Category: Health Economics & Costs
Would You Discuss Your Health with an AI Chatbot?
From the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Akst wrote:
Once upon a time, my wife’s uncle, Jim, delivered babies, set broken bones, diagnosed diseases, and helped people reconcile themselves to mortality. That’s what family physicians did in those days.
Things are different now, and the doctor I most often consult is AI. I’d prefer to see Uncle Jim, but if physicians like him still exist somewhere, I doubt I could get an appointment. How I ended up resorting to artificial intelligence—despite excellent health insurance and proximity to great care—says a lot about the state of healthcare in this country.
Saturday Links
- Dr. Casey Means (the would-be Surgeon General): Doctors make people sicker. (NYT)
- A single submarine can require four tons of rare earths. (NYT)
- A brief history of Obamacare.
- The whole developed world is about to start shrinking. If not for immigration, it already would be.
- How much does AARP get for sponsoring UnitedHealth insurance? $9 billion.
- Cato study: Repealing certificate-of-need (CON) laws increased the number of long-term acute care hospitals (LTACs) by 69 percent and added an average of 558 certified beds per million elderly residents. Furthermore, when LTACs entered the nursing home market, they decreased the rate at which patients in skilled nursing facilities were rehospitalized by 5.9 percent, the number of patients who fell while in care by 5.3 percent, and the number of patients who were physically restrained to their beds by 13 percent.
Why is Health Reform So Difficult?
Why can’t people agree on strategies to fix health care? It is due to many things, including disagreements on health economics, self-interest, and fundamental differences in ideology. Every public intellectual has an idea that may, or may not, do anything to improve health care.