Award judges cited Moderna’s pricing of its COVID-19 vaccine, which was developed with $1 billion in federal funding. Still, despite the tax-payer backing, Moderna set the estimated prices for its vaccine significantly higher than other vaccine developers. The Lown Institute’s judges wrote that, “given the upfront investment by the US government, we are essentially paying for the vaccine twice.” More
The Shkreli Awards for profiteering and dysfunction in healthcare, an annual tribute to the worst actors of the US health system, have unsurprisingly focused this year on misconduct during the covid-19 pandemic, with the place of dishonour taken by the Trump administration’s federal personal protective equipment (PPE) task force. “What was even worse,” said award judge Patricia Gabow, “was that Moderna ‘selected’ Brigham and Women’s Hospital for the vaccine trial and Dr. Nabel sold Moderna stock, after it quadrupled in price with the vaccine development.” More
The Biden administration could fix our patent system, making it easier for generics to reach the market. More
A year ago, physicians who championed public health initiatives on social media were often harassed online. The pandemic made it worse. More
Hospitals face the new year with new requirements to post price information they have long sought to obscure: the actual prices negotiated with insurers and the discounts they offer their cash-paying customers. More
This study estimated the effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion on hospital finances in 2017 to update earlier findings. The analysis also explored how the ACA Medicaid expansion affects different types of hospitals by size, ownership, rurality, and safety-net status. More
Covid-19 has taken an outsize toll on Black and Hispanic Americans — and those disparities extend to medical workers. More
The crisis of Covid-19 created new opportunities for exploitation by this year’s greedy and misguided “winners.” More
The current COVID-19 pandemic shares many of the same causes as the Panic of 1907: lack of a coordinated federal response, lax state-level regulations, and absence of clear strategies to respond and recover from the initial outbreak. Therefore, we propose a new entity paralleling the Federal Reserve —the Federal Health Authority (FHA)—to anticipate health shocks, coordinate future responses, and address longer-term problems in the nation’s health and health care. More
Pharmaceutical interaction in US residencies is common. This study explores the extent and type of learner interactions in US family medicine residencies with the pharmaceutical industry and compares interactions from 2008, 2013, and 2019. More
Most Americans want to die at home, but we're not giving family caregivers the support they need to manage end-of-life care for their loved ones. More
Data from hospital cost reports and clinical quality measures collected by the Lown Institute illustrates unequal facility usage by Medicaid patients in four of the country’s largest hospital referral regions. In Los Angeles, hospitals with clinical quality above the national median allocate just 23% of inpatient days to individuals with Medicaid, as compared with 54% of inpatient days for hospitals in the bottom two quality quartiles. Similar disparities emerge in New York and Houston, albeit to a lesser degree. In all these markets, many facilities with the highest objective quality scores serve very few Medicaid patients, who instead rely on publicly run facilities and small private hospitals with relatively poor clinical quality. More
What's going well and what isn't when it comes to value-based payment experiments in Medicare. More
In the latest edition of the “Right Care Series” in the journal American Family Physician, Dr. Ann Lindsay from the Stanford University School of Medicine, and patient partners Helen Haskell and John James tackle the subject of evaluating older adults for frailty before recommending elective surgery. More
Fortunately for North Texas, the region is home to two of the most accessible and valuable hospitals in the nation, according to the “Best Hospitals for America” list published by Washington Monthly. The publication partnered with the nonpartisan healthcare think tank Lown Institute to evaluate 3,200 hospitals, ranking those that “save lives, save money, and serve social justice.” John Peter Smith (JPS) Health Network was ranked No. 1 hospital in the nation in the ranking, and Parkland Health and Hospital System came in at No. 9. More
The best way hospital leaders can show health care workers support is to commit to changing the broken health care system, now and after Covid-19. More
In a partnership with the Lown Institute, Washington Monthly created a ranking system that factored not only the clinical prestige of a hospital, but also its cost-effectiveness and service to the surrounding community. JPS was given high marks for caring for people living near the hospital, regardless of their ability to pay, and for taking on a leadership role in the community. More
Ever since the initial press release from Pfizer came out, the medical community has been waiting for more detailed results to better analyze the vaccine's effectiveness and safety. Here's what the briefing document shows. More
What types of spending count as community benefits, and which types of hospitals spend the most? Shannon and Vikas tackle these questions and more on this week's Lown Hospitals Q&A. More
How do nonprofit and for-profit hospitals differ when it comes to community engagement and community health investment? More