Just a quick observation.

I talk a lot about how economics assumes that people always make rational decisions and how there are many experiments that show that it isn’t actually the case. We are actually really bad at making rational choices when it comes to money.

Why wasn’t this ever an issue in medicine? I think it’s a fair assumption to think that, if given the choice, everyone would want to maximize both their health and wealth. Why aren’t healthcare systems designed following models where everyone always makes the rational decision to maximize their health? Why was it a surprise to economics that people in real life don’t behave perfectly rationally with respect to their money but we’ve always sort of assumed the opposite in health?

Maybe it’s because we can observe people making bad health decisions (smoking, drinking, eating junk food) but we don’t get to observe their financial decisions (although smoking is probably a bad financial choice too). Isn’t it kind of weird that we’ve always assumed that people will always make the right choice to maximize their wealth but not their health? I’m kind of weirded out by it.