In 1996, a man wrote to Carl Sagan asking him the distance to heaven. Sagan was a very public agnostic. He replied brilliantly: “Thanks for your letter. Nothing like the Christian notion of heaven has been found out to about 10 billion light years. (One light year is almost six trillion miles.) With best wishes…”…
The experiment was simple. A group of behaviorally-minded researchers tested whether patients are more likely to receive mammograms when those tests are automatically scheduled (meaning they can opt out if they want) versus when they have to opt in for the tests. Automatic scheduling should have increased mammograms. It didn’t. In one respect, it even…
Health insurance is not what it used to be. With increasing frequency, Americans who purchase private health insurance find themselves with plans that require them to fork over significant amounts of money every time they receive healthcare. That means if you get, say, a heart attack, your portion of the hospital bill is probably going…
Even before Obamacare became the law of the land, the U.S. health care system was undergoing a dramatic transformation. Millions of people were shifting from generous health insurance plans to consumer-directed ones that pair low monthly premiums with high out-of-pocket costs. This shift has been encouraged by employers, eager to reduce the cost of employee…
Many companies spend lots of money providing health insurance coverage to their employees. And the costs of that coverage continue to rise, in part because the girth of the American public is also rising. Overweight and obese employees cost companies money, through increased sick leave, disability claims and, of course, healthcare expenses. As a result,…