In a wonderful New Yorker article titled “The Hangover,” Nick Paumgarten writes about the strange mix of private and government forces that led to the Spanish fiscal crisis. In a wonderful sentence, he evokes one such force, the almost invisibility of debt: It is often hard to perceive an economic crisis. Debt doesn’t look like…
In a 2011 JAMA article, Gil Welch and colleagues looked at how many chronic diseases Medicare enrollees had across different regions of the country. They came up with the following picture: This picture may confirm some of your suspicions. For example, elderly in the north are sicker than ones in, say, Arizona or Southern Florida,…
I write frequently about the importance of perspective taking in clinician/patient interaction. Seeing the world through other people’s eyes is also a crucial moral and political skill. No surprise then that Abe Lincoln showed great perspective taking abilities. Consider these words, from an 1854 speech on slavery: I think I have no prejudice against the…
According to a CDC study, about 1/3 of American families either struggled to pay medical bills in 2011 or outright couldn’t pay them! Not surprisingly, this problem is especially big for people with limited financial resources: Just another piece of evidence in favor of something I’ve been talking about lately when giving public lectures: that…
Lost in all the confusion about Obamacare is the fact that the law relies on more than just the individual mandate to encourage people to buy health insurance. It also makes health insurance more affordable, especially for people at or below 400% of the federal poverty limit by subsidizing insurance for those folks. So do…
A recent Time magazine article by Steven Brill has received a lot of attention, for highlighting some of the crazy ways that hospital set their prices. One quote in particular caught my attention. It had to do with what hospitals call the charge master, which is essentially a big list of what they charge for…
One of the great pleasures of blogging is reaching new audiences and, better yet, interacting with new people. On the other hand, blogging also puts us bloggers into contact with unpleasant commenters. This unpleasantness has compelled me to establish some guidelines for my own on-line behavior. First, I strive always to blog, and to comment…
Recently, Congressman Paul Ryan put together another budget balancing proposal. It has received a lot of attention in the news, even though it is as likely to be enacted as is the Senate Democrat alternative– in other words, it won’t be enacted. Nevertheless, for those of you interested in healthcare and healthcare policy, here’s a…
A review of Critical Decisions was recently published in The American Journal of Bioethics. You can check it out here. (Click here to view comments)
A dozen years ago, my wife filled out an NCAA bracket on a popular website. Out of more than 1 million entries, she finished somewhere around 17th. Think about it: 17th out of a million. Clearly I married up! I mean everyone says their spouse is one in a million, but how many really mean…