Public Policy & Medical Economics

Young adults who experience a traumatic injury are now more likely to have insurance coverage and access to rehabilitation if they live in a state that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), new study findings show. Further, states that expanded Medicaid also saw greater reductions in socioeconomic and... Read more

New data published by The BMJ today show that white doctors applying for medical posts in London are six times more likely to be offered a job than black applicants.... Read more

In a noteworthy report addressing the challenges faced nationwide by current and future physicians who are underrepresented in medicine, clinician-scientists from Regenstrief Institute, Indiana University School of Medicine and University of Washington School of Medicine discuss a leaky career pipeline and highlight enhancing mentorship and sponsorship relationships as critical to improving diversity, equity and... Read more

States with Democratic leaders tended to have responded more strongly to COVID-19 and have seen a lower rate of the spread of the virus, according to new research led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.... Read more

High-income nations should heed the World Health Organization's calls to delay COVID-19 vaccine boosters until 10% of people in every country are vaccinated, two bioethicists say in a paper published today.... Read more

One in every three children in foster care are on psychotropic medications designed to alter their mental status or mood, a significantly higher percentage than children who are not in foster care within the Medicaid program.... Read more

Earlier this summer, Stanford economist Neale Mahoney sounded an alarm with a study he coauthored: Americans have at least $140 billion in unpaid health care bills sitting in collection agencies—making the country's medical debt crisis far bigger than anyone had realized.... Read more

The European Union's laws, regulations and policies regarding access to medicines are having unintended consequences in low- and middle-income countries, according to new research from the UvA's Law Centre for Health and Life, published today in the journal The Lancet Regional Health—Europe. The research team, led by Dr. Katrina Perehudoff,... Read more

Average annual health care spending for individuals with employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) rose 2.9% to $6,001 per person in 2019, according to the Health Care Cost Institute's annual Health Care Cost and Utilization Report. Between 2015 and 2019 spending increased by 21.8% or $1,074 per person. While prices continued to grow... Read more

Care for the 15 most prevalent types of cancer in the U.S. cost approximately $156.2 billion in 2018, according to a team of Penn State College of Medicine researchers. The team also found that medication was the biggest expense and that medication expense for breast, lung, lymphoma and colorectal cancers... Read more

The existence of age, race and sex disparities in healthcare delivery within the United States is well established, with prior studies identifying inequitable treatment in common cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension, coronary artery disease and heart failure. However, it remains unclear if similar disparities exist in echocardiography a common heart-imaging... Read more

Tiffany Braley, M.D., M.S., an associate professor of neurology at University of Michigan Health, was surprised when a patient she was caring for explained why they needed to go home from the hospital as soon as possible: their pets.... Read more

African American COVID-19 patients had the least physician follow-up and the longest delays in returning to work, a University of Michigan study found.... Read more

A simulated pancreatic cancer clinical trial screening process showed that Black patients were significantly more likely than white patients to be excluded from clinical trials for a wide range of eligibility criteria, according to results presented at the virtual 14th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in... Read more

Chinese Americans and Laotian Americans were over 10 and 14 times more likely to be diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer, respectively, than non-Hispanic white Americans, with incidence rates surpassing other Asian American subgroups, according to results presented at the virtual 14th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in... Read more