Quotulatiousness

January 11, 2012

Computers as doctors

Filed under: Health, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:02

An interesting post from Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution:

In 2004 I wrote In Praise of Impersonal Medicine arguing:

    I have nothing against my physician but I would prefer to be diagnosed by a computer. A typical physician spends most of the day playing twenty questions. Where does it hurt? Do you have a cough? How high is the patient’s blood pressure? But an expert system can play twenty questions better than most people. An expert system can use the best knowledge in the field, it can stay current with the journals, and it never forgets.

and in 2006 I noted:

    The practice of modern medicine is surprisingly primitive … My credit card company knows far more about my shopping history than my physician knows about my medical history.

I now believe that we are on the cusp of major changes to medicine. The thousand dollar genome sequence is less than a year away, Ford has just developed a car seat that can monitor your health, many people are already using wrist monitors to measure heart and sleep patterns. All of this data will soon be combined with massive databases to offer predictive and prescriptive health diagnosis.

But my favourite part of the posting was this comment from Joseph Huntington:

Stay clear of Doctors. I am a lifelong physician. Cardiologist, Head Surgeon, UCLA for 17 years. Medicine today is riskier than any casino. I left the zoo when it became a Federal Collection Center for data that will likely be used in population selection. If you’re a model or athlete, you have nothing to fear. If you’re sub-average, or over age 35 … just sleep well, drink water, walk, breathe deeply, eat mostly fresh things, laugh, love, work honorably and again, stay away from guys like me.

Reason.tv: Three reasons conservatives should cut defence spending now

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:23

Pro-nuclear power opinion piece on the BBC

New Hampshire breaks for Romney

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:13

After all the other candidates (except Ron Paul) effectively signed their Socialist Party cards during this campaign trying to portray Mitt Romney as the demon offspring of Ebeneezer Scrooge and Gordon Gekko, it’s probably no surprise that Romney won the state handily. Ron Paul managed a better-than-expected second place finish. Doug Mataconis wraps up the race:

Ron Paul came in second with 23% of the vote, higher than he had been polling over the past week and an apparent indication that he had been able to mobilize the independent/libertarian vote in the Granite State much as he had done in Iowa. In 2008, Paul had finished 5th in the state, with about 18,900 votes. This time, Paul garnered more than 55 votes, more than aall of the other candidates save Huntsman and Romney combined. Not surprisingly, Paul’s speech last night was as much a victory speech as if he’d actually won the night

[. . .]

Jon Huntsman, who finished a disappointing third with 17% of the vote, vowed to take the fight to South Carolina and did his best to spin an outcome that had to be a let down given his recent rise in the polls into good news

[. . .]

Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, came out of New Hampshire virtually tied at 9% of the vote, Gingrich with roughly 22,921 vote and Santorum with roughly 22,708. and both gave simultaneous concession speeches that didn’t really concede anything, arguing that the race had just started and that they were heading to South Carolina. One candidate who’s already down in the Palmetto State, Rick Perry garnered a rather pathetic 1% of the vote and issued a statement that basically said that New Hampshire didn’t matter. Of course, you’d expect the guy who came in last place to say the race doesn’t matter.

Taking a look at the Exit Polls, Romney’s victory was pretty widespread, and pulled in what some might consider some surprising demographic groups:

  • Romney won all income categories, except those earning less than $30,000/year. That group went to Ron Paul slightly more (36%) than to Romney (31%)
  • Romney won among both registered Republicans (48%) and registered Independents (32%)
  • Romney won all ideological groups except those who called themselves “somewhat liberal,” which went to Paul 33% and 32% for Romney
  • Romney won all religious groups, except “None” which went to Paul 47% to 21% for Romney
  • Romney won the support of 42% of those with a positive opinion of the Tea Party, and 40% of those with a neutral opinion. Huntsman received 42% of those who had a negative opinion of the movement

In other words, it was, unlike Iowa, a clear and decisive victory for Romney. Some will discount it by stating that this was all expected given the fact that Romney had been leading the field by double digits for months now, and while that may be true nothing succeeds like success and, right now, Mitt Romney has the wind at his back heading into South Carolina. Polling there is now showing him with a double digit lead over his rivals. Of course, the next ten days are going to consist of candidates like Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum trying to chip away at that lead. Gingrich and his SuperPac, for example, will reportedly putting as much as $3.5 million in to ad buys around the state, which is not an insignificant amount of mount for the Palmetto State. Rick Perry is already down there comparing Romney’s career at Bain to “vulture capitalism,” and Santorum is likely to spend his time trying to peal away the social conservatives in the South Carolina GOP, where he’s likely to find a friendlier venue than he did in the Palmetto State. The question is whether it will be enough. Romney will be able to match Gingrich or anyone else dollar-for-dollar and ad-for-ad for one thing. For another, it’s unclear whether the this anti-Bain message really works on Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents. If the results in New Hampshire are any indication, the answer to that question is a clear and resounding no.

An unlikely source of healthcare innovation: Singapore

Filed under: Asia, Economics, Health — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:10

In a post from a few years ago, Bryan Caplan sings the praises of the very different approach to public healthcare practiced in Singapore:

In The Undercover Economist, Tim Harford highly praised the health care policies of Singapore. But it wasn’t until I read the section on health care in Ghesquiere’s Singapore’s Success that I realized how amazing the official numbers are. If the following is true, all the comparisons showing that the U.S. greatly outspends Europe without getting better health are beside the point, because Singapore makes Europe look like the U.S.:

    The Singapore government spent only 1.3 percent of GDP on healthcare in 2002, whereas the combined public and private expenditure on healthcare amounted to a low 4.3 percent of GDP. By contrast, the United States spent 14.6 percent of its GDP on healthcare that year, up from 7 percent in 1970… Yet, indicators such as infant mortality rates or years of average healthy life expectancy are slightly more favorable in Singapore than in the United States… It is true that such indicators are also related to the overall living environment and not only to healthcare spending. Nonetheless, international experts rank Singapore’s healthcare system among the most successful in the world in terms of cost-effectiveness and community health results.

How does Singapore do it? Singapore is no libertarian health care paradise, but it does self-consciously try to maintain good incentives by narrowly tailoring its departures from laissez-faire:

    The price mechanism and keen attention to incentives facing individuals are relied upon to discourage excessive consumption and to keep waste and costs in check by requiring co-payment by users.

    […]

    The state recovers 20-100 percent of its public healthcare outlay through user fees. A patient in a government hospital who chooses the open ward is subsidized by the government at 80 percent. Better-off patients choose more comfortable wards with lower or no government subsidy, in a self-administered means test.

I’ve heard a lot of smart people warn that co-payments are penny-wise but pound-foolish, because people cut back on high-benefit preventive care. Unless someone is willing to dispute Singapore’s budgetary and health data, it looks like we’ve got strong counter-evidence to this view: Either Singaporeans don’t skimp on preventive care when you raise the price, or preventive care isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“I don’t know how these kids do it, how they go to school every day without breaking these laws”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:07

The further criminalization of what used to be ordinary childhood behaviour:

Each day, hundreds of schoolchildren appear before courts in Texas charged with offences such as swearing, misbehaving on the school bus or getting in to a punch-up in the playground. Children have been arrested for possessing cigarettes, wearing “inappropriate” clothes and being late for school.

In 2010, the police gave close to 300,000 “Class C misdemeanour” tickets to children as young as six in Texas for offences in and out of school, which result in fines, community service and even prison time. What was once handled with a telling-off by the teacher or a call to parents can now result in arrest and a record that may cost a young person a place in college or a job years later.

“We’ve taken childhood behaviour and made it criminal,” said Kady Simpkins, a lawyer who represented Sarah Bustamantes. “They’re kids. Disruption of class? Every time I look at this law I think: good lord, I never would have made it in school in the US. I grew up in Australia and it’s just rowdy there. I don’t know how these kids do it, how they go to school every day without breaking these laws.”

The British government is studying the American experience in dealing with gangs, unruly young people and juvenile justice in the wake of the riots in England. The UK’s justice minister, Crispin Blunt, visited Texas last September to study juvenile courts and prisons, youth gangs and police outreach in schools, among other things. But his trip came at a time when Texas is reassessing its own reaction to fears of feral youth that critics say has created a “school-to-prison pipeline”. The Texas supreme court chief justice, Wallace Jefferson, has warned that “charging kids with criminal offences for low-level behavioural issues” is helping to drive many of them to a life in jail.

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