The Max Stayman creed
(04/07/16 4:51am)
“College is the time when the boy you are meets the man you are going to be.”
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“College is the time when the boy you are meets the man you are going to be.”
“I’m gonna go get some breakfast and maybe walk around a little bit.”
Next time you walk down Main Quad, have a look at the outside of the West Union building. Running along the top of the wall you’ll see a series of shields. These heraldic panels feature the crests of some of the greatest universities across the United States and the world, including the University of North Carolina, the University of Texas, Yale, Harvard and Oxford.
Even among those of us who feel immune, it is hard to escape the idea that each thing we do has to prepare us for the next thing down the road. Of course we take classes and do internships and join clubs because they’re interesting, but we also do those things for how they will prepare us for our next internship or job or graduate school application. In a sense, while each class is an academic exploration of its own, it is also an instrument, a means to an end, of achieving the next rung on the ladder of success.
Two months ago, I wrote a column for Campaign Stop 2016 about my vision and hope for what good Republican leadership would look like: facing the issues head on, applying traditional Republican values instead of religious conservatism and showing a willingness to engage in bipartisan conversation.
“Ain’t it like most people? I’m no different. We love to talk on things we don’t know about.”
In a rare foray into the political scene, I have the following thoughts about the recent discussion regarding the refugee crisis.
“Hey Max, you’ve got to check out this school called Duke. You’ll love it!”
I am a big fan of John Steinbeck, and I am getting ready to read his book “Travels with Charley” (in which he travels the country trying to rediscover the American Dream). In a departure this week from healthcare, I want to include excerpts from two letters I wrote home last summer shortly after driving from Oakland to Denver. It was, for me, a great experience in getting out of the bubbles that are Duke and the Bay Area.
When I went to the store this summer to buy a television for my dorm room, I entered a contract of sorts with the seller. Panasonic told me the size of the television, the quality, the price, the electrical consumption and all sorts of other relevant details to my purchasing decision. In return, I paid them what I felt was a fair price for the value it would add to my life. All this, of course, with the understanding that if it didn’t work as advertised, I could take it back and get a refund.
I’ve had a few conversations recently — both with professors and friends who are also into healthcare — about the rise of high deductible health plans (HDHPs), especially in the five years since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Between 2005 and 2014, the number of Americans covered by one of these HDHPs grew from one million to 17.4 million.
Once a month, I open my shipment of Enbrel refills and see a receipt with two numbers:
Patient engagement has become, over the past few decades, a focal interest of many stakeholders in the healthcare world. Consumer groups, progressive doctors, health policy wonks, and all sorts of other organizations are pushing for more patient involvement and activation in the care journey in an effort to leave behind the era of ‘white coat paralysis’ and unilateral decision-making. Engaged patients don’t just have some sort of moral appeal; in fact, research shows that “people actively involved in their health and health care tend to have better outcomes – and, some evidence suggests, lower costs.” Thus, engaged patients can help us satisfy at least two thirds of health care reform’s Holy Grail, the Triple Aim: lower cost, higher quality and improved patient experience.
“Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” So says the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, anyways. Perhaps that’s true. It probably is. As painful as it may be to lose a loved one, you have to think that the joy of loving must still be worth it when compared to living a life devoid of love. To borrow a phrase from Bill Simmons in his Grantland article last spring, that would “suck all kinds of suck.”
There has been a good amount of talk this past month—both among the policy experts and the greater public—about a pending Supreme Court decision: King v. Burwell.
I just had the opportunity to read Tracy Kidder’s highly acclaimed book Mountains Beyond Mountains for the first time. Surprisingly, being in the Global Health FOCUS freshman year and studying health policy, I hadn’t read it yet. A fun read, this book was light, exciting and hit close to home—Farmer was a Blue Devil!. Since Farmer is the graduation speaker this year, I recommend you read the book first if you will be hearing him talk.
Back in Sept. of 2014 I wrote a column about end-of-life care. From a detached perspective, I wrote about “balancing money, time and quality of life.” As I wrote, however, I wondered if my views would change if subjected to some of the situations I described. Two weeks ago my grandfather passed away, and sprinkled throughout the time I spent with family, I was able to reflect on some of the opinions I offered in that first column.
While applying to internships for this summer, I have been asked over and over, and have had to ask myself, why I want to work in health policy. I always feel like I have to qualify my study of Public Policy, in order to portray myself fully and honestly, as focusing as much as possible on healthcare. But why not energy? Or immigration? Or military?
Despite the penalties under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) associated with not buying health insurance, there is still a subset of the population that refuses to purchase insurance policies. Some of these people choose not to buy insurance because they can’t afford it—many others make an active choice that is not driven solely by financial burden, but rather by psychological and behavioral economic phenomena. The term “young invincible” got tossed around a lot during the early stages of health care reform to describe 19-34 year olds who felt they were invincible and didn’t need health insurance. However, research has shown that up to 82% of young adults understand the need for health insurance. Given that young adults don’t necessarily feel invincible, what is standing in the way of buying insurance?
My first health policy professor, Dr. Don Taylor, beat into our heads that the most radical part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is neither the individual mandate nor the Medicaid expansion—it is the idea that people will make rational and informed decisions about their health insurance purchases. This isn’t a political comment, but a basic observation about human behavior. The fundamental, and still unanswered, question is whether or not the Exchanges can provide complete and digestible enough information for people to shop for health insurance like they shop for any other commodity.