Very cool article about how we view and respond to national problems

[Jenksismyhero]

http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_13_a_murray.html

[Balta1701]

Very interesting and worth-while article.

 

I certainly think that some of their points are completely correct, and I think there are other circumstances we can apply it to as well. Many other problematic issues follow a power-law distribution, such that they can be fixed by just cracking down on the worst of the bunch.

 

For 2 more examples: 1; pollution from power plants. Most of the new power plants are no where nearly as polluting as older ones. But the older ones stay online, because it is cheaper to buy a lot of lobbyists than it is to upgrade the plants. So we spend years haggling over legislation requiring improvements to new plants, while the big polluting older plants fail to be upgraded, and then every time the deadline comes up for them to be upgraded, we come up with some sort of "New Source Review" policy letting them off the hook.

 

2. Medical malpractice. Big one here; a huge majority of malpractice complaints come from patiets of doctors who have multiple complaints. But to this day, the public does not receive full access to that sort of information, and it's not something a lot of people disclose. So in other words, the people with the most malpractice suits against them just keep going on practicing medicine and racking up the lawsuits. If there were some method of disciplining poor performing doctors, the malpractice problem in this country could be dramatically cut. Instead however the policy currently is to limit malpractice lawsuit claims, punishing the victims instead of punishing the one making the mistakes.

[Texsox]

In downtown Reno, food for the homeless was plentiful: there was a Gospel kitchen and Catholic Services, and even the local McDonald's fed the hungry. The panhandling was for liquor, and the liquor was anything but harmless.

 

I never really stopped to consider that. I assume most cities are like that.

 

This is what really interested me:

 

O'Bryan and Johns called someone they knew at an ambulance service and then contacted the local hospitals. "We came up with three names that were some of our chronic inebriates in the downtown area, that got arrested the most often," O'Bryan said. "We tracked those three individuals through just one of our two hospitals. One of the guys had been in jail previously, so he'd only been on the streets for six months. In those six months, he had accumulated a bill of a hundred thousand dollars—and that's at the smaller of the two hospitals near downtown Reno. It's pretty reasonable to assume that the other hospital had an even larger bill. Another individual came from Portland and had been in Reno for three months. In those three months, he had accumulated a bill for sixty-five thousand dollars. The third individual actually had some periods of being sober, and had accumulated a bill of fifty thousand." The first of those people was Murray Barr, and Johns and O'Bryan realized that if you totted up all his hospital bills for the ten years that he had been on the streets—as well as substance-abuse-treatment costs, doctors' fees, and other expenses—Murray Barr probably ran up a medical bill as large as anyone in the state of Nevada.

 

"It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murray," O'Bryan said.

[Jenksismyhero]

Has anyone read The Tipping Point? I'm interested in reading it after this article. He has a couple more articles on his website that I haven't read yet. Probably will start though.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Has anyone read The Tipping Point? I'm interested in reading it after this article. He has a couple more articles on his website that I haven't read yet. Probably will start though.

 

 

So many books to read..........so little time. Even though I have 2 more on the way Id like to take a look at this one too.

[Texsox]

So many books to read..........so little time. Even though I have 2 more on the way Id like to take a look at this one too.

 

No, you read? I didn't know Rush had an Oprah like reading club.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

No, you read? I didn't know Rush had an Oprah like reading club.

 

 

Believe it or not I do. Not as much as I'd like because college classes take up a good deal of my spare time but I still squeeze in 2-3 a month.

Edited January 29, 2007 by NUKE

[Rex Kickass]

Has anyone read The Tipping Point? I'm interested in reading it after this article. He has a couple more articles on his website that I haven't read yet. Probably will start though.

 

I've read it. Interesting point, but it takes about 6 seconds to figure it out.

[Texsox]

Believe it or not I do. Not as much as I'd like because college classes take up a good deal of my spare time but I still squeeze in 2-3 a month.

 

Which fictional and comic book do you like the best?

 

Links

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Which fictional and comic book do you like the best?

 

Links

 

 

LOL! That's funny. Actually I dont have a membership there.

 

 

My greatest interest is history, historical fiction but aside from that I just keep my eyes open and anything I see that catches my fancy gets added to the list and read when its turn comes.

[Mplssoxfan]

My greatest interest is history, historical fiction but aside from that I just keep my eyes open and anything I see that catches my fancy gets added to the list and read when its turn comes.

I read a lot of history too, emphasis on Civil War, Ancient Rome and WWII. But I read anything. Not enough fiction, unfortunately.

[Jenksismyhero]

I read a lot of history too, emphasis on Civil War, Ancient Rome and WWII. But I read anything. Not enough fiction, unfortunately.

 

If you history guys are interestd in colonial period stuff the book Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathanial Phillbrick is my most recent read. I explained to my friends that it's a story told with facts instead of facts molded into a story...if that makes sense. He does a good job of telling the story with a lot of factual information, but not so much that you feel lost. Good read, and interesting. Kinda changes your views on Squanto a bit (at least what you remember from grade school).