Can’t we just cool off!

Enough of this heat!

Enough already! We’re all sick of this heat. It’s gross and disgusting. We’re lucky in N.C. to have power after what’s happened in so many other places. Day after day of 100 degrees is getting on everyone’s nerves.

Cooling off needed on ACA, too

I wish that now that the Supreme Court has not overturned the individual mandate or other key features that the country could cool off about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and get on with it. Among other benefits already being realized from the ACA are the more than 6 million young adults who now can continue to be enrolled in their parents’ health care plans. In the New England Journal of Medicine last week, McDonough wrote “In a less hostile political environment, congressional Democrats and Republicans would collaborate in assessing, modifying and reconstructing many ACA elements, large and small — typical activities after the launch of any major law.” Instead, they continue to fight.

Nod to behavioral science

Yesterday’s New York Times included several otherwise unrelated articles that shared one feature: a central theme of behavior change. The most interesting was a commentary by Richard Thaler, the Noble Prize winning economist and behavioral scientist who reported on experiments he and colleagues have been running in England to test policy alternatives. They showed a dramatic increase in the percentage of tax delinquent citizens who paid their overdue taxes after being exposed to a message that communicated the large proportion of fellow citizens who were paid up. In England, Prime Minister David Cameron created the Behavioral Insight Team to bring behavioral science evidence to policy making. What a great idea! Thaler says that putting behavioral scientists at the table, along with lawyers and economists, has led to better decisions and policies. We should do that in this country.

It’s supposed to be cooler tomorrow. Let’s hope so.

Happy Monday,

Barbara