The successful recent trends in healthy life expectancy (2)

Health at a Glance: Europe 2014

A new european health report by OECD has been released. It includes key data and information regarding how health systems are performing and citizen's health. Some days ago I was highlighting the successful achievement in healthy life expectancy in our country (as a temporal trend). Now we can compare these data with other countries and we can see that we are at the top 10 of EU-28.
Data can raise many comments. If you want to know the big change in health expenditure, look at p. 121. In 2000-2009 european expenditure growth rate was 4.7%, in 2009-2012 is -0.6%. In our specific case is still less. Now is the moment to remember those that some years ago said that health expenditure would never collapse because there were some factors (technology and ageing,...) beyond the control of decision makers.
In summary, we can confirm that healthy life expectancy has increased and resources have shrunk. That's all folks (up to now).

PS. On cross-fertilization between health economics and management.

 

Norman Rockwell. Rome exhibition. Must see.

How much does it cost (a drug)?

Once again you can check the cost of developing a new drug ($2.6 billion in years 1995-2007), a jump in real terms of 145% from its former 2003 estimate $802m. These figures were widely criticised. And now as you may imagine this is again a huge nonsense. The Economist and Forbes joke about this numbers and my view is even more sceptical.
I'm still waiting for an estimate of new drugs costs adjusted by value. Unless somebody is able to provide such a figure, I will avoid analysing in detail any cost accounting exercise.

Risky lifestyle regulation, what's new?

Regulating Lifestyle Risks The EU, Alcohol, Tobacco and Unhealthy Diets

Since we all agree that lifestyles affect health, then more evidence is needed on what to do and how to do it. Fortunately, a new book summarises the state of the art on regulating lifestyles. Selected sentences from two selected chapters 14 and 15:
Nudging healthier lifestyles: Informing the non-communicable diseases agenda with behavioural insights
by Alberto Alemanno

In sum, most behavioural insights consist of ‘mechanisms rather than law-like generalizations’.66 For purposes of policy, it would therefore be valuable to have a better understanding of how the major findings of behavioural research apply within heterogeneous groups. Unfortunately, due to methodological and empirical complexity, current variety of behavioural studies.71 A number of different types of studies are possible, such as (a) experiments, (b) randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and (c) surveys. 

Using outcome regulation to contend with lifestyle risks in Europe Tobacco, unhealthy diets, and alcohol
by Stephen d. Sugarman

In conclusion, outcome regulation offers a new way to deal with lifestyle risks – risks that people now take but at a deep level want reduced. That is, mature peoplemostly do not want to smoke or get drunk or eat unhealthily. They have been enticed into doing so in substantial part because of marketing efforts by sellers of these products who have created social norms in support of their consumption. People also drink, smoke, and eat the wrong things because they provide short-termpleasure, even if they also bring with them long-term serious harms.

There are some debatable conclusions, however this book is a required reading for any health regulator.

PS, NYT article on mediterranean diet, original in BMJ..

The opportunity cost of delay in applying HTA

Some weeks ago I attended the meeting of the Spanish Health Techonology Assessment Association. The presentations and communications highlighted the current status on economic evaluation, and to be honest, an uncertain application and usefulness for public policy in our country. The reason?. There is a fear, a deep fear, that economic evaluation could guide some coverage decisions. Since this represents a reduction of discretionary powers, politicians prefer the status quo. Any change that represents an introduction of health technology assessment will reduce the degrees of freedom in their decisions. Is this fair for society? I would like somebody to calculate the opportunity cost for such a delay.

PS. I suggest you have a look at Sculpher, Peiró and Culyer presentations. My presentation was about stratified medicine, and J. Pons about the state of the art in HTA.

PS. Tomorrow, Conference at Fundació Grifols: Personal and collective determinants of health ailments, Whose responsibility is it?. Determinantes personales y colectivos de los problemas de salud, ¿de quién es la responsabilidad? I'll give a speech in the first session.

The successful recent trends in healthy life expectancy

Esperança de vida, lliure de discapacitat i en bona salut a Catalunya

If there is one measure to monitor continously in welfare policy, this is the case for healthy life expectancy. If somebody wants to track wether citizens, clinicians, health managers, politicians, firms, etc... are contributing to better life in the health arena, then this is the aggregate measure. If somebody were able to establish the right incentives for achieving the best benchmark, this would be great. Kindig suggested long time ago that "purchasing population health" should be valued according to healthy life expectancy.
Fortunately, new data about recent trends has been published and we can confirm that has increased over a period of 7 years, between 2005 and 2012 from 63 to 65.7 years for men and from 60.6 years  to 66.1 for women . In women the proportion of years lived in good health has gone up by 5 percentage points, from 72 to 77 % in men and has increased only one point from 81 to 82 %. In any case, in marginal and in absolute terms there is a substantial improvement . Nobody would have been able to foresee changes of this magnitude.
Some months ago I showed in this blog an alternative measure, the morbidity-adjusted life expectancy.  An alternative construct that allows easier geographic and temporal comparisons.
We are on the right track, contrary to those that thought with the crisis and cutbacks things would worsen. As you know and I have explained many times, there are lot of areas for improvement and we have not to reduce our effort to mantain this successful trend.

PS. My congratulations to the authors of the report. Excellent and helpful work.

Manufacturing disease

Lethal But Legal: Corporations, Consumption, and Protecting Public Health

The quest for better regulation is an open-ended learning process. In democracy, governments maximize impact during their political term and better regulation deserves a longer term commitment. The costs and benefits of inaction for society are larger than for politicians. A recent new book explains that public health regulation and specifically on food policy, needs a complete overhaul. I've said this many times, in the book you'll find the details to take into account.
The author, Nicholas Freudenberg, DrPH, is Distinguished Professor of Public Health at the City University of New York School of Public Health and Hunter College and founder and director of Corporations and Health Watch, an international network of activists and researchers that monitors the business practices of the alcohol, automobile, firearms, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and tobacco industries.I strongly suggest a quick look at their site, you'll find many interesting information, like the one related to Berkeley and soda-tax.

The fifth wave in population health

For debate: a new wave in public health improvement

Required reading.UK CMO et al. in The Lancet say:

A fifth wave of public health development is needed, and needed now, as a consequence of shifts in the burden of disease and persisting health inequalities, but also against the background of emergent features of modern society. In consideration of the previous waves, there has been a shift from the top-down approach involving structural changes (such as the public works of the 19th century), towards a positing of shared responsibility for health. This shift mirrors changing political ideology and increasing understanding of the contribution of individual behaviours and lifestyle choices to health outcomes.

PS. Health spending around the world in The Economist.
PS. Piketty under scrutiny, in WSJ.