A primer on health reform

I've been meaning to blog about health reform forever, since that's what I do with my days. But the issue is so big, it's been hard to know where to start. But someone recently asked me for a primer on the issues, so the rest of this post is lifted verbatim from the email I sent him.

One of the challenges in the health reform debate is that the system is such a mess, nearly everyone who works in health policy agrees that we should do SOMETHING, no matter how imperfect. So nearly every reputable source I'm going to give you is going to be in favor of any legislation that comes out of a Democratic Congress.

The other challenge is that until the past few weeks, the proposals for how to make all this happen have been vague, and everyone favors reform but doesn't necessarily care that much about the details. Also, legislative analysis apparently bores audiences, so there's not a lot of specifics on the different legislation for a non-policy audience.

With those provisos, here's my best attempt at a list:

Eight Myths About Health Care Reform - From the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a good primer on the disinformation

In Search of Health Reform - An interactive feature that gives a good overview of the problem and the proposed solutions.

The Experts vs. The Public on Health Reform - The CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit health policy foundation, takes on how health policy experts view the issues, versus how the public views the issues.

This is the point where I take a break to say that I am a health policy wonk, and that the information I added below might take you into minutiae that you really just don't care about.

Not Enough Audacity - Paul Krugman makes the case for a public plan.

Fiscal Suicide Ahead - And David Brooks argues why we need cost containment, and why we're unlikely to get it.

The Cost Conundrum - A really influential article about the structural problems that Brooks is talking about above.

The Risk Pool - This is an article that Malcolm Gladwell wrote in 2006. It's not really central to the issues being debated right now, but I think it provides a compelling framework for how we think about risk and insurance. Anything risky is best spread out among as many people as possible. This means that buying health insurance is harder and harder the fewer people are in your "risk pool". It's why we have Medicare (old people are terrible risks) and why people want a mandate that everyone have health insurance (more people spreading the risk), and so this issue is what underlies a lot of the fundamentals of health reform.

Finally, I tag bookmarks on Delicious with healthreform when I remember.

Pandora Whining

I listen to Pandora a LOT.  Several hours a day, every day.  In July they added a limit to their ad supported service limiting "free" listening to 40 hours a month.  I got an email saying "although this change affects only 10% of our listeners, you are one of them!"

Once you reach the 40 hour limit, you have two options.  You can pay $1 to continue to use the ad supported service for the rest of the month, or you can pay $36 for the year to upgrade to the premium, non-ad supported service.  I actually think this is a fairly nice way to deal with generating more revenue while keeping the service affordable.  BUT I'm annoyed with two things about this arrangement.

First, Pandora has made the interface for the $1 a month option cumbersome.  You have to wait until you actually run out of time for the month and then enter your credit card number.  It enters it as a one time payment, which means you need to type in your credit card number every month.  This is obviously intended to steer you to the $36/year premium service.

Which brings me to my second gripe.  I feel like I am absolutely paying enough for my ad-supported Pandora already.  Somehow from my music taste, Pandora's ads can divine my needs and desires more readily than even I can.  So far, I have purchased Dove deodorant with matching body spray, renewed my passport, and purchased Venus Spa razor blades, pretty much all based off Pandora advertising.  They know about my secret shame, enjoying Bud Light with Lime, and are trying to get me to buy some of that too.

As it turns out, I ran out of Pandora credit yesterday, so I'll be using other free services for another day until it starts over.  It's probably worth it for me to just upgrade to the paid service, but it will take me a bit to feel like it's not being imposed on me.

Quinoa, Black Bean, and Corn Salad

Quinoa is a South American grain that holds its shape nicely in salads. It's nutty and full of protein. I made this recipe up pretty spontaneously, because I knew I had quinoa and black beans in the pantry and limes in the fridge. I love bean and grain salads, especially in the summer.

I think next time I'd adjust the proportions a bit (more quinoa!) and add some chopped cilantro. I also don't think the roasted corn makes that big a difference. Also, the dressing proportions are made up. I don't measure.

1/2 c. dry quinoa, rinsed
1 c. water
1.5 c. canned black beans, rinsed
1.5 c. frozen corn kernels, thawed (I used Trader Joes roasted corn)
1/2 c. chopped red bell pepper
1 serrano pepper, seeded and chopped
juice of one lime
2 T. (?) olive oil
dash of hot sauce
1/2 tsp. oregano (Mexican if you have it)
1/2 tsp. cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Add the quinoa and water to a pan, bring to a boil, turn down to low and let simmer until water is absorbed, 10-15 minutes. Transfer quinoa to a bowl and let cool. Add beans, corn, and peppers. In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Add dressing to salad, stir, and put in the fridge to chill. Enjoy!

Web Browser ABC Meme

I just discovered the "Page Info" stuff in Firefox 3.5. I'm not sure if this is new or not, but it allowed me the opportunity to see how many times I've visited certain domains. Apparently I reload Facebook an average of 57 times a day.1 Oops!

And with that in mind, I now bring you the ABCs of my AwesomeBar.

(Instructions: type the letter ‘a’ in your browser location bar and choose the first match from the dropdown. Repeat for each letter of the alphabet.)

A: http://asitebyanyother.name/
B: Blind Pig Music
C: Chalk, Cheese, and a Beard
D: Delicious
E: Etherpad
F: ubiquity-firefox | Google Groups
G: Troubleshooting Ubiquity Interface Problems
H: ubiquity-firefox: log
I: isoHunt - the BitTorrent and P2P search engine
J: Jonathan Coulton
K: Pulling it Together: 19.7 - Kaiser Family Foundation
L: Mozilla Labs » Ubiquity
M: Ann Arbor, MI to Monson, Massachusetts
N: NYTimes
O: Orbitz Travel: Airline Tickets, Cheap Airfare, Hotels, Vacations, Car Rentals & Cruises
P: planet ubiquity
Q: Twitter / Search - ubiquity
R: Recovery.gov
S: Songza
T: The Ride - Ann Arbor Transportation Authority
U: ubiquity-firefox | Google Groups
V: How We're Releasing Ubiquity 0.5 on Vimeo
W: Wowhead: You'll be back.
X: xkcd - A Webcomic - Form
Y: YouTube - Hey Paul Krugman (A song, A plea)
Z: Shoes, Clothing, Handbags, Sunglasses | Zappos.com Free Shipping

Only surprise is that Pandora didn't show up, although the URL of planet ubiquity is filled with Ps. Other than that, it looks just like my life. Music, ubiquity, nerding. I guess I feel like I read a lot more health news and a lot more wikipedia than this list would indicate.

1: Is it wrong that I want to put a methodological note here? I've had this Firefox profile for 305 days, which I guessed with terrifying accuracy and then actually checked with a date calc.

Del.icio.us

I finally bit the bullet and signed up for Delicious. I have resisted this for some time, because I hated the URL for the most part, but also didn't grasp the value of saving my bookmarks on the web. I even blogged about how much I hated it.

Fast forward to today - I signed up three weeks ago and I LOVE it. Not only is it a great way to make my bookmarks searchable, but I also can share things I like with friends. The Firefox addon means it's integrated into my existing browsing habits almost seamlessly, and the tagging feature is actually fairly useable.

I'll admit part of the appeal is that I read so much on the Internet these days, I kind of want a way to catalog that. So when someone is like "how do you know this?" I can actually just be like "go read what I have read".

Here's my regular bookmark feed: http://delicious.com/heatherpedia

I've been tagging things "eggnog" for sharing with family and friends that are about the stuff I'm interested in, but for a more general audience. You can find those things here: http://delicious.com/heatherpedia/eggnog

Silence of the Lamps

This is the first "web comic" I ever went crazy for, back in 1997.

Weekday Banana Walnut Oatmeal

I saw a post on Summer Tomato for Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal labeled a "weekend breakfast", since cooking regular rolled oats takes a little while. Like Darya, I prefer real oatmeal to instant or quick, and I also am not really a bright sunshiney person in the morning. If it's more complicated than turning on the coffeemaker, I will probably not do it on a weekday morning.

This oatmeal recipe is that easy. And cheap! And tasty! I use Trader Joe's unsweetened soymilk, so the honey makes it tastier. It can certainly be remixed with any combo of toppings based on your whims and what's in the fridge.


Banana-Walnut Oatmeal

1/2 c. rolled oats
3/4 to 1 c. milk or soymilk
sliced banana
walnuts
1 tbsp. honey

The night before you want to eat this, put the oats and soymilk into a bowl and put it in the refrigerator.

In the morning, take it out and stir, then pop it in the microwave for 2 minutes. Remove, stir, and microwave another 1-2 minutes. Top with banana, walnuts, and honey. Yum!

Wayback Machine

While trying to update a broken link on Wikipedia, I came upon some adorably outdated articles I wrote for The Dartmouth my freshman year in college. The first is a meditation on how overpowered iMacs are as public BlitzMail machines. Check out those system specs! (These same iMacs would later spawn the great pink eye epidemic of 2001-2002.)

The second was an article about some of my favorite websites at the time. Oddly, some of those sites are still around, and are hilarious!

• Poorly Drawn Lamp Page
• The T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project
• The Infamous Exploding Whale (Ha! This is what things were like before YouTube, kids!)

The remaining sites have vanished into the tubes, never to be seen again.

And finally, I don't want to forget my 1998 interview with Archimedies Plutonium. The article is nothing special, but you really should read about the man himself, or you may live out the rest of your life without understanding that the whole universe is actually one giant plutonium atom. He is also apparently a usenet celebrity, and has quite the Wikipedia user page. For anyone out there still wondering, he actually did scrub pots at Dartmouth, until he was replaced by an automatic dishwasher, attempted to sue the school, and subsequently left Hanover because the people there were too backward to handle his science.

Must Listens on the Web

I started my summer internship at the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation on Tuesday. One of the perks is I get to listen to music. One of the drawbacks is that music has to mostly come from the web. There is of course Pandora and Last.fm, but sometimes you want a whole album, or a specific artist, or a playlist that exactly matches the way researching the ROI on high quality preschool programs makes you feel. And for those things, my friends, I have compiled a list for you.

• Exclusive First Listen on NPR Music – I am listening to John Vanderslice’s new album on here right now, which is fantastic.
  
• Wilco (The Album) – this is a one off rather than a constant resource, but Wilco’s new album is streamed in its entirety.
  
• Songza.com – basically an aggregator of streaming content from YouTube and iMeem, among others, you can make playlists on here. My own stream has whatever playlist I’m into right now, and the blog has featured playlists each day.
• YouTube – sometimes it’s easier to just use the YouTube interface to save more than one playlist. Two of mine are songs I loved at 13 and one of Irish folk singer Lisa Hannigan.
  
• Twitter music Monday – this one takes a bit of work. On Mondays, people on Twitter post songs they like. Those songs may rock, or they may suck. It’s part of what makes it awesome.
• Hype Machine Radio – this is one of the cooler music aggregator ideas going on out there. Basically they aggregate music blogs, see what is trending, and make those songs available. The last three songs were T.I., Jordin Sparks, and Sunny Day Real Estate. Our collective consciousness has spotty but intriguing taste in music.
• Music for Busy People – by invite only. If you know me, you should ask me for an invite. Makes me feel cool in a totally lazy way.
• South By Southwest Music Player - songs from this years SXSW artists (it's a link in the right hand column)
  

tofu and self-nurturing

The past month has been 100% crazytown for me. Sarah came home to Massachusetts, so I took the week of Martin Luther King day to fly back there to visit for a week. Not content just to see my sister after a year and a half, I also managed to dart down to New Haven to see Grace, and from there we went to NYC to see Ted and meet up with Chris and Zach too. I returned to Ann Arbor for five days, only to leave again the following Saturday for the National Health Policy Conference in Washington DC.

That's a whole lot of awesome life experience packed into one month, especially if that month also happens to be the first month of a new semester. And while I value those experiences, all that activity left me feeling very drained and like my head was just spinning all the time.

Last semester I often stayed on campus until 7, 8, or 9 pm to study or work. I am definitely more productive when I just keep plugging away on campus, but a certain level of stress brings on rapidly diminishing returns in the form of me needing to sit around and do nothing for a while (an evening, a weekend, the whole of winter break) to recover. So I've settled on a gentler approach. When I'm done with classes/committments most days, I come home. I continue to work here, but I feel much more relaxed in my own home, changed into loungey clothes, in a comfy chair.

With all of this lounging, it's tempting to pop a Lean Cuisine into the microwave and keep reading. But as I mentioned in my last post, I've been cooking dinner. Real food. It's glorious. Tonight I made a Garam Masala Tofu Scramble from 101 Cookbooks, and it has reminded me the extent to which simple vegetarian food is my comfort food. I've been out of the cooking swing of things for so long, the concept of weeknight meals had begun to elude me. Now that I'm doing it again, I remember how much cooking relaxes me. Chopping vegetables is meditative, sauteeing is magical, and relaxing with the result is deeply satisfying. Mmmmmmm, tofu.

warm chickpea and broccoli salad

I've been craving vegetables for several days now. Not just like "I could use a salad". Elaborate fantasies about roasted beets and fennel salads.

I've really enjoyed reading the New York Times series recipes for health. This past week was broccoli, and although broccoli isn't something I really need a recipe for, new ideas are always good. I made the warm chickpea and broccoli salad. It came out nicely, although I would caution you that shaking the covered bowl to distribute the dressing might make the broccoli crumble a bit. I'd probably add a little more broccoli next time, although I have no idea if I used the amount called for in the recipe.

I've decided to make time in my day for cooking dinner. It helps me to feel less rushed, and more in touch with what I need to be balanced and healthy and calm. After dinner tonight (and last night) I took the time to get coffee ready to go for the morning and throw smoothie ingredients together too.

Sleeeeeepy! Night!

24 minutes of blogging

I started my second semester yesterday, and I'm sitting here in my health services survey class with 24 minutes of time left on my battery. So here's 24 minutes of my thoughts!

My first semester ended on a really positive note. My grades were good, but most importantly, I really saw my ability to focus and get shit done. Honestly, when I started, that was my biggest worry. As a recalcitrant procrastinator when I was an undergraduate and even when I was taking grad classes in Arizona, I became pretty convinced getting anything done was always going to be a struggle. But in the middle of the semester, something changed. I realized I wanted to be here, and that this work was important to me. I also realized that the sky wasn't going to fall if my work wasn't perfect. Yup, that's right, I'm a perfectionist who procrastinates, imagine that.

This semester is looking okay so far. I'm excited for my regression class and for econ, and less so for the health services survey class. My politics seminar has a lot of potential, and I'm oddly excited for a presentation-based class. I'm going to make the world's most awesome PowerPoints. I'm also trying to get into a class on decision-making and risk simulation stuff, in my ongoing attempt to be 70% as cool as Nate Silver. I want to learn Monte Carlo simulation!

Kitties!

Sometimes you just need something to take you to your happy place:

Ah, Internets

Here is what has been distracting me today:


For those of you not familiar with (fluff)friends, it's like a tamagotchi for your Facebook profile. You can pet it and feed it and it can race with other people's fluffs. I'm sort of in love with my pet radish, who in turn has a pet tofu. I can almost understand the pain of the 7th grader in my gym class senior year (I was a teachers assistant in gym my senior year for reasons still not fully understood by me) who had her tamagotchi thrown over the fence by a very mean boy. The background picture and speech bubble are new as of today. Yup, I can have a politcal virtual radish if I want it.

I need to dig myself out of the long tail of the Internet and back into the stuff I have to do for tomorrow.

Great Obama Video

100th post!

I'm going to use this opportunity to let all you googlers know that I have no idea if Zach Braff has a beard or not, but this picture seems to indicate he does.

A glimpse into my wikibrain

The last seven wikipedia pages I have visited:

1. Juan Soler
2. Cataplexy
3. Burma-Shave
4. Frank Drake
5. Savasana
6. Abaya
7. Benazir Bhutto

Why 7? Because it's the most illustratively biased sample!

blogging from my iPod

is less than ideal. Does anyone know how to copy/paste on the iPod touch or iPhone? Is it possible to save images off the web? At least I'm getting better at the keyboard.

Yes we can!

I love the song in this video, "Fake Empire" by The National, but the video's pretty sweet too.

Wikipalin

This entry from Sarah Palin's Wikipedia talk page is just too funny not to share. Some dude watches a YouTube video where he decides Sarah Palin looks cross-eyed. He then creates an account on Wikipedia called "Esotropic Flautist" (she's playing the flute in the video) to discuss why her vision issues haven't been discussed in the mainstream media. The internet sure is changing the discourse...by making it stupid!