Interesting Government Nudge
Do you think this will work to get people to stop texting and driving? (Click here to view comments)
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Has the Obamacare Medicaid Expansion Already Reached Its Peak?
The Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid eligibility this year in those states which decided to follow its provisions. That means lots of people are now newly eligible for Medicaid. However, the number of people signing up for Medicaid in the states has been underwhelming. Which raises a question: how much can we expect enrollment numbers…
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Humbling Words from Carl Sagan
The Cornell Alumni Magazine had a wonderful article recently, on its famous former professor, Carl Sagan. Here is my favorite Sagan quote from that article: Look again at that dot. . . . On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their…
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Last Minute Government Shopping
First a quick apology – this post is a bit outside of my normal range of topics. But I thought I would share it with you anyway. This is a picture from the University of Chicago Magazine, showing spending on federal contracts by week of the year. That tall bar on the very right –…
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More on Burritos and Calories at Chipotle
Sarah Kliff, one of my favorite journalists, had a really nice write up on the burrito study recently published by a wonderful student at Duke, Peggy Liu. Here is an excerpt from her write up, and a link to the full article: For anyone counting calories, the Chipotle menu may be among the world’s least helpful…
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Obesity Is the Future of Chronic Disease
In a recent post, I excoriated athletes like LeBron James and Peyton Manning for endorsing unhealthy junk foods – for fattening their wallets by fattening our population. A recent study in Health Affairs provides a powerful illustration of the future effects of these fatty foods. The study is a rather dry and technical one, involving statistical predictions of population health demographics (Zzzz) using a health…
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Can Behavioral Economics Lower Healthcare Costs?
Insurers can use behavioral economics, which examines why people make certain decisions and then determines how to influence said decisions, to compel members to improve their health, according to research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “I don’t think there’s any question that behavioral economics approaches have a lot of potential to contribute to healthcare,”…
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On Stigmatizing Mysterious Illnesses
“When an illness is viewed as inexplicable and impenetrable, people tend to react to it with one of two extremes: either they stigmatize it or they romanticize it. It’s hard to know which is worse.” – Michael Foster Green, Professor, UCLA Department of Psychiatry (Click here to view comments)
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What Grilled Cheese Jesus Has to Do with Randomized Trials of Healthcare Interventions
I was recently interviewed on NPR’s marketplace by Dan Gorenstein. He did a really nice story on the kind of bravery it takes for health care opinion leaders to put their ideas to the test of a randomized trial, when the world is already ready to pay them huge amounts of money to promote their…
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Figuring Out How Many Calories Are in Your Burrito
As if the Affordable Care Act wasn’t controversial enough, a lesser-known provision of the law has critics warning of regulatory zeal. Section 4205 of the ACA (in case you haven’t read that far) requires restaurants to post calorie counts for the meals they sell, a requirement critics claim will be costly to comply with, while being…