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Cavalcade of Risk #149: Single Best Answer
As I mentioned earlier, I’m starting to rev up the studying for the licensing exam. A lot of the studying takes the form of practice questions. They’re actually a lot of fun to do: they force you to think actively about the clinical scenario, keep you on your toes, and make it near-impossible for your eyes to glaze over as you semi-consciously read the same page for the 10th time in a row as your eyelids begin to feel heavy, droop, and you start to….
Yikes! Where was I? Right! The Cavalcade is back! Since I’m sure that most of you don’t believe me when I say that doing practice questions is actually fun, I’m going to use this opportunity to try to convince you. With the aid of sophisticated, peer-reviewed psychometric techniques (or not), I have converted each entry into a USMLE-style “single best answer” multiple choice question. Let’s see how you do!
Cavalcade of Risk: Step 1[49]
Instructions: For each of the following test items, select the one answer that best answers the question posed in the stem.
From Boomer at Boomer&Echo: Which of the following behaviours of financial advisors correlates with the lowest risk of defrauding investors?
a) Claiming to have secret/exclusive insider tips that “your broker doesn’t want you to know.”
b) Counseling clients that investments with higher expected returns tend to be riskier.
c) Offering to move your money offshore to avoid taxation.
d) Pressuring you into making a hasty decision on an “exploding offer.”
e) Charging abnormally high membership fees.
From Ken Faulkenberry at the AAAMP Blog: If shares of the Notwithstanding Blog Internet Empire (NBIE) earned a 8% return in 2011 and exhibited a beta of +1.2 relative to a benchmark of shares in all medical blogs that collectively earned a 5% return, then:
a) The alpha for NBIE in 2011 was +2, making it a good investment.
b) The alpha for NBIE in 2011 was +3, making it a good investment.
c) The alpha for NBIE in 2011 was -3, making it a bad investment.
d) The alpha for NBIE in 2011 was -6.8, making it a bad investment.
e) The alpha for NBIE in 2011 cannot be calculated with this information.
From Van R. Mayhall III at the Insurance Regulatory Law Blog: Which of the following statements DOES NOT accurately characterize insurance company insolvency:
a) Most state-based insurance guaranty associations are more comparable to private member-based associations than true state agencies.
b) Insurance companies are subject to unique state-based insolvency protocols in lieu of entering the federal bankruptcy system.
c) Payouts from state insurance guaranty associations are subject to statutory caps.
d) Insurance guaranty associations are intended to provide “bailout” financing to prop up faltering insurers.
e) None of the above.
From Emily Holbrook at Risk Management Monitor: The shoe-shopping website Zappos.com recently earned positive press for:
a) Losing your examiner’s personal information, along with that of millions of other customers.
b) Locking out customers from your examiner’s home country for 4 days after a data breach.
c) Being named in a potentially-class action lawsuit seeking damages as a result of a data breach.
d) Having “some analysts” criticize the company’s response.
e) Having “some analysts” praise the company’s response.
From Jason Shafrin, the Healthcare Economist: Medicare’s new value-based purchasing initiative, which aims to reduce payment to “low-quality” doctors, currently uses treatment costs for which of the following chronic diseases as an element of its cost measure (as distinct from its quality measure):
a) Hypertension
b) Alzheimer’s disease
c) Diabetes
d) Lung cancer
e) Breast cancer
From Louise Norris at Colorado Health Insurance Insider: Colorado’s Medicaid program has recently undergone much change and provoked a great deal of controversy. What happened at the end of 2010 to put Colorado’s Medicaid program on better financial footing?
a) Successful negotiations to lower the fee schedule for physicians’ services.
b) A 55% increase in enrollment relative to 2007.
c) A one-time $13.7 million grant from CMS.
d) New dedicated revenue from a sales tax increase.
e) The introduction of Medicaid Managed Care programs.
From Dr. Jaan Sidorov, the Disease Management Care Blog: Which of the following is an accurate characterization of Dr. Sidorov’s assessment of Health Insurance Exchanges (HIEs) and recent Kaiser Health News commentary on the subject?
a) The left is doing their best to nurture this fledgling institution to maturity in anticipation of the PPACA’s full rollout.
b) It’s reasonable for consumers to spend more time shopping for consumer electronics than for health insurance.
c) Government-run HIEs will eventually match the ease-of-use and “cool” factor of iPhone apps and online purchasing aids.
d) Multiple insurance options on HIEs include variations in provider tiers, out-of-pocket costs, and exclusions.
e) Consumer expectations for HIEs will eventually be exceeded.
From Julie Ferguson at Workers Comp Insider: Doctors’ deaths differ from the deaths of other Americans in that:
a) Doctors often choose to forgo lifesaving chemo, radiation, and procedures.
b) Paradoxically, doctors often do not have access to the full range of lifesaving technologies as the rest of society.
c) Non-physicians tend to be more ready to accept death.
d) Doctors have a cultural bias against accepting death that isn’t shared by society at large.
e) Non-physicians who choose to fight their disease are often pressured by friends and family to be serene in the face of death.
Answer Key
Of course, since you read all the entries, you don’t need one! But just in case: B; A; D; E; C; C; D; A.
Examiner’s Notes
As always, it’s an honour and a pleasure to host the Cavalcade of Risk! If this is your first time at the Notwithstanding Blog, or if you’re coming back after a prolonged absence, I encourage you to take a moment and poke around some of other posts here. From health care policy to health professions training (i.e. medical school), I’ve got it covered.
The 150th(!) Cavalcade will be hosted on February 8th at My Wealth Builder.
Cavalcade of Risk #135: Independence Days Edition
July 2011 has given us many causes to celebrate, and we’re not even half-way in! Early July is when we see Canada/Independence/Bastille Day celebrations in Canada, the United States, and France respectively. This past Saturday was the first day of independence for the brand-new Republic of South Sudan. And today, for the 135th iteration of the Cavalcade of Risk blog carnival, I am pleased to present nine incredibly informative and insightful submissions (plus one of my own) for your edification.
In recognition of all of the countries with July independence days, we’re going to be running a carnival sideshow at this blog carnival today. Interspersed with the submissions will be a small number of flags with trivia-esque hints for countries with July national days; the names of the countries will be at the end of the post. Hopefully this will be an entertaining mid-July “trivial pursuit” to accompany the serious business of risk discussed in the submissions!
This country's neighbours include Suriname and Brazil. (is this a trick question?!)
Two related posts from Jacob Irwin and a guest blogger at My Personal Finance Journey discuss the perils of e-commerce and sharing financial information online. Jacob dissects an example of a common ‘phishing’ scam, and the red flags that should cause one to be suspicious of an email that seems designed to separate you from your personal information (and eventually, your money!). His guest blogger, Les Roberts, talks about how to stay safe while shopping online, and discusses some of the basic technical aspects of secure online transactions.
Tom Drake at the Canadian Finance Blog has a comprehensive post addressing what he claims is the conventional wisdom regarding life insurance: buy term and invest the difference. He argues that while the strategy has its obvious appeal, it’s highly sensitive to the assumptions used in the term vs. permanent comparison. Well worth a read!
No, it's not an American flag, though their capital is named for one of America's Founding Fathers.
Hank Stern, writing at InsureBlog, notes in the context of recent floods in North Dakota that sometimes taking a risk with your insurance coverage can be justified, but as with the analysis in the previous post, that it all comes down to how robust your assumptions are. Come to think of it, isn’t that the case with just about anything?
This country currently leads the world for longest stretch without an official government. You might say they've been waffling for the past year or so.
Wondering about health insurance exchanges? Dr. Jaan Sidorov (aka the Disease Management Care Blog) took one for the team and dove into the depths of the details of Utah’s already-existing exchange. He notes that setting up an exchange is far more complicated than one might think at first glance, and that it’s unlikely that they will be functional in every state of the union come the 2014 deadline. He also ponders the potential for exchange listing/delisting to be used as a quasi-extra-legal cudgel (my words, not his!) by state insurance regulators seeking additional ways to force insurers into line.
“Oh no they didn’t!” is a common refrain from business owners wondering how that absurd claim could have been paid out by their workers’ compensation carrier. Nancy Germond has a clear and concise explanation of why, “oh yes they did!“, along with an interesting history of how workers’ comp came to be in the first place. Read on at Allbusiness.com.
Do you remember the Dodd-Frank bill? Thought it only applied to big banks and high-falutin’ investment securitization shenanigans? Van Mayhall III has a post at his Insurance Regulatory Law blog reminding us that the new provisions of the law could also affect larger insurance companies and their affiliates in ways that management will want to be aware of well in advance of anything going wrong.
St. Thomas isn't just one of the US Virgin Islands. This equatorial namesake, however, has a "princely" companion.
At Colorado Health Insurance Insider, Louise Norris asks whether eligibility criteria for the newly-established federal high-risk health insurance pools is hampering enrollment. Colorado is an interesting vantage point from which to observe this: the twenty-year-old program “CoverColorado” is very similar to the new federal one. The differences between the two programs’ eligibility rules generate good insight into where the federal program is going wrong in attracting enrollees.
If you asked this country for a date in 1995, you might find the time being pushed up unexpectedly.
Workers Comp Insider Julie Ferguson and I seem to have been on the same wavelength for this blog carnival! I recently wrote a post arguing that the problem of poor price transparency in health care may be an objection to the use of consumer-directed health plans now, but that early adopters will pave the way forward for the rest of us. The chicken-and-egg issue is not all that intractable! Julie Ferguson, on the other hand, has a far superior post addressing the same topic. She points out the immense price differences for the same medical services that exist across state lines and across street intersections alike, and provides links to seven (count’em!) different resources for employers and individuals to use to get the best bang for their medical buck.
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This brings CoR-135 to a close. Thank you to all of the submitters for their quality posts on risk, and thank you to Hank Stern for his tireless work managing the behind-the-scenes logistics of every edition of this blog carnival. It really is an honour for this callow medical student to be invited to sit at the grown-ups’ table and host the Cavalcade!
The next edition of Cavalcade of Risk will be hosted by Jacob Irwin at My Personal Finance Journey on July 27th.
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For those of you who tried your hand at the national flags-and-trivia sideshow, the answers are here.
The first one was something of a trick question. It’s France! French Guiana sits atop the northern coast of South America, and is every bit a part of France as Paris or Nice, and as such France has land borders with Brazil and Suriname. Bastille Day: July 14.
It’s not an American flag, but there is a reason it sorta-kinda looks like one. Liberia was established as a place to which to “repatriate” black Americans in the early 19th century, the idea being that they could live a life of greater freedom there than in the antebellum United States. James Monroe was one supporter of this effort: the Liberian capital is Monrovia, after him. Proclamation of independence from the United States: July 26.
Next up: Belgium! It’s been quite a while since they’ve had an official government, and the country is wracked by political tensions between the Flemish and Walloon communities. Oath of the first King of the Belgians: July 21.
St. Thomas in Portuguese is Sao Tome (can’t figure out accents, sorry!), and the flag is that of Sao Tome and Principe, a small island nation located along the Equator in the waters west of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. Independence from Portugal: July 12.
Prior to 1995, the Pacific island country of Kiribati was split by the international date line. Makes inter-state time zone differences in the US seem incredibly convenient by comparison, doesn’t it? After kinking the IDL a bit to the east to accommodate the entire country on one side, Kiribati was positioned to be the first country in the world to see each new day. Independence from the UK: also July 12.
The CDHP Chicken and the Price/Quality Data Egg
There was a post at KevinMD.com not a few days ago that was as interesting for its comments as it was its content. In the post “Consumer-Driven Healthcare Will Only Shift Costs if Implemented Poorly,” the author argued that “consumer-driven” insurance requires consumers to have access to at least a minimum degree of information to guide their decision-making. If employers/insurers shift both the costs and decision-making about healthcare onto their employees/insured, the latter will require either structural “nudges” or other decision-making support to be able to access the care they need and save money.
A brief discussion in the comments brought out what is one of the more common objections I hear to any attempt to move health insurance in the direction of high-deductible catastrophic care policies: “how are patients supposed to find information on quality and price from physicians and hospitals? It’s not there? This can’t possibly work!”
It’s not a trivial objection, but when all is considered I can’t say that I’m convinced by it.
It’s not as though the health care industry hasn’t caught onto the need to devise, assign, and disseminate cost values for different tests and procedures (even if only for internal purposes), even where cost was never previously a consideration. See the recent highly-publicized study in Archives of Surgery finding that merely giving medical staff information on blood test costs reduced spending by lowering utilization.
As more and more patients start asking for real price and quality data, providers will have an incentive to find it and give it to them. With traditional third-party payment, what does it matter to the physician? They get paid what someone else says they get paid. If my classmates are representative of future physicians more generally, most would far rather not even have to think about pricing and bundling their own services if they don’t have to. That won’t change unless there’s a demand for it, and right now the main source of that is patients with consumer-directed plans.
We already have a great deal of beneficial, effective competition on both price and quality in areas of the health care market that are actually markets, and in which people tend to pay out of pocket. Think of the trends of both price and quality of laser eye correction over the last few decades, or cosmetic surgeries that aren’t covered by insurance. These are elective procedures with real risk of misadventure, as with many services provided by physicians and hospitals. The reason that price and quality data are easier to come by for LASIK than for cardiac catheterization is precisely because patients have an interest in knowing. This isn’t to say that the process of developing the data is necessarily quick and easy, but surely this should disprove claims that transparent pricing “could never happen” in health care more generally.
Right now, I’d imagine that the people most likely to sign up for consumer-directed health plans (though obviously there are many exceptions) are those who want to, or at least are comfortable with managing more of their health care spending in exchange for lower premiums and capped out-of-pocket spending. As with any other new product, it is the early adopters who will pave the way forward for other consumers. My prediction is that as a small but growing group of patients and physicians begin to leave the third-party payment model, whether via HSAs or by exiting insurance entirely for some services, the medical industry will get better at providing transparent price and quality information to everyone who asks. CDHPs (and the providers who accept them) today may be like the first cell phones in the 1980s: as the early adopters push for improvements, we’ll see the product evolve into something that can be used more widely in the future.
Yes, there is something of a chicken-and-egg problem right now. But it’s anything but intractable, and certainly won’t be a problem forever.
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There is a strong argument to be made that transparency and competition on quality goes hand in hand with price competition. John Goodman from the NCPA makes the case here and here, among other places.
A bad feeling
According to famed bioethicist Leon Kass, we should listen to “the wisdom of repugnance.“
Revulsion is not an argument; and some of yesterday’s repugnances are today calmly accepted — though, one must add, not always for the better. […] In crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully to articulate it.
If I held myself to such high standards, I would tell you that I find the thrust of what I see as mainline bioethical thought to be “icky,” and from there res ipsa loquitur. However, I’d like to think that my distaste has more than mere “revulsion” behind it, and as such the matter is not so easily disposed of.
In the “standard” ethics and professionalism lectures, medical students are taught that medical ethics rest on three foundational pillars: non-maleficence (“do no harm”); beneficence (“do what’s best for your patient”); and autonomy (“act in accordance with your patient’s wishes”).
Who decides what’s best for the patient, or what constitutes harm? Logically, it should be the patient! When the stakes are high, so too should be the barriers for a physician to substitute his or her goals and values for the patient’s.
SUMS has a thriving medical ethics program, and we’ve had the opportunity to hear clinicians and medical ethicists from SUMS and from farther afield talk about ethical conundrums they’ve seen on the wards. Every presentation has shared one feature, without fail: it’s only an ethical conundrum (usually meriting a call to the bioethics committee) when the physician doesn’t agree with a patient’s choice, and has been unable to successfully use persuasion or coercion to change the patient’s mind.
This seems like a trivial observation at first. After all, why call the ethics committee to adjudicate a matter where the physician and patient are in perfect agreement (aside from rarer edge cases where this happens, usually involving experimental procedures)? It makes perfect sense!
What this means though, is that the medical ethicist has become the person to provide cover for a physician to override the patient’s autonomy. By virtue of selection bias in the cases they are asked to adjudicate, and the ever-present threat of regulatory capture, the role of “medical ethics” runs the risk of devolving into Paternalism 2.0. “We know what’s best for you, and if you don’t believe us, we’ll make you.” What’s more, when the medical ethicist is nothing more than the cudgel with which the physician forces his goals onto his patient, what claim does the ethicist then have to support his monopoly on decision-making in this sphere?
Admittedly, this image of medical ethics is a caricature. But to see the danger that lies in store, look no further than their cousins: the bioethicists.
At every turn I can think of, bioethics has established itself as the true “Ideology of ‘No.'” Whether dealing with BRCA gene testing for breast cancer susceptibility, assisted reproduction technologies, APOE4 screening for Alzheimer’s susceptibility, or “cosmetic” fetal ultrasound, mainstream bioethical opinion always seems to come down on the side of denying information to patients. Hardly the patient-empowering mindset that marked the field’s nascent days.
So why has the medical ethics / bioethics enterprise come to undervalue patient autonomy so extensively? I offer two preliminary hypotheses.
First is the fact that medical ethics and bioethics are situated in an academic-institutional environment that usually leans left-liberal (Progressive). Whether the institution makes the people, or the people make the institution, it comes out to the same thing: the setting is one that inculcates a predilection for top-down technocratic control. I think that this assessment is valid, regardless of what you think of the merits of different political philosophies.
The second one is, in my mind, more interesting. Public choice theory reminds us that bureaucrats, leaders, institutions, and their people do not exist in a world devoid of incentives and personal agendas. As an ethicist, when you say “no,” you entrench the need for your services… there needs to be someone with the authority to say “yes,” and what better way to establish your authority then by saying “no?” When you posit increasingly more complex models for evaluating ethical dilemmas — “autonomy, beneficence, and non-maleficence” just don’t cut it — you create an institutional need for someone with expertise in dealing with these complex rules to act as interpreter, and thereby increase your own power and prestige. Giving full weight to patient autonomy would undermine the need for your services.
This isn’t to say that ethicists make decisions with an explicit eye to entrenching their influence in the medical setting. It is, however, a reminder that we should always be asking ourselves: quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchers?
That, and the “wisdom” of repugnance is only as valid as the reasoning that supports it. Having “a bad feeling” about something doesn’t cut it when lives are on the line.
“The kids don’t know how to read a case-control”
Image via Wikipedia
In a world where everybody wants more of their pet cause in the medical school curriculum, it’s always enjoyable to find such a cause that actually merits support.
Jin Packard, blogging at Low-Yield Medical, makes the case that medical school needs to give statistics and epidemiology the respect they deserve, using his own training as an example of how not to do it.
I, for one, view statistical fluency as a basic life skill — though given my background in economics (with all the exposure to stats and econometrics it entails) I would be expected to say that. If you disagree with me as far as physicians are concerned, go read Jin’s piece… it’ll set you straight.
Where I seem to part ways with him, however, is on the advisability of trying to get all of this material in during medical school. When I think of how much I learned in two semester as an undergraduate (and how much more I taught myself afterwards), it seems like a whole lot for a medical school course. Given that many medical schools are shortening the amount of time spent in the classroom from the traditional 2 years to 1.5 (or even 1, in some cases!), when do you teach it?
Personally, I would change the pre-med requirements so that “two semesters of math” becomes “two semesters of statistics.” Advanced calculus is nice to know, but I have yet to use it once. Statistics, on the other hand, are all around us. If students have a good foundation upon entry, it makes the task of the med school that much more achievable, and gives them that many fewer excuses for failure.
And let’s be honest, failure is what we have right now.
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Title taken from Sam Roberts‘s ever-so-catchy song “Them Kids.” [second link will stream the song]
As I’ve blogged before, “the kids also don’t know how to make payroll.”
Model Marketing (and New Hampshire’s $4,300 cheek swabs)
I have been asked many times to register for bone marrow donor registries. I’m told that there are severe shortages of potential donors from my ethnic group, and that ethnicity correlates with the probability of successful match. I’ve been solicited again and again over email listservs in college and here at medical school, reminded of the life-saving potential of a simple cheek swab (and subsequent marrow harvesting, if matched). One particularly aggressive college classmate told the assembled masses that ”choosing not to donate is essentially deciding to let somebody die. And, yes, you are responsible for that.”
Strong words, those.
However, I have never been asked to register as a bone marrow donor by ”flirtatious models in heels, short skirts, and lab coats.” Not that I would have found that approach particularly persuasive.
What might seem, at first glance, like an innovative approach taken from the playbook of marketing professionals, has instead been depicted as a nefarious attempt to scam insurers out of around $4000 per cheek swab tested.
“They got people to do this without telling them it could be a charge of $4,300 against their insurance,” he said.
New Hampshire passed a law in 2006 requiring insurers to pay for tissue-typing tests for potential bone marrow donors. But at the time, Mr. Boffetti said, proponents told lawmakers that each test would cost $100 or less.
How absurd! This group should be lauded for their efforts to increase the pool of potential bone marrow donors! That non-profits and charities are adopting the for-profit sector’s successful marketing techniques is a sign of progress, not nefarious intent!
Here’s a thought for New Hampshire’s ”senior assistant attorney general:” there would be no need to investigate and vilify this group for…. I don’t even know exactly. The article doesn’t imply they’ve done anything illegal or unethical. They seem to have simply billed insurers as the law allows them to.
This is one of those problems that seems like it could only be caused by idiotic regulation. Getting a cheek swab and tested for bone marrow donor registration is clearly not a risk against which one needs to be insured. It’s an elective procedure that has absolutely zero health benefit for the insured party. New Hampshire’s legislators, in their infinite wisdom, decided to mandate coverage anyways.
And somehow the Times portrays the models as the most unseemly part of this saga.
Les Douleurs de la Demagogue
I’ve blogged before about the conflict-of-interest issues raised by the various ways in which physicians interact with pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Since starting my medical training at SUMS, I’ve had the opportunity to think about these issues further, especially since SUMS has taken their approach to the issue to an extreme level of demagoguery that I had previously thought impossible outside the realm of parody. To wit, the first-years were recently subjected to a presentation on the school’s COI policy from a “researcher” who proudly described himself as an “anti-pharma zealot” [the Z-word is 100% verbatim]. The official reply letter to be sent to any vendor* with the temerity to send a holiday gift reads like a mix between a legal filing and a letter home from a high school principal outlining the sins of the schoolchild.
There is a very defensible (I would say persuasive) case that reactions such as SUMS’ go too far. Perhaps the best exposition of this side of the argument comes from Richard Epstein, an NYU law professor whose writings on the topic can be found here and here. The crux of his argument is that these regulations of COI are ostensibly designed to advance a goal, and that they should be considered in light of how well they advance that goal, not in terms of how well they stick it to the drug companies. His argument is that the most extreme reactions — those on display at SUMS, for instance — do more to retard the goal of human progress in the medical field than they do to advance it.
This is perhaps best encapsulated in this snippet from a Vanity Fair piece (h/t John Goodman) decrying the practice of “outsourcing” drug trials to countries with weaker regulatory oversight.
Many U.S. medical investigators who manage drug trials abroad say they prefer to work overseas, where regulations are lax and “conflict of interest” is a synonym for “business as usual.” Inside the United States, doctors who oversee trials are required to fill out forms showing any income they have received from drug companies so as to guard against financial biases in trials. This explains in part why the number of clinical-trial investigators registered with the F.D.A. fell 5.2 percent in the U.S. between 2004 and 2007 while increasing 16 percent in Eastern Europe, 12 percent in Asia, and 10 percent in Latin America. In a recent survey, 70 percent of the eligible U.S. and Western European clinical investigators interviewed said they were discouraged by the current regulatory environment, partly because they are compelled to disclose financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. In trials conducted outside the United States, few people care.
I see two evils here, and have a pretty good sense of which one I feel to be the lesser. I wonder how many lives SUMS’ local “zealot” would be willing to sacrifice on the altar of anti-corporate ideological purity…
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* – Given that I’m paying tuition to SUMS in exchange for an education, I can’t help but wonder if I should consider them to be my “educational services vendor,” and if this COI business holds for the vendors to my vendor. All those verboten food baskets have to go somewhere…
Cavalcade of Risk #112: The Cavalcade Gets Schooled
It truly is an honour to have been asked to host the 112th edition of the Cavalcade of Risk blog carnival! After all, I am but a lowly, economics-trained fledgling first-year medical student who has been blogging here for less than six months (still considerably longer than my time as a med student to date!) and who still has the occasional blog formatting issue or two.
The excitement surrounding the start of medical school is far from wearing off; as a result of that continued excitement, I decided to take the Cavalcade with me to classes. Remember: everything you read here is fair game for the final (and the licensing exam)!
Cavalcade of Risk #112: Medical School Edition
Behaviour and the Brain
The workers' comp adjuster described this case as "a major headache."
Brains are important. There are several pre-clinical courses that deal with them, and not just because the subject has a starring role in the licensing exam (and on the menu at the Bistro Zombie). The brain is the seat of our behaviour, emotion, rational capacity, and risk assessment capability. Even with this fascinating organ working at full tilt, dealing with risk rationally can be difficult. Of course, we humans are far from perfectly rational, which makes for even greater challenges. GrrlScientist links to a TED talk in which a researcher tries to gain insight into the root of human irrationality by examining decision-making in monkeys. [CONGRESS JOKE DELETED]
Regulatory Compliance
Perhaps the most fun part of medical school orientation is the parade of sessions required by law, by the university, or by the medical school, for little other purpose than to be able to check off a box and say “the students are aware of the policy.”
If legislation had animal mascots, you would be looking at the HIPAA Hippo and the Son of HIPAA Hippo HIPAA Hippo
Of course, some of this compliance information is actually high-stakes. For instance, this year’s HIPAA training session included a portion on medical identity theft red flags. However, as well-trained and as eagle-eyed as the medical students are, you are your best first line of defence when it comes to preventing medical identity theft. Ryan from CashMoneyLife has a post that explains how patients can both detect and protect themselves from medical identity theft.
Physiology
The Physiology of the Medical Student
“Phys” is all about how stuff works. The typical first-year physiology course is a detailed overview of how the body works under normal conditions. It’s easy to take for granted the complexity and intricacy of the processes that keep us alive, in part because most of the time, it all works without any effort on our part (knock on wood).
Protecting the normal physiology of business partnerships is the subject of the next post. Jacob at My Personal Finance Journey explains how a combination of buy-sell agreements and properly-structured life insurance contracts can be used to make small business partnership succession go much more smoothly with much less effort at a stage where there will already be so much in flux.
Histology
The upperclassmen tell me that we look at a lot of slides in histology. As you can see, I'm trying to get a head start.
Histology, the study of tissues, typically involves lots of staining, sketching, and microscopy. While advances in technology means that some slides are digitized for ease of review, there’s still plenty of opportunity to get your hands dirty with “the real deal,” just like the Disease Management Care Blog did with his submission to this week’s Cavalcade. Dr. Jaan Sidorov has found the National Association of Insurance Commissioner’s “Blank” proposal defining the medical-loss ratio, stained it, and put it under the digital microscope for all to view.
Pharmacology
Is it just me, or do four of these look like they're glitter-filled?
I’ve always been impressed by the ability of nearly every physician I know to rattle off drug names (and their indications, side effects, etc.) with seemingly perfect, instantaneous recall. I’d imagine that the months-long pharmacology course in year 2 has something to do with that. “Better living through chemistry” can be tricky to achieve if you don’t know your chemicals.
Jason Shafrin, the Healthcare Economist, describes one set of efforts to improve the benefits of pharmacological therapy by involving pharmacists more directly with the patient’s medication therapy management.
Pathology
Not to be confused with "path-ology," a course taught at schools of engineering and urban planning.
“Path” examines how the body’s structures respond to a variety of stimuli, usually bad ones. It seeks to answer the questions “what’s going on here? What’s wrong? What do these cells do when we [injure/mutate/slander] them?” In this vein, the ever-intrepid InsureBloggers emerge from their basement labs to look at one state’s new PPACA-created Pre-existing Condition Insurance Pool, and provide a concise and focused overview of its pathologies.
Anatomy
I’m fortunate to be able to use so much of the material from my undergraduate vertebrate anatomy class to review terms for medical school anatomy. Despite the fact that, in college, we worked on cows and cats instead of humans, the similarities between the vertebrates are such that a comparative approach to anatomy can yield great dividends. For instance, courtesy of National Geographic TV, I know of a whale anatomist who works out of a human medical school in New York City.
First-year anatomy: a whale of a good time? Or the course that will have you sitting in lab all sad and blubbering?
Joel, our next poster, uses the techniques of comparative insurance anatomy to arrive at this tongue-in-cheek “Plea For Car Insurance Reform.” As with the vertebrates, insights from one area of the insurance world may be able to tell you something about the others.
Biostatistics and Epidemiology
The Notwithstanding Blog would like to remind all visitors to wash their hands and observe universal precautions during their visit
Biostats teaches medical students how to use quantitative tools at a basic level. Being able to critically evaluate new biomedical research is a crucial tool for those of us entering medicine at this time of seemingly-exponential change. Epidemiology more broadly examines health status and disease in the aggregate, including surveillance of epidemics and monitoring of health trends. Careful use of the tools of these fields can allow one to make reasonable predictions about the future of wellness trends and epidemics, or, if you’re Louise of Colorado Health Insurance Insider, the future of PPACA-grandfathered insurance plans.
Extracurriculars
The range of extra-curricular activities at SUMS (Sorta Urban Med School) seems nearly endless. There are running clubs, research opportunities, student government positions, specialty interest groups… the list goes on. However, one set of time-honoured activities among medical students is health outreach and education within the local community. Many medical schools are located in or near areas in which there are major problems with access to healthcare and accurate health information; students can and do rise to the challenge of filling those gaps as best as they can.
These outreach projects can range in tone from the humour-filled to the gravely serious. Julie Ferguson at Workers’ Comp Insider shares a feel-good breast cancer awareness video, along with some other chuckle-inducing medical parody videos. David Williams, host of Cavalcade of Risk #113 in two weeks, posts a guest piece about the lies and dangers of so-called “pro-ana” websites.
Material unrelated to the course that nevertheless shows up on the final because it’s the professor’s niche research interest
"Syllabus? What syllabus?"
One of the risks of starting medical school, with its concomitant classes and extra-curricular activities, is that it will affect your blogging output. Nonetheless, I plan to stick around. I invite all of you CoR readers to poke around the rest of this site. If you like what you see (and even if you don’t), I’d love nothing better than to have you stick around with me!
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Cavalcade of Risk #113 will be hosted at the Health Business Blog.
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The Notwithstanding Blog 
Some Friendly, Unsolicited Advice for PNHP
Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP), as the name suggests, is the biggest and best-known group of American physicians who support replacing the current health care system with a national single-payer. I used to be a big booster of this idea, but it doesn’t take much poking around this website to figure out that my feelings towards American single-payer reform have cooled considerably (to say the least).
I’ve been fortunate to attend a number of events run by senior PNHP officers at SUMS and at other venues (e.g. the AMSA conference back in March). At one of the more recent events, I had the privilege of speaking at length to some of their representatives at length. As you might expect, the resulting discussion was direct but cordial.
Though I disagree with their proposed policies, I do respect PNHP as an organization. It is one of the biggest mobilizers of physicians and medical students who are in favour of radically changing how American health care operates. Their passion is palpable at even the most informal event. They do have a contribution to make to the health policy conversation. Unfortunately, while there is an intellectually-coherent case to be made for single-payer (a mistaken case, in my view, but respectable and honest), I have yet to hear it from anybody at PNHP (n=small).
I harbour no illusions about my ability to persuade hard-core single-payer believers in a short blog post. I do, however, have some friendly and hopefully helpful advice on how to talk to the uninitiated and the un-converted more productively:
1) Don’t try to twist the data to support your case. It shows. At best, data on Medicare-vs.-private administrative costs are equivocal, cross-country infant mortality comparisons are spurious, life expectancy at birth captures a lot of mortality that is out of the hands of the healthcare system, and so on. The empirical case for single-payer superiority is thin gruel.
2) When someone asks whether you’d trust a Republican President and Congress to implement single-payer well, don’t duck the question. It’s a more important one than you seem to acknowledge. If you want to centralize control in government, be prepared to talk about how you will deal with your ideological opponents who tend to win elections every now and then.
3) Your moral argument is a lot stronger than your empirical argument. Why not make it explicit? Americans don’t tend towards collectivism, but neither are most people data-oriented policy wonks. Instead of making a weak case based on weak data, you should be prepared to talk about the moral strengths of single-payer relative to the alternatives. Where are the mentions of equity, obligation, and collectivism? (I ask this seriously, not passive-aggressively)
4) Be fluent in the language business, politics, and economics. When your executives are being matched point-for-point by medical students who majored in biochemistry and similar fields, you know you have a problem. If you’re going to call for the dismantling of private insurance, have some idea of how the sector actually operates. If you want to give control of the health system to government, be able to discuss the nuances of Washington power structures. Be able to respond to phrases like “deadweight loss,” “price-vs.-income problems,” and “underwriting” with more than a blank stare.
5) Anecdotes are rarely dispositive of policy questions. When someone points this out about anecdotes involving people you know, don’t get offended; this rarely advances discussion. When you introduce your friend’s problems to the debate, it’s not your opponent who’s trying to use them to score “cheap points.”
6) Milton Friedman is said to have told an up-and-coming Walter Williams, after the latter appeared on TV to discuss school choice, that “[Williams] was right about everything but [had] made one mistake […], when you talk about liberty, you have to smile.” You may not be talking about liberty as Friedman understood the term, but his advice is every bit as applicable.