Healthcare Links!!!

by Alex

Robert Reich wrote a great piece in the Wall Street Journal a little while ago about the debate over the mandate. He is referring to the ongoing debate between Sen. Clinton and Obama. Should people be mandated to have health insurance under their plans? Reich argues that it really only comes down to 3% of the population. Check it out here.

A Reuturs article writes about the still present racial disparity in treatment of black Americans. Check it out here.

If you are at all interested in spending and its relationship to life expectancy in healthcare systems, you really need to check this out. Very clean, straight up graph from the blog The Big Picture. Look who the outlier is here.

Daniel Engber on Slate argues that the cost related to obesity are really blown out of proportion. There is a debate going on about how much we spend in treating obesity. Engber says that it really isn't that much comparatively. Check it out here.

Keep warm and surf the world-wide web a bit!

Polling Update

by Alex

Its Friday night and polling ended about two hours ago. We worked from 5 to 9 today and had about 7-8 phones going at over that time. I believe the final tally for the night was 66. That puts us 10 short of 400, or almost two-thirds of the way done.

We continue polling tomorrow morning at 11. This session will conclude at 7. With so many hours, I feel as if we can get to 500 by tomorrow. 600 is the number. While we are taking a little longer than expected, we feel pretty good getting there. Now, when that will be is anyways guess.

Derek's Reaction

by Derek

It's amazing how much we're learning about the US healthcare system by actually being immersed in a project like this. Right now we're in the midst of conducting a public opinion poll, which is interesting... and very taxing. We're trying for 600 respondents, and have about 250-300 after a week of polling. It seems we're all starting to finally figure out what works in terms of getting people to stay on the phone line and participate in the survey. Today, we're taking a much needed break from polling and are gearing up to hit the phones hard again tomorrow.

I think we're all a bit apprehensive and excited about our upcoming public assembly. It seems were generating a lot of interest in the community, there's just a question about how many of these people will actually show up. It's an uncomfortable feeling that the success or failure of this event is somewhat out of our hands. I know that we'll have the event well-planned, it's just difficult to anticipate how many people will actually show up. I continue to remain cautiously optimistic.