This is just a brief coda to the Congressional action on healthcare. There’s a little bit left for lawmakers to do, but I hope this is the last political post from me on the issue. I do plan to continue investigating and explaining the economics of health care and, of course, diabetes self-management.
But [...]

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How can you prevent mistakes? Some mistakes have extraordinary costs: airplane crashes, surgical infections, building collapses, nuclear power-plant explosions. Even the mistakes that don’t kill people — like software defects and leaky roofs — can slow you down by adding waste to a process, forcing you go back and spend time (and money) [...]

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Apologies for the overblown title to this post, but Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) just amused me to no end last night with his claim that it was Armageddon for America. I love hyperbole, especially about the Apocalypse; and it doesn’t get much more hyperbolic than saying the world is going to end in judgment [...]

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“Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to revise and expand my comments in the record.”
Yes, I’m watching C-SPAN right now, waiting for the vote. But it’s making me nervous. (Presently, Minority Leader Boehner is getting roundly shouted down. But he’s also getting some “Amens!” from the chamber, too. So there’s at least a [...]

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I have a coworker who has been keeping us updated on the “whip counts.” He has been following it with the intensity that a devotee of the Tour de France might afford each stage of the 23-day race. And he’s been reporting the results in an almost cryptic shorthand that would make a [...]

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I recently discovered Ignore the Code, a well-written, nontechnical software/design weblog by Lukas Mathis. It’s really good. Go check it out.

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This weekend we did a lot of trip planning. Preparing for an undertaking of this size — four weeks in three varied regions of a continent — is always a fine balance between ensuring that we have a place to sleep at night and leaving enough freedom to do whatever we want with a [...]

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Have a good design idea for a product to help manage diabetes? Want some help (i.e., prize money, access to design experts, introductions to venture funders, etc.) with turning your idea into a real product?
If so, enter the 2010 DiabetesMine™ Design Challenge before April 30, 2010.
Last year’s grand prize winner was a design to [...]

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I would have to say that I have a generally cheery, optimistic, “can do” disposition that is somewhat tempered by my belief that we have to persevere through adversity brought on by those who subscribe to a variety of reactionary attitudes. (My endearing, sarcastic cynicism stems — most likely — from the recognition that [...]

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Updated on 5 March 2010 at 8:30AM: I added a few more questions that were written down at the office.
It seems like I have a lot of answers about healthcare, but I really don’t. However, I do have some anecdotes and a few facts. And I have done some research when prompted or [...]

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There are three questions I ask whenever I look at potential healthcare changes:

How will it improve patient health outcomes?
How will it contain or reduce the cost of healthcare?
How will it increase access to healthcare for all Americans?

The first question focuses on the basic purpose of medicine: making or keeping us healthy. In general, it [...]

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I wanna model.

Modeling Sucks – Handsome Boy …
No, not that kind of modeling. And I don’t want one of those other kinds of models, either. (Although it’s certainly nice to watch Heidi Klum every week on Project Runway.)

I want to develop a model that helps me figure out how to balance exercise, insulin, [...]

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