“How to Tell Someone That She Is Dying” – The New Yorker
“Promoting Population Health through Financial Stewardship” – The New England Journal of Medicine
Because so much of human thinking is dichotomous, even though so much of the real world exists on a continuum, we have strange phenomena like the one illustrated in the picture below. The picture shows the significance values of research findings, and reveals that there are many more articles published where the statistical significance of…
I know, I know: I usually write about health and healthcare; why should anyone care about my opinion on whether Larry Summers should be Federal Reserve Chair? As it turns out, my work on doctor/patient communication has given me insight into the danger of judging job candidates—be they physicians or Federal Reserve chairs—based purely on…
I was raised in a family that hates taxes. Not hates taxes as in “Gosh, it’s too bad such a high percentage of my paycheck goes to the government.” More like: “How dare the government steal my hard-earned money and give it to undeserving moochers!” (Is there such a thing as a deserving moocher? Sorry,…
“Contracts With Patients in Clinical Practice” – The Lancet
I post pretty regularly on out-of-pocket medical expenses, a topic I’ve been conducting research on, and one that will fit centrally into the new book I’m writing. Most often when people think about paying for medical care, they think about medications. But as this figure from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows, don’t forget about the…