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For perspective take a look at this. At least 2 of 10 have outright incest and almost all of them have some adultery, homosexuality, rape, or other content that was controversial at the time. Words are words, and some of the best fiction around has incorporated horrific or depraved events. Banning books based on how well they conform to social norms is not good.

"For the first time in recorded history there existed an open-water path between the Atlantic and the Pacific." Are you 13 years behind, or 69 years behind the times? There are also reports of pre-western history passages from the orient.

Your first example took 9 weeks, the second more than 12. This year a freighter sailed from Vancouver via the NW passage to Finland in less than 5 weeks for a far longer route.

right, because people use their phones for PHONEcalls...owait, no they don't generally. . Data overtakes voice use: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/technology/personaltech/14talk.html .. Smart-phones outnumber feature phones in US: http://techland.time.com/2012/03/01/smartphones-outnumber-feature-phones-in-u-s-for-first-time/ .. Smartphones Finally Overtook Dumbphone Sales Globally: http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/14/gartner-q2-smartphone/ .. Smartphones to outnumber feature phones in Kenya by end of 2013: http://www.humanipo.com/news/32204/smartphones-to-outnumber-feature-phones-in-kenya-by-end-of-2013/ .. So basically, the planet is evolving towards using smartphones more than featurephones, and Voice is being overtaken by data on these devices, even in 3rd-Word countries. .. So why do we need to prioritize a curved phone for phone-calls again ?

Nearly half of Americans couldn't get $2000 together within 30 days without pawning possessions or taking a payday loan, including significant numbers of people that are above the poverty level. If I had under $2k in my account and I was fired, I'd end up missing mortgage, HOA, and utilities payments (not to mention food, credit card bills, and other expenses). I'd say that the poverty level has a "sufficient but not necessary" relationship to living paycheck to paycheck.

Actually, manufacturers do report their own efficiency numbers, and the EPA spot-checks them.

http://business.time.com/2012/12/10/more-reason-to-be-skeptical-about-new-car-mpg-claims/

Not only that, but they are allowed to use the same numbers if the drivetrain and weight of the vehicle is the same as to a previously tested vehicle.

Actually, manufacturers do report their own efficiency numbers, and the EPA spot-checks them.

http://business.time.com/2012/12/10/more-reason-to-be-skeptical-about-new-car-mpg-claims/

The best thing about the movie Apollo 13 was the attention to every detail; the old cabinet TV with Walter Cronkite, the clothes, the music... As to the movie "Gravity" I submitted this, which linked Ms. Ivin's full review of the movie. If you see it in the firehose, don't vote it up as it would be a dupe at this point.

Ivin is a self professed sci-fi fan and "one of the original Trekkies".* An engineer and a Trekkie? I'll bet she's lurking here now, probably has a 3 digit UID. A snippet of her review:

My first take was to itemize the errors. The vehicles are in impossible orbits -- wrong altitudes, wrong inclinations. The backpack maneuvering unit has a nearly infinite amount of fuel and comes superchargedâ"but only until the plot requires it suddenly to run out. Space stations seem to retain pressure in their various modules despite coming apart at the seams. You can apparently close an outward opening hatch against exiting pressure with one hand.

She did have a lot of good things to say about it.

If you have a GF this is most likely a movie you can take her to since it's Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.

* Sometimes it's great being a geezer, I got to see TOS when it was brand new and flat screen monitors, "communicators", self-opening doors, etc were just fantasies. A young friend envied me when I described hearing Led Zeppelin for the first time, as John Bonham was dead before he was born.

I live in a science fiction fantasy, except it's all real now. You guys grew up with computers, computers grew up with me.

You guys will see things even science fiction writers haven't thought of.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

It's fine to hypothesize whatever, but from what I can tell, hard evidence suggests there are easy solutions. I have yet to see any case studies that show prohibition working, in contrast.

Meh, it wasn't that big of a deal when I left corporate employ to buy private medical insurance.
Still have it today. I'm lumped in a category of similar size businesses for actuarial purposes.
And I will pay more under obamacare.

Its not the panacea you think. And its not going to be as cheap as you think.
Forbes says it will be almost $7500 per year for a family of four. Time pretty much concurs.

The only way this proves a boon to entrepreneurship is if they skates on the insurance (refuse to buy) and just pay the fine.
And why wouldn't they? The fine is 1/12th of the cost of an actual insurance policy.

Apparently not.

"For the first time in recorded history there existed an open-water path between the Atlantic and the Pacific."

Are you 13 years behind, or 69 years behind the times?

There are also reports of pre-western history passages from the orient.

Here we go,

http://business.time.com/2013/04/24/how-does-one-fake-tweet-cause-a-stock-market-crash/

It wasn't an article, it was just a tweet, put out over the Associated Press channel after a hacker briefly took control. As it was the AP channel, stock-trading bots monitor it. It wiped $130 billion dollars off the stock market in the space of seconds - but it came back almost as fast.

Exactly as predicted, you toss out the evidence and strut off snorting.

Here it is direct from Snowden:

http://swampland.time.com/2013/09/05/five-revelations-from-snowdens-newest-leak/

The full extent of the NSA’s highly classified encryption cracking program Bullrun is only known by top officials in the NSA and its counterpart agencies in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Bullrun has successfully foiled several of the world’s standard encryption methods, including SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), VPN (virtual private networks), and the encryption on 4G (fourth generation) smartphones.

Care to refute Snowden?

We are going back to my rules:

Prove your point about it being outright false or STFU.

An estimated $100m USD. The winner sets the rules for the next one, so if New Zealand wins they will lower the cost, allowing more teams to able to compete.

The submarine cable map is insightful.

The idea to add another cable through Hawaii is not obvious. In order to improve path redundancy, going to south america would be a better idea. And at least Brazil could be interested

The more important issue, though, may not be the size of the price tag, but who pays. According to a Jan. 31 report by the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW), private households pay 35% of the subsidies for renewables but account for one-quarter of electricity consumption. Those subsidies in the form of surcharges on electricity for private households rose from 3.6 per kilowatt-hour in 2012 to 5.3 in 2013 — an increase of 47%, according to the report. That led Economics Minister Philipp Rösler to complain over rising electricity prices forcing an increasing number of Germans into “energy poverty” earlier this year.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/05/28/the-cost-of-green-germany-tussles-over-the-bill-for-its-energy-revolution/#ixzz2fSXsFcML

There may be jobs added for those unemployed and there may eventually be a benefit to all Germans...for now, though, it is causing serious damage to their middle income households and therefore to their economy. Two German families I know have had to sell the houses they have lived in for 15+ years specifically because the cost of power is so much higher...their 5+ member families live in two bedroom apartments now. But hey, there is a benefit to it right? Somewhere....

If it can happen in Maine, I think it can surely happen in California

It can happen anywhere and it can happen for all the wrong reasons, especially in California because what people don't realize is that business will grow and prosper where it's welcome. Last year California lost 5.2% of its businesses and while the experts can't agree on a clear "why," I think that California has become more anti-business, anti-growth over the past few decades. I was born and raised in So. Cal and lived out there through the end of the 80s but even then it was still growing. Sure the recent recession has hit everybody but the decline in California is inevitable; Overpriced housing such as in Orange County means that even middle class wage earners have a very hard time of living there, which also helps to drive up the costs of labor. You can blame speculation on most of that but without mass transit and massive urban sprawl it creates huge amounts of gridlock. Add to it the anti-business legislation that's been passed and you have a perfect storm brewing over over-inflated housing prices, employees who can't get to work because of long commutes and an anti-business attitude and ranking highest in the nation on taxation in most categories, that makes California downright a sucky place to make a living and conduct business. As they say "it's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

Continuing the off-topic thread, I believe that draconian programs to control population are not going to be successful. However, it is a fact that if women are given control over their reproductive rights, population stops increasing, and in many cases, begins to decline. So, a better way to go is to empower women. Look here

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/09/11/2-million-bikers-to-dc-motorcycle-riders-roll-into-washington/

It was about not getting a permit to demonstrate their Patriotism. While a Muslim group did. People pretty pissed at the beucratic asshats in DC right now.

How does artificially cutting your children off from a huge part of the world help develop their brain in a healthy way?

Like... umm... having 1 in 10 kids diagnosed with ADHD may be related to the use of gadgets?

As opposed to teaching them how to interact with the world in a responsible and constructive way?

Do I detect a false dichotomy here? The responsible and constructive way of interacting with the world is mandatory to be done using gadgets?

You should really pay more attention. Do try to keep up.

It looks more and more like the war on boys.
http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/19/school-has-become-too-hostile-to-boys/

I want them to start suspending girls for playing with dolls and playing house. Clearly this will lead to teenage pregnancy. 100% of the girls that pregnant under the age of 18 have played with dolls or knew someone that did!

Extremely poor example. It is quite common for people in ghettos to be even more obsessed with status symbols like expensive shoes. And spending disproportionate amounts of their income on these things for the perceived respect.
http://business.time.com/2013/01/16/how-dr-dre-made-300-headphones-a-must-have-accessory/
"And the car that you drive cost more than your house" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nJdJ5aZMiI)

Oh there's another really good reason to line up. You can sell your spot in line for big bucks. If you're out of work and are just going to bum around for a few days anyway, why not do it outside an Apple store so you can make a few hundred bucks off a stup^H^H^H^Henthusiastic Apple fan.

A little math may be clarifying.

100% Iranian backed Assad regime* versus 200 Taliban / 50,000+ Syrian rebels.

Maybe you should worry more about the Australians since they may outnumber the Taliban.

G’Day Damascus: Australians Are Joining Syria’s Rebels in Surprising Numbers

The world would have been much better off if the Obama administration would have done something useful years ago before the foreign fighters started showing up in numbers, but the American voters that showed up wanted "change."

*Including arms, supplies, and combat troops & trainers

You should study the Vietnam War before you write a troll post that sounds *that* uninformed. The USA left because of things like this:
-- Most young men drafted (often straight out of high school) were returning either dead, maimed or with severe PTSD & addictions to government-supplied hardcore drugs. Many of the survivors killed themselves over the atrocities they'd been forced to commit.
-- Mass media stopped covering up the mess & showed the public what *really* was going on, like LIFE Magazine's coverage (keep in mind that movies/TV weren't at all violent, so this kind of thing was a horrible shock).
-- Public sentiment turned so aggressively against the war (especially after the National Guard killed 4 students) that politicians they elected to end the war didn't dare fail to live up to their promises.

That's what I know about, at least -- I wasn't born until the late 70s and, frankly, I sucked ass at history as a student. :-p

To quote a famous protest song:
Well, come on mothers across the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam!
Come on fathers, don't hesitate,
Send your sons off before its too late!
Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box.

And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don't ask me -- I don't give a damn,
The next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates!
Well, there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee, we're all gonna die!

Bill Gates: " If they [my children] had to go to a general inner-city school, I would do anything I could to avoid that being the case, because as a parent, I particularly see the potential in my kids that that wouldn't unleash," Gates said.

President Obama: President Obama reopened Monday what is often a sore subject in Washington, saying that his daughters could not obtain from D.C. public schools the academic experience they receive at the private Sidwell Friends School.

Matt Damon: Damon told the Guardian there were no longer public schools progressive enough for his family so private was the only choice in their new home of Los Angeles.

Well, with their marketshare falling like a rock (Achievement unlocked: Apple Fanboy hate. -5 Karma, +5 reputation) they gotta do something -- Android is now passing 70% and continuing to climb while Apple dropped to about 15% and has been losing about 1% a month on average for the past two quarters (Achievement unlocked: Use of facts on the internet. +2 karma, -1 reputation). Of course, only on slashdot would the phrase "up to" cause people to cream their pants with excitement that the great and noble Apple (Achievement unlocked: Sarcasm! -1 karma, +7 reputation to shop owners in town GenX) was going to give them 'free' upgrades. It'll be just like going to a used car dealer and getting a "great deal" on your trade-in -- they give you x amount of dollars now, knowing that the buy-in (aka your loan APR) will offset it by x plus a percentage, so they can afford to be generous... just keep paying the monthly 'rental' fee (Achivement unlocked: Car analogy! +2 karma, +1 reputation).

Well, with their marketshare falling like a rock (Achievement unlocked: Apple Fanboy hate. -5 Karma, +5 reputation) they gotta do something -- Android is now passing 70% and continuing to climb while Apple dropped to about 15% and has been losing about 1% a month on average for the past two quarters (Achievement unlocked: Use of facts on the internet. +2 karma, -1 reputation). Of course, only on slashdot would the phrase "up to" cause people to cream their pants with excitement that the great and noble Apple (Achievement unlocked: Sarcasm! -1 karma, +7 reputation to shop owners in town GenX) was going to give them 'free' upgrades. It'll be just like going to a used car dealer and getting a "great deal" on your trade-in -- they give you x amount of dollars now, knowing that the buy-in (aka your loan APR) will offset it by x plus a percentage, so they can afford to be generous... just keep paying the monthly 'rental' fee (Achivement unlocked: Car analogy! +2 karma, +1 reputation).

Marketshare for IOS will probably drop, but have you seen the average IOS user's statistics versus Android and others? Have you seen how much money IOS users spend versus the rest? Which is more used by business? You may understand statistics but you're missing out on the big picture here.

This is one of many reviews. http://techland.time.com/2013/04/16/ios-vs-android/

The really special thing about Courier is that one of the reasons it died was because it didn't support traditional e-mail (An altogether weak reason to kill a hardware platform when it could surely be patched in.) And then, what does MS launch Windows RT without? ...That's right, an e-mail client!

The only people refusing to get vaccinated are the religious nut jobs here.

Bzzzt. You try again. This fear cuts across the spectrum.

Even a few years ago Joel Stein talked about meetings with "doctors" who rattled off false statistics or even some horrifying statistics ("Oh only 1% of polio sufferers become paralyzed") as if they were nothing to convince people not to vaccinate. These were secular events attended by well off suburban parents, not "religious nutjobs". Jenny McCarthy still acts as a non-religious advocate for this position.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1924497,00.htm

These people suffer a lack of discernment because they lack understanding of science. This isn't a blindness just introduced by religion.

Maybe it's receded among the more highly educated, but it had currency, and people ply this crap to whoever listens.

Tesla is a big target in the crosshairs of the automotive industry right now so I'm very skeptical. Tesla is doing what no other company has been able to do in the US and that seems to be a problem with everyone from dealers to falsified reviews in The New York Times. Let's do without the TFA drama have a look at the the egregious attack vectors listed:

1) You want to leverage a tool on a website with some useful functionality. You enter your email/password. They willfully and incorrectly store that information and are subsequently compromised (or worse, they use it themselves).

This is a really broad claim. What's more, if you haven't logged in over an SSL connection then... well, you're kind of a dumbass.

2) An attacker gains access to a website's database of authenticated tokens. It has free access to all of that siteâ(TM)s cars up to 3 months with no ability for the owners to do anything about it.

This is no less dubious that so many online services that I couldn't begin to count. The risk of compromise is an accepted one and hopefully mitigated. No fair faulting them without seeing how they would handle said compromise.

In a nutshell, TFA is going to need to find more substantial basis for panic than this. Sheesh.

I'm sure that's nothing to do with jealousy or partisan politics. It's not like his political opponents had any

I'm sure the political right is so clear, honest and straightforward that they'd never resort to ad hominem attacks.

I'm sure Reverend Gore has received lots of awards for his AGW Theology. And I'm sure each and every one is at least as valid as this: Adolf Hitler: Man of the Year, 1938

Feel free to Godwin me...

Well there is a massive export of brainpower underway, which has been ongoing for years: lately it seems that anyone who can expatriate does. Of the half dozen friends I kept in touch with since college, I am the only one who has not yet moved abroad, though I'm now looking for a job in Switzerland. The yearly canadian quotas of french immigrates are expended in mere hours instead of the weeks or months it used to take. Swiss companies have started discriminating against cross-border candidates ("Swiss residency mandatory" is increasingly common in job ads). The economic crisis has worsened this situation, just like with Spain.

Only two US prisons were on it.

I think you need to work on your counting skills. I counted 4 current US prisons and one closed (Alcatraz) out of a total of 20.
25% is extremely bad given the US's self perceived high ground in all things moral. Remember this includes the entire world, most of which is comparatively very poor and lacks the resources to do much better.
That said, imgur is hardly a reputable source and the list has clearly been skewed by US prison's notoriety in the west. I'm sure there are far worse out there.

No prison thinks much of human dignity.

I refer you to Norway: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1989083,00.html
Only fools support prisons that ignore the dignity of the prisoners. If you actually want to help society, you support and protect those that need it the most.

The reality is that people are getting fatter because they are consuming more calories.

No, they are not. Americans are consuming less calories and exercising more yet they are getting fatter.

Saying "It's the thermodynamics" does not help understand the process at all, it's just a restatement of its end result. "You are getting fatter" is nothing but a paraphrase of "your body is accruing calories", and holds zero insight. It does not explain why cows can be selectively bred to be fatter or leaner, it doesn't explain lipodystrophies - especially the progressive forms where only half of the body gets obese. That's why trying to get lean by eating less works so poorly: it has little to no impact on the underlying cause.

The reality is that people are getting fatter because they are consuming more calories.

No, they are not. Americans are consuming less calories and exercising more yet they are getting fatter.

Saying "It's the thermodynamics" does not help understand the process at all, it's just a restatement of its end result. "You are getting fatter" is nothing but a paraphrase of "your body is accruing calories", and holds zero insight. It does not explain why cows can be selectively bred to be fatter or leaner, it doesn't explain lipodystrophies - especially the progressive forms where only half of the body gets obese. That's why trying to get lean by eating less works so poorly: it has little to no impact on the underlying cause.

No, based on what he's published before, he's pretty pro-government in these cases.

It was not merely offensive. It was incitement to murder.
By a journalist of an international publication.
On another journalist.
Who is being given asylum against prosecution.
Prosecution aimed at unraveling the sources to articles published by various newspapers and magazines.
Regardless of whatever stance or determination might be made about Assange, this is a descent into utter evil, when a so-called journalist incites people through a global medium to murder a whistleblower - basically the most courageous journalistic source on the face of the earth. Well, maybe we have a few of these people in existence now.
Incidentally, the Time readers poll in 2010 voted Assange the Time Person of the Year, though somehow (not enough guts on the editorial board, I guess?) that asshole Zuckerberg got the spot.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/13/julian-assange-readers-choice-for-times-person-of-the-year-2010/
Of course all of the above still is true even if you don't consider Assange a journalist. Even if you consider him an enemy combatant.
Journalists have lost all their backbone and principles but this takes it to a new ultra-low.
The other dumb bit is how Time said it was just an "offensive" tweet apparently.
If Time and other big media names want to survive in the networked media age, the only thing they have going for them is quality, journalistic integrity, and strong adherence to an ethically unassailable position of trust. Time and other major newspapers and news magazines should take a very strong stance against Grunwald.
I highly recommend a big lashing out at Time but all its competitors in the marketplace, who can have fun climbing all over themselves to be the first to tar and feather that ugly cretin.

I think you missed the point. This was about marketing, not advertising (advertising is just one small part of marketing).

So you're blocking advertising, great. But what if the fact you have an adblocker installed on your machine (which is generically trivial to detect, BTW) means you automatically pay 10% more for everything? That's the world the author of the original study is warning us of. That the data collected via widespread tracking can be used to penalize one class of customers for fuck-all reasons.

It's already begun. There have been cases of Orbitz presenting higher prices to Mac users. Or some of the pricing slipperiness Amazon has engaged in.

This sort of "different pricing for different people" is already somewhat pervasive in society, even in B&Ms. As a member of a particular grocery chain's frequent shopper program I get special coupons every three months in the mail. Those coupons are custom-printed for me, and are different than the coupons somebody else on the same program would get, because they're based on my shopping habits and demographics. At what point does that start heading into becoming discrimination and/or "unfair"?

Way back in 1967 I wrote a term paper for my 11th grade English class on the tobacco industry. I was able to find many references to a "lung cancer epidemic" in the mid-1900s that alarmed the medical community. For example http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,807357,00.html

Turned out to be caused by tobacco use as pushed by the tobacco companies. Servicemen during WWII got a pack of cigarettes in their daily ration packs, generously donated by the tobacco companies. They knew even then that it was highly addictive. I grew up sucking on candy cigarettes. All the movie stars and "cool" people smoked. Only the chronic asthma and bronchitis caused by my parent's smoking, that still plagues me to this day, kept me from ever smoking myself, until I wrote that report and realized just what was going on. It started out to be a paper on the advertising industry, until I found out how much the tobacco industry was spending on advertising - as I recall for just one year, something over a million dollars in 1952, which was a lot in those days. My English teacher gave me an A+ and quit smoking...for a month.

Anybody else remember television in the early 1950s, the big wooden box, the tiny screen, the guy in the white coat with a stethoscope around his neck showing you the graphs proving how good smoking BrandX cigarettes were for your heart?

Go ahead, lardy-boy. Given your awesome talent for geography you'd probably hit Bahrain, Bhutan or Belgium anyway.

Hang on, I'm in Be . .. .£$@* &
no carrier

The world is doomed anyway. Even if you win at the game of make Snowden escape the NSA, almost nothing changed, things kept going downhill. The dark side of the force won.

That calculator leaves out the MVNOs which are decidedly cheaper. The one that comes to mind is Bandwidth.com's Republic Wireless which offers unlimited data, texting and voice No Contract for either $19/month or $29 month, depending on how you purchase their phone. (Using the WSJ calculator, the next closest price I could find for unlimited data was T-Mobile at $70/month) The main catch is that you have to buy a specific phone--the Motorola DEFY XT, which again, depending on the plan you choose is going to be either $199 or $99. They have a special feature that I think is quite interesting--probably all of the carriers should allow this--you can connect to a WiFi and use that to make or receive calls--this is a good idea for bad reception areas and basements. The phone itself seems to be okay. Its reviewed well, but it is a bit outdated. At least it is a durable, waterproof phone though. Reviews for the phone and for Republic Wireless seem to be quite good over all. Here are a couple of the best ones that I have seen: A customer review http://longmeadcrossing.com/republicWireless.htm Time Magazine Review: http://business.time.com/2013/02/22/the-19-per-month-smartphone-is-actually-getting-decent-reviews/

Yeah, I saw "Full Metal Jacket," too.

I didn't see the movie. Was it, like, the same as actually being there? Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week's Toll, June 1969 (Slide 1 of 227)

Running a weapons warehouse and shipping Libyan weapons to 'freedom fighters' is Syria is a bit more than a "mess"....
Who is getting the flow of arms in Syria? The best friends the USA ever had: Al-CIA-da.
The black flags, battlefield bbq, one faith only types.
"CIA moved missiles out of Libya to Syria's rebels"
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4413289,00.html
"CIA 'clamping down on Benghazi operatives'"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10219347/CIA-clamping-down-on-Benghazi-operatives.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2383654/Congressman-cries-cover-claims-Obama-administration-hiding-Benghazi-witnesses-relocating-giving-new-identities.html
http://world.time.com/2013/05/14/we-will-slaughter-all-of-them-an-interview-with-the-man-behind-the-syrian-atrocity-video/

Librarians are well used to this... for example MARC Records and after all they've had to deal with these sort of problems for a while... 1700 years in this case who are currently in the middle of a digitization project.

It's pretty clear that, in aggregate, doctors aren't fleecing the system

I disagree. First, doctors are horrible at finance. Few trouble to manage their own money effectively. It's common for a doctor to be pulling down 6 figure pay, and yet be broke because he blows all his money on expensive cars, big houses, and trophy wives. They are even worse with their patients' money, going through that like the proverbial drunken sailor. They'll happily order unnecessary $2000 scans, "just in case", and to cover their asses and to get some use out of the really expensive equipment the practice should not have bought in the first place. They prescribe expensive brand name medication when a generic is available, and oft times is superior. An example is prescribing Crestor, instead of simvastatin or lovastatin. Even a generic may be the wrong approach, if patients have not tried other measures first, such as improving their diets and exercising. I realize there is a great deal of pressure on doctors from both Big Pharma and patients. We're really sold on the idea of magic pills that fix all our medical problems. Doesn't help that Big Pharma works the public over with all these ads. "Ask your doctor about ..." But rather than go with the flow, especially since it's more profitable, doctors have a duty to push back.

My own personal experience with this was thanks to an automobile accident. Had my parents with me, and they were both injured. My mother finished her hospitalization in a private place, where she had been sent for rehab. On the day they released her, they shoved a wheelchair at us, and shoved a form under her nose for her to sign. The form said that she promised to pay for the wheelchair herself should her insurance refuse. She didn't need the wheelchair, but at that time we were still just a little too credulous and inexperienced with medical profiteering. I protested that we could get a wheelchair from a friend who no longer needed his, but was ignored. I asked how much their wheelchair cost, and was told not to worry about it because insurance would cover it! I pointed out that the form they were insisting she sign suggested that there was a possibility insurance would not cover it, and so I ought to know what it cost. They replied that they didn't know but it was sure to be reasonable. Uh huh. Turned out that damned wheelchair cost $825, 4 to 6 times what it should have cost. That was hardly the only instance of profiteering.

You should read Bitter Pill (paywalled), and How Dentists Rip Us Off (pdf) if you are truly ignorant of the reckless and cavalier attitude the medical community has towards costs.

First of all - werd. To just about all of this.

Secondly I want to add that it's not as if there is some other definitive source that the government can use to determine the appropriate reimbursement rate for procedures. Hospitals have something called a "chargemaster list," but the prices on those lists vary wildly from hospital to hospital. And most hospitals, when quizzed as to why the prices seem so out of whack, argue that it doesn't matter because consumers "rarely" ever pay those prices.

Steven Brill had an amazing article on this subject in Time magazine, but it's now behind a paywall. You can find it here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2136864,00.html.

And the Washington Post has a brief discussion of the article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/23/steven-brills-26000-word-health-care-story-in-one-sentence/