More on Advertising Junk Food to Kids

Posted on by admin

I recently posted a blog showing what television channels are most commonly used to advertise junk food to kids. Here’s a couple other pictures illustrating some fascinating facts about such advertising.
First, the advertisements don’t seem to place as much emphasis on food as they do for adult advertisements:

fast food marketing tactics

And why is that? Because they emphasize toys!:

fast food marketing tactics2

It’s time that we ban toys in happy meals and the use of cartoon characters and toys to advertise junk food to children.
(Click here to view comments)

Why Many Physicians Are Reluctant to See Medicaid Patients

Posted on by admin

red tapeIn an earlier post, I presented some data on which kind of physicians in the United States are most and least likely to see new patients who receive Medicaid, the state/federal program to pay healthcare costs for low income people. Now a recent study lays out some reasons why many physicians are so reluctant to see such patients.
Not surprisingly, it starts with low reimbursement rates. Medicaid pays about 61% of what Medicare pays, nationally, for outpatient physician services. The payment rate varies from state to state, of course. But if 61% is average, you can imagine how terrible the situation is in some locations. Physicians interviewed in the study explained that they felt it was their duty to see some amount of Medicaid patients in their practice. They recognized the moral need to provide care for this population. But they did not want to commit career suicide – they did not want good deeds to bankrupt their clinical practices.
But reimbursement rates were not the only story. Many physicians talk about unacceptable waiting times to receive reimbursement from their state Medicaid programs. To make matters worse… (Read more and view comments at Forbes)

Money for Nothing

Posted on by admin
rwjfDuring a break between classes, I offered some MBA students the chance to make a little extra money. Some would have a job of sitting in the classroom for five minutes doing nothing, absolutely nothing – no reading, no listening to music; just staring straight ahead. For this effortless job, they would receive $2.50.
Others would have the job of sitting in the same room for those same five minutes, but rather than staring into space they would be asked to solve word puzzles, forming four-word sentences out of five-word combinations. For example, the words “eagle apple majestic soars” could be turned into the sentence: the majestic eagle soars.
The question for the students was: how much would they need to be paid to unscramble sentences for them to prefer that job over the easier one… (Read more at the RWJF Human Capital Blog)

Great Quote on the Psychology of Science

Posted on by admin

riddle of the labyrinthI recently read Margalit Fox’s wonderful book, “The Riddle of the Labyrinth,” which tells the extraordinary tale of how three people, working in parallel, figured out the meaning of what, to me, look like random scribbles on ancient tablets – the language known as Linear B. In trying to deduce the riddle of these scribbles, one of the scholars highlighted in the book points out:

“A scholar’s worst enemy is his own mind. Facts are slippery things. Almost anything can be proved with them, if they are correctly selected. . . .”

Readers of my blog will know that I am very interested in the psychology of science. In this case, the person who ultimately solve the riddle of the language failed to solve the riddle for a long time as he was convinced the language could not be any form of Greek. Once he overcame his own preconception, he rapidly solved the rest of the riddle.
When trying to figure out how the world works, do your best not to let preconceptions stand in the way of an objective interpretation of the evidence.
(Click here to view comments)

Advertising Bad Food to Good Kids

Posted on by admin

Whatever you think about the proper role of the government in nudging adult Americans into healthier habits, you ought to be open to the idea that we, as a society, should be doing something to reduce obesity among children. As I wrote about in Free Market Madness, once people become obese, biology conspires against them to lose weight and keep that weight off. Think: Oprah! Therefore, it is imperative to make a sincere effort to reduce the chance the next generation of Americans will be as obese as this generation.
That is going to be hard to do if restaurants and food companies continue to target children with their advertising. Consider this picture, illustrating which television stations receive the most money from fast food advertisements:

fast food tv ads

Us concerned citizens should let these television stations know we aren’t happy that they receive revenue to air these kinds of ads.
(Click here to view comments)

Doctor, First Tell Me What It Costs

Posted on by admin

nytimes_logo_180x18013If an antibiotic would cure your infection, your doctor would probably still warn you about the chance of sun sensitivity before prescribing the pill.

But even when the costs of a medical intervention might force patients to choose between paying the bill or keeping up with their mortgages, American physicians rarely discuss that serious side effect with them. One physician recently explained to me that he felt money talk would “violate the doctor-patient relationship.”

Given how much attention we have been focusing on health care costs and the Affordable Care Act, now is the time to change such thinking… (Read more at The New York Times)

On the Allure of Cheating

Posted on by admin

R ratedRecently, my 15-year-old son and a group of his friends went out together for dinner and a movie. The movie they chose to see was an R-rated comedy, a fact that only struck them when they approached the ticket office and realized they would not be allowed to see the movie. Not to be deterred, they did what has almost become a rite of passage for 15-year-olds – they bought tickets to another movie, and then snuck in to the R-rated one.
But their adventure was not over yet. They quickly caught wind of a rumor that another group of underage kids had just been kicked out of the same movie. As they approached the doorway to the theater showing the forbidden movie, they saw two theater employees walking down the hallway. Someone on to their scam? They quickly walked the other way, peeking back for a window of opportunity to slip into the theater unnoticed. Hearts racing, the fear centers of the brain on high alert, they dashed into the theater when the employees looked the other way, and scrambled into a row of seats before they could be detected… (Read more and view comments at Psychology Today)

PeterUbel