The Death Panel

Is Obamacare going down in flames? Is Sarah Palin’s “Death Panel” comment the culprit? Is the government going to start killing its own citizens? In Sarah Palin’s Facebook post, she explains her concerns by quoting from section 1223 of HR 3200: Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five…

How to make your city clean like Tokyo

I just recently returned from my honeymoon in Tokyo, Japan and Bali, Indonesia.  One thing anyone visitng Tokyo will notice is that it is very clean .  Further, Japan has the most advanced toilets in the world.  On the other hand, most Balinese burn their trash.  Why is Tokyo so clean when other world cities…

Getting Electronic Medical Records Right

Currently, only 1.5% of U.S. hospitals have electronic records systems covering all their clinical units; an additional 7.6% have systems in at least one such hospital unit (Jha et al. 2009).  This low EMR usage rate is astounding, especially since the RAND Corporation found that using EMR could save up to $77 billion annually.  The…

Out of Office Message

Today marks my last blog post as Jason Shafrin, the single, avant garde Healthcare Economist.  Yesterday I was lucky enough to marry a beautiful, intelligent, creative woman that will make me happy the rest of my life.  We are heading off on a 12 day honeymoon on Tuesday.  Blog posting will resume on Monday, August…