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Tag: Kim Bellard

Quantum Theory of Health

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By KIM BELLARD

We’re pretty proud of modern medicine.  We’ve accumulated a very intricate understanding of how our body works, what can go wrong with it, and what are options are for tinkering with it to improve its health.  We’ve got all sorts of tests, treatments, and pills for it, with more on the way all the time.

However, there has been increasing awareness of the impact our microbiota has on our health, and I think modern medicine is reaching the point classical physics did when quantum physics came along.  

Image credit: E. Edwards/JQI

Classical physics pictured the atom as kind of a miniature solar system, with well-defined particles revolving in definite orbits around the solid nucleus.  In quantum physics, though, particles don’t have specific positions or exact orbits, combine/recombine, get entangled, and pop in and out of existence.  At the quantum level everything is kind of fuzzy, but quantum theory itself is astoundingly predictive.  We’re fooled into thinking our macro view of the universe is true, but our perceptions are wrong.   

So it may be with modern medicine.  Our microbiota (including both the microbiome and mycobiome) both provide the fuzziness and dictate a significant portion of our health.   

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Your Wealth is Your Health

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By KIM BELLARD

We’ve been spending a lot of time these past few years debating healthcare reform.  First the Affordable Care Act was debated, passed, implemented, and almost continuously litigated since.  Lately the concept of Medicare For All, or variations on it, has been the hot policy debate.  Other smaller but still important issues like high prescription drug prices or surprise billing have also received significant attention.

As worthy as these all are, a new study suggests that focusing on them may be missing the point.  If we’re not addressing wealth disparities, we’re unlikely to address health disparities.  

It has been well documented that there are considerable health disparities in the U.S., attributable to socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, gender, even geography, among other factors.  Few would deny that they exist.  Many policy experts and politicians seem to believe that if we could simply increase health insurance coverage, we could go a long way to addressing these disparities, since coverage should reduce financial burdens that may be serving as barriers to care that may be contributing to them.

Universal coverage may well be a good goal for many reasons, but we should temper our expectations about what it might achieve in terms of leveling the health playing field.

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Healthcare Might Look Good in Plaid

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By KIM BELLARD

I don’t really follow FinTech — I can’t even keep up with HealthTech! — but it caught my eye when Visa announced that it was acquiring FinTech company Plaid for $5.3b; a 2018 funding round valued the company at $2.65b.  A 100% increase in valuation within a year suggests that something important is going on, or at least that people think something is.  

I suspect there may be some lessons for healthcare in there somewhere.  

For those of you who are equally as unfamiliar with FinTech’s terrain, Plaid has been described as the “plumbing” that supports many other FinTech companies.  Launched in 2013, one in four people with a U.S. bank account are now believed to use Plaid to connect with 2,600 FinTech developers connected to more than 11,000 financial institutions.  Its customers include Acorns, Betterment, Chime, Coinbase, Gemini, Robinhood, Transferwise, and Venmo.  Plaid claims it connects with 200 million consumer accounts. 

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Healthcare Needs Some IHOPs

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By KIM BELLARD

The New York Times had an article that surprised me: Current Job: Award Winning Chef.  Education: IHOP.   The article, by food writer Priya Krishna, profiled how many high-end chefs credit their training in — gasp! — chain restaurants, such as IHOP, as being invaluable for their success. 

I immediately thought of Atul Gawande’s 2012 article in The New Yorker: What Big Medicine Can Learn From the Cheesecake Factory.

Ms. Krishna mentions several well-known chefs “who prize the lessons they learned — many as teenagers — in the scaled-up, streamlined world of chain restaurants.”  In addition to IHOP, chefs mentioned experiences at chains such as Applebee’s, California Pizza Kitchen, Chipotle, Hillstone, Houston’s, Howard Johnson’s, Olive Garden, Panda Express, Pappas, Red Lobster, Waffle House, and Wendy’s.  

Some of the lessons learned are instructive.  “It was pretty much that the customer is always right,” one chef mentioned.  Another said she learned “how to be quick, have a good memory, and know the timing of everything.”  A third spoke to the focus that was drilled into all employees: “Hot food hot. Cold food cold. Money to the bank. Clean restrooms,” 

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Simple Steps to Meaningful Health Reform

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By KIM BELLARD

Picture 79 Now that health reform at the federal level seems to have hit an impasse, Congress and the Administration are scrambling to see if anything can be salvaged this year.  Although both the House and Senate bills are severely flawed, each falling short both on true health reform and on fiscal responsibility, it would be a shame if we walked away from these efforts with nothing to show for it.

Doing something about those “evil” insurance companies remains a primary target, with brave talk still coming out about removing the ability of health insurers to consider pre-existing conditions in accepting new applicants.

This singular focus ignores two important facts – first, that this problem is primarily in the individual market, since such use of medical underwriting/preexisting conditions exclusions is largely absent from the predominant group health insurance market, and second, that such restrictions will inevitably lead to higher costs.  The latter statement is not fear-mongering; it is Economics 101.Continue reading…