“Beyond Costs and Benefits” – The Oncologist
The world is complicated. It’s hard to know what the federal government should do about a whole range of problems. That’s why most people take a shortcut, and judge policies based on their opinion of the people who support or oppose those policies. If you like someone, and he supports a policy, then you are…
Imagine your physician prescribed an expensive new drug for you. Concerned about its price, you ask what your out-of-pocket costs will be. To help your physician, you even pull out details of your insurance coverage. But even with this information in mind, don’t expect your physician to be able to estimate your costs. The complexity…
Shutterstock American physicians deserve to be paid well for their work. As a physician, myself, I know what it takes to become a doctor in the U.S. Four years of late nights in the college library in hopes of achieving a GPA commensurate with medical school admission; then four years of medical school, which makes…
It is hard for any physician to advance as a medical researcher. Competition for research funding is fierce; the rigors of publishing in prestigious medical journals are gargantuan. And women pursuing such careers face even bigger challenges, with many having to take on disproportionate burdens at home compared to their male colleagues (caring for kids,…
I have two reasons for showing you this picture, illustrating the decline in cigarette sales in Germany, France, Japan, Switzerland and the US over the past few decades. First, to show you the decline in cigarette sales in Germany, France, Japan, Switzerland and the US over the past few decades. Second, to encourage those of…
Here is a figure reproduced in Fortune, showing that when researchers publish articles raising questions about the harms of salt, they cite other researchers who raised similar questions. By contrast, when they definitively argue in favor of the harms, they cite other definitive colleagues. Some of this makes scientific sense. If you show a particular…