Zarek Brot

@reedabelson.bsky.social @teddyrosenbluth.bsky.social I am not saying you should write celebratory articles about PA (you shouldn’t) but I do not understand why docs cannot, will not be treated as the interest group they are rather than benevolent experts.

Also, “I think it’s the back door into privatizing traditional Medicare.” The privatization of Medicare is not exactly happening through the back door…

Ambulance Taxis: The Impact of Regulation and Litigation on Health Care Fraud Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

Look, you absolutely do not have to hand it to the administration, but TM has already experimented with prior auth (www.nber.org/papers/w29491). It is good to not let docs use Medicare as a piggy bank! Don’t be scared of buzzwords!

I get the hand-wringing about the AI of it all but the concern about prior auth for years is the slowness of human review. Many PA rejections are procedural, why not speed them up tremendously? (I do think limiting the “black box” nature of algorithmic denial here is very important though)

Medicare Will Require Prior Approval for Certain Procedures

Just kidding, but only barely! A really disappointing and poorly-framed article that, as always, relies on doctors as “experts” on how they get paid. Yes, doctors don’t like it when you regulate their activities. But federal funds need an advocate and defender too.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/h...

NYTimes: mobsters absolutely hate anti-racketeering enforcement! Government is using AI to crack down on a subset of crimes, mobsters are worried this could be a “slippery slope” towards using it more broadly!

Piece in JAMA Health Forum written by David Cutler entitled, "The Worst Piece of Health Care Legislation Ever"

David Cutler popping off, my goodness

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

de gustibus EST disputandum

Pretty sure I learned how to do it from the appendix of Chandra-Finkelstein-Sacarny-Syverson AER 2016.

selecting on the dependent variable

So on the margin, there’s a small chance that a faculty member might see these posts, become aware of a candidate, and ask for the committee to consider them.

I don’t know how other departments work. But in our group, the interviews/flyouts are chosen by a small committee. That means there are a bunch of faculty who aren’t reading packets. If I saw a good health candidate I might take action bc otherwise the committee might not care.

Reining in costs is hard. But (paraphrasing my coauthor Boris) in a world with finite resources where providers have no qualms about prescribing low-value care, policies that discipline the use of care may be necessary.

This great article by Betsy Cliff (tradeoffs.org/2023/10/03/p...) discussed our recent paper about prior auth of drugs.

She makes a point I feel strongly about: PA is not ideal, but the alternatives are 1) cost sharing, which is worse; or 2) do nothing and let premiums explode, which is bad too.