Economics Behaving Badly
George Loewenstein and I have an Op-Ed in the New York Times today. Check it out, and feel free to add your comments.
George Loewenstein and I have an Op-Ed in the New York Times today. Check it out, and feel free to add your comments.
Sometimes people flat out need cameras shoved down into their stomachs. A long history of reflux disease, for example, could prompt a gastroenterologist to perform an “upper endoscopy”—to run a thin tube down the patient’s throat in order to view their esophagus and stomach and look for signs of serious illness. Medicare has correctly decided…
I am very fortunate to have never been sued. That is not necessarily because of my amazing ability as a physician. I always practiced in Veterans Affairs medical centers, where my status as a federal employee meant I would not get sued by my patients. I also had an incredibly appreciative patient population. But I…
The FDA has proposed new labels on grocery store food products, that adjust serving sizes to more accurately capture what Americans eat. Research I conducted with Steven Dallas and Peggy Liu suggests these labels could be a problem. Here is a great media story on our findings: Last year, the Food and Drug Administration announced…
We’ve done a lot of things in the United States over the last few decades to curb tobacco consumption. We’ve warned people cigarettes will kill them, created persuasive ad campaigns to scare people away from cigarettes, and added a hefty tax to the product. As a result, cigarette use in United States is lower than…
I recently had surgery to relieve an impingement of my left hip. I suffered a complication of the procedure in the hospital where I received the surgery performed follow-up care to treat the complication. As I lay on the table receiving that second treatment I wondered – okay, I mainly wondered “are they really going…
Experts in decision psychology and behavioral economics have conclusively shown that humans, those silly creatures, are not always rational decision makers. They let unconscious forces influence their thinking, and not always for the better. But of course, doctors aren’t human. Right? Well, here is some evidence of just how human we doctors are. The odds…