Tag Archives: data

Obamacare reality: It is working

At a time in the US when all of the Republicans presidential candidates are declaring Obamacare a failure which needs to be undone, it is worth noting the REALITY that it is succeeding in its primary purpose of covering more American with health insurance. It does not mandate insurance coverage, but the subsidies and tax penalties for not having insurance are motivating more people to get insurance. 20 million more people now have health insurance than did before. (Click on graphs for a clearer image.)

 20 Million Gained Health Insurance From Obamacare, President Says
The Huffington Post

Uninsured rate Gallop-HealthwaysEven though cost containment was not its primary goal, Obamacare is also reducing, not increasing, costs of health care.
Since many people don’t trust the government, here are some private sector slides.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers, an actuary firm not known for being political, forecasts that health expenditure
cost growth in 2016 will continue to slow down.

http://www.pwc.com/us/en/health-industries/behind-the-numbers/assets/pwc-hri-medical-cost-trend-chart-pack-2016.pdf

Here are my two favorite slides from their chart pack. Note the changes since 2010.

pwc trends gdpand nhe

My view is that the above figure is misleading, since the decline in rates of growth did not start in 1961, but still the slow growth since 2010 is clearly evident.

 

spending growth rate PWC 2016

Obamacare is working. We just don’t have enough leaders and media telling us this.

 

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Let me know if you would like to be added as a BUHealthFriends subscriber by emailing ellisrp at bu.edu

Playing video games does not predict voilent behavoir in children

(Reposted from The Incidental Economist) This November 2013 UK study confirms what other studies have shown, which is that playing video games does not predict psychosocial adjustment problems in young children. Even watching 3 hours of TV per day in the UK has no meaningful association.

I also reposted my favorite graph about videos and gun violence from an earlier TIE posting.

Perhaps the 50th anniversary of  JFK's death, done with a $20 mail order rifle, is yet another good time to refocus on gun control.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Randy

The dangers of TV and video games
Posted: 25 Nov 2013 06:01 AM PST
From Archives of Diseases of Childhood, “
Do television and electronic games predict children’s psychosocial adjustment? Longitudinal research using the UK Millennium Cohort Study
“:

BACKGROUND: Screen entertainment for young children has been associated with several aspects of psychosocial adjustment. Most research is from North America and focuses on television. Few longitudinal studies have compared the effects of TV and electronic games, or have investigated gender differences.

PURPOSE: To explore how time watching TV and playing electronic games at age 5 years each predicts change in psychosocial adjustment in a representative sample of 7 year-olds from the UK.

METHODS: Typical daily hours viewing television and playing electronic games at age 5 years were reported by mothers of 11 014 children from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Conduct problems, emotional symptoms, peer relationship problems, hyperactivity/inattention and prosocial behaviour were reported by mothers using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Change in adjustment from age 5 years to 7 years was regressed on screen exposures; adjusting for family characteristics and functioning, and child characteristics.

RESULTS: Watching TV for 3 h or more at 5 years predicted a 0.13 point increase (95% CI 0.03 to 0.24) in conduct problems by 7 years, compared with watching for under an hour, but playing electronic games was not associated with conduct problems. No associations were found between either type of screen time and emotional symptoms, hyperactivity/inattention, peer relationship problems or prosocial behaviour. There was no evidence of gender differences in the effect of screen time.

CONCLUSIONS: TV but not electronic games predicted a small increase in conduct problems. Screen time did not predict other aspects of psychosocial adjustment. Further work is required to establish causal mechanisms.

Since we’re never going to have an RCT of TV or video games, these kinds of prospective cohort studies are important. In this one, they followed more than 11,000 children in the UK. They found that watching TV for three hours or more (a day!) at 5 years associated with a higher chance of having a conduct disorder at 7 years versus kids who watched less than an hour a day. How much of a difference? A 0.13 point increase in conduct problems. That corresponds, according to the article, to “0.09 of a SD [standard deviation] increase in age 7 years conduct score. Do you understand now? I don’t either.Anyway, the authors said it was a “small increase in conduct problems”.Video games? No effect.Yes, these are young kids, and it’s unlikely that they have been playing much GTA 5 or Battlefield 4. So I’ll look forward to more data. But that this point, it’s hard to point to a large study like this and find a smoking gun. Figuratively or literally.More on this topic here and here.@aaronecarrollShare

This is my favorite graph on this topic. From here

http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/video-game-chart-no-trendline.jpg

AHRF/ARF 2012-13 data is available free

AHRF=Area Health Resource File (Formerly ARF)

2012-2013 ARHF can now be downloaded at no cost.

The 2012-2013 ARF data files and documentation can now be downloaded. Click the link below to learn how to download ARF documentation and data.

http://arf.hrsa.gov/

“The Area Health Resources Files (AHRF)—a family of health data resource
products—draw from an extensive county-level database assembled annually from
over 50 sources. The AHRF products include county and state ASCII files, an MS Access
database, an AHRF Mapping Tool and Health Resources Comparison Tools (HRCT). These
products are made available at no cost by HRSA/BHPR/NCHWA to inform health resources
planning, analysis and decision making..”

"The new AHRF Mapping Tool enables users to compare the availability of healthcare providers as well as environmental factors impacting health at the county and state levels."