economics

Sunk costs and opportunity costs for writers

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged business economics writing on by

Economics is more personal than most people realize. Every choice about how to allocate your resources is an economic decision, and time is your most basic resource as a writer. You expend time on your work in order to get income. Sometimes you know exactly what you’re going to do today and what you’ll get in return. A lot of the time you face choices. Which of your customers should get your attention first? Should you put them aside for a while and look for new income opportunities? Should you keep working on a time-consuming project or give it up as a lost cause?

Two economic concepts are useful in making these decisions: sunk cost and opportunity cost.
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Overcharged: Why Americans Pay Too Much for Health Care 1

This entry was posted in Reviews and tagged books economics medicine on by

Charles Silver and David A. Hyman, Overcharged: Why Americans Pay Too Much for Health Care, Cato Institute, 2018.

Book cover for Overcharged It would be hard to believe all the outrages described in Overcharged if public information and personal experience didn’t back them up so much. We all know that medical costs are skyrocketing. This book goes into many of the details and provides a comprehensive explanation.

A number of my experiences make more sense in the light of what I’ve read there. One time a full surgical team, including an anesthesiologist, showed up for a procedure to remove a routine sebaceous cyst from my scalp. I had already said I didn’t want general anesthesia, and I continued to refuse it. I’m sure he got paid anyway. Fortunately, I had very good insurance at the time.

Another time I underwent a biopsy for prostate cancer because of elevated PSA. It turned out negative. I had recently had a bladder infection, which is a common cause of high PSA, but the doctor didn’t care that it was most likely a false positive. I won’t go into how disgusting the prep, the procedure, and the aftereffects are. Once I sued a doctor for overcharging, only to learn that in New Hampshire, you can’t sue a doctor in small claims court without an expert witness. (At least that was what he told the judge, and she didn’t contradict him.) In terms of practical economics, that means you can’t sue a doctor in small claims court. We all know that the very idea of getting a price or even an estimate in advance for a medical procedure is a joke, even though it’s expected for any other big-ticket expenditure.
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