What’s the point in research if nobody is listening? Below is a 3-day time-line of events in the UK that demonstrate hypocrisy, ignorance and a disregard of empirical evidence within the UK Government. 07/03/2011: The Government demonstrates its commitment to translational… Read More »Falling on deaf ears: The government’s disregard for empirical evidence
This month the Equality Act 2010 was accepted by the Department of Health here in the UK, with no amendments. The NHS can no longer discriminate based on age (aside from a few reasonable exceptions). But can this new legislation… Read More »Equal care for the elderly: A swing and a miss?
The ‘well-being valuation method’ is a recently developed technique for valuing the effect, in monetary terms, of a health problem on an individual’s well-being. The method involves calculating the compensating variation necessary to maintain the same level of well-being after suffering from… Read More »The well-being valuation approach: Solution or convolution?
Science minister David Willetts recently claimed that universities were responsible for picking up the slack in R&D following Pfizer’s run for the hills – in this writer’s opinion the first of many rats* to flee this sinking ship. We need… Read More »Requiem for UK R&D
A couple of weeks ago when I was out shopping with a friend, after informing him that I had never bought a scratch card from the shop he persuaded me to buy one to tick it off the list of… Read More »Does money really make you happy: An economic approach
I recently listened to a radio show that got me thinking about something, which, to my knowledge, has never been explored. We all know the famous phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence about the ‘inalienable’ rights of man;… Read More »Life, liberty and the pursuit of unhappiness
Some call economics the dismal science, I call it useful. When it comes to obesity one would argue that it offers the mechanisms to prevent a needless tide of early deaths, spiralling NHS costs and sore eyes on the beach.… Read More »My big fat tax
Back in 2005, NICE and the Department of Health here in the UK set about trying to figure out the level at which society valued a QALY, and also whether different QALYs should be assigned different values. The results of… Read More »Is a QALY a QALY or not? The SVQ project and the value of life
The UK Government recently announced its plans for “Public Health England”, with ‘nudging’ high on the agenda. What the government considers a ‘nudge’ is unclear, though it seems to mean giving people the opportunity to improve their own health. Here’s… Read More »The economics of the ‘nudge’: Why the UK government’s new public health policy won’t work
This month the American Economic Review publishes it’s top 20 articles from its 100 year history. As one might have hoped, we see Kenneth Arrow’s 1963 paper, “Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care“, on the list. Having published… Read More »100 years of the American Economic Review: The top 20 articles