George Loewenstein and I have an Op-Ed in the New York Times today. Check it out, and feel free to add your comments.
There are many reasons that life expectancy is not a good measure of a health care system. For starters, how long people live is often more a function of public health systems then of medical care systems, with clean water and low rates of infectious diseases having more impact on people’s life expectancy than their…
Insurers can use behavioral economics, which examines why people make certain decisions and then determines how to influence said decisions, to compel members to improve their health, according to research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “I don’t think there’s any question that behavioral economics approaches have a lot of potential to contribute to healthcare,”…
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…
Is a test that costs $800,000 to add one year of life worthwhile? In one survey, most physicians said yes-evidence that controlling costs will require overcoming very powerful, and irrational, psychological forces. Imagine for a moment that you are in charge of the U.S. health care system, and must decide whether to pay for a…
I had a chance to talk to the host of the public radio show, Sound Medicine. You might want to listen to the broadcast. Then again, you might want to enjoy the spring weather (if you are in the Northern Hemisphere). Your choice!
The HPV vaccine saves lives. It does so by reducing a person’s chance of being infected by the human papilloma virus, a virus that causes a whole range of cancers including, most importantly, cervical cancer. Vaccinate your teenage daughter against HPV, and you will increase the chance she will live to old age. Simple as…