I’m-sure-you-know-this-by-now fact-of-the-day: the US leads the world in healthcare costs. As I’ve written previously, a big reason for this is that prices in the US for healthcare services are higher than elsewhere. This was nicely illustrated in a Health Affairs article from 2012. The article looked at how many physicians per capita practiced across six countries,…
The New Yorker recently published a very nice article on Pope Francis. At one point in the article, the Pope explains why he is trying to deemphasize all the controversies that have taken up so much of the Church’s attention in recent years, controversies about birth control, abortion and the like. His explanation shows a respectable…
Read the following quote, and try to guess which U.S. president made this statement: “A responsible budget is not our only weapon to control inflation. We must act now to protect all Americans from healthcare costs that are rising $1 million per hour, 24 hours a day, doubling every 5 years. We must take control…
In a recently published article, a team of researchers showed that a simple graphical cue, showing people which foods are healthy and unhealthy, significantly improve their eating behaviors. Here is a nice summary of the study results, as summarized on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website: With a problem as large as America’s obesity epidemic,…
In an earlier post, I wrote about JFK’s disdain for domestic politics, and how such disdain doomed his lackluster efforts to pass Medicare legislation. As it turns out, Richard Nixon, the man he defeated in the 1962 Presidential Election, held similar disdain for domestic affairs when he was President of the United States, and not…
In a previous post, I presented a quote from Dwight Eisenhower that foreshadows the Obamacare insurance exchanges, and argued that Obamacare is a centrist healthcare law, one that rather than socialize the healthcare system instead promotes private hospitals and private insurance companies. I even wondered whether Eisenhower might support important components of the Affordable Care Act….
As a physician and behavioral scientist, I am always interested to explore the connection between psychological well-being and health. Which is why I have decided to share recent findings from a study, published in Psychological Science, that presents data from across the globe on positive emotions and self-reported health. The data show a pretty…
In a late night phone call during a foreign policy crisis, Kennedy expressed disdain for domestic policy, showing the kind of attitude that doomed later efforts to reform the U.S. healthcare system: “It really is true that foreign affairs is the only important issue for a president to handle, isn’t it? I mean, who gives…
Until recently, the state of North Carolina, where I live, was a bastion of political moderation, especially compared to our neighbors in the southeast. Our politics were moderate in part because the Democratic Party remained relatively strong in the state, and to survive in this region of the country had embraced center left, rather than…
As anyone who has followed the Obamacare roller coaster over the past 4 years knows, passing legislation is only the first step in reforming a healthcare system. Since Obamacare came into law, we have been consumed by battles over how to implement it, and by struggles over how to make it work effectively. But such…