Skewed state? Spending on health & old age due to rise to 43%, education down to 13%. RF 2 update following #AS2015 pic.twitter.com/Xrnz8vp02I
— Resolution Foundation (@resfoundation) November 24, 2015
Where are British taxes spent?
26 Nov 2015 1 Comment
in budget deficits, defence economics, economics of education, fiscal policy, health economics, labour supply Tags: ageing society, British economy, British politics, demographic crisis
How to get a tinfoil hat
26 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, health economics Tags: conspiracy theories, quackery, Quacks
Psychic fails to foresee court case
26 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, health economics, law and economics Tags: charlatans, consumer fraud, psychics, Quacks, welfare benefit fraud
JFK assassination conspiracy theories are still going strong, unfortunately
19 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, health economics, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: conspiracy theories, cranks, expressive voting, JFK conspiracy theorists, political psychology, Quacks, rational ignorance, rational irrationality, social psychology
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It’s World Toilet Day Today
19 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in development economics, health economics Tags: extreme poverty, health and sanitation
On World Toilet Day, this #Dailychart explains why the world must build toilets to save lives econ.st/1F3ppfK http://t.co/zJJ2jT09yw—
The Economist (@ECONdailycharts) November 19, 2014
Unlike @Subway @WalmartToday understands the #DHMO awareness campaign
19 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, economics of regulation, environmental economics, health economics Tags: political satire, precautionary principle, Subway, Walmart
The western environmental movement’s role in China’s one-child policy
19 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in development economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, growth disasters, growth miracles, health economics, labour economics, labour supply, population economics Tags: China, cranks, doomsday profits, doomsday prophecies, one child policy
Healthcare Triage News: Brand Name Placebos Are More Effective than Generic Placebos. For Real. | The Incidental Economist
15 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in health economics Tags: drug prices
The British have stopped drinking tea
15 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, health economics Tags: coffee, national diets, tea
Stand with me as a proud carnivore
13 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in health economics, liberalism
As a diabetic, I’m very annoyed by the automatic social deference to vegetarians and vegans. They are food snobs but no one dares offer them meat. I have people annoying me on a regular basis trying to tempt me with sugary things.
@tslumley on spending ½ PHARMAC budget on one semi-wonder drug @PeterDunneMP
13 Nov 2015 2 Comments
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, health economics, politics - New Zealand
Thomas Lumley wrote a great post today on the unavoidably brutal arithmetic of rationing the budget of PHARAC – the New Zealand government agency that buys drugs for the public health system.
Would you spend $200,000 per drug for two thousand melanoma cancer patients. It doesn’t work 66% of the time, but helps 34% of patients and cures 6% of patients.
The trick in the tail is funding the drug would cost half the entire budget of PHAMRAC.
Many more wonder drugs, more correctly, semi-wonder drugs coming down the pipe, so these life or death decisions will not get any fewer in a world of scarcity.
In 1979, Gordon Tullock wrote a 1979 New York Law Review book about avoiding difficult choices. As per Gordon Tullock, he barely mentioned the books are mainly discussed as a stream of consciousness his reactions to the book. His review was a review of a book by Guido Calabresi and Philip Bobbitt called Tragic Choices which was about the rationing: the allocation of kidney dialysis machines (a “good”), military service in wartime (a “bad”), and entitlements to have children (a mixed blessing). Tullock argued that we make a decision about:
- how to allocate resources,
- how to distribute the resources, and
- how to think about the previous two choices.
People do not want to face up to the fact resources are scarce and they face limits on their powers.
To reduce the personal distress of making these tragic choices, Tullock observed that people often allocate and distribute resources in a different way so as to better conceal from themselves the unhappy choices they had to make even if this means the recipients of these choices are worse off and more lives are lost than if more open and honest choices about there are can only be so much that can be done.
The increasing number of both wonder drugs and semi-wonder drugs that cost the earth will increase the importance of facing up to difficult choices more honestly than in the past.
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