A Thought on Mental Illness
Freedom to be insane is an illusory freedom, a cruel hoax perpetrated on those who cannot think clearly by those who will not think clearly. -E. Fuller Torrey (Click here to view comments)
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Provocative Piece On Behavioral Economics And Public Policy
The Financial Times, one of the great newspapers of the world, recently published a really nice essay exploring some of the controversies about what role, if any, behavioral economics should play in public policy. I’m going to give you a “teaser” of the article here, and you can always click on the link to read…
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How Long Will It Take to Get a Doctor’s Appointment?
A report on the Kaiser Family Foundation website shows how long it takes to get appointments with primary care doctors and subspecialists. The most dramatic finding comes out of Boston, where you can expect to wait more than two months to see a family physician. I expect the delay in seeing a family physician results…
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How Charlie Brown Prevents Traffic Accidents
Check out this wonderful street art, that seconds as a behavioral intervention to reduce traffic speed: Very cool! (Click here to view comments)
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The Mistake of Selling Your Car When It Reaches 50,001 Miles
You might think that the difference between a car that has been driven 49,999 miles and one that has been driven 50,001 miles is… 2 miles. But you would miss out on another big difference – in the price a buyer would be willing to pay for those two vehicles. Here’s a graph showing just…
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Careful When You Come Up For Parole
Parole boards are supposed to objectively assess whether inmates eligible for parole deserve to be released from prison before the end of their sentence. They need to determine whether people are reformed, whether they have been behaving themselves in prison, and whether they pose unacceptable risks to society. But it turns out their decisions may…
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Why I’m Not Sad That I Can’t Fly
I remember one time having a conversation with Daniel Kahneman, one of the founders of behavioral economics, about the topic of happiness and emotional adaptation, in the context of chronic disability. We were discussing emotional impact of experiencing a limb amputation. Kahneman pointed out that it is the loss of the limb that is really…
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Malpractice Reform Could Benefit Patients More Than Doctors
The U.S. medical malpractice system is broken. It frequently does not punish doctors who need punishing, while levying fines against doctors who did nothing wrong. And this dreadfully inaccurate system still manages to take almost five years, on average, to settle claims. Experts have been promoting a type of reform known as “safe harbor rules,”……
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Why It Sometimes Doesn't Pay, Literally, To Take Medicaid Patients
I have written a couple of pieces lately documenting the high percentage of physicians who refuse to take Medicaid patients, and some of the reasons for their refusal. One of my pieces prompted a physician to email me with his take on this matter. I am going to quote from that email, but take out…
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Obesity Really DOES Kill
There has been controversy recently about whether obesity is truly bad for people’s health, or in fact whether it might even protect people from early mortality. A study from the New England Journal in January provides strong evidence that obesity kills. It shows that people with very low body mass index have high mortality rates,…