Oldsmobiles

I’ve been looking over this study again, and it’s worth pointing out that the people studied were mostly over 75 years old, mostly female, almost all non-black – not to mention the fact that every patient in the study is on Medicare and lives in LA.
I have nothing against elderly white women – there’s a [...]

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We need badges

Though I am glad I missed out on the Wellsphere debacle, I still have a weird little inkling of envy about the badges. They’re awful-looking, but still… The internet being what it is, and Photoshop being what it is, and the blogosphere’s respect for Wellsphere being it what it is, I thought it wouldn’t [...]

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Lost what?

On the recommendation of ChronicBabe, I watched this video in its entirety. I can say in all honesty: it was one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen. I consider myself reasonably well-informed on human reproductive anatomy but… I had no idea that was even possible.
So, of course, it’s baffling to me that [...]

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Nucanus

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Wellsphraud

Dr. Val has a post about the Wellsphere scam; they get access to your RSS feed, sell its content, and you don’t get a cent. The terms of the contract (at the bottom of Dr. Val’s post) are even a little heartbreaking to read, knowing that hundreds of bloggers signed up.
I got several emails from [...]

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Boring econometrics post

Maggie links to a link to an NBER study (pdf) of patient demand for hospital amenities, and wonders: are patients irrational? Me – I wonder whether “irrational” is Health Beat’s new favorite way to describe sick people.
Yes, sick people like to be in comfortable hospitals; you don’t need the NBER to tell you that much. [...]

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Routine cruelty

Atul Gawande’s article in the New Yorker has gotten a lot of play already, but here aremy two cents:
Gawande is correct that path-dependency will shape our future health care system; that much is more-or-less inevitable, by definition. But to some extent he’s arguing against a straw-man. I don’t see a lot of serious commentary suggesting [...]

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I’ll not live to see the day

The Colbert Report had a good bit after the Inauguration about all the black notables asked on camera, “Did you ever think you see the day when a black man was President?” According to  Tim Meadows (as P. K. Winsome), the point is: “we don’t age in dog years. We live just as long [...]

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Selling ideas

This evening’s Marketplace had an interview with Health Net CEO Jay Gellert; I listened while doing the dishes.
Gellert is also the chair of AHIP, the health insurance industry group, so it was a little surprising to hear him give away a lot of ground:
I think where we are is the following: first of all, we [...]

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Higher ed.

From a story on college students foregoing health insurance:
Many employer-sponsored plans have cut-offs at either age 19 or 23, leaving part-time and graduate students, many who are just scraping by financially, with fewer health coverage choices.
College students incurred an estimated $100 million to $300 million in uncompensated inpatient medical expenses in 2004 and 18 percent [...]

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