Jason Shafrin is a healthcare economist, using quantitative analysis to improve the quality and efficiency of the American health care system. Dr. Shafrin is currently an Economist with Precision Heath Economics and where he uses his interdisciplinary skills in economics, health services research, and health policy to improve the quality and efficiency of the healthcare system. Dr. Shafrin is an expert in value-based purchasing methods, quality of care measures, discrete choice experiments, health insurance claims data analysis, and digital medicine. After receiving a PhD in Economics from the University of California-San Diego, Dr. Shafrin worked at Acumen, LLC helping Medicare implement a variety of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a Obamacare).
Before 1983 only 10 drugs had been approved to treat a rare disease, but as of November 2015 over 450 additional new orphan indications (both new drugs and secondary indications for previously approved drugs) had been approved.