It's okay to change your mind

On Monday, my dad and I drove over to Brandeis University for my tennis practice to find out that it had been cancelled.  We had not been notified that camp wasn’t running so my dad and I ended up driving in the car for 1 hour.  My dad recently discovered a new podcast, called Planet Money [which is a section of NPR news] that he claims is intellectually

stimulating and claims it a good way to pass time spent in a car.  Lasting around 20-30 minutes, these podcasts make good, informative use of the time lost during transportation.

My dad played a podcast titled On Second Thought, which explains why it’s okay to change your mind.  I relistened to the podcast today to help myself remember and capture the details.  Three stories were told, one about an economist, another about a novelist, and the final about a man who built a website dedicated purely to helping people change their minds.  I’m going to share the story about the economist and how she changed her mind since I am fascinated with how it links science and hope together. However, I’ve attached the link to this podcast for further listening.

~THE ECONOMIST

Catherine Baker is an economist at Harvard and she has always held the belief that Medicaid should be extended to everyone in need; everyone should have access to medical insurance.  Baker focused her study primarily on Emergency Rooms:  she argued that many people who did not have medical insurance went to the ER room since it was cheaper to be charged a large bill in the emergency room when needed than be charged for medical insurance annually.  And these people who didn’t have medical insurance didn’t necessarily always have emergencies…some came for annual checkups which ends up swarming the line for people who do have emergencies.  

In some states, Medicaid is granted to people by lottery. So if you’re lucky and your ticket is pulled, you are granted health insurance.  Baker conducted a study in Oregon which tracked the people who got the Medicaid and how many times they went to the emergency room. The people part of this study were a perfect bunch, some had received Medicaid, others were denied Medicaid, and others could afford health insurance themselves.  She and her team discovered after calculating their data twice [since the results seemed to lend itself to a mathematical miscalculation ], that surprisingly, people who received Medicaid went to the Emergency Room more often by 40% more, than people who didn’t receive Medicaid.  Not only do they go to the Emergency Room more, they also go to their regular doctors more often as well!  Baker was shocked and a little bit confused as to why the results of the study were so contradicting to her initial intuition. As she later reasoned and shared with Planet Money, she believes that since the people receiving Medicaid no longer have to pay for their care, they are using it more and more often to ensure absolute health.  It also models a basic principle of economics: the less you have to pay for something, the likely you’re going to use it.  

Baker found herself changing her mind as a scientist, though this contradicted her hope as a citizen.  She realizes that she had hoped that people who received Medicaid went to the Emergency Room less.  However, the science behind it revealed otherwise.  Baker was split between science and being a citizen. ~

What this podcast highlights at the beginning is that it is okay to change your mind.  I remember in history class this year, during our “four corner” debates, I found myself switching to a different corner sometimes after considering the perspectives of people in a different corner.  Luckily, in our history class, people were very respectful of these changes. Recently, I've also been discovering my fashion sense changing. I used to be [and still am] a conservative dresser. I feel odd and out of self when I wear a particular style of clothing and I thought it was "popular" girl style. However, this past month, I've been trying to transition my style to something a bit more trendy. In essence, my perception of "trendy" clothing is changing and is no longer associated with "popular" girl style: it's personal style. In our society though, it is socially constructed to be bad if one changes his/her mind.  Name calling is even involved (“wishy-washy”, “backflipper” in Australia, “U-turner” in England etc].  However, I believe we must remember that none of us are always right and that it is important to understand that when one changes their mind, it is a good thing, showing how they are open to new ideas.  Let’s celebrate “wishy-washy” people.