Warning – the warning labels pictured below are graphic but, according to a recent study, they increase the chances that people will quit smoking.
Now we need to find a way to get legal permission to use such pictures, so we can shock people out of their habits.
One of the dangers of studying behavioral economics and psychology is that the ideas follow you around pretty much everywhere you go. I was reminded of that when some of my students came back from a mid-class bathroom break to tell me they thought the toilet levers were not well designed, environmentally speaking. At Duke,…
Sometimes people flat out need cameras shoved down into their stomachs. A long history of reflux disease, for example, could prompt a gastroenterologist to perform an “upper endoscopy”—to run a thin tube down the patient’s throat in order to view their esophagus and stomach and look for signs of serious illness. Medicare has correctly decided…
Common wisdom ain’t always that wise. The pundits have concluded that Obama made a big mistake by focusing on health care reform this past year, when he should have focused on the economy. Politically speaking, the pundits are correct. Obama has appeared to be ignoring the economy at the expense of health care reform, and…
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina will offer individual health plans through new on-line exchanges ranging from $185 for the lowest-cost plan for 25-year-olds to $947 for the top plan for a 60-year old. Those rates were among those the insurer included Thursday in a preview of the plans it will look to…
Irena Bucci was receiving follow-up care after delivering her second baby when the obstetrician discovered a problem with her kidneys. “My creatinine was rising,” creatinine being a waste product normally cleared out of the bloodstream by healthy kidneys, “and my doctor didn’t know why. I didn’t have high blood pressure or diabetes,” two diseases that…
In The Heart of Power, David Blumenthal and James Morone relate the 75 year history of presidential efforts (typically unsuccessful) to reform the U.S. healthcare system. I used to think major reform efforts did not happen for many years after FDR’s New Deal. After all, social security had taken a huge dent out of poverty among…