Friday, November 1, 2013

Health is an investment

...so to make people healthier, we have to get them to invest.  TED talk by Emily Oster:

5 comments:

  1. Perhaps investing in cures for Malaria would make people in Africa more optimistic about their life expectancies, and there would be a reduction in AIDs. It seemed like Emily's point was that because people in Africa are so pessimistic about their life expectancy, they lack the incentives to make smart decisions about their health.

    Also, for people looking for their Stossel fix:

    http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/index.html

    'The Singapore Alternative' is a short clip where healthcare in Singapore is discussed. In Singapore, hospitals compete with each other for better prices and better care. Notice the prices of certain operations. Stossel does question the use of 'life expectancy' as a statistic of good healthcare.

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  2. It's always in the details. You miss paying attention to details and you end up with fixes that are not the best solution to the problem. I like the point she makes that the information suggests that we can end up spending a lot of money in policy that doesn't solve the problem. At least not the best solution to the problem.

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  3. Why not tackle our healthcare issues at home instead of abroad.

    The New York Times’ Business Section Sunday, February 1, 2015 had an article about Paid Paternal Leave and its health benefits to both child and parent. In addition it made a case for the long-term economic benefit of these working mothers who are taking advantage of these programs primarily in California, New Jersey and Rhode Island http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/upshot/the-economic-benefits-of-paid-parental-leave.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0

    The author, Claire Cain Miller argues that according to studies a mother who took leave were 6% more likely to be working a year later than those who did not. In New Jersey, in the year after giving birth, women who take paid leave are 40% less likely to receive public aid or food stamps (Rutgers study).

    President Obama has given federal employees the right to take six weeks paid leave when they become parents. President Obama is quoted as saying “It’s time we stop treating child care as a side issue or women’s issue, and treat it like a national economic priority that it is.”

    IOf course business will talk about the costs of paid leave but there has been no evidence to date that businesses suffer. Of course, the culture of our business society being what it is , the possibility of punitive issues of denying promotions and raises from employers to employees who take paid leave is a strong possibility.

    The economic issues need to be studied further. To date, evidence seems to point in the direction that paid leave has move overall benefits to the economy than any adverse effects on businesses profitability.

    The well-being of our citizens and the economic impact of programs that make a difference should be our top priority as a nation.

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  4. Health is definitely the biggest investment and we always need to focus on this maximum since without this investment been correct, it is not possible to be successful. I am working with OctaFX broker where they have extra-ordinary system which includes 50% bonus on deposit which is also use able, so with that I am never worried over anything at all and that helps me work smoothly, so that also is what keeps my health in best shape all the time.

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  5. Let me be cold hearted and scientifically blunt: humans and our desire to survive make our healthcare system and its goals a problem that grows and grows with every generation. Consider animals and plants. Nature selects them for survival and the ones that don't survive are not part of the reproduction process, thereby reducing the chances those "defects" will be passed down. However, humans constantly prolong life, regardless of the defects. Some of the medical procedures used to prolong human life are absolutely amazing (infants born with organs on the outside, organ transplants). Medications now prolong the lives of people with diseases who would have otherwise died as infants. The fact is, as we save and prolong all of these lives, the DNA and chromosomes that carry these "defects" procreate and our species, as a whole, becomes weaker every day. This is a sad, but true dilemma. The more we save lives, the harder we need to work at saving lives.

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