Penn LDI – Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics

LDI Adjunct Senior Fellow Robert Field is featured in a Yahoo! News compilation of the 16 most talked about predictions about how the Supreme Court will rule. Field, a professor of both Law and Health Management and Policy at Drexel University, predicts that the individual mandate will go down. Contradicting him…

Are physicians and their patients overlooking the hidden costs of using pharmaceutical company coupons to purchase prescription drugs?, asks LDI Senior Fellow David Grande in an article in JAMA. Grande, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine, writes that "drug coupons raise 2 primary financial concerns. First,…

In his latest Time.com column, LDI Senior Fellow Zachary Meisel argues that its time for the "simplicity revolution" in medicine. With co-author Jesse Pines, he writes, "We have been living for way too long in the era of the giant health care VCR remote with too many buttons that no…

A WHYY and Newsworks story features LDI Senior Fellow Kevin Volpp discussing the "automated hovering" concept that won his center's recent innovation tournament. Automated hovering is a system that helps patients adhere to prescribed medication after they are discharged from hospital treatment for heart attacks. Volpp, MD, is director of LDI's…

LDI Senior Fellow Maureen Maguire's study of drugs for treating age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is featured in the AARP Bulletin. The research project essentially showed that $50-per-dose Avastin is as effective a treatment as the $2,000-per-dose Lucentis. "The impact on vision is virtually the same, no matter which drug is…

LDI Senior Fellow Marjorie Bowman is leaving the University of Pennsylvania to become Dean of the Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University in Ohio. Boonshoft is affiliated with seven major teaching hospitals and more than 20 other health care institutions throughout the Dayton region. Bowman, MD, MPH, has been…

A new white paper by LDI Senior Fellow Dan Polsky and Wharton Health Care Management doctoral candidate Caroline Ly explores the worldwide health consequences of indoor air pollution generated by the use of wood, coal and other solid fuels. The latest World Health Organization data attributes 2 million annual deaths and…

Philadelphia, which has about 50 ambulances but needs 70 to fully cover the city, has authorized police cars to transport gunshot and other trauma victims to local hospitals. LDI Senior Fellow Brendan Carr is featured in a Philadelphia Inquirer article that explores this policy and asks if it's safe and effective. "We…

David Asch, who is stepping down after 14 years as LDI's executive director, is profiled in a Philadelphia Inquirer Business section article. 

LDI Senior Fellow and Associate Director of the CHOP Center for Autism Research is featured in an article in the LDI Health Economist  about the impact of the ACA's "essential health benefits" provision on insurance coverage for autism.

Writing in his latest "Opinionator" column in The New York Times, Ezekiel Emanuel bashes the da Vinci surgical robot as a "pseudo innovation" that increases costs without improving patients' health. He concludes that "We need to stop glorifying every new technology as an innovation." Emanuel is Penn's Vice Provost for…

LDI Senior Fellow Jason Karlawish is the co-author of a New England Journal of Medicine article arguing for a less private enterprise and more public approach to the ownership and exploitation of biomarkers as tools of medicine.  Karlawish, MD, is a professor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Penn's…

More funding alone is not sufficient to reduce the current gap in global maternal and child mortality rates, says LDI Senior Fellow Alison Buttenheim in a Science in Action article. She emphasizes the importance of framing choices and using other behavioral economics techniques to encourage more effective responses from individuals…