In residency, we had a term for ER docs who always seemed to find an excuse to admit patients to the hospital. We called them sieves. Recent evidence suggests that sieves in the ER drive up costs, workloads, and hospital utilization; but they do not save lives.
Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, millions of people receive generous subsidies to cover the cost of health insurance. Some people, in fact, receive coverage for free, their monthly premiums paid in full by the federal government. Unfortunately, even a small change in price can cause people to lose their coverage. That’s important…
Many people die in ways, and even in locations, that go against their preferences. They don’t want to be put on ventilators and, yet, spend their last days in intensive care units tethered to breathing machines. They don’t want cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), and, yet, receive full-on “codes” when their hearts stop.
Much of this unwanted care could be avoided if patients (aka: “people”) discussed their treatment preferences with their clinicians.
After learning that her favorite prophylactic is going off the market, Seinfeld’s Elaine Benes had to decide which potential partners were “sponge-worthy,” even putting her new boyfriend through what resembled a job interview to see if he was up to her new sexual standards.
While the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic is hopefully behind us, new variants continue to spread, with news sources reporting this week that Jill Biden and Whoopi Goldberg have come down with the virus. Given the ongoing threat of Covid-19 and other infectious diseases, we all face a new kind of worthiness judgement, a decision about who is “contagion-worthy”: who should we hug, kiss and socialize with given the risk that they harbor a dangerous microorganism?
“Young adults make rational sexual decisions.” What does this reveal about the way young adults make sexual decisions?
I don’t know how many coaches told me “no pain, no gain.”
Admit it: you can often tell a lot about a person’s personality from their facial expressions. Someone who glowers at you, forehead contracted in a glare, is probably trying to be intimidating. But what if that person isn’t glaring at you? What if they are simply so tall that, with their head tilted down to…
Cinnamon. Buttered popcorn. Strawberry and banana. Yummy tastes and smells that have lingered in my TV room, after my teenage son and his friends finish vaping. E-cigarette companies like Juul are creating flavors designed to lure young customers, following a tradition established by their cigarette-manufacturing predecessors. For a while, the Trump administration appeared poised to…