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.
Facts about People Who Enjoy Eating Tasty Animals (PEETA)
10 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in development economics, health economics Tags: economics of physiology, The Great Escape, The Great Fact, vagans, vegetarians
Breathing Beijing’s air
10 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
Breathing Beijing’s air: the equivalent of smoking nearly 40 cigarettes a day. http://t.co/7M3TxrgUPD—
ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) October 13, 2015
Self-driving cars – a surprising quirk in the cost benefit analysis
09 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, health economics, transport economics
Why are Scandinavians so thin? Still few overweight Japanese
08 Nov 2015 1 Comment
in health economics Tags: Denmark, economics of obesity, Finland, Japan, Norway, Scandinavia, Sweden
Smoking and lung cancer in the USA
07 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, health economics Tags: economics of smoking, meddlesome preferences, nanny state
@MaxCRoser Actually did an update to 2010, but still same message http://t.co/R3Euppxhtq—
Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) April 16, 2015
Creative destruction in homeopathic products
06 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in health economics Tags: charlatans, consumer fraud, consumer protection, creative destruction, homeopathy, quackery, Quacks
The death of heavy smoking
05 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of regulation, health economics Tags: economics of smoking
Russia has a serious shortage of men
05 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in health economics, population economics Tags: ageing society, alcoholism, Russia, sex-ratios
The decline of homeopathic quackery in the NHS
04 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of information, economics of regulation, health economics Tags: homeopathy, Quacks
https://twitter.com/NightingaleC/status/501737546125410305/photo/1
The decline of outpatient attendancies at the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital: nightingale-collaboration.org/news/165-more-… #ten23 #homeopathy http://t.co/cFO4k2vIjt—
Nightingale Collab. (@NightingaleC) August 19, 2014
The rising costs of #homeopathy on the NHS: nightingale-collaboration.org/news/162-the-d… #ten23 (3/3) http://t.co/GjXkC14y3D—
Nightingale Collab. (@NightingaleC) August 19, 2014
The decline of #homeopathy on the NHS: #ten23 (2/3) http://t.co/0FcHBjtqI7—
Nightingale Collab. (@NightingaleC) August 19, 2014
The decline of #homeopathy on the NHS: #ten23 (1/3) http://t.co/BcHz8GQ7bG—
Nightingale Collab. (@NightingaleC) August 19, 2014
At least the good old days didn’t have the precautionary principle
31 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, economics of regulation, energy economics, environmental economics, health economics Tags: expressive voting, precautionary principle, rational ignorance, rational irrationality, risk risk trade-offs
Creative destruction in Medicare spending
31 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, entrepreneurship, health economics Tags: creative destruction
"1 in 3 Medicare dollars today gets spent on something that wasn't around a decade ago." –@amitabhchandra2 http://t.co/khX40YG5Bp—
The Hamilton Project (@hamiltonproj) October 11, 2015
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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