Rethinking the Economy

A story like this seems to pop up about every decade. From the July 28 Washington Post:
At a recent town-hall meeting in suburban Simpsonville, a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.”
“I had to politely explain that, ‘Actually, sir, your health care is [...]

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This weekend I heard a Republican politician on the radio arguing his health care plan was “pro-free market” and Obama’s was more “big government.” But his plan would stop insurance companies from being able to turn anyone away.
Okay people, let’s get real. It’s one thing to say you want to get the government out of [...]

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The next time someone tries to scare you about the cost of health care for all, here’s a nice stat from Krugman. The Congressional Budget Office just published an analysis of the Senate’s health care bill.
The budget office says that all this would cost $597 billion over the next decade. But that doesn’t include the [...]

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As we saw in the last post, one reason computerizing healthcare records can be a disaster is that the people designing the software don’t pay attention to how people will actually use it.
Some software designers argue that the way to avoid this mistake is to use “user-centered design.” Don’t assume that nurses in a hectic [...]

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There’s one thing Democrats and Republican politicians agree on when it comes to healthcare reform: digitizing healthcare records could be a godsend. When it works, it can improve patient care, reduce medical errors, and save billions of dollars a year — a crucial consideration given the threat that skyrocketing healthcare costs pose to our economic [...]

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