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Five Times the US Almost Nuked Itself
kdawson writes "io9 has a scary outline of five times the US came close to accidental nuclear disasters. Quoting: 'In August of 1950, ten B-29 Superfortress bombers took off from what was then called Fairfield-Suisun Air Force Base in California, headed for Guam. Each was carrying a Mark IV atom bomb, which was about twice as powerful as the bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II. Shortly after takeoff, one of the B-29s had engine trouble. On board was General Robert Travis. He commanded the plane to turn back to the base when the landing gear refused to retract. Sensing the plane was going down, the pilot tried to avoid some base housing before crashing at the northwest corner of the base. The initial impact killed 12 of the 20 people aboard, including General Travis. The resulting fire eventually detonated the 5,000 pounds of conventional explosives that were part of the Mark IV. That massive explosion killed seven people on the ground. Had the bomb been armed with its fissile capsule, the immediate death toll may have reached six figures.'"
Conservatives used to like having that kind of local control, where individual states got to decide what was important to them. Apparently, conservatives now believe we should let some other state decide what the de-facto regulations are in our own state. At the same time they're decrying federal regulations...but with the federal regulations we at least get to vote on the people making "the rules".
What crap. If I want to purchase insurance from a company in another state, it's my business. I don't need the morons in the Federal government OR the state government telling me I can't. And try to fit it into your puny mind that the Feds telling states to leave us the hell alone and let us decide for ourselves is not a power grab.
Actually, we evil liberal commie bastards have been working on this for a very, very long time
Yes, you have been trying to pass the same damned thing for a long time. You'd think that you would have taken some of that time to pull your heads our of your ass and figure a way to do it right, instead of forcing YOUR version of Utopia down our throats.
I do have to hand it to you this time though...you just wrote a bunch of shit down and passed it without knowing what it was. That right there is reason enough to repeal it and tar and feather the morons who passed it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Given that we've had several approved drugs recently kill & maim a whole lot of people, how do you propose to make the current system both easier (and thus cheaper) and safer?
Have ta love morons who think that people who disagree with something or suspect it could be done better are automatically obliged to come up with a better solution or shut up.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Ideally, going to the doctor would be something you pay for out of your own pocket.
Everyone clamors for national health care; most everyone in the US drives a car and must have car insurance by law, but nobody is clamoring for national car insurance. That's because there's actually competition in car insurance. And that's because car insurance doesn't cover when I run out of gas or hit a nail with my tire, it covers things like when someone runs into the side of me in an intersection.
Likewise, in health care, a terrible illness or accident would be something that insurance would pay for. A routine check up (which would include mammograms for older women, prostate exams for older men) is something that all insurance would provide once or twice a year (not due to regulation, but because competition would force them to, like with car insurance). If I get sick with strep throat and all I need is to see a doctor for 15 minutes to a Biaxin prescription, then I should pay for it myself. If I know I have something simple, I don't need to go to Mayoclinic to have the health care gods look at me. I can go to the doctor that has good reviews online for $20 and get my medicine. For someone genuinely too poor to pay for medicine, we already have something like that for food -- they're called food stamps.
And if I'm in charge of my own money and making my own medical decisions for my own self, I'm not going to go to the doctor that refuses to quote me a price before I go in. I'm going to go to the doctor that has a clear, transparent pricing scheme. Would you give your car to a mechanic that wouldn't tell you how much he was going to charge?
National health insurance may inevitably be necessary in the US. But it won't have been necessary because you can't have privatized health insurance. It will have been necessary because the US government was too incompetent to properly set up a competitive industry for health care. Our car insurance system is running mostly fine, and honestly, a sick car in the US is just as detrimental to your livelihood as being sick, yourself. The deal is that car insurance is very transparent, it covers only what is necessary (i.e., not everything), and you have a choice of where to get your car fixed, by whom, and for how much.
You resoundingly do not have any such choice in medicine, and that is why it is so god damn expensive, mismanaged, and quite frankly, often downright evil (doesn't matter if health insurance company X makes little Suzy die in the emergency room, none of their "customers" are really capable of switching to a different insurance company).