Slashdot Mirror
Text Comments Out In YouTube "National Discussion" of Health Care
theodp writes "While the White House has invited the nation to Join the National Online Discussion on Health Care Reform, it is currently only accepting 20-30 second YouTube video responses — text comments have been disabled. Which raises a question: Should a video camera be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest? BTW, the response-to-date has been underwhelming — 101 video responses and counting — and is certainly a mixed-bag, including a one-finger salute, a talking butt, a woman "Showing my Apples", and other off-topic rants and unrelated videos."
So fucking what if text comments are disabled in this stunt? It's not as if people don't have plenty of other avenues to express themselves, such as writing and/or calling their elected representatives, or even you know vote for them.
This is a nice excuse to get this onto slashdot, but this just isn't news for nerds or stuff that matters.
It sounds to me like the administration is looking for raw material they can put into commercials to run in districts that oppose Obama's plans.
I.e,. this might be a huge casting call in disguise.
I'm fairly skeptical these days when Obama says he wants to involve the general population in a discussion. His modus operandi became evident when he ignored the highly voted Internet town hall topic of legalizing marijuana. It appears that at least sometimes, he's only pretending to take the general citizenry's views into account, even when he's saying otherwise.
Apparently it's not working.
Should a video camera be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest?
Yes.
I think we can tolerate the absence of people who can afford computers and not cellphone cameras.
Have you ever looked at the comment section of a YouTube video? I wouldn't want a low-level staffer to spend half a second wading through that pile of drooling morons. Posting a video at least requires minimal effort.
From TFA:
If I were the staff member in charge of wading through the discussion, I wouldn't want to have to use Youtube's craptastic comment system either.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Yuk. I don't like doing video. Text is more efficient and searchable. Bad Obama.
They wouldn't let competing viewpoints even by ad time on ABC prior to or after the "special." It's a lot easier to win a debate limited to one side.
You can open up your favorite video editing software and just put some slides of text. No camera involved.
Looks to me like a computer is the greatest part of that admission price. The camera (assuming the computer didn't come with one) is just an extra fee.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
MS Paint and Windows Movie Maker.
Say it in 24 bit color, baby!
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Yes, as a technical question it's now easy for everyone to communicate with their public officials! But what exactly are these officials supposed to do with ten thousand poor-quality comments? Institute a Slashdot-style moderate system? A digg-style voting system? (Obama did actually try that last one.) Develop a new version of spam filter that is some sort of "shitty comment with no useful content" filter? It seems what they're trying here is exactly what the submitter criticizes, a "barrier to entry" filter, with the hope that people who bother to make a video about their idea at least have an idea they've thought through for 5 minutes. Looks like that may have failed, too, but I can't blame them for trying.
In a different context, Gerhard Fischer pointed out in 1996 something similar about the internet not being a magical solution for education:
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I often hear (on NPR, usually) politicians calling for a "national discussion" or a "national debate" on some topic.
Exactly what is a "national discussion/debate"?
It seems to me like things usually work out this way: news organizations cover some topic, congress and the President start discussing it, lobbyists come onto the scene, and in the end the Congress either (a) sells us out to lobbyists, or (b) makes a completely irrational piece of legislation.
So is calling for a "national discussion/debate" really just an attempt to dress, as democratic, a decision which the common citizen has no capacity to influence? That is, like what happens with so-called "town-hall meetings"?
Surely it raises another question: Should internet access be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest?
If you're going to restrict discussion to those with access to the web it doesn't seem a giant leap to expect them to have a cheap and cheerful webcam.
If your opinion is so valuable then write a letter and mail it to the President or your elected representative.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Video Camera's aren't the barrier of entry, owning a computer/mobile device that has internet access is. Even if they did allow text comments I still need blow a few hundred bucks on a cellphone contract or a computer. Requiring video just makes sorting through the responses easier. And it doesn't prevent you from participating in government. You can still call your local congressmen/senator for a few cents on a pay phone.
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
Given the average IQ level of YouTube commenters, they should have blocked responses altogether and provided a URL to a forum on whitehouse.gov. That would at least eliminate the morons who can't read carefully.
Don't worry, he won't listen to those video replies either!
Color me trolled.
Look, this is plainly a compromise that tries to cull wheat from chaff. Don't believe me? Go look at any major American newspaper website. Pick any random story and dive into the comments. Now, take note of the insults, the extremely partisan rhetoric (from all sides), the bad grammar, the incredible misunderstandings of the entire point, and, yeah, even hopes that one or the other subjects go die.
It's simply much easier for anyone to click reply and type out, "HURR DURRR UR A FAGGG." Sure, you can do the same with with a web camera -- and apparently some folks are doing so -- but I bet there are going to be much less to go through than if everyone could pop a comment under the story.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
And nothing of value was lost...
In the democratic system, and people and general. But lately I've taken the stance that while some individuals may be smart, people as a whole are panicy and stupid. This whole "Open Government" thing, while honourable, is beginning to look like a futile attempt.
... only from Facebook users via their Facebook site. The link is on the referenced page.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
A video camera, computer, internet connection and YouTube account?
No sig for you!!
Am I the only person who's concerned that the Whitehouse has been allowed to be the moderator of such discussions?
After all, the administration has a political agenda, and therefore an incentive to bias the discussions on any particular topic of debate. Deciding details such as the length and form of submissions can be a powerful device for controlling the topic and direction of debate. At that point, it's a rather useless vehicle for arguing a side that the administration doesn't want advanced.
A good idea. Otherwise half the comments would be idiots callling Obama a ni**er.
The Obama administration is far, far better than any Bush administration.
However, it seems to me that "public participation" is dishonest. It is apparently a way of getting attention. It apparently never results in the public actually having any actual power.
If video responses with their "price of admission" were this bad, can you imagine how inane and disgustingly unintelligent text comments would be? Their video limitation was a good idea IMO.
Should a video camera be the price of admission for participating in an open government discussion, especially when issues may hit those with lower incomes the hardest?
Since we're talking about health care I can safely say that, in this case, the lower income people are the very people this initiative is supposed to help. It is the rich and possibly the middle class who will have to pay, against their will (through higher taxes), in order to pay for health insurance for others. Those with lower incomes get to sit back and watch the government and/or the rich people pay for everything for them. That is how things work when a Democrat is in office. Daddy gov't will help them by using the money from other people.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
a third world country called the United States.
Yours In Books,
Kilgore Trout
...and such was the case with the "one-finger salute" video. That intellectual powerhouse thinks Obama somehow snuck into the White House even though he is a Kenyan citizen, and mourns the loss of the Pontiac Firebird.
I think I'll cry.
> The "Nobel Prize winner" myth: Every school child will have access to a Nobel Prize winner
In some ways yes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn8PNMTSlwo
Plenty of other lectures/talks from MIT, Stanford, and other universities around the world are available online.
> it is doubtful that Nobel Prize winners will look forward to getting a few thousand e-mail messages a day.
I'm sure Feynman isn't too worried about that :).
FWIW, you can learn a lot from people without sending email to them, or communicating with them.
Raising the technical bar weeds out the sincere from the rest.
At least that was the idea until the talking butt came along.
You are the person who invented sending four line comments in powerpoints aren't you. Now we have your ID we are going to hunt you to the ends of the internet. You can't run and you can't hide. Our advance team is in Montréal already. They will be arriving at your home soon. Stay there so that at least you die surrounded by the things you know.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Ok, so am I the only person on slashdot who thinks slashdot's "ask slashdot" system is by far the best way to solicit responses from people on a mass scale (not sarcastic)? So far the government's attempt at getting "public input" has been ignorant of the better options... have you seen their open government website (http://mixedink.com/OpenGov/)? You can't even post more than a page for a draft on what you think should be done about something. There's a huge god damn difference between "I think you should do X" and "I think you should do X and this is how because I know I can't trust you to do it right".
And christ, a good portion of the responses on the open government website are off topic or unreadable/rambling. Almost 100% of it is rhetoric, or calls for expanding upon current ineffective government resources via the means of existing ineffective government resources.
Just as intellectual as the rest of the farce known as politics. The only difference is that the professionals wear fancy suits and genuinely think they are saying something insightful.
Just as intellectual as the rest of the farce known as politics. The only difference is that the professionals wear fancy suits and genuinely think they are saying something insightful.
Sounds a lot like slashdot to me.
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
My dad is a lawyer, as are many politicians. He said the most important thing involved in winning a case (or arguement) is setting the context of that arguement.
Basically with the video responses they are trying to get around the problem that both might be absolutely right. When both sides are absolutely right it is the correct time for rhetoric, emotioned arguement.
As text responses just invite flamewars and shouting matches. One person on a decent connection could post several replies a minute in a text-based system and make their opinion seem more reflective of the population. Granted, video responses aren't a great deal better; but by limiting it to that they can at least give everyone a (semi) equal opportunity to post.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Hm... maybe if they run a spell check on all comments and use the result as a spam filter. The comment only gets read if the spell check is minimally satisfied.
A video camera for a computer is a lot cheaper than having to have a computer in the first place.
No surprises there. I have seen some beleaguered web board admins replace their web boards with a blogroll community. Instead of accepting comments, they would accept trackback URLS where people would respond on their own blogs. Upping the cost in effort to respond greatly reduced the amount noise, but it also greatly reduced the overall number of responses. The web is a medium of short attention spans.
There are better ways to poll people. Youtube comments will only give you a cross section of youtube users.......not a group representative of most of America. No reason to spend tax payer money in this economy to pay people to read peanut gallery quality comments.
If you actually watch many of those videos, it is easy to see that the vast majority of them are people asking, "How can this benefit me?? (Or my sister, or my uncle, or...)"
Very few have been asking the hard questions, like "What part of the Constitutional gives you authority to do this?"
For someone who is supposed to be a "Constitutional scholar", Obama does not seem to have much understanding of it.
Sitting in front of a computer in your underwear is NOT a fancy suit. Yes, it's fancier than a birthday suit, but it's still not fancy.
I thought I was going to have to offer this correction. You beat me to it. Someone please mod Curien's comment up!
Spekkio Master of War
There is a place down the street I can go and pay a few dollars and sit down at a computer which has a webcam and post a video on youtube.
If someone can not afford to take a bus to an internet cafe.. then, I certainly feel sorry for them.. but if they are that down on their luck.. maybe the government should just fly them all to washington to hear their comments?
Wait, they put out a call on YouTube and they expected anything other than this as a response? It's *YouTube*, wtf did they expect? Have they never read the comments section on any random video on the site?
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
Yes but at least the Republican senators were willing to voice their opinions in the most eloquent manner they could.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
His modus operandi became evident when he ignored the highly voted Internet town hall topic of legalizing marijuana.
Or perhaps, he is just waiting for the right time to take up the topic. Just because he hasn't legalized weed in the first few months of his presidency does not mean he is ignoring the issue. Don't you suppose that, while anti-drug laws are pointless and archaic, they are SLIGHLTLY less important making sure that the economy doesn't implode further, getting out of the Iraq war, winning the Afghanistan war, Dealing with North Korean nuclear proliferation issues, and drafting national healthcare reform? Perhaps? Maybe?
I know a right wing nut who insists that Obama is a failure as a president because he hasn't SINGLE HANDEDLY FIXED THE LARGEST AND MOST COMPLICATED ECONOMY in the world yet. Let's get some perspective here. There are only so many hours in the day, and only so much the president can do. Just because he hasn't willed weed laws away with sheer psychic might (remember the president can't draft laws, just stamp yes or no on it.) doesn't mean he is ignoring things.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
In response to your concern over responses from people with lower incomes: I think this is rather unfounded given that webcams go for as little as $10-20. That is certainly minute compared to the cost of the computer and the internet connection itself.
see a Text Widget
All of these policies have one net effect, accelerating the pace of moving american jobs off shore. Adding additional taxes as well as
government imposed energy price increases destroys our ability to compete in the market.
this string of celebrity deaths is clearly a backhanded tactic by barrack obama to pass universal health care.
I send morse code messages with a series of white and black engineering diagram files.
The elephant in the room is of-course this: in the time of the largest US economic meltdown, in the time when the government must do one thing - cut spending and shrink to cut costs and stop printing money, in this time how is this reform going to be paid for? One most likely possibility is of-course the printing press.
You can't handle the truth.
The pattern so far is to pass complex pieces of legislation along strictly partisan lines so quickly that Congress can't read it and the public can't react to it. The last thing the administration wants is real public comment on this.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Note the voting pattern of Hispanics, Asian-Americans, etc. These non-Black minorities serve as a measurement of African-American racism against Whites (and other non-Black folks). Neither Barack Hussein Obama nor John McCain is Hispanic or Asian. So, Hispanics and Asian-Americans used only non-racial criteria in selecting a candidate and, hence, serve as the reference by which we detect a racist voting pattern. Only about 65% of Hispanics and Asian-Americans supported Obama. In other words, a maximum of 65% support by any ethnic or racial group for either McCain or Obama is not racist and, hence, is acceptable. (A maximum of 65% for McCain is okay. So, European-American support at 55% for McCain is well below this threshold and, hence, is not racist.)
If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama. At that level of support, McCain would have won the presidential race.
At this point, African-American supremacists (and apologists) claim that African-Americans voted for Obama because he (1) is a member of the Democratic party and (2) supports its ideals. That claim is an outright lie. Look at the exit-polling data for the Democratic primaries. Consider the case of North Carolina. Again, about 95% of African-Americans voted for him and against Hillary Clinton. Both Clinton and Obama are Democrats, and their official political positions on the campaign trail were nearly identical. Yet, 95% of African-Americans voted for Obama and against Hillary Clinton. Why? African-Americans supported Obama due solely to the color of his skin.
Here is the bottom line. Barack Hussein Obama does not represent mainstream America. He won the election due to the racist voting pattern exhibited by African-Americans.
African-Americans have established that expressing "racial pride" by voting on the basis of skin color is 100% acceptable. Neither the "Wall Street Journal" nor the "New York Times" complained about this racist behavior. Therefore, in future elections, please feel free to express your racial pride by voting on the basis of skin color. Feel free to vote for the non-Black candidates and against the Black candidates if you are not African-American. You need not defend your actions in any way. Voting on the basis of skin color is quite acceptable by today's moral standard.
The notion of a "town hall" at the Federal level is bunk. The comments or pithy videos selected will likely be produced or pushed by interested parties anyway, so the notion that poor people are being disenfranchised is irrelevant, since all citizens lack franchise in the propaganda state.
The government that the Democratic majority and presidency is practicing is the type of behavior that is common in the legislatures of states like New York. The "leadership" provides plums in the form of committee assignments, jobs for relatives and cash in exchange for voting as ordered. If you don't follow the leader, you lose the privileges.
This obviously isn't a phenomenon unique to democrats, but it is especially effective since 2/3 branches of government and soon all three will be controlled by the same people.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
You are the person who invented sending four line comments in powerpoints aren't you.
Yes. And he also invented the hold button. Take him down!
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Our video response is 7 minutes long. Any chance we can get an exception?
- Stealth Dave
Evil is as eval("does");
Obama's plan is bullshit and the Democrats have no real motive to pass real health care reform.
It sounds to me like the administration is looking for raw material they can put into commercials to run in districts that oppose Obama's plans.
Particularly with the 20-30 second requirement. Who can say anything other than "great plan, Mr. President" in just 20 to 30 seconds? I'd love to add my two cents, but I don't think I could squeeze it into less than a few minutes. Well, let's see...
"This healthcare plan sucks."
Well, that was easier than I expected. I had a lot more to say, but when I write, I try to write things so that the audience can understand what I am saying, and sometimes you know you just can't say anything.
I think we'd be a lot better off to pass a law that medical providers must present the cost of any service or treatment in advance. Any time I ask for prices in advance, I find great deals, like the oral surgery I once needed. I got an x-ray, some time with the doctor when he discussed what he was going to do, then the actual surgery on another day which involved at least 30 minutes of work by the doctor and a couple of assistants, plus some pain drugs, and a follow-up appointment a week later just to make sure it was healing correctly. Total cost: $300
Compare that to some lab work I had done recently which I didn't check the price of because the government was paying for it. (I would have simply not bothered otherwise, which isn't to say it wasn't a real problem, just that long-term chronic fatigue isn't something anyone can afford to investigate without insurance.) I had some blood drawn for some tests, a chest x-ray, and an EKG. Some time later I got a letter in the mail indicating that the government paid $1200 for those services. I was only there for ten minutes. X-rays are just photographic film and an x-ray tube, and an EKG isn't that complex either, both technologies have been around at least a hundred years. ...but the real kicker was that they charged $50 for a venipuncture.
Insurance is just a band-aid. The problem is that people spend without knowing how much, because they accept medical services without asking about the cost, assuming the intake person in the E.R. can even give you any answers. Insurance puts the costs up-front, and to keep premuims low, insurance companies force doctors to not waste so much money, but they also allow people to seek medical care when they really don't need it since it won't cost very much and they've already paid for it anyway, and that raises the costs back to what they would have been anyway. The end result is that your monthy premium costs more than oral surgery and it doesn't even come with a dental plan.
Despite my intense hatred for libertarians, I really think this is one issue where the free market can do a lot of good, if only the rules are changed so that the free market has some means by which to affect people's decisions. Passing a law that requires people to buy insurance only gives them a half-ass solution that was already available to them anyway, and it removes the solution of simply buying insurance for extreme situations and using the "shop around for a lower price" solution for more common needs, which is always going to be cheaper than buying insurance for everything.
As for Obama's fucked up idea of requiring insruance to cover pre-existing conditions, how about we do something sane like require insurance to cover post-existing conditions? If I get cancer while I have medical insurance, it will pay for my treatments, but only as long as I continue to pay the premiums. Imagine if homeowners insurance worked that way. One day your house burns down, which causes you to miss a few days of work, so your boss fires you because he's a prick, and now you can no longer pay your homeowner's insurance. Well, too bad, now they're no longer going to pay the contractors rebuilding your house.
It's retarded. Any illness that occurs when someone has coverage should be covered, no matter how long the treatments take. Insurance companies want it
Here's Matt Taibbi on your claim that "Fannie Mae regulation REQUIRED banks to loan . . .":
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/06/18/the-greatest-non-apology-of-all-time/#comment-881
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/06/18/the-greatest-non-apology-of-all-time/#comment-883
... like 20 to 30 second sound bites. They might as well look for ideas at an open mike poetry night.
June 29-2009:
Dear Senator/Congressperson,
Can I depend on you to ardently advocate for, and support the president's Proposed Health Care Plan as I do?
Listed hereunder, are some points that I have outlined, which (to my mind), needs special attention.
* Ensure that SINGLE PAYER representation are at the table during these discussions.
* Ensure that all doctors in general practice are paid relatively equal, regardless of whether he/she is attending to a patient with Medicaid or Medicare insurance.
* Ensure that all patients have the option to choose their own preferred Hospital/Primary Care Physician.
* Ensure that all patients have access to Dental Care (fillings, extractions, cleaning/oral hygiene, and capping loose or missing fillings).
* Ensure that all patients have access to pain management, massage therapy, drug and substance abuse counseling, medication adherence counseling, and blood tests (including HIV Viral Load monitoring).
* Ensure access to maternity care, pre-natal care, post-natal care, pre-abortion counseling, and post abortion counseling.
* Ensure that all doctors accept all patients that are insured or not insured, as a humanitarian gesture, and not simply an emergency consultation, with a prescription issued that the patient cannot afford to fill.
FINALLY:
Health Care is not something that has to be considered, or encouraged.
Health Care is something that ALL societies in this modern era MUST provide for EVERY citizen!
Sincerely,
Please Go To congress.org
But I washed these underpants specially, and they even *bend*! How much fancier can you get?
The nice thing about text comments is they can easily be written and read by the blind or the deaf. A system that allows only video/audio comments is immediately inaccessible to a significant portion of the population. See the Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_of_the_Rehabilitation_Act
Assuming one might convince people to care about the tenth amendment, it wouldn't be long before the 28th amendment was passed. They all ignore the tenth amendment on a regular basis, so I can't imagine anything but bipartisan support for repealing it, aside from having to put into words that they are repealing a portion of the bill of rights.
That's kind of the whole idea behind the idea that you have to support other people's rights even when you do not agree with them because if you don't then you'll eventually lose yours. Sure, violating a basic principle in just a few specific cases may not be the end of the world, but eventually there's a point at which a majority of people have an interest in one of those violations, at which point you'll never again see widespread support for that principle since too many people are enjoying its violation.
So, yes, that 20 to 30 seconds will get you absolutely nowhere. Congress has no interest in supporting the tenth amendment, the states have no interest in forcing them to do so, and the people don't care because, given a chance to draft a new constitution, few people would bother with renewing the tenth amendment anyway.
In fact, there's a fun thing Obama can do. Start an online discussion, google moderator style, about what the bill of rights should say if it were to be rewritten. I guarantee you that the tenth amendment would be replaced with "a man shalt not lie with another man" and the ninth would probably be replaced with something to protect the rights of Mother Earth. In fact, I'd be surprised if any of the current amendments, aside from a less ambiguous version of the right to bear arms, managed to make it onto the list. Everyone would be so concerned with what new laws they want that they wouldn't bother to preserve what we already have. ...and basically, that's our whole problem.
We're a species that has just recently evolved the ability to create large societies and so we're not very good at it. We can just barely understand how to make it work. By random chance, some of us are better at it than others, but the majority suck at it, and so a simple majority in favor of the wrong idea isn't difficult to come by. We might be better off if any law whatsoever required 90% approval to pass.
I checked out some of the video responses. The OP's description of the collection as "a mixed-bag, including a one-finger salute, a talking butt, a woman 'Showing my Apples', and other off-topic rants and unrelated videos" neglects to acknowledge that there ARE legitimate responses. That description also seems to suggest that the Obama administration is to blame for losers and sociopaths on YouTube (I always wondered who let them in!). If they were allowing text-based comments, they would probably be expected to read every last one of them. I'm guessing there would be a lot of them, and I wouldn't expect the quality of the responses to take a sudden leap when they only require half a second of forethought. It seems at some point that this turned into a discussion of dishonesty in the Obama administration. I don't see how that applies here. They're not exactly "pulling a fast one on us" by disabling comments. Most people would catch on when they try to reply and the form isn't there.
Welcome to Slashdot. Replace this text with your desired signature before replying to a story.
I wouldn't recommend sending in your 'true' opinion by video.
Search for "An open letter to Obama"
I don't know about you but I don't feel very comfortable with where our country is going. Do you really consider yourself too stupid to make your own decisions? Get the Federal Government OUT of your personal lives! Get active and get our system fixed to the way it was designed, not this bastardized socialist garbage that's ruining us.
I don't know what Obama's handler's name is but they should definitely call him Skippy, 'cause he's so smooooooth!
Amazing how people fall all over themselves when exposed to such eloquent excrement.
I believe this is the best write-up of the financial disaster I have ever read.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
But the videos are too useful to the insurance companies, who will use them to diagnose conditions like MS, Parkinson's, diseases whose symptoms include jaundice, and other signs of serious illness or injury that are visually detectable so that they can deny you coverage under the new, improved "A public health option is off the table!" system.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
There is one very simple way to fix all of this, but you probably hate the idea:
Drop the insurance model entirely. The government pays for all medical care. It just pays. Not via insurance. Procedures have prices set by medical boards, and the government sends hospitals and doctors checks for that amount for doing them.
Actually, that's exactly what I would most like to see happen. (It could fit in a 30 second video too.) I just can't imagine our politicians discovering that that is the best thing to do, let alone implementing it without fucking it up for their own personal agendas. The republicans will complain that it's anti-business and doesn't allow people to choose their own coverage and the democrats will be upset that it doesn't do anything to protect the enviroment. (It seems like that is the only thing that democrats can motivate themselves about anymore.)
There's room for debate about what should be covered and how costs will be controlled, but when it comes to whether or not it should be automatic coverage for everyone paid from general taxes, it's just completely obvious that it should be. Everyone wants coverage, so we wouldn't be forcing anyone to pay for something they don't want, and insurance is about people with equal risk agreeing to pay eachother's bills, and if everyone has insurance from conception, then everyone starts with the same risk, and so paying everything directly from taxes makes sense. The only thing there is to debate is how to decide how much to pay for particular services, since we'd have to account for the fact that we're removing what little influence the free market had to begin with, but it's clear that total coverage for everyone is the best way to go.
I don't usually agree with libertarians, but since I can't really imagine our politicians seeing the light, I just think that something really simple they might be able to do without fucking it up is to make the cost of healthcare more transparent to people so that the free market can have some room to work. The current method of "we'll help you now without talking about money and in a month we'll send you a bill for whatever we decide to charge you" isn't the way to inexpensive health care. Like I said before with the $300 oral surgery example: You can get a good price if you look around for it right now. Just imagine how that would change if requiring everyone to mention costs up-front caused everyone to compare prices.
There is really no good reason why basic health care needs to be unaffordable without insurace. Sure, some things have to be expensive -- someone has to pay for that $1 million MRI machine -- but a lot of basic things are only expensive due to lack of competition.
Like the pharmacy that charges $10 for generic prescriptions regardless of which drug and pill count. Why charge less than $10 when insurance isn't going to care since the patient has a $10 co-pay anyway, and people will be so happy that it is only $10 they won't even consider the fact that they might be getting a dollar's worth of pills. When Wal-Mart shook things up by advertising their $4 prescriptions, Meijer decided to compete with that by offering certain very inexpensive prescriptions free of charge. One of my friends got one of those because his doctor told him that what he was getting was free at Meijer. It's amazing what a little competition can do.
I really don't see how a lot of people, you included, think that people get more medical treatment than they need thanks to insurance.
My own personal experience, actually. Like I was saying with the story about my visits to the E.R.:
The first time I went, I was expecting $300 or so (a figure a friend once mentioned about someone else's ER visit). If they would have told me right then that they'd rack up $1200 over several hours of doing very little, I would have just sat in the waiting room for a while to see what happens, being content to be near the hospital in case th
There are secession movements in Texas and Vermont, which intend to do just that.
That's interesting. I looked into both. The Vermont movement seems somewhat misguided. There are plenty of good reasons to seperate from the union, but the ones they state aren't all that convincing, and some of them are just enviromental nonsense and libertarian pornography. Still beats Texas, however, whose web page appears to be a sort of blog with no useful content whatsoever. No introduction, no index of content, just a bunch of seemingly only vaguely relevent blog entries.
The Vermont site linked to an article about a poll that shows that 20% of people in every state are in favor of their home state seperating from the union, or, well they were last year, but I can't imagine the number is any lower now. Once this CO2 law takes effect and no one can afford to heat their homes, I suspect it won't be long before that number reaches the 2/3 majority Vermont is looking for.
It really needs to happen. I can't recall the last time congress passed a useful law, save a few the current administration created to undo the damage from the last. ...and really, I'm not sure what it possibly could do that states can't do for themselves just as well. The euro is proof that independant nations can share common currency. Canada is proof that a passport isn't required to travel between different countries. As for disaster relief, countries help eachother out all the time. The only thing I can think of that we would lose is the money they create out of thin air when the money they're taking from the citizens of the states isn't sufficient, and it isn't as if we don't need to put an end to that anyway.
I'm going to have to do some research into why the original colonies felt the need to create a federal government in the first place. All I can recall is something about providing for the general welfare. I sure hope they didn't form a union with no idea what its purpose should be.
Well, let's see...
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The only part of that that sounds like a real reason is "provide for the common defence." The rest just sounds like a bunch of happy words.
So far the only insight I can find is in Wikipedia's article about the articles of confederation, which lists a few vague reasons for why the constitution was written to replace the articles of confederation. Apparently the states were fighting with eachother because one state would do something another state didn't like, and so they consequently decided they needed some way for the majority to tell the minority what to do.
Comically enough, I would have said that's all the federal government is good for. Do you want a certain law in another state, but the people of that state don't want it? Just get the other states together and say "we want this law, and there's more of us than there are of you, so what we want matters more than what the people who actually live in your state want." It works even if it's your home state that doesn't want the law. Just go tell on them to the federal government and they'll take care of it for you.
I think we can do without that.
You're right, EKG isn't complicated at all. I once built a rather simple one that used my computer as a display device. With that approach, I'm sure one could simply be a $100 USB device which works with a PC application and prints a permanent record from there, or just stores it electronically. Certainly that would reduce the per-patient cost to less than $1, plus the cost of those disposable electrodes, which is kind of up there as well. They really should just wash and sterilize reusable electrodes, but since doctors can charge whatever they like since no one asks about costs up-front, it's simply easier to use disposable electrodes and bill them to the patient. I looked into buying some for myself. In the end I just soldered some wires to coins and added some shampoo for conductivity and it worked well enought that I could see all of the details that doctors are interested in.
I do think you're right, that if it were all properly managed, waste due to overuse wouldn't really be a problem. Even though the two times I went to the hospital resulted in $2000 of expenses, nothing much really happened in either visit, and I really don't think it should have been more than $200. Both visits included very little face time with people, old technology like EKG and x-rays, generic medications, and there were a few blood tests, but I assume they were the "add three drops of this, stir, and see if it turns blue" type of test. ...and in both cases I think I would have been out of there with a lot less expense had a doctor simply asked a few more questions and said "this seems like nothing, but I can look into it further if you like," as both visits were more "I don't know what's happening" and less "I think something bad is happening."
I suppose they have to pay for the new hospital one way or another. I always get a kick out of how almost every business I visit is so much more wealthy than I am, like how Wal-Mart is covered with HDTVs that no one watches even though the average Wal-Mart customer cannot afford even one of those TVs. That new hospital, however, it really takes the cake. There are a couple of photos at the bottom of this page: http://www.reidhospital.org/about_reid/brief_history_of_reid/index.html
So, I agree, overuse wouldn't be a problem if it all weren't for the near-total lack of cost-control measures. There really isn't a good reason why anyone shouldn't be able to get an EKG for any minor chest pain they have because it really shouldn't cost that much anyway. I'm sure the machines sit idle most of the time anyway.