Stats Chat

Newshub has a story about a new treatment for Crohn’s disease and some other autoimmune conditions, ustekinumab (brand name Stelara).  This is an artificial antibody that blocks a couple of immune-system signalling chemicals.

The treatment is not funded by Pharmac; that’s the point of the story.  We aren’t told how much it costs, but Matt Nippert looked it up and the US list price is US$12,332 per month.  At that price, Pharmac’s entire annual budget of NZ$1.045 billion would pay for just over 5000 people to receive ustekinumab, or about a quarter of people with Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis in NZ.  Funding it for 630 people would make it Pharmac’s highest single expenditure [to the extent you can tell, because there are secret discounts not included in the published figures]. I think this sort of information is critical to interpreting the call for Pharmac to fund ustekinumab, and it should routinely be part of reporting.

Pharmac obviously isn’t going to fund this at list price, and they could probably get a discount.  Canada seems to pay only about NZ$30,000 per year for the drug. At that price you could fund it over 4000 patients before it got to be Pharmac’s single highest expenditure. That’s still quite a lot of money that would need to be subtracted from expenditures on other drugs. 

New Zealand’s medical system saves a lot of money through Pharmac. Some of this is by negotiating lower prices. Some is by not funding drugs that don’t really work. Another unavoidable component of this saving, though, is not buying effective drugs that are too expensive, and waiting until the price drops.  I’m not going to claim that Pharmac always gets the decisions right, but it actually does pretty well, and every thousand dollars it spends on a more expensive prescription is a thousand dollars it can’t spend on multiple less-expensive prescriptions. We could increase Pharmac’s budget, but if I were going to drop another couple of billion dollars a year on the health system, I think I’d worry about surgery and cancer waiting times first.

Figures that everyone should know (or, at least, everyone with reckons on pharmaceutical subsidies): Pharmac spends about a billion dollars a year.  That’s an average of roughly $200 per person per year, or $16000 per person per lifetime.

Team Ratings for Round 14

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Note that because Lyon is to play Montpellier midweek, there will be a change to those two teams ratings. The changes are likely to be small, but given the closeness of the Brive versus Montpellier match could easily affect that prediction. To deal with this unusual situation, I will post an updated forecast after the Lyon versus Montpellier game, prior to the weekend games.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 83 matches played, 56 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 67.5%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 14

Here are the predictions for Round 14. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Postponed Games

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 83 matches played, 56 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 67.5%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Postponed Games

Here are the predictions for Postponed Games. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 6

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 26 matches played, 15 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 57.7%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 6

Here are the predictions for Round 6. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 11

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 52 matches played, 35 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 67.3%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 11

Here are the predictions for Round 11. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 7

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 16 matches played, 13 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 81.2%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 7

Here are the predictions for Round 7. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 13

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 77 matches played, 53 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 68.8%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 13

Here are the predictions for Round 13. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 5

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 22 matches played, 13 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 59.1%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 5

Here are the predictions for Round 5. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 10

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 46 matches played, 32 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 69.6%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 10

Here are the predictions for Round 10. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 6

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 13 matches played, 10 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 76.9%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 6

Here are the predictions for Round 6. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.