To the anathema of many, the United States primarily relies on lightly regulated private markets for the provision of healthcare services. This extends across even ostensibly government services such as Medicare and Medicaid, which are increasingly financed by tax dollars but provided by firms through large public-private partnerships of Medicare Advantage and Medicaid Managed Care.
Optimal U.S. healthcare policy must harness market forces while maintaining no illusions about the profit maximizing motivations of private firms. Our biggest policy mistakes result from writing poor regulations that either explicitly or implicitly rely on the better angels of our nature rather than acknowledging the stark reality of the motives of private firms.
Director of the Program on Healthcare at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University Craig Garthwaite summarized his Congressional testimony on the subject in his first post for Forbes. Read more.
MAKING THE ROUNDS
The American Medical Association Wednesday urged big social media and technology companies including Amazon, Facebook and Google to take action to stop vaccine misinformation on their platforms.
Two large operators of Blue Cross and Blue Shield health insurance plans announced what they are calling a “strategic affiliation” that will merge key management and operational functions into a larger health insurance company with business on the East and West Coasts.
The Blues merger has implications for Anthem, the publicly-traded, investor-owned, second largest U.S. health insurer that operates Blues plans in 14 states: It makes it more difficult to expand using the valuable Blues brand in new markets.
Rite Aid Tuesday evening announced the end of John Standley's nine-year run as chief executive officer following a period of shareholder unrest and two failed mergers that have left the drugstore chain's stock price trading at less than $1 for months.
RESEARCH ADVANCES
New research published in the journal Nature shows that breast cancer is 11 genetically distinct diseases, and each has a different prognosis and chance of coming back after treatment.
The study, which was also jointly led by Stanford University in California, examined genetic changes in breast tumors from 2,000 women, following them over 20 years to see whether or not the cancer returned. Researchers then analyzed this data to create a tool that can be used in the future to predict which women are likely to be at high risk of relapse. Read more.
