My 14-year-old son Jordan did not make the JV basketball team in his high school. Not very surprising really. There is no freshmen basketball team at his school and only six freshmen made the JV, out of a class of more than 400 students. Six freshmen who were all taller and better basketball players than my son: “They all deserved to be on the team ahead of me,” he told me, resigned to the fact that he would not be able to play his favorite sport for his school team. So now Jordan rides the bus home after school ends every day, no running around at practice or working out in the weight room with the rest of his buddies. The weight room, after all, is reserved for “athletes.”
Our nation sits in the midst of a growing obesity epidemic, one that threatens the health of our children, and we can’t muster the public will (aka the dollars!) to assemble freshmen basketball teams?
In North Carolina?!? … (Read more and view comments at Forbes)
Wallet Biopsy?
Do you feel like your out of pocket medical expenses are growing? You are not alone. Even for people getting Medicare, the amount of money coming out of patients pockets is growing too. And it is growing not only because all health care spending is growing, but also because patients are being asked to bear a higher proportion, a larger percent, of the burden. That is illustrated in this figure from the Kaiser Family Foundation website:
Is Einstein Overrated?
Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn relates the following from Einstein as one of his favorite all time quotes:
“There are only two ways to live our life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
My thought: Can’t we live as if SOME things are miracles??? Really Albert. How could you miss such an obvious alternative?
The True Immoral Acts Behind The First "Test Tube Baby"
The first test tube baby was born July 25th, 1978 in the north of England. Louise Brown was called the “baby of the century” by some and a “moral abomination” by others. It wasn’t Brown who critics accused of being immoral, of course. She was just a blameless infant. Instead, it was her doctors who came under fire for their new fertility treatment—in vitro fertilization (or IVF). Roman Catholic theologians characterized this treatment as “unnatural”. Bioethicists fretted about the risk such treatments posed for mothers and children.
But all these critics of IVF missed the true immorality behind Louise Brown’s birth. Brown’s doctors never told her mother that IVF was a brand new procedure… (Read more and view comments at Forbes)
Health Insurance Exchange Decisions…So Far!
The Obamacare law establishes what are known as “health insurance exchanges” to help people compare health insurance plans. It is, when you think about it (heck: even when you DON’T think about it) a pro-market aspect of the law—it gets insurance out there to consumers so they can pick the plan that best suits them. It helps them SHOP for insurance!
But in this partisan world, not all states are going ahead with the idea of creating these exchanges. The Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff has a nice summary, in one simple picture, of where things stand:
But in this partisan world, not all states are going ahead with the idea of creating these exchanges. The Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff has a nice summary, in one simple picture, of where things stand:
As you can see, there is a bit of a red state/blue state pattern to things. Hopefully we can overcome our political divisions, and take steps to help American consumers make more informed choices about their health insurance coverage.
Deciding About Breast Cancer Chemotherapy
As if being diagnosed with breast cancer wasn’t bad enough, many women with this diagnosis face complicated decisions about what kind of medicine or chemotherapy to take, if any, to reduce their chance of cancer recurrence. As I discussed in a recent post, the mathematics of such decisions can be hard to comprehend for many patients. But given that the right choice often depends on patient preferences, it would be great to help patients understand enough of their math to involve them in making the choice.
A group of researchers has developed a tool to help women with these decisions. Called Adjuvant Online, it is a computer algorithm that takes in information about a specific woman’s cancer, and then produces survival estimates for her, illustrating her chance of survival and breast cancer recurrence based upon whether she chooses one set of treatments versus another… (Read more and view comments at Forbes)
Partisan Drift Over the Environment: Are Republicans Wandering Away from their Voters?
There’s a fascinating new analysis available, looking at parallels between the politics of health care and the environment. It is led by Theda Skocpol, a social scientist at Harvard (whose writing about health policy and the Tea Party are wonderful).
I am reproducing one figure from that report. It shows, in lines, where Congress has voted on environmental issues over the years, showing increasing polarization. No huge surprise there. We live in politically polarized times!
In triangles and diamonds it reveals a more surprising finding: that GOP voters and Democratic voters are not nearly as polarized as their legislators. Indeed, it looks like the Republican Party has left its voters behind, and adopted much more extreme positions than most Republicans hold.
I am reproducing one figure from that report. It shows, in lines, where Congress has voted on environmental issues over the years, showing increasing polarization. No huge surprise there. We live in politically polarized times!
In triangles and diamonds it reveals a more surprising finding: that GOP voters and Democratic voters are not nearly as polarized as their legislators. Indeed, it looks like the Republican Party has left its voters behind, and adopted much more extreme positions than most Republicans hold.
What Obese People Can Learn from Pigeons
In a 1967 experiment, psychologists trained pigeons to peck a red key to get food. (Pigeons were huge back then, research wise!) Then they tested whether the pigeons could learn to delay gratification. They set up the pecking booth so that those pigeons who waited a little longer before pecking the red key would get more food when they chose to peck it.
But the pigeons couldn’t wait.
Delaying gratification is an important life skill. As Walter Mischel showed in a series of groundbreaking studies, children who can delay gratification are more likely to go to college and less likely to end up in jail. If you want to see what this looks like, check out this video… (Read more and view comments at Forbes)
My Take on Persistence of the Death Panel Myth
Here is a video illustrating my take on why so many people still believe Obamacare includes a death panel, and why I think this kind of misguided believing is not a Republican thing, nor a Democratic thing, but…a HUMAN thing.
Remember: Suicidal Killers Are Suicidal
In the book review section of the New York Times, Andrew Solomon poses a reflection on Adam Lanza, the deranged elementary school shooter in Connecticut:
“If we want to stem violence, we need to begin by stemming despair.”
How we will stem either of these problems I don’t know. But what a great sentence!