Bottom-line pain.

Businesses, as they cast about for relief from the rising costs of employee health care, are trying to reform the medical marketplace as an alternative to calling on the federal government to impose a cure.     

An industry in pain

The pharmaceutical industry, buffeted by marketplace changes and unprecedented political pressure, is far from united as it heads into the mother of all lobbying battles.     

How to stop industrial growth with minimal pain

In order to reach material equilibrium in the economy, one must be able to control the total production volume of industrial sectors. The paper discusses three ways of stabilizing the size of an industrial sector. The no-nonsense appraoch entails direct regulation of the capacity of industrial plants. The manipulative approach softens the negative employment effects of direct regulation through a subsidy scheme. The enlightened public approach implies reduced material standards, as does the manipulative approach, but insures stable employment even at constant sector output.     

Deficit reduction: Short-term pain for long-term gain

The paper evaluates the costs and benefits of fiscal consolidation using simulations based on the IMFs global dynamic general equilibrium model GIMF. Over the longer run, well-targeted permanent reductions in budget deficits can lead to a considerable increase in both the growth rate and the level of output. The gains may be enhanced by shifting some of the tax burden from incomes to consumption. In the short-run, credibility plays a crucial role in determining the size of initial output losses. Global current account imbalances would be significantly reduced if budget consolidation was larger in countries with current account deficits.     

Examining the association between pain severity and quality-of-life,work-productivity loss,and healthcare resource use among European adults diagnosed with pain

Objective: The goal of this research was to quantify the association between pain severity and several health outcomes in a large sample of patients diagnosed with some form of pain.

Methods: Responses from patients who had been diagnosed with some form of pain (n?=?14,459) were drawn from the 2013 EU National Health and Wellness Survey (NHWS; n?=?62,000). Respondents reported their subjective pain severity in the past week on a numerical rating scale (0–10) as well as the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form (SF-36), Work Productivity and Activity Impairment Questionnaire (WPAI), and healthcare resource utilization in the past 6 months (healthcare professional (HCP) visits, emergency room (ER) visits, and hospitalizations). Associations between pain severity and health outcomes were examined via a series of regression models controlling for a set of demographic and health-related covariates.

Results: After controlling for demographics and comorbidities, pain severity in the past week was shown to be significantly negatively associated with Health Utilities (b = ?0.022, p?b?=?0.18, p?b?=?0.13, p?b?=?0.14, p?b?=?0.08, p?Limitations: This study was a self-report cross-sectional study which may have biased the results and does not allow for causal inferences to be made. Finally, the regression models run were limited to available covariates and, hence, some potentially important covariates may not have been included in these models.

Conclusions: The findings suggest that reducing pain severity could result in an increase in patients’ quality-of-life and work productivity, and a decrease in healthcare resource use. The equations, linking pain and outcomes, were presented in an accessible format so they could be readily applied in healthcare decision-making.     

The burden associated with neuropathic pain in Western Europe

Abstract

Background:

The purpose of this study is to assess the burden of neuropathic pain (NeP) on health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL), health status, employment status, absenteeism and presenteeism, and direct medical costs in Western Europe.     

The effect of acute pain on risky and intertemporal choice

Pain is a highly salient and attention-demanding experience that motivates people to act. We investigated the effect of pain on decision making by delivering acute thermal pain to participants’ forearm while they made risky and intertemporal choices involving money. Participants (n = 107) were more risk seeking under pain than in a no-pain control condition when decisions involved gains but not when they involved equivalent losses. Pain also resulted in greater preference for immediate (smaller) over future (larger) monetary rewards. We interpret these results as a motivation to offset the aversive, pain-induced state, where monetary rewards become more appealing under pain than under no pain and when delivered sooner rather than later. Our findings add to the long-standing debate regarding the role of intuition and reflection in decision making.