Quote of the Day
“When many remedies are proposed for a disease, that means the disease is incurable.” -Anton Chekhov (Click here to view comments)
-
-
A Clever Nudge to Reduce Waste of Natural Resources
I teach a course on behavioral economics and public policy at Duke University. One of my former students recently emailed me a picture of a bill he received in the mail. It looks like conEdison is trying to remind him to pay his bills electronically, so they don’t have to send him a bill in…
-
How Obamacare Helps Women
Here is a picture from a recent Atlantic article, showing that, pre-Obamacare implementation, women have more difficulty paying for medical care: The ACA should fix improve this situation, meaning Obamacare should help women more than men. (Click here to view comments)
-
Quote of the Day
“If we can understand autism, we can understand the brain.” Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel (Click here to view comments)
-
Do People Move Across State Borders To Receive Generous Medicaid Benefits?
I teach an undergraduate health policy class at Duke University. Recently, my students asked me whether states potentially hurt themselves by offering generous health care benefits when neighboring states don’t offer such benefits. Then I got home and pulled out a recent issue of Health Affairs, and read the results of a study suggesting that this…
-
Setting Priorities in Targeting Health Care Quality
Measuring healthcare quality has become a veritable cottage industry. Quality measures are proliferating so quickly that the Department of Health and Human Services has created a, and I’m not making this up, “Quality Measures Clearinghouse”. At last count, it included more than 2100 such measures. When it comes to health care quality, if you measure…
-
Students Taking State Government to School?
Students at Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill just put together a very thoughtful proposal on how the state of North Carolina could expand its Medicaid program, while still promoting the private insurance market. Here’s a link to a wonderful story, that highlights their efforts and shows, I think convincingly, that the students are taking…
-
Do Docs Spend More in McAllen, Texas Because People Who Live There Are Obese?
In a very influential 2009 New Yorker essay, Atul Gawande described why health care spending is rampant in McAllen, Texas, an example of the regional variations in healthcare utilization that policy experts at Dartmouth have been studying for years. Indeed, this research has shown much higher spending in places like McAllen, compared to cities like Salem,…
-
Predicting Adaptation to Calamity and Disability
People often show an amazing ability to emotionally recover from difficult circumstances. I devoted my second book, You’re Stronger Than You Think, to this topic. Now comes some really cool research, showing that people’s ability to bounce back from adversity depends, not all that surprisingly, on their underlying personality traits. Although this result is not…
-
The Biggest Government Health Care Spender Since LBJ Was…Ronald Reagan?
Many readers will recognize Ronald Reagan’s famous maxim that: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Some will even recognize his vehement opposition to Lyndon Johnson’s Medicare proposal, before the program was passed into law: “We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb…