On Advertising
“Advertising is legalized lying.” – H.G. Wells
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“Advertising is legalized lying.” – H.G. Wells
(Click here to view comments)
A very disturbing new study was just published, in which physicians viewed a video of a patient with back pain asking for OxyContin. Twenty percent of docs said they would prescribe that med under that circumstance: …Too often, doctors prescribe potentially dangerous medications to patients who shouldn’t be getting them, and what they prescribe is…
As Jim Newton pointed out several times in his book on the White House Years, Eisenhower valued balancing the budget. Sometimes that meant controlling social welfare spending. But it also meant trying to restrain military spending and foregoing tax cuts, even when his Vice President, Richard Nixon, was running for Presidency and needed a lift in…
I write frequently about the importance of perspective taking in clinician/patient interaction. Seeing the world through other people’s eyes is also a crucial moral and political skill. No surprise then that Abe Lincoln showed great perspective taking abilities. Consider these words, from an 1854 speech on slavery: I think I have no prejudice against the…
In recent posts, I’ve presented several interesting pictures of how arbitrary thresholds influence behavior. I showed how airplane pilots speed up flights to make on-time arrivals, but don’t speed up late flights that won’t make it on time. I’ve shown that the price of used cars changes when the mileage on the odometer passes arbitrary round…
Interesting picture on the Vox website from Sarah Kliff, showing an increase in the number of health insurance companies planning to compete on the exchanges next year: So much for the rumors that Obamacare will quickly kill the health insurance industry. (Click here to view comments)
Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in what the World Economic Forum founder, Klaus Schwab, described as the planet’s largest brainstorming session. Approximately 700 leading thinkers (and me, too) converged upon Dubai to discuss the greatest economic challenges facing the world, from the current economic crisis to future crises. People from 6 continents…