Trafalgar Square
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We spent the day with our medical advisors today, pitching our ideas and getting their feedback for the best way to use our shiny new device. One of them cautioned against the moral hazard of medical innovations: if we take responsibility for patients, they will cease to take care of themselves. The specific topic concerned whether monitoring for disease progression would create a false sense of safety that enabled people to continue bad habits (“I can go on smoking if the monitor says I’m okay!”).
I’ve known it myself with regard to cholesterol: diet and exercise didn’t budge it, so I was put on Lipitor. Now, I admit, I’m less likely to quibble about having the occasional South Beach unsafe meal it the little pill keeps my TotChol at 130 regardless.
And now I’m sitting here wondering what the corresponding moral hazard is for Viagra…
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Over dinner, our mixed Dutch – American group got into a discussion about the US election, and a Dutch physician asked a colleague how she voted in the primary. She told him, but commented that Americans would never ask one another about how they voted. The Dutch were amazed: apparently that isn’t a taboo topic in the Netherlands.
It launched a conversation about “What can’t you ask?” The Americans have a long list, from salary to politics, religion to sex. The Dutch, apparently, only keep salaries secret from one another?
But even that has exceptions. I was trying to sort out salaries for my group, and consulted HR to get the employee COMPA ratios. These are numbers that tell what an employee makes relative to their market value: people are generally paid between 90 and 105% of COMPA. Along the way, I discovered that every employee here knows their COMPA, where this is a very deep secret in the US (leading to “Why do I only get 95% of market value?”).
Similarly, when handing out a raise, I get an envelope from HR, which I hand out with a handshake, a smile, and a compliment. It turned out to be a serious breach here: we should have opened the envelope together, discussed the amount, and agreed on it’s appropriateness (followed by a handshake, a smile, and a compliment).
‘moral is, money matters are tough everywhere…
