Taxing unhealthy foods

The effect of prices on nutrition: Comparing the impact of product-and nutrient-specific taxes

Nowadays, many people is asking about evidence oon the impact of taxes for sugar sweetened beverages. The reason is that in Catalonia from May 1st. a new tax has been implemented.Two tax rates have been set in relation to sugar content: For drinks containing more than 8 grams of sugar per 100 ml: €0.12/litre. For drinks containing between 5 and 8 grams of sugar per 100 ml: €0.08/litre
A new article in the Journal of Health Economics sheds light on the issue:

Our main finding from the tax simulations is that nutrient-specific taxes have much larger effects on nutrition than do product-specific taxes, without causing a larger decline in consumer utility. The intuition for this result is that nutrient-based taxes have a much broader base, so it is more difficult to substitute away from any one good in response to such taxes. For example,a 20% tax on soda decreases total purchased calories by 4.84% and decreases sugar consumption by over 10%. However, a 20% sugar tax decreases total calories by over 18% and sugar by over 16%.The larger effect of a sugar tax on nutrition comes despite the fact that it has the same effect on indirect utility as a soda tax. Dueto their negative income elasticities and the patterns of own- and cross-price elasticities we find, taxes on snacks and packaged mealshave very small effects on nutrition. Fat and salt taxes, on the other hand, have much larger effects, decreasing calories by 19% and 11%, respectively. SSB taxes, which can be thought of as a hybrid price policy that targets a set of products based on their nutritional content, also are quite effective, reducing caloric intake by over 8%. However, these taxes are less-effective and only slightly less-distortive than a broad-based sugar tax.

If this is so, the next steps should be to review the initial impact and explore wether new approaches could be more succesful. Unfortunately the article doesn't explains the details of how to implement their result...

PS. On sugar

Ben l'oncle Soul

The challenges of medical practice variations

Medical Practice Variations

The title of this post is not original, it is really from a book published in 1990, 27 years ago! And Wennberg started such research on the 70's. What is new is the book "Medical Practice Variations" released last year. After all these years concerns have spread, methodological improvement is huge, and unfortunately evidence says that practice still shows wide range of variability. This is the main concern, what to do about it.
The description is excellent, 23 chapters and 527 pages reflect an effort of many years of several projects on the issue. A must read is the chapter 4, p. 53 by Enrique Bernal and his team: Medical Practice Variations in Elective Surgery. Variations may harm and produce waste, therefore understanding how to prevent low-value care is crucial. They say:

Two key steps in reducing low-value care, proposed by García-Armesto et al. (García-Armesto et al. 2013), are the following:
• Identifying those technologies ineffective in their usual indications or less effective than alternatives
– Dropping them from the benefits basket or making them subject to avoidable copayments
– Restricting indications to certain types of patients (choice guided by evidence of positive benefit/risk balance)
– Specifying and limiting the types of providers more suitable to offer each service (therefore substantiating indication becomes a requisite, discouraging irrelevant use)
– Capping the frequency or length of treatments
• Producing and making available guidance on a regular basis to reduce inappropriate use of procedures
– Highlighting and tackling unwarranted variations in elective surgery (naming and “shaming” to prompt query and change)
– Fostering best practices and improving coordination of care

As I said, a must read. Congratulations to the authors. Unfortunately the barrier is the price: $279. Notwithstanding that, health policy makers and managers should have it as a key reference for their decisions.

PS. If you want to know more about current projects, check the ECHO  website.

The tough figures of worldwide health spending

Evolution and patterns of global health financing 1995–2014: development assistance for health, and government, prepaid private, and out-of-pocket health spending in 184 countries

We live in a disparate world, and the range of health care expenditure per capita goes from $33 in Somalia to $9.267 in USA. These are tough figures, while in Somalia you'll understand that access is the problem, in USA disparity is inside, waste and access at the same time are the problems. The Lancet article shows the reality of world health expenditure. It worths reading it.

The availability of prepaid resources for health, such as government spending, is one of many determinants of access to health care, and can lead to population health gains. Economic development is associated with an increase in spending and specifically an increase in prepaid resources. This is at the core of the pursuit for universal health coverage. This research also points to countries that deviate from the trends, spending more or less than expected, based on their level of economic development. This information is valuable to planners assessing funding gaps and financing opportunities, and can be used to provide insight into what future health financing challenges are likely. Tracking changes in health financing patterns across time and benchmarking against global trends is vital to addressing missed opportunities, ensuring access to medicines and high quality services, and the pursuit of universal health coverage.

Gorgeous new album by Joan Miquel Oliver. Atlantis

ACOs state of the art

L’expérience américaine des Accountable Care Organizations:des enseignements pour la France ?

After all the efforts, ACOs coverage in US is right now only for 9% of population (28 million citizen). It seems a low figure. You can check the details of the current situation in an excellent report (en français) by IRDES. However, they consider that this approach could be useful for France, and I'm not so sure. The differences are huge to introduce something similar.

Parov Stelar - State of the Union

In Barcelona soon

Toolkit for comparative effectiveness

Methods in comparative effectiveness research

If comparative effectiveness is the new fram for valuing health technologies, then we need the appropriate toolkit. This is not new, I said the same in 2010 and afterwards in this blog. Right now there is a difference, you may read in this 600 pages book all the details about it (a chapter on machine learnisn is missing).
A clear understanding of comparative effectiveness is precisely what the authors of this report have neglected, unfortunately. It doesn't make any sense to start economic evaluation without an assessment of comparative effectiveness. It doesn't make any sense to back for QALYs as an accounting approach. Forget this guidelines, and suggest to read this book.

This volume covers the main areas of quantitative methodology for the design and analysis of CER studies. The volume has four major sections—causal inference; clinical trials; research synthesis; and specialized topics. The audience includes CER methodologists, quantitative-trained researchers interested in CER, and graduate students in statistics, epidemiology, and health services and outcomes research. The book assumes a masters-level course in regression analysis and familiarity with clinical research.

What is population health?

What does improving population health really mean?

Population health means the health outcomes of a defined group of people, as well as the distribution of health outcomes within the group.
Therefore, measuring and understanding the reasons for differences in health is a key factor for tackling them.
Kindig paper is the most relevant, and this one reflects the begining.
From the post by Kings Fund :

Approaching the golden age of epigenomics and epitranscriptomics

A new twist on epigenetics

If epigenomics is crucial to discard the genetic predestination paradigm, now we can add a new 'omics to the paradigm: epitranscriptomics. Last February, Nature published interesting news related to recent scientific developments:

The epigenome helps to explain how cells with identical DNA can develop into the multitude of specialized types that make up different tissues. The marks help cells in the heart, for example, maintain their identity and not turn into neurons or fat cells. Misplaced epigenetic marks are often found in cancerous cells.

 Chuan He and Tao Pan are two researchers that have been working on new ways of controlling gene expression

He and others have shown that a methyl group attached to adenine, one of the four bases in RNA, has crucial roles in cell differentiation, and may contribute to cancer, obesity and more. In 2015, He’s lab and two other teams uncovered the same chemical mark on adenine bases in DNA (methyl marks had previously been found only on cytosine), suggesting that the epigenome may be even richer than previously imagined.

The team had shown for the first time that RNA methylation was reversible, just like the marks found on DNA and histones.

Methylated adenine bases are the focus of research on gene expression.

Exercise as a socially contagious activity

Exercise contagion in a global social network

Disciplines as diverse as economics, sociology, medicine, computer science, political science and physics have recently become interested in the interdependence of behaviours across the human social network. In particular, scientists have begun to ask whether our health and other behaviours are contagious, in that our decisions and actions affect the decisions and actions of our peers. If behavioural contagions exist, understanding how, when and to what extent they manifest in different behaviours will enable us to transition from independent intervention strategies to more effective interdependent interventions that incorporate individuals’ social contexts into their treatments

A new  study offers some of the first hard evidence that health-related habits can spread — and so perhaps could be deliberately seeded and encouraged — by social influence and peer pressure. Previous research has sought such a contagious effect in factors such as obesity and smoking, but the results have been inconclusive.

Studies in social differences in health have a a new hurdle to tackle. How to boost social permeability? As Mackenback said in The Lancet on health inequalities: now it's personal.

PS. These are the results of the study in one figure:

The useless prediction of the end of liberalism

Francis Fukuyama predicted 25 years ago the end of history, the triumph of liberal democracy and the arrival of post-ideological world, Now Y. N. Harari predicts the end of liberalism and the arrival of a post-humanism (?). All these efforts are useless in my opinion and the reason is obvious, those that predict the future don't have more information than any other human being. They could devote their time to fruitful initiatives.
If I knew that the second half of Homo Deus was devoted to the end of liberalism and the birth of a post-humanism, I wouldn't have read it. I always try to avoid snake-oil sellers. Reading is an asymmetric information game, the writer knows more than the reader. I would suggest to start a global snake-oil writers lists to reduce asymmetric information.
The New Yorker publishes a sound review of the book,

Harari’s larger contention is that our homocentric creed, devoted to human liberty and happiness, will be destroyed by the approaching post-humanist horizon. Free will and individualism are, he says, illusions. We must reconceive ourselves as mere meat machines running algorithms, soon to be overtaken by metal machines running better ones. By then, we will no longer be able to sustain our comforting creed of “autonomy,” the belief, which he finds in Rousseau, that “I will find deep within myself a clear and single inner voice, which is my authentic self,” and that “my authentic self is completely free.” In reality, Harari maintains, we have merely a self-deluding, “narrating self,” one that recites obviously tendentious stories, shaped by our evolutionary history to help us cope with life. We are—this is his most emphatic point—already machines of a kind, robots unaware of our own programming. Humanism will be replaced by Dataism; and if the humanist revolution made us masters the Dataist revolution will make us pets.

Does this makes any sense? Is it possible to remain as the current best seller with such a message?

Norah Jones. It's a tragedy

When science and regulation don't talk to each other

An Evidence Framework for Genetic Testing

National Academy of Sciences and Food and Drug Administration don't talk to each other. At the same time that NASEM publishes a report on how to assess genetic testing, FDA clears genetic testing for 23andme without any precise assessment, for the following tests:

• Parkinson’s disease, a nervous system disorder impacting movement
• Late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive brain disorder that destroys memory and thinking skills
• Celiac disease, a disorder resulting in the inability to digest gluten
• Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a disorder that raises the risk of lung and liver disease
• Early-onset primary dystonia, a movement disorder involving involuntary muscle contractions and other uncontrolled movements
• Factor XI deficiency, a blood clotting disorder
• Gaucher disease type 1, an organ and tissue disorder
• Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase deficiency, also known as G6PD, a red blood cell condition
• Hereditary hemochromatosis, an iron overload disorder
• Hereditary thrombophilia, a blood clot disorder

Meanwhile NASEM recommends a decision framework for the use of genetic tests in clinical care:

1. Define genetic test scenarios on the basis of the clinical setting, the purpose of the test, the population, the outcomes of interest, and comparablealternative methods.
2. For each genetic test scenario, conduct an initial structured assessment to determine whether the test should be covered, denied, or subject to additional evaluation.
3. Conduct or support evidence-based systematic reviews for genetic test scenarios that require additional evaluation.
4. Conduct or support a structured decision process to produce clinical guidance for a genetic test scenario.
5. Publicly share resulting decisions and justification about evaluated genetic test scenarios, and retain decisions in a repository.
6. Implement timely review and revision of decisions on the basis of new data.
7. Identify evidence gaps to be addressed by research.

If you want further details, check Mathew Herper blog. My first impression after reading it is that this move, paves the way for recreational genetic testing. An approach that should be completely banned by legislation. If FDA has done so, let's wait for what it may happen in Europe where the regulator is still planning a change of the regulation in 2022!!! Meanwhile, the door is open (to the worst for citizens).

New album by Txarango. Enjoy it!

Learning to say no

Cost effective but unaffordable: an emerging challenge for health systems

There are big questions unanswered in health policy, and the social willingness to pay for a costly and effective technology is one of them. In a recent article, a description and controversies of NHS budget impact policies are explained:

The budget impact test means that technologies costing the NHS more than an additional £20m a year will be “slow tracked,” regardless of their cost effectiveness or other social or ethical values. This risks undermining the existing opportunity costs framework.

Therefore if there is a costly and effective therapy that has an impact budget greater than 20m, than next steps are uncertain in UK. This is the setting.
Really this affects all health politicians, and the issue is related to prioritisation and price regulation. The "solution" to the first issue is to delay prioritisation to the next minister, and what it is possible is to renegotiate prices of drugs. As I have said many times, prices are a fiction, because what it is under negotiation is a contract with the government, therfore the whole amount (p·q).

Budget impact is essentially the price per patient multiplied by the number of patients treated. Yet the prevalence of someone’s condition should not determine their access to treatment. The principle of equity means that like cases should be treated as like; the NHS Constitution requires the NHS to respond to the clinical needs of patients as individuals.

Righ now in Catalonia cost-effectiveness is a also a fiction, since prices are confidential, and it is not possible to estimate the ratio. Budget impact is the option.

Prix Pictet. Photo Exhibition in Barcelona

You can't miss it

Paying the bill of gene therapy

GENE THERAPY: Understanding the Science, Assessing the Evidence, and Paying for Value

Approximately 12-14 investigational gene therapies for additional ultra-rare conditions and some for more common conditions, such as haemophilia and sickle cell disease, are progressing through the developmental pathway and are expected to reach regulatory approval within the next 2-3 years

These therapies rely mostly on viral vector techniques, therefore they don't take into account the coming genome editing, the most disruptive one and the most recent as well. If this new technologies reach the market, how should be paid and applied?. This is what a recent report explains and gives details for decision makers. It is really welcome, the issue deserves a deeper understanding.

Situation in Europe
Glybera and Strimvelis, have been granted marketing authorization in the European Union by the European Medicines Agency (EMA):
- Glybera was approved by the EMA in 2012, but has since become the world’s most expensive short-term treatment (Adams, 2016), and as such has not been widely successful - it has only been used by one patient, with the prescribing clinician overcoming steep bureaucratic hurdles to obtain insurer funding (Abou-El-Enein et al., 2016a).
- Strimvelis received marketing authorization in 2016. Patients can currently only be treated in Milan, due to the treatment’s extremely short shelf life which dictates that cells must be infused back into the patient in less than six hours.

More efforts should be devoted to understand this emerging market and assess its value.

Caro Emerald

Rethinking income inequality and health (once again)

Income Inequality and Health: Strong Theories,Weaker Evidence

The inequality frame is usually flawed, and this is specially clear when the metholodogy and data to support the statements are biased. Let me suggest today this article that summarises perfectly common misunderstandings on this relationship. It would be a great input for a review and remake of recent papers.
The summary:

What is already known about this topic? A large body of research has examined the association between income inequality and average health. A separate body of research has explored income disparities in health. These two traditions should be seen as complementary, because high and rising income inequality is unlikely to affect the health of all socioeconomic groups equally. 

What is added by this report? Although plausible theories suggest that rising income inequality can affect both average health and health disparities, empirical tests provide only modest support for some of these theories. We argue that understanding the effects of income inequality on health requires attention to mechanisms that affect the health of different income groups, thus changing average health, disparities in health, or both. 

What are the implications for public health practice, policy, and research? Progress is likely to require disentangling direct effects of rising income inequality, which operate through changes in an individual’s own income, from indirect effects, which operate through changes in other people’s income. Indirect effects of rising income inequality may change a society’s political and economic institutions, social cohesion, culture, and norms of behavior, all of which can then affect individuals’ health even if their income remains unchanged.

PS. If someone needs an estimate of morbidity, please avoid inconsistent approaches. If someone needs policy guidance don't trust on cross-sectional data on such a difficult issue.

PS. My posts on health inequalities.

Anticipating public concern over genome editing

Genome editing: an ethical review

The Nuffield Council has released a key document on ethical implications of genome editing. You'll notice that it is an open document, a work in progress because technology is evolving. If you want an excerpt check this short guide.

It should be remembered that most prospective technologies fail, and that some lead to undesirable consequences, a fact often obscured by ‘whig’ histories that reconstruct the history of successful technologies and their beneficial social consequences. Scientific discovery and technological innovation is important but not inevitable. Most important among the factors shaping technological development is human agency. It is human agency, in terms of decisions that are made about directions of research, funding and investment, the setting of legal limits and regulatory principles, the design of institutions and programmes, and the desire for or acceptance of different possible states of affairs, that will determine whether, and which, prospective technologies emerge and, ultimately,
their historical significance.

Nuffield council work is of interest, meanwhile, China is already testing CRISPR technology in humans, no ethical concerns...

Josep Segú - Barcelona