Texting to Promote Weight Loss and in Population Health Management

Anyone who regularly attends a house of worship is certainly aware of how preachers make a point of regularly visiting parishioners while they're in a hospital. Since the Disease Management Care Blog's recent hospitalization involved an inconvenient distance (hour and a half drive) and time (6:30 AM), the DMCB pastor adapted by texting a prayer message. The DMCB took some comfort in what its colleagues euphemistically refer to as "faith healing."

Which is one reason why the DMCB paid attention to this interesting peer-reviewed abstract. 170 obese persons were randomly assigned to either monthly emails or daily "personally relevant and interactive" text messages. There was no difference in weight loss at 6 and 12 months of follow-up, but persons who were "adherent" to the text messages had statistically significant greater weight loss and greater activity levels.  Satisfaction levels were also high in the text message group.

And then there's this other study that randomly assigned obese college students to text messaging plus Facebook, Facebook alone and a "waiting list" control group.  In the limited follow-up of 8 weeks, the text messaging group lost a significantly greater amount of weight (2.4 kg.) vs. the other two groups.

Is texting an option for weight loss in particular and for population health management (PHM) in general?  These two studies would indicate the answer for both is "perhaps."  A better answer may be that texting plus other PHM interventions is better and that texting for persons who prefer it is best. 

The DMCB's Fat Lady might also approve of texting. If it's good enough for the prayerful among us, who can argue against it?

Image from Wikipedia

Health Care Tithing

As Mr. Romney continues his uninspiring march toward the Republican Presidential nod in Tampa, voters will have a chance to familiarize themselves with the practice of religious "tithing."  

If giving up 10% seems like a lot, the Disease Management Care Blog says think again. The concept may not be all that foreign after all, because Americans practically (if unknowingly) already "tithe" to health care.

The amateur economist Disease Management Care Blog cannot resist and naively explores the implications of tithing, beginning with a "thought experiment."

Imagine two neighboring towns. One is populated with persons who earn $50,000 a year. The other has richer persons who earn $100,000 a year.  Assume that, for both towns, voluntarily buying comprehensive health insurance costs $10,000 a year (according to the White House, an average premium is $12,680 a year).

Smart DMCB readers know that $50,000 isn't necessarily a lot of money. Persons in that lower income town won't have much left over after they pay for clothing, food, housing, transportation and energy (and in the case of the DMCB spawn, internet access, gaming consoles, tatoos, cable TV and consumer electronics).

Persons in the higher income $100,000 town can afford the basic necessities and more.  That means once income passes a certain threshold, the top margin is comparatively more disposable. That makes makes the option of buying expensive health insurance bearable.

In other words, the richer town can effectively "tithe" by devoting a big percent off the top to health insurance and health care.  While the cost of clothing, food and housing are elastic, those necessities come first.  Health insurance has to wait its turn.

With that in mind, check out the following infamous, public domain and very downloadable graph.  No PowerPoint on health care costs is complete without it.  While this one is from 2002, the 2006 data can also be easily accessed and aren't much different. While the U.S. is wealthier on a per individual ("capita") GDP ("gross domestic product") basis than the rest of the developed world, it spends far more per individual than would be expected:

Most economists explain that big the gap between the U.S and the other countries represents "waste" from the economic drag of evil insurer-driven administrative costs, unnecessary care in an economically  misaligned non-system, an overindulgence in specialists, our love for the latest technology, a widespread belief in taking drugs for every ailment and time wasted reading the DMCB.

All that (except for the DMCB reading) may be true, but the DMCB also wonders if the graph above is a display of a world filled with $50,000 towns and one $100,000 town. The DMCB thinks it's only natural to for a uniquely wealthy country to be willing to spend much of its excess "top" income on health insurance and health care. When that happens, spending will mathematically jump and the U.S. will appear to be a "nonlinear" outlier.

Functionally, that's tithing.  The DMCB doesn't think that's unexpected.

Of course, the economics of wealth and health care is more complicated.  Wealth not only results in "parallel" increases in spending (allowing the purchase of dried cranberries for tonight's salad or outfitting that man-cave with miniature gargoyle statuary) but "serial" increases that also lead to the purchase of new goods and services like health care. It may not mathematically equate to 10%, but it is still a fraction that is taken off the top. 

The U.S. can afford to commit the top margins of its excess income toward health insurance and health care. It's also "all or none," which may also explain some of the non-linear and disproportionate non-linear compared to other countries.

Contrarian economists have been arguing this for years, but the DMCB never heard it described as "tithing."  While health insurance has "stolen" income from U.S. employees' paychecks and employers' profits, what's also happened is that that economic damage is partially limited to top "excess" levels (or brackets) of our nation's business and personal income.

You heard the concept of health care tithing here first.  That being said, the DMCB can think of some wrinkles:

1. The Fat Lady teaches that humbly religious tithing takes the first 10%, even if there are other necessities. The political version of that in the U.S. is "entitlements."

2. The other "$50,000"countries devote a percent of their budget to health care, but the DMCB thinks that they're buying "preference insensitive" care at the lowest level of service.  Thanks to our wealth, the U.S. can technically afford to indulge in preference sensitive care services - and the variation that comes with it.

3. Many persons in the U.S. are very low income and can't afford any care.  That's true, but thanks to our GDP, they get the worst of both worlds: they have the appearance of a higher than average income compared to the world without the ability to pay the tithe.

4. Just because we're willing to "tithe" doesn't mean we're getting our money's worth and that there isn't diminishing marginal utility.  We aren't and there is.

5. If inflation and stagnant wages are eating away our ability to pay for the more basic necessities, it's easier to stop tithing and jettison health insurance altogether. That means we're less able to cut health care by 10% to make up for a 10% increase in the cost of other goods and services. This may partially explain ....

1) why persons are willing to completely "drop" their health insurance and use 100% of the top marginal money for life's more basic necessities;

2) why employers would be willing to drop health insurance altogether as a benefit.  We may be underestimating the likelihood of a flood of persons being pushed into the individual market when the ACA kicks in.

6. Tithing is an expensive proposition.  No wonder Professor Fuchs is proposing a simple solution: pay for it all with a VAT.

7.  Think the cavernous edifices, expansive lobbies and pricy stonework of premier health care institutions sometimes make them resemble cathedrals? Now you know why.

A Runaway Steetcar Named Contraception Mandate

Here's comes the contraception mandate!

Consider the classic "trolley car" thought experiment:

There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. Unfortunately, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You do not have the ability to operate the lever in a way that would cause the trolley to derail without loss of life (for example, holding the lever in an intermediate position so that the trolley goes between the two sets of tracks, or pulling the lever after the front wheels pass the switch, but before the rear wheels do). You have two options:

 (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track,

 (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

Which is the correct choice?

While this thought experiment has lived on through countless variations and even more debate, the Disease Management Care Blog was taught in a long bygone ethics class that the choices boil down to a utilitarian argument (pull the switch because five lost lives is worse than one lost life) vs. the moral argument (don't pull the switch because, in a situation for which you bear no responsibility, you have a personal duty to not sin by taking a life).

While the DMCB could ruminate on what the Fat Lady would advise, that's not the point here. Rather, the DMCB points out that philosophical choices are unsettled and that there is plenty of room for intelligent argument on both sides.

Which brings us to the Little Sisters of the Poor and their appeal over the Obamacare contraception mandate. 

As the DMCB understands it, this Catholic religious order wants to be exempted from the exemption process that requires the completion of a one-page "self certifying" form. The purpose of the self-certifying form is to allow organizations like Little Sisters to exclude birth control pills (the moral arguments on why it's regarded as sinful can be found here) as a covered benefit for its insured employees.

Completing that form would oblige the insurer, not the buyer, to provide access to contraception services that are mandated by the Affordable Care Act. After checking out pages 39877 and 39878 of the Federal Register, DMCB understands that Washington DC defends this "accommodation" as a cost-neutral solution (fewer pregnancies underwrite the cost of the contraceptives) and as a "administrative" cost that is spread across the risk pool. Accordingly, neither arguably obliges a Catholic organization to meaningfully participate in (pay for) what it regards as a moral sin.

But, says the DMCB, signing the self-certifying form triggers the accommodation which, in turn, leads to coverage of contraceptives. The Little Sisters of the Poor are, in effect, being asked to pull the enabling trolley switch.  Sure, it's not the death of innocents or the trading of lives, but the underlying parallels to the thought experiment still apply. These nuns are being asked to choose the lesser of what they regard as two sins and trigger the contraception coverage.

 In simplistic terms, these nuns are instead choosing a classic moral answer.

From an ethics standpoint, the contraception mandate is far more murky than it appears.

Two additional thoughts:

1.  The contraceptive mandate is a trolley car conundrum of the government's making. They're the ones that built the tracks and put the nuns - and other persons of conscience -  at the switch.

2. In that long bygone ethics class, the DMCB was confronted by a variation in the trolley care thought experiment. Supposed you were held at gunpoint and non-compliance also meant your death in addition to the death of five innocents?  The moral answer would be that your personal duty to do no harm to extends to yourself and you would need to take the bullet. 

That's why the DMCB fears that the Sisters are not going to cooperate even if the government legally prevails in overcoming their objections. They probably mean it and will go out of business.  To make a statement in the best tradition of civil disobedience, they could continue to provide services, refuse to pay the fines and go to jail. 

Yikes.

CODA: It turns out that the particular insurer is also exempt from the contraception mandate. That makes much of the Little Sisters' objections legally moot, but that's not the moral point.