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,”…
“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)
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…
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…
Here’s a new study I conducted with Peggy Liu, Jim Bettman, and Arianna Uhalde on calorie range information. Check it out below. Liu, Peggy J., James R. Bettman, Arianna R. Uhalde, and Peter A. Ubel (forthcoming), “How Many Calories Are in My Burrito? Improving Consumers’ Understanding of Calorie Range Information,” Public Health Nutrition. DOI link….
People have criticized The Affordable Care Act for amounting to a large transfer of wealth, from wealthy Americans to those not as well off. But the real transfer of wealth has been from United States to other developed nations, whose healthcare costs we have subsidized for many years by paying so generously for many of…
This is how Fanny Burney described the mastectomy she received in 1811, a long time before effective anesthesia was available: I mounted, therefore, unbidden, the bed stead. When the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast – cutting through veins – arteries ––flesh – nerves – I needed no injunctions not to restrain my…
In a recent Huffington Post article, I was described as a Duke University economist. I’m sure the economic community would like to make very clear that I am not one of its members. The same goes for most communities, as far as I can tell. Nevertheless, despite that glaring error, much of the content of…
As readers of this blog know, Medicare costs loom large in our nation’s future. If we do not find a way to control Medicare spending, it’s hard to imagine any way to remain a solvent nation. As we continue to explore ways of controlling these costs, it is important to remember that a great deal…
Andrew Solomon wrote a wonderful article in the New Yorker recently about Adam Lanza’s father and his search for answers to his son’s awful behavior. The piece included a quote I thought I would share with you today: All parenting involves choosing between the day (why have another argument at dinner?) and the years (the…