​ That is the title of a recent paper by Schneider and Sutter (2026). While many people are familiar with the concept of risk aversion, the dispersion of outcomes (i.e., risk) is not the only thing that matters. The skewness of distribution (prudence) and risk in the tails of the distribution (temperance) matters. For instance, prudent individuals may be more likely to play the lottery since downside risk is moderate, but there is a very high upside (risk are right skewed). Key questions in the literature are how prudent/temperate are people and does prudent/temperate preference matter for real-world behaviors. The…

​ There were a lot of horrifying things in the news this year—a lot. But some of it was horrifying in a good way. Extraordinary medical cases—even the grisly and disturbing ones—offer a reprieve from the onslaught of current events and the stresses of our daily lives. With those remarkable reports, we can marvel at the workings, foibles, and resilience of the human body. They can remind us of the shared indignities from our existence in these mortal meatsacks. We can clear our minds of worry by learning about something we never even knew we should worry about—or by counting…

​ Clinical trials focus in-sample (direct) effect of vaccines on health outcomes (e.g., decrease in illness, hospitalization, emergency department use, and death). Typically, however, clinical trials do not test whether the vaccines reduce transmission. FDA do not require this as it would be logistically challenging and costly to estimate indirect effects of vaccination within a clinical trial. A new AEJ Applied Economics paper by Freedman, Sacks, Simon and Wing (2026) aims to estimate both direct and indirect effects. The use a natural experiment framework for differential vaccine eligibility roll-out by age: Our focal state, Indiana, granted eligibility to health-care workers,…

​ Rural Emergency Hospitals (REHs) are a new Medicare provider type created to preserve essential emergency and outpatient access in rural communities where low inpatient volume makes full-service hospitals financially unsustainable. They receive enhanced outpatient payments and a fixed monthly facility payment in exchange for forgoing acute inpatient care.​ CMS has an REH fact sheet that gives a high level overview, but here are some more details. What is a Rural Emergency Hospital? A Rural Emergency Hospital is a rural facility that furnishes emergency department, observation, and other outpatient services but does not provide acute inpatient care, except in distinct-part…

​ That is the title of a helpful article by Karnon and Haji Ali Afzali (Pharmacoeconomics 2014) with a subtitle A Review and Critique of the Costs and Benefits of DES. The paper starts by highlighting the 3 most common types of models: decision trees, Markovian cohort models, and individual level models. Decisions trees are useful for simple, short-term models, but not useful for more complex modeling tasks or longer time horizons. Cohort models are the most popular, but “…[b]ecause such models follow a cohort rather than individuals, they are subject to the Markovian assumption, which states that the subsequent…

​ FDA Qualifies First AI Drug Development Tool in MASH. No impact of Medicaid on crime rates. “The life of an artist is…” Elasticity of disability insurance (DI) takeup to DI generosity: 1.26 Do it anyway.   Read More from Healthcare Economist

​ In my latest Guest Column in The Evidence Base, II am joined by my colleague Tiago Beck as we examine how global pricing reforms are reshaping the European pharmaceutical landscape. Building on their session at ISPOR Europe 2025, the column explores the growing tension between EU access ambitions and international policy pressures – offering a timely perspective in light of last week’s agreement on the EU pharma package. An excerpt is below. The European Union finds itself in an unprecedented policy paradox. It has just concluded negotiations on its landmark pharmaceutical reform – formally known as the EU General…

​ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is in critical condition. This year, the premier public health agency had its funding brutally cut and staff gutted, its mission sabotaged, and its headquarters riddled with literal bullets. The over 500 rounds fired were meant for its scientists and public health experts, who endured only to be sidelined, ignored, and overruled by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist hellbent on warping the agency to fit his anti-science agenda. Then, on August 27, Kennedy fired CDC Director Susan Monarez just weeks after she was confirmed by the Senate. She…

​ From Zhu et al. (2025) in Health Affairs: Primary care clinicians have expressed growing interest in concierge and direct primary care practices, which often feature smaller patient panels and greater clinical autonomy compared with traditional primary care models. We assessed practice and workforce characteristics using a national sample of concierge and direct primary care practices identified through novel linkages of public and proprietary data. From 2018 to 2023, the number of direct primary care and concierge practice sites grew by 83.1 percent and the number of clinicians participating in them by 78.4 percent. The share of clinicians in concierge and direct…

​ This week’s edition of the Health Wonk Review is up at Joe Paduda’s Managed Care Matters. My article on Singapore’s health care system is highlighted, but check out the whole thing!   Read More from Healthcare Economist