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Near-universal Mexican Healthcare Coverage Results From Science-informed Changes
ananyo writes about improvement to Mexico's healthcare system. From the article: "A revamp of Mexico's beleaguered health-care system is proving to be a runaway success and offers a model for other nations seeking to reform their own systems, according to a review published this week in The Lancet (abstract). The key to the scheme's success is the way in which it has modified its reforms in response to scientific assessments of their effectiveness, the authors say. Launched in a law in 2003, the Mexican scheme was designed to sort out widespread inefficiencies and inconsistencies in the country's health-care system. Some 50 million Mexicans — nearly half the country's population — who previously were not covered by health insurance are now enrolled, leading the scheme's architects to claim that the country has near-universal health-care coverage. As well as the increased coverage, the scheme has seen the number of conditions treated under Mexican public health insurance nearly quintuple. Admittedly, the former health minister Julio Frenk, now dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, is a co-author on the paper."
So will I have to go to Mexico for my low price drugs now? Sorry Canada
Admittedly, the former health minister Julio Frenk, now dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, is a co-author on the paper."
Will there be any death panels?
...let's watch the mexican economy tank in 3...2...1...
Translation: "We did some things we thought would work, and then later we stopped doing the things that weren't working and did more of the things that were."
In an ideal world, governments behaving sensibly wouldn't make headlines.
. . . about a year and a half ago, and while it's not all bad, it's not quite as glowing as TFA.
“You have people signed up on paper, but there are no doctors, no medicine, no hospital beds,” said Miguel Pulido, the executive director of Fundar, a Mexican watchdog group that has studied the poor southern states of Guerrero and Chiapas.
The result is that how Mexicans are treated is very much a function of where they live. Lucila Rivera Díaz, 36, comes from one of the poorest regions in Guerrero. She said doctors there told her to take her mother, who they suspected had liver cancer, for tests in the neighboring state of Morelos.
Sounds like the problems the opponents to universal health care in the States are always worried about.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
You mean, using someone who actually understands the field he's working in instead of a politician with little or no qualifications, actually gives better results? OMFG this is revolutionary!
Yes, the claim that Mexico has near universal coverage is accurate, but Mexico's health care is not a US or Canadian (-provincial) style. This Wikipedia article is pretty accurate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Mexico about how it works.
Ex-President Fox's Seguro Popular is mostly what the article talks about, and that's what (properly) gives Mexico the right to say that it has nearly 100% coverage. And it's a good program -- my mother-in-law's maid's kid received a kidney transplant under the program.
It's important to distinguish, though, that you're not forced into this system. You can still buy private insurance, or pay cash. (Last time I had to go to a hospital in Mexico, they simply wanted my credit card).
tl;dr: the Mexican government hasn't taken away choice.
--Jim (me)
Doctors write paper claiming that the key to health is for a government to give doctors taxpayers money.......
Without universal healthcare people live in ghettos and a country is full of factions at war. Apparently Mexico is a more civilized country than the rich antisocial faction of Americans would like it to be. Sometimes you wonder if the rabid religious nut-jobs who declare America to be the great Satan might have a point.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Interesting that they don't mention what this is costing the taxpayers. Maybe it's in the body of the paper which I can read for just $31.50.
Probably not.
I don't know why people don't get it. The "free market" people out there love to say "government shouldn't mess with it" and usually, I agree except when government has no choice.
Any time there is an unlimited supply, the government needs to help. Such cases include matters like "copyright" and "patent protection." The supply is unlimited and therefore must be enforced by government to use other means to get people to pay for something with an unlimited supply.
Any time there is an unlimited demandm the government needs to help. Such cases include matters like healthcare, water and electrical service. People need what they need and it has little to do with market conditions. Often is is "use or die." Government needs to ensure that needs of the people are met before suppliers are allowed to exploit the need to gain unlimited profits.
It's interesting and amusing to me that many such free market proponents are great with government enforced or assisted items like copyright but not with health and power regulation. "Only when it serves their interests." So it's selfish humanity as usual... and in the end, that's why we have law in the first place -- to help us to act against our own nature.
I guess healthcare doesn't mean that much to them...
millions of Americans are not flocking to mexico for free medical care... rather millions of mexicans come north.
These stupid studies are all trying to prove the moon is brighter then the sun. It doesn't matter how many graphs, pie charts, or studies you do on the subject. The evident facts of the matter don't support the premise.
This isn't to say mexico can't one day have a great medical system. It's just that today... where do you honestly want to be treated? Exactly. End of argument.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
... nothing. President Lawnchair signed the massive bailout for the health insurance companies (which was conveniently disguised as "health care reform") which ultimately left us with the same broken system, but with people now forced to buy into it. We still have no standard of care, and nothing that actually resembled universal coverage.
And now to further accentuate how ridiculous that is, the Mexican government just beat us to health care reform as well. A significant portion of their country is embattled in violent conflict in the drug war, yet they can pass health care reform. Up here, we can't pass it because of a collection of idiots who are afraid of (their own lack of understanding of) "socialism".
Yeah, go ahead. Mod me down. I can take it. At least I said my piece.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The United States relies upon private health insurance to provide much of the financing for medical costs. This is unusual: in Britain, Canada, and Spain, for example, health-care costs are largely paid for by the government. In Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, medical costs are paid for by a system of "social insurance": it is compulsory for most people to buy insurance, but insurance premiums are tied by law to income rather than to the risk of a claim.
The United States system makes it voluntary to buy insurance, and premiums are linked to risk, not to income. But these market-based premiums, beloved of many Americans, do not seem to be delivering health care that makes them happy. A recent survey revealed that only 17 percent of respondents in the United States were content with the health-care system and thought no substantial reforms were necessary. Why the discontent?
The superficial reasons are simple enough to describe: the system is hugely expensive, very bureaucratic, and extremely patchy. The expense first: US health cares costs a third more, per person, than that of the closest rival, super-rich Switzerland, and twice what many European countries spend. The United States government alone spends more per person than the combination of public and private expenditure in Britain, despite the fact that the British government provides free health care for all residents, while the American government spending program covers only the elderly (Medicare) and some of the marginalized (Medicaid). Most Americans worry about health-care costs and would be stunned to discovered that the British government spends less per person than the American government but still manages to provide free health care for everyone. In fact, if you figure in the costs of providing health insurance to government employees and providing tax breaks to encourage private health care, the US government spending on health care, per person, is the highest in the world.
Bureaucracy next. Researchers at the Harvard Medical School found that the administrative costs of the US system, public and private, exceed $1,000 per persons. In other words, when you count all the taxes, premiums, and out-of-pocket expenses, the typical American spends as much on doctor's receptionists and the like as citizens of Singapore and the Czech Republic spend on their entire medical care. Both places are countries with health outcomes very similar to those in the United States: life expectancy and “healthy life” expectancy (a statistic that distinguishes a long healthy life and a long life plagued by years of severe disability) are a shade lower in the Czech Republic than in the United States; and in Singapore they are a little higher than in the United States. The costs of US bureaucracy is also more than three times the $307 cost per person for the administration of the Canadian health system, whic
Because that's what it sounds like to me! Death Panels! Because I want the right to have a homeopathic doctor (Excuse me, I mean "doctor" -- you can call them that if you use the quotes!) to treat my prostate cancer and if you don't let me, it's because of Death Panels!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Sounds like a better deal for them there than here.
The article discusses primarily the ways that coverage has gotten better/more complete since they instituted this program, but in my experience with the Mexican health care system in the early 90s, the biggest problem was the quality of the care. It was horrible. The doctors and nurses in the big public hospitals were overworked, underpaid, and by and large didn't care. Sanitary conditions weren't very good. As a result, the general populace viewed the public hospital not as a place you went to get better, but a place you went to die, and it was also generally expected that you had better take several family members with you to help keep you comfortable because the nursing staff, such as it was, would ignore you. Anyone who could afford it, or could get friends and family to help scrape up the cash, went to a private hospital.
I imagine the care has improved somewhat, along with the coverage, especially at the larger hospitals. But I'll bet it's still quite different from what many of us would consider the term "health care" to mean.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
So healthcare for one half of the population is considered 'near-universal'? Here in America we have over 275 million people covered, with by some estimates around 40 million left without healthcare coverage (about 80-85% of population covered) and we are told we have a crisis by our politicians.
Maybe we just need to adopt the Mexican definition, then we could easily consider ourselves to have 'near-universal coverage' with 85% of population covered, since they consider themselves to have 'near-universal coverage' at around 50%...
Ken
I think that is the biggest difference between the US and the rest of the 1st / 2nd world: USians want an ironclad guarantee of a perfect health outcome or they will sue, sue, sue. OB-Gyns in the US have to pay an incredibly massive amount of malpractice insurance and many still end up quitting due to the helicopter parents in waiting. Nothing is guaranteed, but USians refuse to accept reality.
I prefer the idea of Medicare Buy in for all in the US. It's been proposed several times, and never passed. The fact is, that if Government health care is so incredibly awful, why are the for-profit insurance companies afraid of a system in which they would have to compete for it? This is the question that they avoid.
Well, I'm here in Edmonton, Canada and I just recently got back from visiting a dentist in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Sure glad I went! Gotta do your research though!
Alberta dentist's have raised their prices in many cases to more than triple what they were 6 years ago. I even would've saved money by going to the States!
I feel bad for families who can't fly to Mexico on short notice... or me if I get stuck timewise next incident.
The quest for universal health coverage: achieving social protection for all in Mexico
If the American system was fixed and the bureaucracy was reduced or eliminated then private health funds would either need to change or lots of people would lose their jobs. So it won't happen. America is just screwed.
From National Geographic Magazine:
http://blogs.ngm.com/.a/6a00e0098226918833012876a6070f970c-800wi
Guess who gets the least bang for their buck in Healthcare?
How about Norway or Sweden?
There is no such case where supply and demand do not apply. The only question is - is there enough supply available to meet your price point?
55% of health care in Mexico is done privately.
You can't handle the truth.
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-05-17/world/world_mexico-decapitated-bodies_1_drug-war-gulf-cartel-monterrey?_s=PM:WORLD
http://www.infowars.com/35-decapitations-in-past-six-weeks-near-us-mexico-border/
http://www.bestgore.com/beheading/chainsaw-beheading-video-sinaloa-cartel-members-decapitated-mexico/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18063328
--
And so on.
No brain, no pain.
Leaving the United States as the largest third world country without universal health care.
We're getting beat by Mexico while Congress is fighting over funding for Planned Parenthood by people who want to turn Medicare into a discount coupon program.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
So, what are they going to do? Just ship everyone to el norte to sit in our ER's to get 'free healthcare' since they cannot be turned away or asked their immigration status like they've been doing for the past 20 years?
These neoliberal politicians seem to live in an entirely different country, and Frenk is no exception; no wonder he's now run as far away from Mexico as possible and is now teaching elsewhere, standing, no doubt, on his alleged achievements while being the secretary of public health in Mexico.
As any mexican will tell you, his boasting is far from the truth; while he may have instituted a program that supposedly provides coverage for people not otherwise under any sort of health care plan (i.e. those who are not, as workers, covered by the mexican institute of social security (IMSS), or as government workers, covered by ISSSTE), he did so without increasing health spending significantly (from 2003 to 2005 it only increased 0.2 percent and it has remained constant ever since: http://corta.me/7mz). So how can you cover 50 million more people without increasing spending? very poorly, that's how. Understaffed and underequipped hospitals, lack of medication, soul-sucking bureaucracy and hoops to jump through, I don't think that's anything to boast about; as befits his neoliberal lineage, Frenk instituted these policies for the macroeconomic "bottom line".
IMSS is supposed to provide coverage for workers and their families. However this entails people working on a stable, formally constituted company which has the obligation to cover fees for employee coverage. It's not a privilege, it's a right that companies must provide to their employees. However, since Mexico has had near zero growth in the past two decades or so (and more so since 2000, when the disastrous, conservative PAN party arrived in power), job creation has stagnated, and even receded in some cases. Millions of people have to resort to the "informal economy", since there's no company through which they can have access to IMSS, this popular insurance thing was created to give some semblance of health care coverage to the 50 million poor and underemployed in Mexico. But make no mistake; this is not the glowing achievement that Frenk would have the world believe. It's really the government hastily trying to fulfill, in a half-assed way, their constitutionally mandated obligation for health care (Mexican Constitution, 4th Article). This has been there since 1983, so actually Frenk's implementation means a 20-year lag for the government to fulfill its obligations.
In an ideal world, governments behaving sensibly wouldn't make headlines.
Universal healthcare is useless if you live in a country with absolutely no rule of law (they have a murder rate three times the US) and in the midst of a bloody civil war the government won't admit to that kills about 10,000 people a year.
Any time anyone says the words "civil war" they freak out, yet the cartels are blowing up police stations and military installations like it's going out of style. Judges, police, prosecutors live in constant fear of the kidnappings, bombings, beheadings the cartels are using to brutally suppress the justice system.
Please help metamoderate.
If you're going to use a phrase, learn what it means.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_world
By deffinition, the US can not be 3rd world. Neither could the soviet union while it was around.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
The conservative argument against universal health care is pretty simple. If it's paid for by taxes, the middle to upper class pay significantly more than everyone else for the same service. And those people don't like doing that.
Personally, i'm on the fence about the issue. I definitely see the benefits of a simple, efficient, single payer system. And I also feel it's important that everyone has access to affordable health care. However, I do find it annoying that a huge percentage of the population pays little to no taxes but expect more and more free services from the government. I think health care is a personal responsibility that everyone needs to budget for. Similar to buying groceries or paying rent (extreme poverty cases aside), everyone has to pay. I see far too many poor people buying iPhones and $100 data plans, yet claim they cannot afford health insurance.
If we are going to compare the health care of other countries with the United States, we should also compare the lifestyle differences between the US and other countries that affect our health and, therefore, the health care that we require. Generally, people in the US eat more crap, get less exercise, indulge in more promiscuous sex, and use more dangerous drugs than people in most other countries. Those things all cause serious disease that takes a lot of expensive medical care to manage before the patient ultimately succumbs. If a hypothetical Joe Blow wants to use meth, inject himself with heroin, eat steak for dinner every night, sit on the couch playing xbox till 1am while drinking diet pop, and then go of to the bars to drink and pickup a new sex partner for the night, he's going to be a high-roller at the local hospital as well.
I thought the Mexican healthcare system, was to come to the US illegally across the border, and get onto our welfare system...help drain Medicare, and clog up our Hospitals' Emergency Rooms....?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Do they mention that single-payer, under the table, is the most popular method of health care access?
The US does have universal healthcare. If you walk into a hospital you get treated.
Health Insurance is like every other insurance. You only need it if you have assets you want protected. It is a financial product. I have car insurance in case I get into an accident. It will buy me a new car or keep my house from being taken in a lawsuit.
I have life insurance not to keep me alive but to protect my family from income they would lose if I died.
I have homeowners insurance because if my house burns down I'd like a new one.
A poor person doesn't need health insurance because they don't have assets that need protecting.
This whole universal health insurance debate is an attack on the poor. They already get healthcare. It's just the non-poor don't want to pay for them. Well too bad.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
That Mexico can figure out universal care but the U.S. is predominated by the insurance industry. That insurance industry is the one primarily responsible for the run up in health care costs in the U.S. And of course in the U.S. we have the billing companies too. We need to neutralize both.
If I need a surgery and have no money to pay for it, a macroeconomist will say that I'm out of the "supply and demand" cycle. However, I might just die. Is that fair?
I am a Mexican. I have treated almost all of my medical needs over the past many (10?) years. Many of my friends prefer private healthcare - just for the reasons you mention. Of course, I have not had to wait for months for an urgent surgery (that happens here, of course), and would most likely do it privately.
Thankfully, I am in the social strata where I can choose. Most of the time, I can perfectly live with some waiting and hurrying. Many people won't even consider it. Up to them. But I know many, many people that were it not for the socialized medicine would get no alternatives at all.
Of course... this does not sadly cover the whole country. The countryside lives in a dramatically different situation, and the supposed universal coverage... does not exist.
Science proves that stopping feeding patients greatly reduces the cost and time of treatment until the patients reach a stable condition.
P.S.: Something in Slashdot causes me to only be able to post as AC, although I have logged in. Oh well.
50% of all personal bankruptcies in the US used to be caused by health issues.
What about the Health Care model set up by the Founding Fathers of the US?
Congress Passes Socialized Medicine and Mandates Health Insurance -In 1798
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2011/01/17/congress-passes-socialized-medicine-and-mandates-health-insurance-in-1798/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29099806/Act-for-the-Relief-of-Sick-DisabledSeamen-July-1798
In an ideal world, there wouldn't be headlines. Good things wouldn't make headlines, because they'd be routine and expected. Bad things wouldn't make headlines, because they wouldn't happen.
However, we live in the real world, where positive progress -- such as governments behaving sensibly -- does make headlines, and rightly so.
You understand you're talking into a mic conneted to the whole world, right? As in, the "World Wide Web"?
I call bull.
Many of the surveys of “outcomes” that show other countries spend less for similar or better healthcare than the United States are just intentionally disingenuous (i.e., they lie).
I've had babies delivered both in and out of the US, been treated for routine issues inside and outside the US, and right now I'd prefer treatment abroad.
Any of my non-citizen colleagues who have had experience both in and out of the US care to chime in about how wonderful our healthcare system is for people who make less than $170K/year, and where you're from?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Emma Lazarus, 1883
I feel sorry for the younger people growing now and to be born, they are getting saddled with a giant debt that will lower this countries standard of living for all but the very wealthy.
Hmm, either we can pay Halliburton and Blackwater (Xe) obscene abomination-before-God amounts of money to build us a fence, or we can return taxation levels to where Republican-War-Hero/Man-Who-Stopped-Hitler-and-Saved-the-World President Eisenhower set them and pay our debts and honor our "City on a Hill" principles at the same time.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Look at the moderation and replies I get for my comments?
You frequently get moderated up, in spite of the fact that you are an arrogant and misinformed twot.
You think anybody wants to hear the truth?
The frequency with which you are moderated up suggests that no, people here do not want to hear the truth. If they wanted to hear the truth they would moderate you down to encourage you to actually read into what you are saying here. Your strange insistence that somehow you are the sole arbiter of what is - or is not - true is amusing.
I haven't lied yet and all I get is ridicule.
You have lied repeatedly. Many people have shown where you have lied (I am one of those people). I could show you where you have lied but then you would just lie about lying or link back to yourself to try to support your argument in spite of being clearly demonstrated to be a liar.
More impressive than your campaign of trying to bludgeon truth to death with ron paul mantras though is your new task of trying to use your sock puppets to drown out anyone who disagrees with you. How many do you have now? Do they get moderator points too?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
/moderate #41065987 +5
...about the Italians, and the Irish, and the Poles, and every other group that ever came here...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Normally drugs are cheap here. But I would say that the report is extremely self serving by Julio Frenk, it is akin to a report by Dick Cheney saying that waterboarding works and WMD had been found in Iraq, or the large banks reporting that deregulation is good in 2008. The reality is that both programs, "Seguro Popular" and "Oportunidades" became the mexican conservative's party attempt at building a vote-buying scheme for their own in the same way that the old single party dictatorship of PRI used the "Desarrollo Integral de la Familia", "Integral Development for Families" DIF goverment program to buy votes from the poor and put a mask of democracy over their de facto dictatorship in the second half of XX century.
The "Seguro Popular" increased the coverage, mostly on paper only, since the sudden increase in demand was not matched by a increase in the availability of healthcare services. The already stretched public health system now have to deal with 2 times more customers than what it used to do, and the coverage of "Seguro Popular" only covered a handful of diseases initially versus full coverage from the normal social security services, just to not make a full lie their claims of increased coverage.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
[Sticks fingers in ears]
La la la la la la la
I CAN'T HEAR YOU!
La la la
YOU apparently live in a bubble where whenever you need more money you just stroll over to the wall safe and pull it out. I, on the other hand, live in reality where we're forced to prioritize
Oh, I'm quite certain I live in a vastly different reality than yours, and I have no doubt I've built up far more financial resources than you have. I believe this is because you and I have fundamentally different approaches to life.
I look at my responsibilities -- old people to care for, children to raise -- and where the resources don't meet the responsibilities, I INCREASE THE RESOURCES. This requires hard work, courage, investment and foresight.
You look at your responsibilities, and you feel afraid, You look at old people to care for and children to raise and immediately begin deciding where you can shirk your duties, claiming "we're forced to prioritize." "Gotta feed the baby, so Grandma's gotta go." People like you used to shove old people out into the woods to die. I believe we can both take care of the kids AND the old people.
Yeah, I do have a wall safe. I started out homeless at 17, and I have performed tasks to make Heracles wince to put that safe there. You're right, I'm not buying the nonsense that there's not enough to go around when we pay the CEO of United Healthcare 1.1 Billion just to QUIT THE COMPANY. At one point, one out of every 700 dollars spent on healthcare in this country was going directly into his pocket. One pocket of one CEO of one company. You want to recapture resources? How about we begin there? Maybe, just maybe, we can cover Grandma's pain meds for just a little longer if we quit giving billions to felons.
In the meantime, how about you reach down deep, find what little of your manhood is left, and find the courage to say "We can take care of the baby AND we can take care of grandma. We can provide compassion and care at both birth AND death." Let go of all that fear and man up, sack up and take care of business without whining about how it's all too much for you.
You must be young.
I've got some gray in my hair, and I'm just about old enough to join AARP but if I ever become such a sad, defeated broken-down old man such as yourself, please, just take me out in the woods and shoot me. I intend to leave it all on the field before I go, and if you ever hear me start to whine that the ball is too heavy to carry, please, just take me out of the game.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
The jump from very poor healthcare to fairly good healthcare is a large leap.
But the same change won't make a country that has excellent healthcare opportunities progress to perfect.
I love it when another country reports that have solved something that America seemingly has not. Just so you know, Mexico will soon take over the Southwest America and Asia will take over the Pacific Northwest America, and the Midwest will fall to no one, and the southeast will fall to the Cuban, Spaniards, and Puerto Ricans, and the Northeast America will fall to Congress and politicians and be bought out by China. The New China will possess the property of the US District of Columbia in about 5 years, because they currently hold all that piece of property owners debt. Oh don't forget about native Americans, they will remain the same.
Please USA, stop all foreign aid for 1 year and see if we can get some help in return. Please USA stop being so prideful and pompous, and arrogant.
Get back to Born in the USA --
Yet, you seem to think "1 billion" is inappropriate compensation for such a feat?
Doing the math, 1 Billion dollars is roughly the value of 13,000 life careers. We're literally saying this man did more -- and I'll be unbelievably generous and use your yardstick of 15 years -- that he did more in 15 years than 13,000 other men did in their entire lives.
OK, it's within the realm of theoretical possibility. Here is a list of feats -- performed single-handedly, mind you -- that might merit a One Billion Dollar payout:
1. Formulating the Grand Unification Theory.
2. Providing the root treatment to cure all forms of cancer.
3. Finding a way to keep telomeres from degrading during replication.
4. Inventing an efficient machine to keep the central nervous system oxygenated and provided with nutrients after a traumatic event.
5. A root treatment to keep viruses from replicating.
6. A solar cell with 99 percent efficiency.
7. The initiation of peaceful relations with a species from outside our solar system.
Feats in that range would be worth a billion dollars. What did your boy do?
Oh that's right. He committed multiple felonies. From your own cite:
Settlement
On December 6, 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced a settlement, under which McGuire was to repay $468 million as a partial settlement of the backdating prosecution. McGuire agreed to not serve as an officer or director of a public company for ten years.
Again, how about we not give billions of dollars to thieves and find a way to keep giving grandma her meds? Why do you people always want to reward criminals?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
BTW...
Yup, run over to the wall-safe. Got it. Your money tree is a fantastic invention. You should patent that.
It's called work and sacrifice. You should try it some time. You'd be amazed what can happen when you're not afraid to get your hands a little dirty.
Sorry, I'm a realist facing real problems, not a bleeding heart ...
Stop it, you're embarrassing me. Do you have any idea who the original "bleeding heart" is? Do you imagine you're insulting me by grouping me together with Him?! When you and I stand on Judgement Day, whose ideas do you think He'll have more sympathy for? That we should just cut the old people loose, or that we should declare that we are our brother's keeper and follow the example of the Samaritan?
You call me a "Bleeding Heart" for declaring we can save them all. I find myself in ridiculously good company. Please, by all means, insult me some more. I don't think I blushed quite all the way out to my ears yet...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
The man created 69.5 billion in annual revenues. So if I divide that by 13,000...yup, I don't know many people that have generated 5.35 million in wealth over their lifetimes, certainly not in 15 years. Even without the options backdating (which is not illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Options_backdating), he's probably still worth a billion.
You seem to measure people by what they should have, based on terms of what you believe are "more than enough for any one person".. You don't use fair measurements -- in your world, a man could claw out of the gutter and build a trillion dollar empire singlehandedly, but personally he should only get maybe 300 or 400 thousand dollars out of it, because that's more than enough for any one man. Right?
The man created 69.5 billion in annual revenues.
Yeah, no, he didn't. Kids with a garage band create more than he did. Little old ladies with Victory Gardens produce more. Grad students in English departments contribute more to Man's knowledge.
He sat on a chokepoint between doctors and patients and exacted a rent on the healthcare industry. He denied care to patients who were in desperate need and pcoketed the money that should have went to alleviate suffering.
The BEST you can say he did was he caused more suffering to patients, killed some people who didn't need to die and contributed to the general misery in the world. He's a foul, filthy man and when he stands before God one day, I don't want to be anywhere near him and his Billions in blood money.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Because people like you always seem more than willing to call for more work and sacrifice from other people. My and my kin are the ones that fight the wars you start, clean up the messes you and your little Wall Street buddies create and generally try to care for the victims your "Screw You, I Got Mine" mentality strews about the countryside.
Tell you what. You stay on your side of the fence with Carnegie, Rockefeller and Rand, and I'll stay on mine with all the other famous Lefties like Bishop Romero, William Faulkner, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, William Wallace, Sir Thomas More and all the rest stretching all the way back to the original Bleeding Heart, whom, BTW, I would never dare to try to use as an epithet.
I'm very comfortable letting God and history judge between us.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Watching Jenny Agutter wrestling with Farrah Fawcett couldn't save the movie but it did make for a memorable scene
I'll lay off trying to get you and yours to pay your fair share of taxes if you'll do me one favor. Make good on the blood debt you owe me and mine. The next time the call goes out, how about you girls stop hiding behind your Mommy's skirts and your Daddy's money and actually enlist to fight the war you got us into? I'm pretty sure our disagreements will disappear with the first shot you hear.
Looking forward to having you on the team,
And I promise not to razz you about all this too much later...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Technically the "absurd" prices in the US subsidize the money for sales overseas. You will find this in many products...text books for example. In some cases this is "legitimate" profit taking because we can "afford" it.