So, the health care reform bills coming out of Congress. Were they purposely designed to make the problem worse, or are our law makers just that incompetent?
1) By requiring consumers to buy insurance or pay penalties, they are making demand inelastic, which will drive prices up. It's basic Econ 101 stuff, folks.
2) They've set the fines for failure to get insurance significantly below the cost of insurance even with the new subsidies. Intentionally. The fine maximums are tied to insurance policy costs. The problem has never been that people could get insurance and chose not to, but rather that they can't afford it. This does nothing to address that root problem. What's going to happen -- I might go so far to say what is obviously going to happen -- is that we will go from a country with millions of people who are uninsured, to a country with millions of people who are uninsured and paying for the 'privilege'.
And no 'big picture' price controls that I can see. I've found limits on how much more companies can charge their older clients compared to their younger ones (2 or 3 times, depending on the bill), and how much they can charge sick clients compared to healthy ones (no difference allowed), but nowhere is there a limit to how much they can charge a person relative to their income, or relative to some external measure like Cost of Living Index or something.
So, basically insurance companies can charge whatever they want as long as they do it across the board in the proper ratios, and we the consumers are legally required to either pay it or pay a lesser amount for absolutely nothing.
This is supposed to be helpful? How? I mean, the parts about no longer allowing people to be disallowed or dropped because of health issues are good, but this forced consumerism, I just don't see how it's possibly going to help. At best I think the effect would be neutral, but honestly I think it's going to hurt a LOT of people.
(The cynical part of me also notes that neither plan goes into effect until after the next Presidential election. Oh hell yes I believe that part is by design.)
Now, if the master plan is to screw up the insurance industry so bad that the whole racket collapses and then we can do real reform without that pesky lobbying block in the way, great! I'm behind that goal, and their plan looks well conceived, if a little blatant, for fulfilling that aim. The pain we'll feel in the meantime sucks, but we gotta get rid of them somehow and this allows impact to the economy to be slower than just putting them all out of business at once.
On the other hand, if the master plan with this bill is to help people who are getting screwed currently... Fail. Complete Fail. Epic Fail. It's not even out of the gate yet and it, and the lawmakers responsible for it, are Made Of Fail.
Showing posts with label healthcare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healthcare. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Burning stupid: health care edition
There are some conversations I am finding more and more difficult to have, or even to tolerate, because the loudest arguments are often really flamingly stupid. Health care is one of those.
I think the US ought to determine which country has the best most-bang-for-the-buck system, and replicate it. Now, this may not come down to an easy choice, deciding how to balance our bang for our buck. But we're not even seriously looking at how other places have done it, and I've got a problem with that. I can tell you right off it is not going to be our current system, and it is going to be a single payer universal system. It's just the numbers, folks. Per capita, Americans pay more and get worse care than any other developed nation. Wanting it to be otherwise isn't going to change that. And the "not invented here" crap? A health care system is NOT the place for it.
Now, I am not at all saying that every position in opposition to mine is stupid. Not at all. There are plenty of intelligent arguments against my position. For just one example, adopting one of these established systems will almost certainly destroy the health insurance industry as it exists today. Personally, I think this is ultimately a good thing, but with the economy in the awful state it's in, now may not be a good time for it.
(Something I got to point out to the "Capitalism is God" people, though. Capitalism worshipers claim that capitalism is always the most efficient way to allocate resources. If that were true, replacing a capitalistic system with a socialistic system would not destroy jobs, it would create them. The most efficient system would be using the smallest amount of resources. If changing requires less resources, the the original system was not using the smallest amount of resources, and thus is not the most efficient.)
There are lots of blindingly stupid arguments against universal health care, though. Some of them, I wonder if the people saying them have ever read typical private insurance terms. For instance:
Stupid 1: In a socialized system, you will be told what doctors you can see and what procedures you can have.
Um... Four words. "Out of network provider." Three more: "procedure not covered." My insurance company already tells me what doctors I can see and what treatments I can get. I eagerly await the day every doctor and every hospital in the nation is "in network". If I get in a serious car accident on my way to visit my mother, I am screwed. Actually, I'm kind of screwed just in town, because I'm only allowed to use one of the three hospitals. The Catholic hospital. Women, if you want to be treated like a wrapper for a uterus, the local Catholic hospital is the place for it -- and I speak from experience here. Under nationalized healthcare, my health options will hopefully determined by my choices, not by someone else's religious beliefs.
Stupid 2: Ungodly long waiting times await you, unlike in the US.
Oh dear. I just spit my beverage all over the monitor. It didn't splash on you, did it?
I read an article a while back that said that when you equalize for population density, wait times in countries with socialized medicine are the same or shorter than in the US. Unfortunately, I've lost that link.
However, I can tell you this. It takes a minimum of 2 weeks to get an appointment with my PCP, and it's usually 3 or 4. When I needed to have a diagnostic ultrasound, I had to wait an entire month for the procedure, and then another month for the follow-up appointment so that my doctor could tell me what it said. (And I had to go to the Catholic hospital for it, where I was treated like a walking uterus. Not fun.) It took like 3 months to get an official diagnosis, when I knew what was wrong with me the day I called for the first appointment. It was the only one of the 3 most likely possibilities that matched my age group, weight, and symptoms.
When I last went to make an appointment with my gyno, mine had left the practice. If I wanted to come under the head doctor, I would have had to wait 9 months for an appointment. Because I agreed to go under the newest member, I "only" had to wait 5 weeks.
Where do people get this "short wait times in America" idea? Yes, we have prompt care clinics where you can get in same-day. They have those in other countries, too.
Also, anyone else note how the comparison is always to either Canada's system or Britain's NHS? I am not dissing either system, because they are far better than the American alternative. But neither of these is considered the best in world, either. Ironically, America's to blame for some of that. Canada's was shorted funding due to NAFTA, and from my perspective a lot of Britain's problems are coming from taking an Americanized viewpoint towards health care. But that's MHO.
Stupid 3: A universal health care system is impossible. It couldn't possibly work.
Don't tell me that something can't be done when every other developed nation in the world already does it. Just don't. Millions of people already live quite successfully under universal health care systems, and idiots are trying to tell me that those very systems are physically impossible and can't possibly exist? UGH! The stupid, it burns!
Stupid 4: Well look what socialized health care did for Massachusetts.
::head desk:: Yes, Massachusetts is a mess. And anyone who's taken two weeks of an Intro to Economics course could have told you that Massachusetts would be a mess. I predicted the day I heard about it that it would be a disaster, and my predictions have come true. In part, it's a mess specifically because most of it isn't socialized. Massachusetts' idea of "reform" was to require people to have health care. [sarcasm]Right, because the problem is that people are choosing not to have it.[/sarcasm]
First, the "reform" does absolutely nothing to help those who are uninsurable due to pre-existing medical issues. There are no good numbers for how many people this may include. I've seen estimates from 1% to 15% of the population. I actually suspect it's much higher, especially if you include people who are technically insured but will have their claims rejected for "pre-existing condition" when they submit them. I say this because, for one example, anemia is one of the conditions that will land you on the "uninsurable" list; 20% of women will have a bout of anemia at some point in their life.
Second, all the Massachusetts plan did was make insurance demand inelastic. We all know what happens to the economic supply-demand curve when demand becomes inelastic, right? Cost goes up and/or quality goes down. That is exactly what happened. A year or two into the program Massachusetts went to the insurance companies to negotiate rates for their subsidized plans, and the companies refused to give them any deals. Why should they? By law, the state had to pay no matter what. Why should the companies give them a discount if they can't say 'no' to full price? The state had no negotiating room. Yet policymakers were absolutely shocked by this frankly obvious turn of events. And because they had budgeted assuming they'd get a discount for their huge block, funding came up short and it turned into a disaster.
This is not a problem with socialized medicine. To the contrary, this is a problem inherent in capitalism, and it will be a problem in any capitalistic health care system, including the one we currently have. Health care is just about the ultimate in inelastic demand, and catastrophic care is even more inelastic then normal care. You don't have it, you die -- which is not a valid choice for most of us. And so, price goes up, quality goes down. Remember what I said in the second paragraph about Americans paying more and getting worse care per capita than any other nation? Hey, theory in action! This is capitalism. This is not some outside taint, this is not some failure due to 'impurity' or 'regulation'. This is inherent to a capitalistic system. It is one of the most basic parts of capitalistic theory. This is the kind of thing that makes economists wet themselves in joy because "look, we're right! It's just like the model said it would be!"
I cannot beat this horse enough. Demand for health care, especially catastrophic care, is so inelastic that expensive and/or (usually and) inferior care is an inherent and unavoidable part of any capitalist health care system. The only way to avoid it is for the system to not be capitalist.
OK, I think that's all I can handle for one day. That's OK. I think those are the biggest stupids, the one that most make me want to beat someone with the huge thick binder of legalese that is my insurance plan.
I think the US ought to determine which country has the best most-bang-for-the-buck system, and replicate it. Now, this may not come down to an easy choice, deciding how to balance our bang for our buck. But we're not even seriously looking at how other places have done it, and I've got a problem with that. I can tell you right off it is not going to be our current system, and it is going to be a single payer universal system. It's just the numbers, folks. Per capita, Americans pay more and get worse care than any other developed nation. Wanting it to be otherwise isn't going to change that. And the "not invented here" crap? A health care system is NOT the place for it.
Now, I am not at all saying that every position in opposition to mine is stupid. Not at all. There are plenty of intelligent arguments against my position. For just one example, adopting one of these established systems will almost certainly destroy the health insurance industry as it exists today. Personally, I think this is ultimately a good thing, but with the economy in the awful state it's in, now may not be a good time for it.
(Something I got to point out to the "Capitalism is God" people, though. Capitalism worshipers claim that capitalism is always the most efficient way to allocate resources. If that were true, replacing a capitalistic system with a socialistic system would not destroy jobs, it would create them. The most efficient system would be using the smallest amount of resources. If changing requires less resources, the the original system was not using the smallest amount of resources, and thus is not the most efficient.)
There are lots of blindingly stupid arguments against universal health care, though. Some of them, I wonder if the people saying them have ever read typical private insurance terms. For instance:
Stupid 1: In a socialized system, you will be told what doctors you can see and what procedures you can have.
Um... Four words. "Out of network provider." Three more: "procedure not covered." My insurance company already tells me what doctors I can see and what treatments I can get. I eagerly await the day every doctor and every hospital in the nation is "in network". If I get in a serious car accident on my way to visit my mother, I am screwed. Actually, I'm kind of screwed just in town, because I'm only allowed to use one of the three hospitals. The Catholic hospital. Women, if you want to be treated like a wrapper for a uterus, the local Catholic hospital is the place for it -- and I speak from experience here. Under nationalized healthcare, my health options will hopefully determined by my choices, not by someone else's religious beliefs.
Stupid 2: Ungodly long waiting times await you, unlike in the US.
Oh dear. I just spit my beverage all over the monitor. It didn't splash on you, did it?
I read an article a while back that said that when you equalize for population density, wait times in countries with socialized medicine are the same or shorter than in the US. Unfortunately, I've lost that link.
However, I can tell you this. It takes a minimum of 2 weeks to get an appointment with my PCP, and it's usually 3 or 4. When I needed to have a diagnostic ultrasound, I had to wait an entire month for the procedure, and then another month for the follow-up appointment so that my doctor could tell me what it said. (And I had to go to the Catholic hospital for it, where I was treated like a walking uterus. Not fun.) It took like 3 months to get an official diagnosis, when I knew what was wrong with me the day I called for the first appointment. It was the only one of the 3 most likely possibilities that matched my age group, weight, and symptoms.
When I last went to make an appointment with my gyno, mine had left the practice. If I wanted to come under the head doctor, I would have had to wait 9 months for an appointment. Because I agreed to go under the newest member, I "only" had to wait 5 weeks.
Where do people get this "short wait times in America" idea? Yes, we have prompt care clinics where you can get in same-day. They have those in other countries, too.
Also, anyone else note how the comparison is always to either Canada's system or Britain's NHS? I am not dissing either system, because they are far better than the American alternative. But neither of these is considered the best in world, either. Ironically, America's to blame for some of that. Canada's was shorted funding due to NAFTA, and from my perspective a lot of Britain's problems are coming from taking an Americanized viewpoint towards health care. But that's MHO.
Stupid 3: A universal health care system is impossible. It couldn't possibly work.
Don't tell me that something can't be done when every other developed nation in the world already does it. Just don't. Millions of people already live quite successfully under universal health care systems, and idiots are trying to tell me that those very systems are physically impossible and can't possibly exist? UGH! The stupid, it burns!
Stupid 4: Well look what socialized health care did for Massachusetts.
::head desk:: Yes, Massachusetts is a mess. And anyone who's taken two weeks of an Intro to Economics course could have told you that Massachusetts would be a mess. I predicted the day I heard about it that it would be a disaster, and my predictions have come true. In part, it's a mess specifically because most of it isn't socialized. Massachusetts' idea of "reform" was to require people to have health care. [sarcasm]Right, because the problem is that people are choosing not to have it.[/sarcasm]
First, the "reform" does absolutely nothing to help those who are uninsurable due to pre-existing medical issues. There are no good numbers for how many people this may include. I've seen estimates from 1% to 15% of the population. I actually suspect it's much higher, especially if you include people who are technically insured but will have their claims rejected for "pre-existing condition" when they submit them. I say this because, for one example, anemia is one of the conditions that will land you on the "uninsurable" list; 20% of women will have a bout of anemia at some point in their life.
Second, all the Massachusetts plan did was make insurance demand inelastic. We all know what happens to the economic supply-demand curve when demand becomes inelastic, right? Cost goes up and/or quality goes down. That is exactly what happened. A year or two into the program Massachusetts went to the insurance companies to negotiate rates for their subsidized plans, and the companies refused to give them any deals. Why should they? By law, the state had to pay no matter what. Why should the companies give them a discount if they can't say 'no' to full price? The state had no negotiating room. Yet policymakers were absolutely shocked by this frankly obvious turn of events. And because they had budgeted assuming they'd get a discount for their huge block, funding came up short and it turned into a disaster.
This is not a problem with socialized medicine. To the contrary, this is a problem inherent in capitalism, and it will be a problem in any capitalistic health care system, including the one we currently have. Health care is just about the ultimate in inelastic demand, and catastrophic care is even more inelastic then normal care. You don't have it, you die -- which is not a valid choice for most of us. And so, price goes up, quality goes down. Remember what I said in the second paragraph about Americans paying more and getting worse care per capita than any other nation? Hey, theory in action! This is capitalism. This is not some outside taint, this is not some failure due to 'impurity' or 'regulation'. This is inherent to a capitalistic system. It is one of the most basic parts of capitalistic theory. This is the kind of thing that makes economists wet themselves in joy because "look, we're right! It's just like the model said it would be!"
I cannot beat this horse enough. Demand for health care, especially catastrophic care, is so inelastic that expensive and/or (usually and) inferior care is an inherent and unavoidable part of any capitalist health care system. The only way to avoid it is for the system to not be capitalist.
OK, I think that's all I can handle for one day. That's OK. I think those are the biggest stupids, the one that most make me want to beat someone with the huge thick binder of legalese that is my insurance plan.
Friday, May 1, 2009
When in doubt, blame Twilight
So, this whole swine flu thing.
When it comes to news, I am the equivalent of an unvaccinated individual taking advantage of the vaccinations of the people around me. I don't put any effort into following general news myself, but so many people around me do that I find out everything I need to know about, and then some.
So, the swine flu thing comes up and I'm going "you know, I've heard that if you get it, it's more mild than the normal flu." And the people around me are all "Oh no, it's as bad as the big bad flu epidemic in 1918 and if you catch it you need to get antivirals or you die" and so on. I defer, thinking I hit a bad rumor. Then I come home and look up the real deal, and... turns out I'm right. Less severe than normal flu. It does have some similarities with the 1918 Spanish flu, but there's also key differences.
Now, there's nothing wrong with keeping in mind the lessons of the 1918. Then, there was a wave of mild flu, and then the bugger mutated into its deadly form. So by all means, we do want to contain this thing and get it to die out its natural virusy death as quickly as possible. At the same time, we should also remember that 1918 had the problems of WWI. Many of the countries hard hit with it were war-torn, low on resources, and with widely malnourished (and thus less able to fight off infection) populations.
Right now, what we actually have is a mild flu strain that transmits easily, does not yet have a vaccine available, and --like any flu-- has a potential to mutate into something nastier. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now, 1918. That date has come up recently. Isn't that the deal with Edward in Twilight, that he was made a vampire to keep him from dying in that flu epidemic? No one's drawn that exact connection yet that I've seen, but I can't help but think that it's why the mass media is jumping to that particular pandemic, when early analysis suggests it's more similar to the pandemic of 1957. (Well, and the fear-mongering "massive amounts of death" part.)
Now, another thing. As I said, I came home and looked up what I need to do if I catch the flu. One of the first things that came up was a British site, and it basically said, "Look, you don't have anything to worry about unless you've been in Mexico or the US."
Is anything else embarrassed by that juxtaposition?
This situation here is why we need some form of universal healthcare. Right now we have a very dangerous combination of a large population with poor healthcare access, and a cultural expectation that you will go into work with an illness and work through it with no regard for the coworkers you are infecting. These two things together make this sort of situation more dangerous than it has to be.
The second one, Powers That Be are trying to negate by encouraging anyone who thinks they have a flu to stay the hell home. My own company has told us that if we think we have the flu, they don't want to see us at our desks for at least a week. That's good. But, this should be the case all the time. People need to be encouraged to stay home when sick all the time.
For the first, even a bass-akward system in which basic care is provided, but more expensive care requires insurance, would be a huge step up. Imagine a system where treatment for infections, minor injuries -- the stuff your PCP covers -- are free, but if you need testing or hospitalization, you pay out of pocket/with insurance; now put this flu thing on it. I think even that half-assed universal healthcare effort would do a LOT to contain the problem. And we would at least have the option of saying that we're expanding that basic care to include anything related to the flu epidemic, so no one who thinks they have the flu should avoid treatment because they're afraid it'll lead to hospital bills they can't pay.
C'mon, country. It's time to join the rest of the world in the 21st century. I know I'll like it; they have cookies.
When it comes to news, I am the equivalent of an unvaccinated individual taking advantage of the vaccinations of the people around me. I don't put any effort into following general news myself, but so many people around me do that I find out everything I need to know about, and then some.
So, the swine flu thing comes up and I'm going "you know, I've heard that if you get it, it's more mild than the normal flu." And the people around me are all "Oh no, it's as bad as the big bad flu epidemic in 1918 and if you catch it you need to get antivirals or you die" and so on. I defer, thinking I hit a bad rumor. Then I come home and look up the real deal, and... turns out I'm right. Less severe than normal flu. It does have some similarities with the 1918 Spanish flu, but there's also key differences.
Now, there's nothing wrong with keeping in mind the lessons of the 1918. Then, there was a wave of mild flu, and then the bugger mutated into its deadly form. So by all means, we do want to contain this thing and get it to die out its natural virusy death as quickly as possible. At the same time, we should also remember that 1918 had the problems of WWI. Many of the countries hard hit with it were war-torn, low on resources, and with widely malnourished (and thus less able to fight off infection) populations.
Right now, what we actually have is a mild flu strain that transmits easily, does not yet have a vaccine available, and --like any flu-- has a potential to mutate into something nastier. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now, 1918. That date has come up recently. Isn't that the deal with Edward in Twilight, that he was made a vampire to keep him from dying in that flu epidemic? No one's drawn that exact connection yet that I've seen, but I can't help but think that it's why the mass media is jumping to that particular pandemic, when early analysis suggests it's more similar to the pandemic of 1957. (Well, and the fear-mongering "massive amounts of death" part.)
Now, another thing. As I said, I came home and looked up what I need to do if I catch the flu. One of the first things that came up was a British site, and it basically said, "Look, you don't have anything to worry about unless you've been in Mexico or the US."
Is anything else embarrassed by that juxtaposition?
This situation here is why we need some form of universal healthcare. Right now we have a very dangerous combination of a large population with poor healthcare access, and a cultural expectation that you will go into work with an illness and work through it with no regard for the coworkers you are infecting. These two things together make this sort of situation more dangerous than it has to be.
The second one, Powers That Be are trying to negate by encouraging anyone who thinks they have a flu to stay the hell home. My own company has told us that if we think we have the flu, they don't want to see us at our desks for at least a week. That's good. But, this should be the case all the time. People need to be encouraged to stay home when sick all the time.
For the first, even a bass-akward system in which basic care is provided, but more expensive care requires insurance, would be a huge step up. Imagine a system where treatment for infections, minor injuries -- the stuff your PCP covers -- are free, but if you need testing or hospitalization, you pay out of pocket/with insurance; now put this flu thing on it. I think even that half-assed universal healthcare effort would do a LOT to contain the problem. And we would at least have the option of saying that we're expanding that basic care to include anything related to the flu epidemic, so no one who thinks they have the flu should avoid treatment because they're afraid it'll lead to hospital bills they can't pay.
C'mon, country. It's time to join the rest of the world in the 21st century. I know I'll like it; they have cookies.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Teeth
Some of you may have seen this already, but for those of you who haven't, the story. Rachel Nabors is a comic book artist, living paycheck to paycheck like most young (and many not-so-young) people in US society today. She has a severe cross-bite that is causing the bone of her jaw to thin. This needs to be treated in the near future, or the damage will become too severe to fix, and she risks losing her teeth. The procedure costs $25,000. Rachel doesn't have insurance, so at the encouragement of her friends, she's asking for donations.
Now, let me toss in a little from my own experience. I'm currently wearing braces. Before they first went on, I had to have four permanent teeth removed in addition to the four wisdom teeth that shouldn't have been left there as long as they were. So, from my own experience:
Insurance wouldn't help. Not enough. It might cover the surgical portion of it, IF it's considered a medical procedure instead of a dental one. (Goofiest thing. On me, the anesthesia was covered by medical, but the extraction was dental.) If it's dental... No, not gonna help much. 8 extractions put me WELL over my yearly dental coverage limit. I ended up paying several hundred dollars out of pocket. Even if she had really good dental insurance, that would maybe knock off $2K from the $25K if the surgery was considered dental.
The orthodontia, nothing covers. No insurance if you're over 23, no federal benefits, nothing. Both insurance companies and the federal government say that orthodontia is always cosmetic for adults.
Bull shit.
I would not be having this done for cosmetic reasons. Because of my age, I've developed one exposed root and two or three partially exposed roots as a complication from the procedure (which may or may not heal after the braces are off), it's excruciatingly painful some days, and it is really helluva expensive! And, I will probably be wearing a retainer every night for the rest of my life. No, the reason I'm having it done is because my choices were have my teeth straightened and keep them for the rest of my life, or come in for more fillings every few years until they finally had to be pulled and replaced with dentures. As an added benefit, I no longer have a tooth literally cutting into my tongue, which is nice.
Furthermore, if it's cosmetic for adults, it's cosmetic for children. That's a bullshit excuse to cut off all adults from help.
This is not something Rachel "got herself into". This would not be addressed if she were somehow "more responsible" or "got a real job with insurance". She's a victim of a shitty system, and there's lots of people out there. So:
1) she could use some help. It is a serious problem, not just a cosmetic issue. Please donate if you can. (Just click on the banner, and it'll take you to a page with the full story and a donate button.)
2) it's time Americans started holding our politicians feet to the fire and demanding that this country act like it has citizens instead of walking resources fit for exploitation.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
The person Kati would like to slap today.
Dr. Nicholas Christakis, for his conclusions that obesity is contagious. He analyzed data from a study from one town (Framingham, Massachusetts), and found a correlation of friends becoming obese with other friends. "It did not even matter if the friend was hundreds of miles away - the influence remained." Conclusion: having fat friends makes you fat.
*smoldering rage*
*Slap!* *Slap!*
Hello! OBVIOUS cause-effect fallacy here. What makes people friends? Similar interests and attitudes. Similarities are further enhanced by growing up in the same town. The obesity correlation is FAR more likely to be caused by shared factors than by interpersonal influence. For hypothetical example: Joe didn't become fat because Bob did; Bob and Joe both became fat because they share a love of drawn butter and a hatred of jogging. The fact that physical separation does not affect the correlation supports my hypothesis FAR more than it supports Dr. Christakis's, and in fact should have eliminated (or at least greatly reduced attention to) the possibility of direct interpersonal influence. If your friend is hundreds of miles away, and your friendship is either not being maintained, or maintained by telephone, e-mail, and letters, you very well may not know that your friend has gained weight. If you don't, there's no way your friend's weight can affect you. But, the shared influences will remain.
I question Dr. Christakis' ability as a researcher that he did not consider (or dismissed) the more obvious and likely conclusion here in favor of the more discriminatory and fear-mongering one.
*smoldering rage*
*Slap!* *Slap!*
Hello! OBVIOUS cause-effect fallacy here. What makes people friends? Similar interests and attitudes. Similarities are further enhanced by growing up in the same town. The obesity correlation is FAR more likely to be caused by shared factors than by interpersonal influence. For hypothetical example: Joe didn't become fat because Bob did; Bob and Joe both became fat because they share a love of drawn butter and a hatred of jogging. The fact that physical separation does not affect the correlation supports my hypothesis FAR more than it supports Dr. Christakis's, and in fact should have eliminated (or at least greatly reduced attention to) the possibility of direct interpersonal influence. If your friend is hundreds of miles away, and your friendship is either not being maintained, or maintained by telephone, e-mail, and letters, you very well may not know that your friend has gained weight. If you don't, there's no way your friend's weight can affect you. But, the shared influences will remain.
I question Dr. Christakis' ability as a researcher that he did not consider (or dismissed) the more obvious and likely conclusion here in favor of the more discriminatory and fear-mongering one.
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