Got this in my gmail this morning:
One guess what’s in the attachment.
I haven’t seen anything like this in years. Since I started using Gmail, actually. Every now and then Gmail just blitzes and crap gets through for a while. They have raised my expectations to unfulfillable heights, apparently.
Turns out Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on Massachusetts Health Care Reform (of course). In particular, the Outcomes section has some good numbers.
There is a “safety net” that is supposed to help low income residence pay their out-of-pocket expenses. To do that, it reimburses the providers for copays, deductibles, etc. Apparently, the payouts from the state have gone down recently. That’s probably part of the larger budget shortfall, but it points to a bigger problem with the system paying for itself (which it certainly isnt).
All in all, I’m glad that Massachusetts tried something. But I’m not sure it’s a good model for the rest of the country. And I certainly don’t think we have enough data to make a judgement yet.
At our annual 4th of July gathering, the topic of healthcare reform came up and I was asked about the state of the Massachusetts health insurance initiative. Since the national healthcare plan is looking a lot like ours - individual mandate, subsidized plans for lower-income families, tax on small businesses who don’t offer insurance (though that one was removed from by Romney) - it seemed like I should dig up some info on that. So here are a few quick facts and links to recent Boston Globe articles on the subject.
Okay, I’ve been busy. Lots of things I want to post about but they’re taking a long time to write up, so for now, here’s a tidbit from PLoS ONE:
How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data 2009 How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5738. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005738
The study found that around 2% of scientists admitted to falsifying data while around 30% admitted to less serious misconduct.
There are lots of problems with studies like this - lots of confounding factors in self-reporting - that the author acknowledges, but it might be a conservative estimate.
The study doesn’t get into what percentage of studies have some misconduct associated with them (as opposed to how many researches have done it at least once) nor how it might effect the research, but it’s still a problem. I should point out that no one has ever said scientists don’t succumb to this sort of behavior - just that the peer-review system is supposed to catch it. Peer review doesn’t seem to be quite as effective as one would hope (but it’s better than a free-for-all).
The paper also mentions the “Muhammed Ali Effect”, of which I had never heard. It describes the tendency of people to think they are more honest - but not more intelligent - than others. And it’s been the subject of numerous academic papers in various discplines. I had no idea Ali’s reach was so great…
There’s been a lot of chatter in anti-quakery circles lately. A lot of it has been backlash against the Huffington Post for recent posts by anti-vaccination folks and general alt-med mongers. And more recently, against Oprah Winfrey for signing a deal with Jenny McCarthy. Most of this has been in the sub-culture of skeptic bloggers. The Huffington Post did notably run an article in opposition to (it’s own) anti-science posts of late. And now Salon has poked it’s head in with an article about Oprah’s general affinity for alternative medicine weirdness.
This morass prompts me to make a few observations about the alt-med culture in general and anti-vaccination in particular. Firstly, as I’ve mentioned, alternative medicine and anti-vaccination seem to be phenomena of the political left. That’s one reason it fascinates me. It pains me to see my side succumb to a lack of reason (our general affinity for reason is what I like about my side).
I’m still not done with this claim. I gave up after a couple of hours. I imagine I’ll be spending a good chunk of my weekend on this.I am currently trying to submit a claim for out-of-network services to my health insurance. I’ve done this before with my old insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and I thought that process was abstruse, but it wasn’t too odious and it got done to my satisfaction. Well, my company recently changed insurers and I now realize how spoiled I was. I would just like to take a moment to talk about the claim form I am faced with and what it demonstrates about the unfathomable levels of stupidity that humans are capable of.
I have been a follower of the creationism/evolution thing for some time now. The loose community of skeptics on the nets that fight those battles share time with fights against other forms of nuttery as well. HIV/AIDS denialism, vaccine/autism quackery, UFOlogy, paranormal nonsense, and others.
I have managed to remain relatively unaware of the details of these. I mean, who has time to devote to learning about more than one completely head-whacking morass of ignorance? Well, I can no longer resist the pull of whackjob trainwrecks.
There are some things about President Obama’s track record so far (vast as it is) that concern me: legal stances on state secrets and habeus corpus, questionable handling of the economic situation, and possibly accountability for torture (I haven’t made up my mind on that one yet).
But one man can’t be all things to all people, and there is one area where Obama has been reminding me of why I was so excited about him in the first place: science.
Ben Goldacre has released a chapter that was originally missing from his book Bad Science. It’s about Matthias Rath, AIDS “dissident”. It’s well worth a read. I have not read Dr. Goldacre’s book (I hope to at some point), but I do read his blog regularly and it is always worth a read, as well. A brief taste:
The United Nations has condemned Rath’s adverts as “wrong and misleading”. “This guy is killing people by luring them with unrecognised treatment without any scientific evidence,” said Eric Goemaere, head of Médecins sans Frontières SA, a man who pioneered anti-retroviral therapy in South Africa. Rath sued him.
The whole thing is below the fold.
I’ve been spazzing lately on trying to understand a little bit about the econoclysm. As I mentioned, I like Krugman’s blog. Howard pointed me to Baseline Scenario, which is nice. I do enjoy the Planet Money podcast and, of course, the periodic This American Life segments by the Planet Money crew. I even tried some papers at the Heritage Foundation to understand the right side of things (didn’t help a lot). I think I have more questions than when I started. Here’s some:
I’m sure I’ll have more later.
