Our Sunday Chart of the Week
Since our chart looks at Medicaid spending on rare diseases, we better start with Medicaid.
It is complicated. Yes, Medicaid targets the poor and has federal and state funding. However, varying from state to state, it has 50 versions because individual states implement their own eligibility criteria.
All states, though, face disproportionately high spending for a small number or illnesses:
High spending takes us straight to opportunity cost. Spend more state Medicaid money on one item and the opportunity cost is less for something else.
For example, with the elderly population growing, long-term care will need more Medicaid money.
And therein lies our dilemma and our bottom line: With scarcity an unavoidable economic principle, we not only need to decide how best to allocate our dollars within Medicaid but also between Medicaid and other state spending obligations. One Princeton economist suggests using the QALY.
Chart of the Week: The Rare Disease Spending Dilemma
Elaine Schwartz
Elaine Schwartz has spent her career sharing the interesting side of economics. At the Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she has been honored through an Endowed Chair in Economics and the History Department chairmanship. At the same time, she developed curricula and wrote several books including Understanding Our Economy (originally published by Addison Wesley as Economics Our American Economy) and Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins). Elaine has also written in the Encyclopedia of New Jersey (Rutgers University Press) and was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom.” Beyond the classroom, she has presented Econ 101 ½ talks and led workshops for the Foundation for Teaching Economics, the National Council on Economic Education and for the Concord Coalition.
