LSPA

Health Care Costs and Value: An International Perspective
Health Care Costs and Value: An International Perspective 150 150 Avalon Health Economics LLC

During the recent debates over the Affordable Care Act (“ACA,” or Obamacare) a commonly raised issue was that U.S. health care does not offer much in the way of “value for money.” The argument, generally, is that we spend a lot more in the U.S. relative to comparable countries but in turn receive poor quality…

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Tobacco Butts and Litter Costs
Tobacco Butts and Litter Costs 150 150 Avalon Health Economics LLC

Tobacco product litter is one of the most ubiquitous forms of litter, accumulating in increasingly large numbers on streets, highways, sidewalks, beaches, storm water drains, waste treatment plants, parks and other public places. Tobacco product litter (“TPL”) is not simply unattractive; it has been shown to be toxic and costly to clean up. More than…

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Training the Health Economics and Outcomes Research Workforce of the Future: Opportunities for Program Development in Colleges and Universities
Training the Health Economics and Outcomes Research Workforce of the Future: Opportunities for Program Development in Colleges and Universities 150 150 Avalon Health Economics LLC

The health care landscape in the U.S. has been changing rapidly in the past 20 years, a phase of evolution that began with the reluctance of private employers to continue to fund double-digit growth in employee health care costs, thereby creating incentives for third-party payers to develop “managed” insurance products. The next phase of those…

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The Declining Health of the Local Market: When and How Should Your Health Care Business Expand into New Markets
The Declining Health of the Local Market: When and How Should Your Health Care Business Expand into New Markets 150 150 Avalon Health Economics LLC

A large proportion of our nation’s health care infrastructure is located in urban markets with declining population. For example, according to the U.S. Census, cities with the largest population decline in recent years include New Orleans, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, and Buffalo. These very same cities, however, are home to some of the most reputable…

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Nobody Pays Retail: A Primer on Valuing Medical Care Bills
Nobody Pays Retail: A Primer on Valuing Medical Care Bills 150 150 Avalon Health Economics LLC

In most markets and in most industries, the prices paid by consumers (or businesses, in the case of business-to-business transactions), are not randomly made up by sellers. To be sure, in less competitive markets, where information is “fuzzy” or sellers have monopolistic power, a seller might be able to name a price and get it.…

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Using Publicly-Available Health Care Databases to Value & Price Medical Care Services
Using Publicly-Available Health Care Databases to Value & Price Medical Care Services 150 150 Avalon Health Economics LLC

In the United States, a variety of “usual, customary and reasonable” (UCR) databases are used by health care entities to benchmark their fees (in the case of health care providers) and to create prospectively determined fee schedules (in the case of health care payers). Both of these exercises have essentially the same objective: to assign…

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