Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis impacting population health and the economy. We describe a cost-effectiveness framework for evaluating acute treatments for hospitalized patients with COVID-19, considering a broad spectrum of potential treatment profiles and perspectives within the US healthcare system to ensure incorporation of the most relevant clinical parameters, given evidence currently available. Methods A lifetime model, with a short-term acute care decision tree followed by a post-discharge three-state Markov cohort model, was developed to estimate the impact of a potential treatment relative to best supportive care (BSC) for patients hospitalized with COVID-19. The model included information on costs and resources across inpatient levels of care, use of mechanical ventilation, post-discharge morbidity from ventilation, and lifetime healthcare and societal costs. Published literature informed clinical and treatment inputs, healthcare resource use, unit costs, and utilities. The potential health impacts and cost-effectiveness outcomes were assessed from US health payer, societal, and fee-for-service (FFS) payment model perspectives. Results Viewing results in aggregate, treatments that conferred at least a mortality benefit were likely to be cost-effective, as all deterministic and sensitivity analyses results fell far below willingness-to-pay thresholds using both a US health payer and FFS payment perspective, with and without societal costs included. In the base case, incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER) ranged from $22,933 from a health payer perspective using bundled payments to $8028 from a societal perspective using a FFS payment model. Even with conservative assumptions on societal impact, inclusion of societal costs consistently produced ICERs 40–60% lower than ICERs for the payer perspective. Conclusion Effective COVID-19 treatments for hospitalized patients may not only reduce disease burden but also represent good value for the health system and society. Though data limitations remain, this cost-effectiveness framework expands beyond current models to include societal costs and post-discharge ventilation morbidity effects of potential COVID-19 treatments. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12325-021-01654-5.

Are victims of human rights abuses better off with or without economic sanctions targeted at their perpetrators? We study this question in the context of a U.S. human rights policy, Section 1502 of the 2010 Dodd Frank Act. By discouraging companies from sourcing 'conflict minerals' from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the policy has acted as a de facto boycott on mineral purchases that may finance warlords and armed militias. We estimate the policy's impact on mortality outcomes of children born prior to 2013 and find that it increased the probability of infant deaths in villages near the regulated 'conflict mineral' deposits by at least 143 percent. We find suggestive evidence that the legislation-induced boycott did so by stunting mother consumption of infant health care goods and services.

Anderson (2010) used data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveys to estimate the effect of the Montana Meth Project, an anti-methamphetamine advertising campaign, on meth use among high school students. He found little evidence that the campaign actually curbed meth use. In this note, we use data from the national and state Youth Risk Behavior Surveys for the period 1999 through 2011 to build upon the work of Anderson (2010). During this period, a total of eight states adopted anti-meth advertising campaigns. While our results are typically consistent with those of Anderson (2010), we do find some evidence that the Meth Project may have reduced meth use among white high school students.JEL Codes: H75, I18, K42, M37

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