Posts about current affairs, as well as updates about the blog itself.
This morning saw headlines reporting the publication of an open letter to MPs calling for a ban on contact rugby in schools. The letter argues that the high impact collisions in rugby lead to a number of serious injuries including… Read More »Rugby, Rugby, Rugby
Recently, a number of health economics journals (henceforth HEJs) co-signed a statement about the publication of negative findings: The Editors of the health economics journals named below believe that well-designed, well-executed empirical studies that address interesting and important problems in… Read More »Health economics journals and negative findings
Steven Levitt and his trusty Freakonomics sidekick were invited by David Cameron to advise on health policy, as they recount in their latest book. Apparently the PM walked out on them. Levitt has kindly given us some more details on his proposal for British healthcare. It consisted of… Read More »Recommended reading for Steven Levitt
On May 2 this year, the topic chosen by Tim Harford in his ‘Undercover economist‘ column in the Financial Times was ‘Healthcare: the final reckoning‘. Tim is always interesting, but I don’t find him sound on health care economics and… Read More »Were QALYs invented in 1956?
In 2013 we published 34 posts and got about 12,000 hits. While we’re by no means disappointed with this, we know we can do better. Our primary goal is to publish more posts, while ensuring that articles maintain a high… Read More »New year’s resolutions
The state of Wikipedia pages relating to health economics is dismal. The page for health economics itself makes for a good case in point. It is incoherent, inconsistent and of little use. If one delves just a little deeper to… Read More »Health economics on Wikipedia: a call to action
In recent months attendance at the journal club has declined to zero, despite maintaining interest in the build-up. Here at AHE blog towers we don’t have the resources to promote #HEJC any more. Promotion is unlikely to make a difference… Read More »A(nother) new #HEJC format
Personalised medicine appears to be an inevitable future of health care, and economists aren’t ready for it. It has various monikers and related concepts including precision medicine, stratified medicine, pharmacogenomics, pharmacogenetics and predictive medicine. But, whatever you call it, it means big… Read More »Economics of personalised medicine: an introduction
It’s 2 years today since we (an editorial ‘we’, that is) produced this blog’s inaugural post, with no more than a vague idea of what it might be or become. Plenty has happened in the online health economics scene since then.… Read More »Two today!
Many have spoken out in opposition to the bill. Some have spoken out in support. As health economists most of us have done little of either. I recently wrote to health economists asking them to answer a simple question: “With… Read More »Health and Social Care Bill 2011