Incentives

Incentives and punishment fuel everyone. The example we looked at today was Doctors; the punishment of a law suit combined with the incentive to enhance business is enough for doctors to produce type II diagnosis. This is telling a patient they are sick when they are actually well. The consequences for the patient in this case are minimized because it is mostly psychological. Compared to the other scenario, type I where they would tell patients they are well when indeed they are sick. In this case a patient may experience grave consequences from lack of treatment. The question becomes how can we minimize these two types of diagnosis since they are both ultimately false. We discussed briefly, changing tort law, or changing the consequences for mal practice claims. While this may or may not be a suitable solution, I think the better solution would be education. In educating doctors even more, they can become more confident, and make false claims less often. I know that no one can be right 100% of the time, but it is possible to be right a good majority of the time, especially if you're trained in even more instances. By education I am implying longer residences for doctors. This means they will have more on the job training, which will expose them to more experiences and therefore make them better equipped to handle all sorts of situations. 

I really think education can be a changer for all incentive based situations. The reading states that every living organism seeks to do things that warrant rewards, and not do things that cause punishment. Being more educated on a subject can help to better understand the underlying rewards. In a doctor's case these underlying rewards may be satisfaction of saving more amounts of lives, or reputation of providing just treatment. As well as help us to avoid punishment. The more you know about any one thing, the more likely you are to know all the routes that will lead to punishment. No two situations can be exactly the same therefore the more education an individual posses, the more chance they have to pick the route that will lead them to favorable outcomes instead of the unfavorable.