending as a share of GDP over the last two decades; (ii) strong income-spending gradient; (iii) rapid growth in the employment of healthcare providers; and (iv) similar propensity for high spending at the end of life.