Despite passionate warnings that the Affordable Care Act would demolish the American economy, things haven’t exactly turned out that way. Here is evidence Dan Diamond circulated a while back. Dan is someone I suggest you follow on Twitter if you want more pictures like these:
Republicans and Democrats agree that Medicare is in trouble – that if its costs keep rising faster than inflation, we will face insurmountable federal budget deficits. They also agree that the problem can be fixed. But that is where their agreement comes to an end, and where the Democrats hold a psychological advantage over Republicans……
Shutterstock I have just given you $78. (I’m a generous guy.) Now I’m giving you a choice: you can enter a lottery where you have a 75% chance of losing that $78 and a 25% of keeping it, or you can hold on to $20 and avoid the lottery all together. Quick—tell me what you…
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…”…
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 gave a talk about shared decision making at the annual conference for the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Here is a nice write-up of that talk. For those of you silly enough not to travel to Florida to hear me pontificate! After listening to the treatment alternatives—surveillance, or active treatment with surgery and radiation—a…
As part of Obamacare, people are required to get health insurance or pay a penalty. That’s what’s known infamously as the individual mandate. But is the penalty too small to matter? For some people, the penalty might be as low as $95. Would anyone in their right mind, who is not otherwise inclined to buy…