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This paper examined the design of the reinsurance benefit in Part D of Medicare. That design generates serious inefficiencies. The significant subsidies to plans in the reinsurance region combined with the launch of unique high cost prescription drugs could be expected to lead to and has led to substantial departures from cost-effective outcomes in treatments delivered. Extremely high costs for an extremely limited class of drugs, what we label MISCs, get woefully insufficient consideration. (Frank and Zeckhauser, 12/4)

Increasingly, public and private resources are being dedicated to community-based health improvement programs. ... We found that the implementation of community-based health improvement programs was associated with a decrease of less than 0.15 percent in the rate of obesity, an even smaller decrease in the proportion of people reporting being in poor or fair health, and a smaller increase in the rate of smoking. None of these changes was significant. (Fry et al., 1/1)

There have been dramatic improvements in reducing infant sleep-related deaths since the 1990s, when recommendations were introduced to place infants on their backs for sleep. However, there are still approximately 3,500 sleep-related deaths among infants each year in the United States, including those from sudden infant death syndrome, accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed, and unknown causes. (Bombard et al., 1/9)

Chilean officials recognized that when people shop, they often do so automatically and habitually, and people seldom spend a lot of time reading labels or doing calculations to figure out what the best choice would be. To address this, Chile's Ministry of Health worked with graphic artists to develop simple warning labels. These black-and-white stop signs note whether a product has an excessive quantity of salt, sugar, calories or fat—enough to increase the risk of a chronic disease. (Cohen, 12/30)