The Dark Web?
Norton Utilities is a good product, but they relentlessly try to upsell you. The latest trick is to tell me that data brokers trying to sell my data, and I should pay them to expunge it. The data in question consists of my name, address and telephone number -- actually two numbers, both of which are more than twelve years old. Finally, it includes my purported relatives, which consist of my dead mother, a guy who lives across the street to whom I am unrelated, and three people I never heard of. When I was a youth, and actually until about 15 years ago, the Post Office used to deliver a book to every household in town,...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 10, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
But I digress
The UCONN women ' s basketball team has been short-handed all season because five players are out with season-ending injuries. So they ' ve lot some game to the top teams but they ' ve still managed to be undefeated in Big East conference play. Yesterday they faced Providence College in the second round of the Big East tournament. PC ' s strategy was to beat the crap out of UCONN center Aaliyah Edwards, which the referees for some reason allowed them to do, causing Geno Auriemma nearly to have a stroke on sideline. The assistant coaches had to put him in a double arm bar to keep him off the court.Providence managed to hang...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 10, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Monopoly Money
First, let me acknowledge Chuck ' s comment on the previous Economics 101 post. I ' m going to get to public goods, it ' s extremely important, but I figured I ' d push it down the list because it ' s easier to deal with the rest of the assumptions first. (To put it formally, the ones having to do with public goods are that all good are non-exclusive and non-rivalrous, and also that there are no positive externalities. I will explain anon.)Today, I ' m going to deal with the Many sellers, Many buyers assumption. It ' s obviously impossible even for Milton Friedman to bamboozle people into thinking that this is somehow a na...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 8, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: God is bad(ass)
Psalms 75 and 76 are classified as songs of praise, but what they are praising is not goodness or wisdom, but sheer power. And they use some weird metaphors. Psalm 75 appears to refer to a day of judgment, an idea which appears rather vaguely in the Tanakh but which is more central to Christianity. Note that the idea in Judaism of the coming of the Messiah and restoration of the kingdom is quite different. However, they have become conflated in the current political alliance between fundamentalist Jews and Evangelical Christians. One of the other would be really disappointed should it ever come to pass. (Again, " Do Not De...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 6, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
What do you know?
The next assumption on our list, on which the theory of the (non-existent) Free Market ™ depends, is the assumption of perfect information. Okay, it doesn ' t have to be absolutely perfect, but it has to at least be pretty good. In order for a transaction to really benefit both parties, they both have to know what they ' re getting and what they ' re giving for it. Once we ' re off the island of Bob and Alice, of course, what ' s normally happening is that one person is exchanging money for a good or service, so the transaction is asymmetrical pretty much by definition -- there ' s a seller and a buyer.Most people don ' ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 5, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
My journey through the parable of American health care
The parable of the Chinese farmer is a story with many versions. In shorthand, it goes something like this: a farmer’s horse escapes – the neighbors say, “How terrible!” The farmer says, “Maybe.” The horse returns, bringing some wild horses with it. The neighbors say, “How wonderful!” The farmer says, “Maybe.” The farmer’s son falls
Read more…
My journey through the parable of American health care originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 4, 2024 Category: General Medicine Authors: Claudia Finkelstein, MD Tags: Physician Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Fee-For-Service: Predominant, Winning & Stupid
By MATTHEW HOLT
In recent days and weeks, there have been three stories that have really brought home to me the inanity of how we run our health care system. Spoiler alert, they have the commonality that they all are made problematic by payment per individual transaction—better known as fee-for-service.
First, several health insurers who sold their reputation to Wall Street as being wizards at understanding how doctors and patients behave had the curtain pulled back to reveal the man pulling the levers was missing a dashboard or dial or three. It happened to United, Humana and more, but I’ll focus on Agilon becau...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 4, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Matthew Holt Change Healthcare Colorado fee for service Humana UCHealth United HealthGroup Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: The dark book
As I explained last time, the Book of Psalms is a compilation and Psalm 72 is evidently the conclusion of one of the component books. The next ten are attributed to Asaph, who was one of king David ' s chief musicians, but that doesn ' t really make sense because they seem to refer to a time when the kingdom was in dire straits, quite unlike the triumphalist tone of the depiction of David ' s reign. Psalm 73, which is used in both Jewish and Christian liturgy and has been set to music, asserts continued faith even while the wicked prosper. The psalm predicts the downfall of the wicked, although as we know that doesn ' t ne...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 3, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Irrationality
One assumption that economic theorists have been weirdly fond of is the idea that as consumers, and investors, people are " rational actors. " We ' ll put the investor aside for the time being and just consider ourselves as consumers -- people who buy stuff with money. (We also consume a lot that we don ' t pay for but that ' s for another day.) The idea of rationality in this context means, first of all, that our desires for goods and services that might be on sale are quantifiable in units called utiles, an idea which has always been kind of vague, but basically it means that I can say that three tomatoes right now ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 2, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Divine Right
Psalm 72 is one of those elevating the king to a kind of demigod status and extolling his power and glory. As I have said many times, the basic structure of Judean society, as was the norm throughout the region, was an alliance between a priestly caste and warrior kings, so that ' s what this is all about. But yes, it ' s weird that it ' s called a Psalm of Solomon, and concludes with " The prayers of David, son of Jesse, are ended. " It ' s doubly weird because many subsequent psalms are in fact ascribed to David. The likely explanation is that the Book of Psalms we have today is a compilation of several books, usually th...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 28, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Assume a Can Opener
Conclusion . . . The
endeavor from here on is to inflate this into a claim about the real world of
many people, many corporations, and innumerable products.A
first order conclusion is that the way to the best possible world is to let
everybody do whatever trading they want, of anything, with anybody.The
posited “free market” economy, if left to its own devices, will turn out
maximum prosperity, efficiency and happiness for all.Government
just needs to leave it alone – an idea called laissez faire – French for “let
do” – a phrase popularized in the 19th
Century. This, however, depends on certai...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 27, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
We Freeze People, Don ’ t We?
By KIM BELLARD
Perhaps you’ve heard about the controversial Alabama Supreme Court ruling about in-vitro fertilization (IVF), in which the court declared that frozen embryos were people. The court stated that it has long held that “unborn children are ‘children,’” with Chief Justice Tom Parker – more on him later – opining in a concurring opinion:
Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself. Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 27, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Abortion Frozen Embryos IVF Kim Bellard Pro-life Source Type: blogs
Stellar Sleep Raises $6M to Help End Sleeplessness With the First Digital Sleep Therapy Platform for Chronic Insomnia
Stellar Sleep, which provides the first digital solution for chronic insomnia management, announced today a $6 million seed round, led by Initialized Capital with participation from Y Combinator, Lombardstreet Ventures, Switch Ventures, Moonfire Ventures, Scrum Ventures, 8vdx, and Goodwater.
More than 25 million Americans suffer from chronic insomnia – meaning sleep problems 3+ nights a week for 3+ months. The condition can lead to both mental and physical health issues, ranging from trouble concentrating to sleep apnea and heart attacks. For people suffering from chronic insomnia, superficial care advice (e.g. cutt...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 26, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT 8vdx Edrei Chua George Wang Goodwater Health IT Funding Health IT Fundings Health IT Investment Initialized Capital Lombardstreet Ventures Moonfire Ventures Parul Singh Scrum Ventures Stellar Sle Source Type: blogs
Economics 101, Lesson One
One
way you can create jobs is to lower people ' s taxes. If people have more money
to spend, it means somebody has got to produce more for them. And the producers
then need to hire people. It ' s Economics 101! -- George W. Bush, Springfield, MO,
January 14, 2002*Mr. Bush was very fond of saying " It ' s Economics 101! " It was a catch phrase for him, and other politicians often say it. But can you think of a critique of the above statement? Is there anything wrong about it?(Jeopardy! music plays.) Okay. When government acquiresrevenue from taxes, what happens to the money? Does it just disappear? Why no.T...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 26, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: A digression to current events
The next two psalms are just the usual pleading for God to be good to me and to screw over my enemies, so I won ' t say anything else about them. But I will take this opportunity to comment on the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that an embryo is legally a child, with Chief Justice Tom Parker writing that " human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy
God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself. " Presidential candidate Nikki Haley said she agrees, that she believes an embryo is a baby. It is something of a mystery why this very weird belief has become ce...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 25, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
