Ruminations on medical matters
Posted in Blog, Medical economics on Sep 19th, 2012
He was among the first to understand the benefits of afterload reduction: Next, he understood early on that inotropic therapy provides (at best) only short-term benefit, at the risk of killing the patient: Parenteral sympathomimetic agents, usually dobutamine, and phosphodiesterase inhibitors, usually milrinone, are used for the management of exacerbations of chronic systolic heart failure. [...]
Posted in Medical economics on Aug 18th, 2011
Neoclassical economists such as Kenneth Arrow and Joseph Stiglitz tell us that the health care market is imperfect (or “Pareto inefficient”), meaning that the allocation of services is not optimal from the standpoint of social welfare. They point to information asymmetry as an important cause of this imperfection: patients cannot distinguish on their own the [...]
Posted in Medical economics on Jun 2nd, 2011
Emperor Joseph II: My dear young man, don’t take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It’s quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that’s all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect. Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty? (Amadeus, 1984) The New York Times recently published an [...]
Posted in Medical economics on Jan 3rd, 2009
In 1961 the Framingham study investigators coined the term ‘risk factor’ and unwittingly ushered in a period in the history of medicine dominated by the advancement of risk modification as a strategy to prevent disease. Academic careers have succeeded and private enterprises have flourished on the promotion of this paradigm. Risk factor reversal is now [...]