In a recently published NEJM Perspective essay titled, “Private Health Insurance & and Profit – Lessons for the US,” Prof. Papanicolas & Dr. Figueroa briefly identify policies in other high-income countries that effectively control healthcare prices and profits. “What distinguishes the US system,” they wrote, “is its combination of relatively permissive policies on each of these dimensions.” “Guardrails constraining [financial] returns are inconsistent; “price regulation is . . . uneven.” However, they added, “international experience suggests that [US] policies could be strengthened and applied more systematically,” that would, they wrote further, “limit excessive prices charged by health care entities.”
Professor Papanicolas largely discusses the work she leads at the International Collaborative on Costs, Outcomes and Needs in Care (ICCONIC).
Listeners may recall I recently had related convos in April with Dr. Adam Cunningham re: external reference pricing and in August with Prof. John McDonough re: his recent book, “America’s Wrong Turn.”
I also encourage listeners a read a related essay I drafted with Dr. Cunningham and published by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) last month as a working paper. It’s titled: “From Captive Bargaining to Outside Options: Re-Anchoring Price Formation in US Hospitals.” At: https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/experts/DavidIntrocaso
Prof. Papanicolas’s bio is at: https://vivo.brown.edu/display/ipapanic
Prof Papanicolas and Dr. Figueroa’s NEJM essay discussed during this podcast, “Private Health Insurance and Profit - Lessons for the US,” is at: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2611270 (requires a subscription)
ICCONIC publications are at: https://sites.brown.edu/icconic/publications/
