That is the title of a recent paper out in ClinicoEconomics and Outcomes Research with co-authors Jennifer Vaughn, Nadine Zawadzki, Shurui Zhang, Paul Pinkston, and David Wei. The subtitle is A Comparison of Later Generation TKIs versus Imatinib from Patient and Payer Perspectives. The abstract is below: Purpose: To evaluate the financial impact of treating CML…
For the second year in a row, many Affordable Care Act insurers are proposing double-digit premium increases, driven by rising medical costs as well as policy changes by Congress and the Trump administration. In preliminary filings with state regulators, insurers are seeking a median rate increase of 14% for 2027, according to an analysis of…
By the time Derion Blackman collapsed in front of a Dollar General in Kissimmee, Florida, in March, he had been waiting two months to regain access to some of the vital medications he’d been taking since undergoing a heart transplant two years ago. “He was on a nasty, dirty ground in front of a store,”…
By MATTHEW HOLT It’s hard to imagine but I may now be in possession of the stupidest letter I’ve ever received from an American health insurance company–-and I’m the guy who got five identical letters on one day from Blue Shield of California telling me that they had changed my primary care doctor when I…
KFF reports on the increased use of copay accumulators: Oscar Health is one of many commercial health insurers that use what are often called copay accumulator programs to keep funds that are meant to defray patients’ out-of-pocket costs for expensive specialty drugs. Over the past decade, more insurers have adopted such strategies to reduce their prescription…
Jude Pare and his partner, Diane Tix, live in rural Minnesota until temperatures dip below freezing, when they take refuge in Arizona for the winter. While away, their mail is forwarded. But Pare, 77, said he didn’t receive any warning from his Medicare prescription drug plan that his $0 monthly premium was about to increase….
For 16 years, Larry Gruber, a fitness coach from Wilton Manors, Florida, received a coupon card to help him pay for a psoriatic arthritis medication he needs that costs more than $7,700 a month. Each year, Amgen, which makes the drug, called Enbrel, sent the coupon card worth thousands of dollars, and that counted toward…
By KIM BELLARD Well, let’s see. Last week much of the U.S. and parts of Europe were under a crippling heat dome. The U.S. celebrated its 250th birthday. And there’s something called the World Cup going on, for those of you who care about such things. But, I mean, really, the news of the week?…
“I will maintain that there is no comparably important question in economics, because this is the question of human progress. This is the question of human wellbeing over millennia. Everything else about resource allocation, about policy, about macro…everything else is a footnote to this larger question of how new things come into being and how…
For decades, Californians have generally said that immigrants, who make up more than a quarter of the state’s population and a third of its labor force, are beneficial to the state and its economy. But budget instability and concerns about rising costs are spilling into a debate over the controversial and expensive policy of allowing…