August 2009
138 posts
The parole officer in the California kidnapping...
The parole officer covering “Creepy Phil” totally blew it. Neighbors were complaining that children were living in the backyard in tents. He missed it. He reported to his superiors that all was well at the Garrido homestead…
Meanwhile, a young woman had been kidnapped and raped for 18 years and subsequently mothered two young children who were likely going to be held hostage the...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-8-30) →
Radiohead (45)
Tom Waits (42)
Grizzly Bear (25)
The National (25)
The Gutter Twins (24)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
What if the government awarded X-prizes?
…of $1 billion to the company/town who can show that they can deliver healthcare at half the cost of today’s $8,000 per person price tag? I would think that would mobilize the positive outliers. Read this interview with Atul Gawande in it’s entirety (also listen to this interview with him on NPR about positive outliers)…but here’s a good snippet of what I’m...
Why we need better options for health care →
squashed:
robot-heart-politics:
I talked to my mom this weekend, and as usual, she brought me up to date on the goings-on of my hometown. She’s the principal at the elementary school, and last weekend, one of her teachers received some bad news. Her daughter, who is 30, married and has 3 children, found out she has liver failure and needs a transplant to live. The problem? Her daughter doesn’t...
The dullest blog in the world →
benjaminpalmer:
Closing a window
July 6th, 2009
A window was slightly open. I decided that I did not need it to continue to be so. I closed it and securing it using the window handles.
Posted in Uninteresting | 47 Comments »
Turning on the computer
July 5th, 2009
I was seated in my computer chair. I reached out my hand and pressed the ‘on’ button. After a moment the computer turned itself...
GE / Nuclear Power / Saving the world... →
I was privileged enough to meet Eric Loewen. He works for GE’s nuclear energy division. They’ve invented something called a PRISM reactor. It uses nuclear waste for power.
The US uses 3 terawatts of energy every year. The nuclear waste already buried across America can produce 300 terawatts of energy using a GE PRISM reactor, thus powering the US for 100 years with no new mining.
Why...
1 tag
My talk on Saturday at Foocamp 09
About 20 people showed up for my talk today (out of 250…not bad) called “Reforming Healthcare from the ground up.”
Yesterday, during the opening session all 250 of us introduced ourselves. One gentleman introduced himself as Mitch Kapor who was interested in Health IT. So I went up to him afterwards and asked if he’d like to be a co-leader of a talk about healthcare with...
The National. England.
-From the Dark Was the...
The more news you consume...
…the less happy you are in life. There have been multiple psychological studies consistently showing these results.
— from The Future of News discussion at FooCamp 09.
Physician Practice Interactions with Health Plans... →
On average, physicians spent three hours a week or nearly three weeks per year on these activities, while nursing staff spent more than 23 weeks per physician per year, and clerical staff spent 44 weeks per physician per year interacting with health plans. More than three in four respondents said the costs of interacting with health plans have increased over the past two years.
Across...
Off to FooCamp09 in Sebastopol, CA...
“We’ve invited about 250 Friends Of O’Reilly (aka Foo), people who’re doing interesting works in fields such as mobile, big data, cloud computing, open government, gaming, open source programming, computer security, hardware hacking, geolocation, cognition, and all manner of emerging technologies to share their works-in-progress, show off the latest tech toys and hardware...
“He had this attitude and air about him that he was wrongfully charged.”
– Man executed on disproved forensics — chicagotribune.com
Stop the death penalty.
Just stop it.
It’s too powerful and too final for to be imposed by man.
Our president supports the death penalty. The president before him loved it. That we elected these men only proves our flaws.
The historians...
“In every aspect of your business (and personal life) try to allow others to...”
– New Rules for the New Economy (via heyitsnoah)
1 tag
How to fix healthcare #1 = Fix the process of...
I look at almost everything in life as a process. For the most part, there are predictable steps that occur when doing something— going to the grocery store, checking your email, going out to dinner with friends, building cars, etc..
The opportunity lies in designing processes. When you design processes, you can analyze each step and ask yourself, “What could potentially go...
Data visualization at the breakfast meeting...
I had breakfast with Nicholas Felton of both the Feltron Annual Report and Daytum to discuss creating the data visualization style guide for Hello Health. When a doctor or patient looks at any sort of data within Hello Health, it’s got to be more than just data. It’s got to be immediately understandable and beautiful…a doctor’s understanding of the situation can literally...
“People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting...”
– Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess (via rahmin)
Junior Parker covers quite possibly the greatest...
If we could reimagine healthcare, what would it...
Lately I’ve realized that so much of my blog has become negative banter about how Washington and the industry has botched an opportunity for healthcare reform.
I admit…it’s easy to bitch. It’s difficult to do something about it. Therefore, I’ve decided to stop pointing out all things bad about healthcare and start writing positively about fixing healthcare from the...
A word that's missing in the healthcare reform...
Sustainable.
Coroner rules Michael Jackson’s death a homicide →
Be wary of any doctor who chooses fame and “the opportunity of a lifetime” over what’s best for the patient.
Sometimes even seemingly harmless things can go awry.
When I worked at Public Citizen (Nader’s group in DC) I wrote a petition to the FDA to ban third generation oral contraceptives. Why? Because the risk of blood clots was twice as much as the risk of blood clots...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-8-23) →
Yo La Tengo (18)
Tom Waits (16)
Radiohead (10)
The National (8)
The Twilight Singers (5)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Movie night is tonight at 9pm in my backyard!
9pm sharp. Projector. Sound. Screen. Flowers. Fish. Dogs named Buddy and Hubble. Beer. Wine. Scotch. And lots of friends.
Here’s where I live. #1L.
We will decide the movie as a group. But we’ve got lots to choose from. And feel free to bring your favorites.
Any suggestions?
Dennis Kucinich on The Health Care Fiasco →
The hotly-debated HR3200, the so-called “health care reform” bill, is nothing less than corporate welfare in the guise of social welfare and reform. It is a convoluted mess. The real debate which we should be having is not occurring.
Removing the “public option” from a public bill paid for by public money is not in the public interest. What is left is a “private...
““We have the only health system in the world based on avoiding sick...”
– Marcia Angell, M.D.: Health Reform: Throwing Good Money After the Bad (via lgordonmoore)
If you are interested in healthcare policy, follow Dr. L. Gordon Moore. He’s one of today’s great healthcare thinkers and a champion for sound policy. And he’s on tumblr! But the real question...
Twitter is the new trucker hat.
I have been getting a ton of Twitter spam lately…i mention a word and I get an immediate tweet back trying to sell me something, 90% of people who have followed me in the past week are worthless bots, or people just trying out twitter and will never log in after tomorrow.
Due to Twitter’s limitations with appeal to people who aren’t geeks, function, and profile quality, it seems...
Worst Weight Loss Plans ever. →
The Candy Diet! (Ayds Appetite Suppressant Candy…they had a marketing crisis in the 80’s unfortunately)
The Cookie Diet.
The Baby Food Diet. Has anyone ever tried the apricots? So tasty…seriously.
The Ayds advertisement is a must watch:
The federal government will mandate insurance you...
Health insurance is regulated at the state level. Every state has their own laws and regulations. In-state insurers sign contracts with in-state providers and hospitals. When you are out-of-state and need medical care, it is considered out-of-network and health insurance will either cover very little or not at all. What will happen to someone with insurance in Massachusetts if they get hit by a...
Movie Night #2 in my backyard is tomorrow night
Let me know if you’d like to come. This is what it looks like.
I have a big backyard with lotsa flowers, a fishpond, dogs, and chairs. Let me know if you’d like to come.
And…I’m also taking submissions for the movie we should watch. Any ideas?
Interview with Hello Health co-founder Dr. Jay... →
It’s long…but if you’re interested in reading about Hello Health and what we’re doing on a daily basis to start solving the healthcare problems I’m always writing about on my blog, this is a good start.
1 tag
How do we save healthcare?
From a conversation I had with squashed:
The only way to save healthcare is to mandate broad, sweeping changes to turn all of the US healthcare industry into a Kaiser-like, closed-loop, true Healthcare System designed to function as a whole with incentives aligned amongst all players to practice quality medicine, not quantity medicine. The System must take financial accountability for maximizing...
Every year, 2,700 surgical patients go home from...
mikehudack:
via fuckyeahfacts.
My stepfather was a personal injury attorney. I remember conversations over the dinner table (or, just as often, the brunch table) about his cases. The cases were often gruesome. They involved the kind of things that never should be allowed to happen. Sponges left in patients who later died. Once, a scalpel left in a patient. One case involved a hapless soul...
My advice for purchasing health insurance.
If you are worried about protecting yourself (sort of), purchase any kind of health insurance.
If you want to pay insurance companies to micro-manage your healthcare, pay them a ton of money per month to do so.
If you want to protect your financial assets and pay as you go/need for healthcare, purchase the cheapest high deductible health insurance plan you can afford and do the research to...
Ultra Orange and Emmanuelle from the soundtrack of...
mikehudack:
thanks to everyone who came over last night. had a blast, and the place already is back to looking like new. But who stole my Claritin?
Sorry dude. I couldn’t afford any more Claritin and I was running low. You have insurance right?
;)
Thanks for the good times man. Had a blast…
Dear People Who Use LinkedIn Or Facebook And...
marco:
I appreciate it. Really, I do.
But I’ll probably ignore your request for at least a few months. Don’t take it personally — I just don’t have any reason to log into these sites more frequently than that. Especially LinkedIn. I’m not sure whether I’ve logged into LinkedIn in the last two years. I should really delete that account.
Ditto that…
The Health Insurers Have Already Won -... →
Money quote:
What people in Washington tend not to discuss, at least on the record, is the open secret that insurers are minimizing their forecasts of the eventual windfall they will enjoy from expanded coverage for Americans. UnitedHealth has given certain key members of Congress details about its finances and tax liability—both historical numbers and figures projected under various...