In early March 2020 I began to write posts about Covid 19. There were few places that people could get good information that addressed the big picture and made it possible to understand what was happening. It seemed like I should write some things that made sense of it all. I wanted to write about what I knew, or thought I knew was true, since there was so much misinformation circulating. So, during the second half of March, I wrote nine blog posts. What did I say and was it true? In my very first post I talked about how everything would change . How we would burn less carbon, we would learn how not to travel for work, how we would learn not to transmit other viruses, like influenza. That was all true . The demand for gasoline was so low that oil prices dropped to a fraction of the cost of production. Planes didn't fly much. We haven't had a flu season to speak about due to infection control measures. I said we should have massively expanded testing because it would allow p
The cost of health care in the US is higher than anywhere else in the world, and yet we are not healthier than our peer nations. In fact, in terms of such measures as infant mortality and life span, we don't measure up. Why is this? Many people involved in providing or receiving care have some pretty good ideas about what costs so much, and what we can do to reduce costs and improve quality. Sharing these stories is an important step in creating affordable universal health care.