The Commonwealth Fund recently circulated information on the widespread difficulty many Americans have paying for their medical care, even when they have insurance. Burdened by high co-pays and high coinsurance rates, these out-of-pocket expenses are putting people on the financial edge. Here is a picture of the results, which show that a third of people…
Advertising is about persuasion. Companies spend billions of dollars per year trying to convince us to buy their products. But sometimes, rigorous philosophical training can help us avoid that influence. Consider the following ad: Only deep immersion in Immanuel Kant helped me recognize the flaws in this reasoning!
David Blumenthal and colleagues recently wrote a wonderful piece in the New England Journal on the future of Medicare. In it, they present a powerful picture comparing how often people in 11 countries have difficulty accessing medical care because of costs. The good news? The USA came in first place. The bad news? First is…
In case you missed it, I am recirculating a picture put together by the Kaiser Family Foundation , which reveals two unsettling facts about health insurance in United States. First, the cost of employer-based health insurance has risen 61% since 2005. When health insurance premiums rise, salaries don’t. That’s a problem. Second, worker contributions have…
I got an unusual email message a little while ago. It was from someone I had never met before, and it wasn’t obvious to me, at first, why this person was contacting me. The email began like this: “I am an engineer and I work in a company of public passenger transport in Buenos Aires….
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…
Thanks to Josh Grey for the image.
I love behavioral science. I love public policy. And I am obsessed with music. So you can see why I think the nudge pictured below may be the coolest thing on the planet! It encourages drivers to drive at an appropriate speed, so they can hear music created by their passage over the road: I…
Here is a public service advertisement, promoting vaccines. (Thanks to Michelle Meyer for making me aware of it.) It harkens back to a day when vaccines weren’t yet available for diseases like polio: Do you think it will work?