Want More Proof That Correlation Is Overrated?
And if that isn’t good enough? End of topic! Click to view comments
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Has Obamacare Made Restaurants Partisan?
Politics in the US is discouragingly partisan. National politics has become increasingly partisan since at least the late ’60s, when the passage of civil rights legislation influenced many conservative southern Democrats to join the Republican Party. Even state politics has become more partisan, where even famously nice people in Wisconsin have found themselves battling their neighbors across…
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Polarized
I recently reread a very informative New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza, called the Obama memos. I have assigned the article to my undergraduate health policy class, to help them understand the political climate surrounding the passage of The Affordable Care Act. And that climate was one of severe polarization, which cut against Obama’s naïve…
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Calorie Counts on… Stairs? Interesting Nudge
Just came across an interesting way to try to motivate people to exert themselves: post calories-burned-counts on the stairs. Would that work for you? For me, it would probably make me look down while walking up, only to trip, fall backwards, crack my head, all the while asking myself: “What the heck is a kcal…
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A Reminder That Correlation Does Not Equal Causation
I think this picture just about covers it: Click to view comments
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When Physicians Pay Attentions to Costs, They Promote Public Health!
This week, my good friend Reshma Jagsi and I published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, in which we explain why physicians are doing their job, as physicians, when they pay attention to healthcare costs. Here is a snippet from that article, and a link to find the full version. Health care costs…
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Orthopedic Surgeons Get "F" Grade On Knowing Cost Of The Devices They Implant
A new study asks Orthopedic surgeons to guess the price of the devices they implant – “the amount your institution currently pays the vendor for the implant.” Despite a lenient grading system, in which the researchers counted as correct any guess within 20% of the actual price, surgeons estimated costs correctly only 1 in 5…
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Want narcotics just ask for them?
A very disturbing new study was just published, in which physicians viewed a video of a patient with back pain asking for OxyContin. Twenty percent of docs said they would prescribe that med under that circumstance: …Too often, doctors prescribe potentially dangerous medications to patients who shouldn’t be getting them, and what they prescribe is…
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Promoting Social Responsibility Among Pharmaceutical Companies
Last fall, an article in the New England Journal presented a powerful picture of just how much effort different pharmaceutical companies make to give poor people access to their products. Here is the picture from that article: The captains of industry are a competitive group of people, I am told. They like to see where…
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A Simple Nudge That Will Improve Medical Care for People with Diabetes
When patients with diabetes come to the doctor’s office, it is important for their clinicians to take a look at their feet. Many, if not most, foot amputations among people with diabetes would be prevented with this simple exam, an exam that will identify problems early enough to prevent them from progressing. But us busy…