Month: January 2011

This seems to be a good thing.

Via San Francisco Chronicle:

The world bathroom scales market is being driven by the growing demand from health conscious consumers focused on maintaining good shape and increasing awareness that body fat percentage is a more precise and superior indicator of health in contrast to body weight.

FYI:

Globally, manufacturers of bathroom scales are in dilemma regarding the maximum weighing capacity of a bathroom scale. There is no uniformity, when it boils down to maximum weighing capacity of bathroom scales manufactured by different companies in different countries. For instance, in the US, a typical bathroom scale can weigh up to 180 kilograms, whereas, in most of the other countries it is in the range of 125 kilograms. However, there is an occasional demand for scales that can weigh more than 150 kilograms in many countries. Presently, retailers meet the customers’ demand by supplying industrial scales, which do not have the innovative features of modern bathroom scales.

H/T: GOOD

GDP, happiness, health

Marketplace asks “Should GDP Measure Happiness?”

“Britain, France and Canada all want to start measuring ‘well-being,’ if not happiness.”

Interesting. (Dr. Jay has been pushing the happiness + health message for a while.)

Here’s a question to ponder: does the 17+ percent of GDP the United States dedicates to healthcare produce a requisite amount of happiness?

In 1931, Dr. W.J. Mayo predicted…

… the average length of an American’s life would be 70 years in 2011. Only about ten years off. More from Abnormal Use:

Contagious and infectious diseases have been largely overcome, and the average length of life of man has increased to fifty-eight years. The great causes of death in middle and later life are diseases of heart, blood vessels and kidneys, diseases of the nervous system, and cancer. The progress that is being made would suggest that within the measure of time for this forecast the average life time of civilized man would be raised to the biblical term of three-score and ten.

Did you know that Medicare paid for 2.3 million housecalls in 2009?

I didn’t.

But it is pure bliss when traditionally-archaic institutions try new things–by hook or by crook–because “that’s the way we do things around here” is no strategy for success tomorrow.

Bravo to reform getting this right. It may not work, but that’s not the point. What we have is not as effective as need be. Now, which provider organizations are ready to take a shot at making housecalls happen?