Economics Behaving Badly
“Economics Behaving Badly” – The New York Times
“Economics Behaving Badly” – The New York Times
Pizza is pizza, and a full stomach is a full stomach. But when restaurants slice pizza into smaller pieces, you are probably likely to consume less pizza:
Recently, Dr. R. Adams Dudley, director of the UCSF Center for Healthcare Value, circulated a picture illustrating rapid growth in the use of tests and other imaging procedures between 2000 and 2013. I thought it deserved further circulation. It reveals 60-80% expansion of testing and imaging, with only – only? – a 40% increase in…
It is hard to make money treating rare diseases. There simply aren’t enough customers to generate many profits. That’s why the U.S. government passed the Orphan Drug Act in 1983, a law which created a series of incentives to encourage drug companies to develop treatments for rare or “orphan” diseases – conditions affecting less than…
Most conservatives agree that Medicaid costs are too high. Most liberals agree that Medicaid patients should receive necessary medical care for free. And both conservatives and liberals agree that we should embrace ways to encourage Medicaid patients to obtain important preventive care services, in hopes that such services will lower healthcare costs by promoting public…
A while back, I wrote a piece in the Hastings Center Report proposing a better way of teaching ethics to professionals, like medical students. I thought such education should be grounded less in philosophy and more in understanding the psychology of our moral behavior. Glad to see that my ideas have been picked up, in…
Often great science depends on keen observation. Darwin built his theory of evolution on detailed observations of everything from birds to beetles. Jane Goodall revolutionized our understanding of primate behavior by staring at chimpanzees for hours and days. But not just staring at them, noticing them. She saw things most observers would not have picked…