Exploiting the Health Bubble
23rd June 2011
I could do this everyday – which would provide a steady stream of PB posts and also destroy my will to live – but here are two stories that illustrate the possibilities for persuasion mavens. Lede with the Big picture first.
Healthcare spending will represent nearly one-fifth of the U.S. gross domestic product by 2019 . . .
Now, Telling Detail from a fighting MD who is also a journalist.
Smoking cigarettes is the cause of so much preventable, deadly disease. But now new research shows sitting for long stretches of time may be just as dangerous.
In a country where people can and will spend 20% of their income on one area and where experts in that area can’t understand their own research, you know you are in a target rich environment. As Butch Cassidy would say to the Sundance Kid, it’s easy, ripe, and luscious.
Begin as always with the expert in the news. Kim Mulvhill, MD, has proof that smoking and sitting kill at pretty much the same rate and to her credit provides a link to a research study to support that assertion.
She provides that link certainly to build her credibility by citing other experts, but certainly not to build her argument because if you read the abstract you quickly see the research makes no comparison between smoking and sitting, but only looks at sitting. And guess what? The Observational Tooth Fairy finds a highly adjusted Small Effect Windowpane under the pillow you’re sitting on. The effect probably does not exist given this data and it definitely is nowhere near the range of effects for smoking (which range from Medium to Large Windowpane increases depending upon the outcome variable). Dr. Mulvhill can misread and misunderstand to her heart’s content and still write in public without fear of laughter, derision, or lawsuit. She shouts Death in a crowded sitting room without consequence.
And, she does so because people have dialed down their WATTage to a flicker. When you’re giving away 20% of your GDP on something you can control with common sense and a little self control, it’s obvious you are not a High WATT worker toiling on the Central Route, building long, dense, and deep webs of elaborated thoughts about your health. You’re skipping polished stones over an ocean of thought, a Cue kid laughing on a Peripheral Route beach.
As a persuasion maven you cannot observe this scene without smiling a toothy grin. Hello, Little Girl. Experts are falling over their own incompetence to help Other Guys and the Other Guys are making automatic payments in a subscription model called Forever Young.
Right now everyone is happy. Everyone believes that their life and health is increasing every year and they are willing to pay more and more every year for that belief. Their beliefs about life and health have become psychological assets that are worth more and more without regard to reason, reality, or reservation. That’s a Bubble.
Persuasion in health is so easy it is almost hard. In an orchard of nothing but low hanging fruit which one do you take first? Wipe that grin off your face, chose the one you find personally easy, ripe, and luscious, and get busy.
This Bubble will burst someday. Not soon. Not if there is a conservative revolution in 2012. Maybe 2020. When my Medicare bill is half of your income.
Until then it is easy, ripe, and luscious.
