Random Musings of The Week

Its time again for a post on some interesting articles that I read this past week.

First, lets starts with the most important topic of discussion: Healthcare. Every body keeps talking about the rising healthcare costs. The debate in Washington to overhaul the healthcare system has been centered on two issues: Making sure that everybody who is eligible can buy health insurance and how do you control the out of control healthcare costs. When it comes to cost, one of the drivers that is often overlooked is the rate of hospital acquired infection. They add significant cost to the overall care of the patients. Yet preventing them does not take rocket science. Its as simple as providers washing their hands before a procedure, or touching a patient etc. Read an interesting conversation with one of the Physicians leaders who is spearheading efforts to reduce rates of hospital acquired infections.

The second article is also about reducing cost of healthcare. Its an idea (though I admit its far more radical just washing your hands) that is being considered by one of the lawmakers in the state of Vermont. If this lawmaker has his way and can muster enough support in the legislature, then hospitals would be banned from advertising their services to consumers.

This third article is about the role of the media, in an age where information can travel as fast as the thought process itself. And when information travels so fast, how does an individual know if the information has been filtered for its accuracy and whether it can be trusted. This conversation between Fareed Zakaria and Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, reminded me of the infamous death panels. Eric Schmidt hits the nail on the head when he says:

We're in a situation where we're going from a model where everything you saw was true and was highly metered -- that is, highly controlled -- to an explosion of information where not everything you see is true. And it's very difficult for humans to sort out what's true and what's false.
This will be the bane of politicians. It will be the bane of people like yourself, people everywhere. How do I know that this is true?
And the problem gets worse with real-time information and the fact that people are willing to say things that aren't true, and so forth and so on.

Check out my other Random Musing posts 1,2,3, 4