Slashdot Mirror
How Kentucky Built the Country's Best ACA Exchange
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Dylan Scott writes at TPM that Kentucky, with its deeply conservative congressional delegation, seems like an unlikely place for Obamacare to find success. Instead, Kentucky's online health insurance exchange has proven to be one of the best, and shows that the marketplace concept can work in practice. Kentucky routinely ranks toward the bottom in overall health, and better health coverage is one step toward reversing that norm. It started with the commitment to build the state's own website rather than default to the federal version. On July 17, 2012, a few weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear created the exchange via executive order, over the objections of a Republican-controlled state legislature, which sought other means — including an effort to prevent the exchange from finding office space — to block the site's creation. ... Testing was undertaken throughout every step of the process, says Carrie Banahan, kynect's executive director, and it was crucial because it allowed state officials to identify problems early in the process. ... From a design standpoint, Kentucky made the conscious choice to stick to the basics, rather than seeking to blow users away with a state-of-the-art consumer interface. It 'doesn't have all the bells and whistles that other states tried to incorporate,' says Jennifer Tolbert. 'It's very straightforward in allowing consumers to browse plans without first creating an account.' A big part of that was knowing their demographics: A simpler site would make it easer to access for people without broadband Internet access, and the content was written at a sixth-grade reading level so it would be as easy to understand as possible."
Kentucky did better than you did. One of the most ass-backwards hillbilly clueless groups of people around. And they beat you. Completely.
That's... Very very sad.
Yes, as opposed to Vermont where we set the bar so high nobody can use the state's site.
To quote wikipedia.
"The study, the most comprehensive study of literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government, was released in April 2002 and reapplied in 2003 giving trend data. It involved lengthy interviews of over 90,700 adults statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and location (urban, suburban, or rural) in 12 states across the U.S. and was designed to represent the U.S. population as a whole. This government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information." Further, this study showed that 41% to 44% of U.S. adults in the lowest level on the literacy scale (literacy rate of 35 or below) were living in poverty.[2]
A follow-up study by the same group of researchers using a smaller database (19,714 interviewees) was released in 2006 that showed some upward movement of low end (basic and below to intermediate) in U.S. adult literacy levels and a decline in the full proficiency group.[3]"
The less literate seem likely to be over-represented in the users of these exchanges.
Well it seems those hillibillies really have the basics anchored down. Good for them.
Mandatory XKCD.
http://xkcd.com/1133/
The only flying space car that's taken anyone to another world.
Subject pun intended.
What is with all the websites which launch with a bunch of stupid bells and whistles? Just get the core functionality working, and then worry about the pretty pretty. Most sites never really make it that far, but they implement the gewgaws and glitter anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Something Bad is going to happen, because Obama called upon his Bottomless Well of Executive Power to delay the Employer Mandate unilaterally, fearing political fall-out for the 2014 elections should millions upon millions of previously-covered workers be dumped into the exchanges.
Will this happen? I don't know. But here's what I do know: Obama sufficiently feared this possibility to violate the Constitution and delay his own beloved pet boondoggle to avoid the possibility of it.
Right now we are talking about the millions and millions of people in the individual insurance market. They are getting screwed. But as a percentage of the country, this is a small number of people -- I think the fraction is something like 8% or so.
Caveat: I just made that up. But it's low.
We should be talking about What Happens Next. And critics of ObamaCare have some good authority to speak about What Happens Next, given that they already predicted What Already Happened.
The individual-market Losers are the canaries in the coalmine for tens of millions more likely losers.
I would like Obama and his Minions to be questioned closely about what they predict will happen next. I want them on the record as to their new promises about "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan" as regards employer-paid coverage.
Let's face it: If 90% of the country thinks, probably wrongly, that only 10% of the country is getting screwed, they will probably just shrug it off and say "Sucks to be them." All of these anecdotes about people getting screwed will not move the general public.
Only worries about What Comes Next, regarding themselves, will agitate them for the 2014 elections.
Honestly I don't know if the disruption in the employer markets will be as bad. I think it will be bad, but not as bad -- for one thing, I think employer-provided insurance already includes a bit of subsidization for sick workers-- in as much as the employer buys coverage for an undefined group, which might include very sick people -- the risks then are already pooled, at least to some extent. But only to some extent, because the sickest of all people probably do not work, and thus do not ever enter the employer coverage pools.
Employer coverage is also generally decent, and thus won't be much affected by increased demands for coverage. But it will be affected somewhat, and when ObamaCare demands that a business give its employees, effectively, a $1,000 or $3,000 annual raise in the form of a health care policy that covers previously uncovered things (and also steals money to subsidize the uninsurable), many companies may balk and simply stop providing insurance altogether.
Maybe this is the secret evil genius of Obama's plan -- he will get all those healthy people subsidizing the sick on the individual markets, because when his employer mandates start kicking in, many companies will dump their huge numbers of relatively low-risk people (remember, the most sick people can't actually work for a living) into the high-risk individual market pools.
Do I know these things? No, I don't. But after having not looked into these matters for five years straight, perhaps our media could trouble itself to rise from its lazy slumbers for a few minutes to begin asking some questions about ObamaCare.
Until now they've gotten everything about ObamaCare wrong. Can they attempt to get some of it right, before the employer mandate kicks in?
You obviously aren't from Kentucky. Sixth-grade reading level might honestly be overstating the capabilities of some of the people I grew up with.
In effect the deliberately obstructionist Republican governors put the entire project at risk, and now the Republicans are screaming that it doesn't work. They are sick manipulative bastards who will do anything to get their way.
By the way, a friend of mine just signed up through the California exchange, and it was not a big deal. If the people in charge want it to work, they can make it work. If they want it to fail, they can make it fail. The Republicans want government to fail, so it does. By analogy, it's like going to a doctor who thinks medicine is bunk, and he proves it by having his patients die. In both a literal and figurative sense, Republicans are happy to see Americans die.
Why is Snark Required?
Yup, it's the success of the governor, not the senators.
And Obama could do with having a look at what they did when they said "Fuck it, these idiots 'DO NOT WANT' to do anything where a Democrat, especially a half-black one, may get plaudits".
"[T]he content was written at a sixth-grade reading level so it would be as easy to understand as possible."
They really are setting the bar high in Kentucky.
Yes they did.
It's far more difficult to write simple and easy to understand text than it is to simply copy & paste legalese.
The target demographic of this site is every adult living in the state, so it should be accessible to every adult.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The summary does not explain that at all.
"[T]he content was written at a sixth-grade reading level so it would be as easy to understand as possible." They really are setting the bar high in Kentucky.
What I want to know is who they had to waterboard to get insurance companies to provide information about their policies written at a 6th-grade level...
Mine alternates between issuing cryptic tomes (with pictures of happy, smiling, healthy people on the front, naturally) that alternate between dense medical-billing-and-coding jargon and EULA-like 'eh, you'll discover what we don't cover after you've had the procedure' disclaimers.
As much as I enjoy making fun of the developing world, why should we permit vital, allegedly mutually-consensual, contracts to be couched in language that a substantial portion of the people who 'agree' to them aren't capable of understanding? Without mutual understanding, much less mutual consent, centuries of contract law are reduced to a mockery.
It's just a matter of facing the reality of public education in the US.
Nothing wrong with being honest about the situation, as in making sure your target audience is able to understand what you're saying.
I guess in some people's infinite wisdom it would just be better to leave the masses frustrated just to make it seem that the human race is more advanced than it is.
I bet you're one of those people who likes to make melodramatic quips to make yourself sound more insightful than what you really are too, huh? You people are a real treat. I think most of the time you do that just to say you disagree without someone being able to show you why you're wrong... as if you know something no one else knows.
Also, given the generally negative effects of both poverty and ill-health on things like school attendance and performance, there is a fairly strong incentive to make these mechanisms accessible even to adults who are probably permanently screwed at this point. Even if it's too late to do much more than write them off, they are the ones we need to work with if we want to head off the next generation of probably permanently screwed people before it's too late.
Nada: You see, I take these glasses off, she looks like a regular person, doesn't she? Put 'em back on...
[puts them back on]
Nada: ...formaldehyde-face!
##
Bearded Man: We could be pets, we could be food, but all we really are is livestock.
What I want to know is who they had to waterboard to get insurance companies to provide information about their policies written at a 6th-grade level
They probably had someone outside of the insurance companies do the translating, though I do prefer your waterboarding approach. Oh, that sounds so harsh. Better to call it "enhanced contract interpretation".
The target demographic of this site is every adult living in the state, so it should be accessible to every adult.
You're on the wrong website. The GP is in the spirit of things, as he pretends to have a larger penis because he can read on a 7th grade level.
After seeing this headline on slashdot, I decided to look at the KY ACA website. It is terrible. Their website has navigation "glitches" where hitting the "back" button will not actually go back and will reload the same page.
RI's system kind of, sort of, works. However I applaud Kentucky for understanding KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid. That's something that seems be thrown out the window in most web development projects.
Without mutual understanding, much less mutual consent, centuries of contract law are reduced to a mockery.
That's the plan.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Eh, they just wanted the bar set so Rand Paul could understand the site. Mitch McConnell is SOL though.
They succeeded because the governor accepted a system that doesn't do it all, but gets right what it does. That is totally bass ackwards from how government normally does it in the US. It's pretty normal for 1.0 to be just about everything and the kitchen sink, not a modest product that's well-tested and positioned for rapid iteration through point releases to address bugs the full user base finds and new features.
"We are going to achieve a consensus ad idem concerning this medical coverage policy, by one method or another. Now, would you like to do this the easy way, or are you going to make me do it the hard way?"
21,000 out of the 26,000 who signed up in KY are enrolling in Medicaid.
Nice way to be a goose stepping bigot.
All websites must be designed for use by rural Kentuckians.
Last post!
The cryptic stuff comes because they used techno-geeks to build the sites. The techno-geeks talked to the insurance geeks and the new Geek-O-Rama was stillborn.
It is really hard work creating good user interfaces. Skimp on that or turn it over to people who don't converse well with the regular society and we get crap interfaces we have to suffer from. And it doesn't necessarily restricted to gui elements. I especially love the Verizon phone jungle where you can go around loops which are 9 interactions long:
Phone Systerm: Please allow us to direct your call to the responsible party.
Me: You have included a charge on my bill for feature A I did not ask for?
PS: Please press the correct button to choose features of feature A:
1. Would you like feature A to walk the dog?
2. Would you like to link feature A to feature B (but only if you choose feature C)?
3. Would you like to pay even more for feature A?
Me: Errr...none of those.
PS: We work to ensure your enjoyment with this new feature for you.
Me: I don't want it.
PS: Please press the # key for instructions on how to use your new feature.
Me: I DON'T WANT IT.
PS: Please allow us to direct your call to the responsible party.
I'm a Kentuckian of several generations on both sides; I wrote my first computer program in Kentucky. It makes me happy to see our exchange is doing well. One thing about Kentuckians: we may not always know everything, but we know what we don't know and aren't generally too proud to try to remedy it given the means.
"The wisdom of the Patriarchs was that they *knew* they were fools." --Master Foo
That's certainly the impression that only gets deeper every time I interact with somebody who can afford more lawyers than I can. Plus, Mandatory Binding Arbitration with the arbiter of their choice, in the venue of their choice, according to a contract that they reserve the right to amend at any time if it wasn't bad enough originally!
Are there any major features the federal site has to cover that these functional state-specific sites aren't handling? It depends on how fundamental the problems with the federal site are, but it seems like it might make sense to just take one of the better state exchange sites and add in whatever extra things are necessary for the federal site.
All websites must be designed for use by rural Kentuckians.
But Fark.com still sucks.
Nothing has changed here. Most newspapers have historically been written at a 6th grade level. What does that mean? It means keeping the sentences straight to the point and not trying to hide things with words that have several meanings.
There used to be an Amiga program called Excellence that used a grammar analyzer to tell you where your paper landed on reading scale.
I work in a very large multi national and I'd say most of my reports are written to that level. It allows people to pick up the information quickly and keeps them interested in the subject long enough to finish reading it. When I write higher level stuff its almost always ignored by business folks. Even some engineers wont read it.
I was once told to put all the information on the subject line thats important.
Just a note, none of the people reading the stuff I write are stupid or dumb, they are just busy and dont ussually have time to spend sifting through complex stuff.
So the gist of the story is that a more conservative state that applied true free market ideas fared better than the ones that went with the usual big goverment ideas? Why am I NOT surprised? It is amazing to me that when you see SO much evidence that the free market is infinitely better than goverment that so many statists still claim otherwise.
A point I've read in The Economist, and has really stuck with me, is how one of America's strengths is the somewhat loose federation of the states, which allows for different approaches to any given problem. Each state can try its own approach to the ACA, or education, or taxation laws, et cetera. Eventually the "better" approaches should become clear, and the country as a whole will adopt them.
Now in practice it doesn't always work like that, but I think we see it in action right now with marijuana legalization and gay marriage.
Of course, the federation also means that, in cases where the "best" approach is known a priori, we lose efficiency when some states fail to adopt it. I don't consider that a big problem, because I think politicians are rarely capable of identifying and engendering quality programs right from the start, especially at the national level.
Let's hope the rule proves true here, and that other states copy Kentucky. (Maybe Kentucky can even share the code?)
"[T]he content was written at a sixth-grade reading level so it would be as easy to understand as possible."
They really are setting the bar high in Kentucky.
Despite per-pupil costs of public schools quadrupling over the last 50 years (inflation-adjusted), mere 30% of 8th-graders nation-wide are deemed "proficient" in reading. Kentucky did the web-site right, even though their average is slightly above national.
We are now all set for our healthcare to become the same sort of dizzying success, that the public schools already are.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I found it amazingly ironic that the states which take the hardest stance on wanting to do everything their own way because the federal government can't possibly know the nuances of their state needs nearly all chose to let the feds make the ACA website for them.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
As a programmer currently living and working in Kentucky, I am also proud of the state's website offering. Of course Obamacare should be thrown on a fire, and it will probably be crushed under its own weight if not heavily modified, but I'm glad we made a functional website.
Dark Reflection
weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear
There's your answer right there.
If something *can* be described in sixth grader terminology, why use harder terminology to explain it?
Eh, they just wanted the bar set so Rand Paul could understand the site. Mitch McConnell is SOL though.
Rand Paul graduated college and medical school, and passed certification of American Board of Ophthalmology — before running for Senate and winning.
I'd wager, his reading comprehension is above that of most people — yourself included.
McConnel has "only" a bachelor degree of formal education, but that's still well above most people... Whatever your beef with your political opponents, sneering at their education only makes you look ridiculous.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Testing and feature prioritization, how innovative! I am actually not being sarcastic. So many big projects push testing off as a "waste of resources" and absolutely don't prioritize features. For instance I don't know how many government web sites have a "Message from the ...(fill in organization head)" front and center of the front page of the website. I am willing to bet that less than 1% of people actually click on that. Then after that you often find news about awards and other ribbon cutting crap that the leaders feature in. And hidden away in the corners are the stuff that people actually want.
So with so many projects you have too many cooks who have their own internal priorities and the result is the wonderful British expression, A Dog's Breakfast.
I love that one.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
While training to be a journalist in the 1970s we were taught to write at that level also. Reading at that level will take you through The Atlantic, National Geographic, Outside Magazine, Consumer Reports, The New Yorker, WebMD, Wikipedia, Reuters, Washington Post, New York Times. Considering the state of literacy in America, "setting the bar higher" would be stupid for a website designed to serve the public with health issues. If you happen to think this bar is too low, try walking into a classroom where kids have to learn to read, and teach them. Try teaching people to read when they grow up in poverty, a big problem in all states, including Kentucky. I've lived there. My own father had to get a GED because when he was in ELEMENTARY school he had to drop out to get a job so his family could get by. Over-privileged, over-bred, snarky people may look down at the unwashed masses. But those who grew up in comfortable homes with parents who had the time and resources to focus on their kids' education have lived soft lives. They haven't had to rise above it. In my childhood my father knew I had to graduate from high school. He told me he'd beat the hell out of me otherwise. But even though he knew the value of a high school education in the workplace, he still had no concept of the value of college. I've had to struggle to get where I am today, and many of the people I lived with in Kentucky still struggle just to make a living. I hated living there and won't do it again, but I'm damn proud that Kentucky, one of those states people laugh at, a Tea Party foothold, had the foresight to do something right that our glorious surveillance president couldn't get it right. And no, I'm not a right-winger. Just the opposite.
"[T]he content was written at a sixth-grade reading level so it would be as easy to understand as possible."
They really are setting the bar high in Kentucky.
Almost all public media, from newspapers to the evening news to cable headline "news" shows, targets a 6th - 8th grade reading level, and has for a very long time.
Of course you need to take this with a grain of salt, as the "reading level" is pretty vague. For example, in MT where I live we expect that by the end 6th grade you're no longer shopping in the "young adults" section of the bookstore, while in California they're just getting into the "Goosebumps" at the end of Senior Year.
NBC Predicts: All Americans Will Receive A Microchip Implant In 2017 Per Obamacare
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/10/nbc-predicts-all-americans-will-receive-a-microchip-implant-in-2017-per-obamacare-videos-2797326.html
ObamaCare Death Panels illegally withholding treatment
http://www.westernjournalism.com/obamacare-death-panels-illegally-withholding-treatment/
Look to Communism to Explain Obamacare
http://www.newsmax.com/RonaldKessler/obamacare-healthcare-russia-RichardS-Foster/2009/12/14/id/342383
It's good to hear from you two on this. A local perspective is always a plus, even on such a common topic as a functional website.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
"[T]he content was written at a sixth-grade reading level so it would be as easy to understand as possible."
They really are setting the bar high in Kentucky.
Yes they did.
It's far more difficult to write simple and easy to understand text than it is to simply copy & paste legalese.
The target demographic of this site is every adult living in the state, so it should be accessible to every adult.
I agree with the parent's point, that it is difficult to write things simply and well. And conversely, there are parts of the state where a sixth-grade reading level IS a high bar. Significant parts of the demographic, especially in the eastern part of the state, would be challenged by text written at a sixth-grade level. I'm guessing that the plan is that those people might know someone that does have a sixth-grade reading level and will get help from them.
Because I'm on my fourth online application and kynect had me in some sort of infinite loop purgatory (in which I wasn't allowed to complete the application process) for the past three weeks. This morning, I finally got a message asking me to upload additional documentation.
For what it's worth, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services is in charge of Kentucky's exchange. The same Cabinet which is responsible for child welfare and has a history of hiding information about child fatalities which occur under their watch.
Sent from my iPhone
Considering how many times you see such illiteracies as "there car's are over their, the looser's car is hear" at slashdot, a NERD site of all places, having a sixth grade reading level may be setting the bar too high. There are obviously people here (never mind those who don't consider themselves nerds and would never come here except to troll) who never read a book in their life that wasn't required by some teacher.
Rand Paul graduated college and medical school, and passed certification of American Board of Ophthalmology — before running for Senate and winning.
Rand Paul isn't board certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology--at least he hasn't been since 2005. Yes, he passed his board exam in 1995, but rather than recertify (like every other doctor has to), he opted to create his own "National Board of Ophthalmology" with himself as president. (see wikipedia if you don't believe me)
To be fair, it does take a certain amount of intelligence to give the middle finger to your accrediting board and create your own professional board "shell" company. Doesn't say much for his ethics or proficiency at ophthalmology. I guess that's why he went into politics, those traits likely serve him well.
I'm appalled that the overwhelming majority of the comments have mostly been cheap shots of the "hurr durr, dum hillbillies cain't reed, they need to dumb down the site".
The takeaway should be the that the KY developers properly understood that they need to make the site as widely accessible as possible.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"[T]he content was written at a sixth-grade reading level so it would be as easy to understand as possible."
They really are setting the bar high in Kentucky.
That's pretty standard for text intended for the general public. Newspapers have traditionally been aimed at a sixth-grade reading level too.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Those who live in denial of the truth, are destined to take action based on a false premise.
Spin, swerve, dodge, parry
look in the mirror
your tongue is still hairy.
Obamacare's Website Is Crashing Because It Doesn't Want You To Know How Costly Its Plans Are
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/14/obamacares-website-is-crashing-because-it-doesnt-want-you-to-know-health-plans-true-costs/
HealthCare.gov pricing feature can be off the mark
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505269_162-57608843/healthcare.gov-pricing-feature-can-be-off-the-mark/
Lie about the law, lie about the plans, lie about the prices, lies lies lies.
It may be a jagged pill for you to swallow, but the truth is all lies, and the lies are the truth.
If you think leaders who feed the public a steady diet of lies
in order to hide from them the truth of their own actions
is acceptable behavior
then you are the problem and not the solution.
Thank you dear Drudge reader. Did you see the one about the homeless high schooler too?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
If you dig deep enough you might glance Amelia Earhart in there, as the BOFH said.
A successful Obamacare website won't matter in the long run. The purposes of Obamacare are to 1) destroy the private health insurance industry 2) force everyone onto a Medicaid-like system 3) become a general-purpose political weapon to control people's behavior and to suppress political dissent 4) drive the US into bankruptcy. Nationalized healthcare systems are driving European countries into insolvency even though US citizens have been paying for Europe's security, propping up Europe's standard of living and paying for the medical innovation that has improved healthcare around the world. If the US nationalizes its healthcare system, no country will prop up the US like the US has propped up Europe and dark days will be ahead for pretty much everyone on Earth.
To be fair, it does take a certain amount of intelligence to give the middle finger to your accrediting board and create your own professional board "shell" company. Doesn't say much for his ethics or proficiency at ophthalmology. I guess that's why he went into politics, those traits likely serve him well.
Ok, what does that "say" for his ethics? Providing competition to the state-backed monopoly on a category of medical care sounds ethical to me.
To be fair, it does take a certain amount of intelligence to give the middle finger to your accrediting board and create your own professional board "shell" company.
Isn't that how the USA was founded?
Newspapers are typically written at that level (and not just in KY).
Let's say we did switch to full socialism single payer healthcare. All the hospitals have already invested bazillions in equipment and have to make money to pay it off. How long would it take to start seeing the effects?
I lived in Kentucky for three years. Some of the most brilliant people I ever met grew up there, and then there were the others. Kentucky's a bizarrely divided state, even within single cities like Lexington or (to a lesser extent) Louisville. It's kind of like an intensified microcosm of the US as a whole: you've got some of the best-educated people in the world who can do absurdly hard things well, and then you've got some of the most undereducated people in the country, who can barely figure out how not to overdose on the painkillers to which they're addicted. Geographically, UK ought to be out in the boonies of godforsaken nowhere, but they have an opera program that's way too big for their school's size, a symphony and a philharmonic and various smaller groups like string quartets, a library endowment that apparently rivals Harvard's, an absurdly good clinical psych program, etc. Some of the best graphic design I've ever seen came out of UK. Berea's not far away, and that's even more amazing in terms of art. Around them is a vast wasteland of poverty that most drug dealers would reject as unprofitable. It doesn't surprise me in the least that Kentucky came up with the best ACA website in the country, nor that it has the greatest need of one.
Common occurrence? Functional website? Are you sure you meant to use those phrases in the same sentence?
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
US about to be the world's biggest oil exporter.
NSA shutting down foreign surveillance while maintaining domestic surveillance
Kentucky is a model for a government-run IT project done right
Did Hell freeze over or something?
What you said. Let's not bash the people who've actually struggled to learn shit and do better for themselves.
"Whatever your beef with your political opponents, sneering at their education only makes you look ridiculous."
That's some pretty big talk from a person who's sig line is: "Somewhere in Chicago a community is missing an organizer."
Here's one for you:
Whatever your beef with your political opponents, sneering at their community service only makes you look ridiculous.
Warning: This sig is not thread safe. For more information see Slashdot's sig policy.
Also, given the generally negative effects of both poverty and ill-health on things like school attendance and performance
More accurately, the negative effects of govt programs which have fostered dependency which has in turn caused the proliferation of social pathologies including poverty and low educational achievement. The very worst communities are those which have fallen the furthest down the rat-hole of progressive social programs.
there is a fairly strong incentive to make these mechanisms accessible even to adults who are probably permanently screwed at this point.
From a rational standpoint, the incentive is to wean those adults off of govt programs, not to introduce them to yet another one, esp. one which is so inherently destructive and dysfunctional as Obamacare. The moral hazards of charity, esp. the impersonal, coerced charity of govt programs, has been understand for centuries. Sadly, the power-hungry and the well-intentioned, but naive, keep destroying people's lives by pushing more people into govt dependency.
Even if it's too late to do much more than write them off, they are the ones we need to work with if we want to head off the next generation of probably permanently screwed people before it's too late.
It is extremely difficult to reintroduce the shame and stigma of receiving charity once a generation of children have grown up in families almost wholly dependent on govt programs and it is only that reintroduction which will cure the disease. Unfortunately, progressive political ideology seeks to eliminate all societal standards of behavior and the very concept of of personal responsibility in a misguided attempt to create an impossibility: an enduring culture in which no one ever has to feel shame or guilt. Shame and guilt are a sign of a conscience which is what keeps people from misbehaving without the need for the use of police force.
Did you think your former insurer would send you an offer for the best possible deal? Or did you think they'd try to get you to buy the most expensive thing they've got just in case you don't bother to check for alternatives?
The difference is that George Washington didn't appoint his wife Vice-President.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Let's clarify: this is competition to the state endorsement (certification, licensing, whatever synonym suits) monopoly, not an actual service monopoly.
I like the idea of competing endorsement entities. I think Consumer Reports is great, and I think, e.g., Amazon provides good competition with how it aggregates and presents its user ratings. I think these sort of systems would be a more effective approach than many of the state enforced licensing requirements for all sorts of products / services.
However, we ought to hold a healthy skepticism for a service / product provider that creates an "independent" certifier to certify his service / product, and then claims that certification is equivalent to others.
Did RP / other board members continue to develop that certifying entity? Do they publish robust performance statistics (e.g. comparison on malpractice suits, rate of de-accrediting poor performers)? How many other professionals opted to attain their certification? Have other entities added that certifier as "trusted"? Those would all be indicators that the National Board of Ophthalmology was a genuine competitor in the certification sector. From what I can find about NBO, it looks like "no, few, and none" are the answers.
Does that make them more or less worthy of a caveat emptor warning? After all, state licensure has been shielded from competition for many years, and the questions are hard to answer for them as well. Not clear to me, but other people might lean one way or the other, depending on their biases about state corruption.
But I certainly wouldn't read any nobility into the act of creating the NBO.
Try teaching people to read when they grow up in poverty
That excuse, commonly proffered by the supporters of the education bureaucracy, has been shown to be a red herring. An experimental program was run in MN, in the late 1980s IIRC, in which a private concern ran a school for students from the poorest, most social dysfunctional areas of Minneapolis. The basic skills of the students were dramatically improved and at a cost per student which was well below that of the Minneapolis public school system. Money, either that of the students or of the school system, isn't the problem. The problem is an educational system which is heavily bureaucratized and which faces no real competition.
I really probably shouldn't do this, since it's far too close to arguing politics on /., which everyone knows is a no-no, but...
Here's the thing, per the wikipedia page, which is as much research as I care to do about this, he got the board certification from the ABoO, then formed the NBoO because he and about 200 other ophthalmologists got their knickers in a twist about having to recertify, let that fall apart, then reformed it right before his original certification ran out. As of now the NBoO isn't recognized by anyone. That's problematic.
Certification is incredibly important in medical fields. If the chef at a restaurant doesn't know his stuff, you're gonna eat a steak that's overdone, if your ophthalmologist doesn't know his stuff, then you're blind for life. Someone's gotta be making sure that our doctors actually know what they're on about, the price of them screwing up is too high.
If you genuinely disagree with that, then let me know the next time you need surgery, with three days notice I can be board certified by the National Board of AreYouFuckingInsane Surgery, and I'll beat anyone else's price for your surgery by 25%. Don't worry dude, I"m like, totally qualified. I saw it on TV once.
Oh, and real quick before anyone brings up the whole recertification thing, Even if you're the best damn ophthalmologist in the world, if you don't keep up with the current science, you'll fall behind in much less than 10 years. The big bad secret about medicine is that we still don't really know how the human body works, we've just got a pretty good set of guesses, but we figure out ways that we're wrong all the time. Hell, I'm a paramedic, I deal with disease processes that we understand pretty well, and I have to recertify every 2 years, including proving I've done a whole bunch of continuing education.
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.
There are obviously people here who [have] never read a book in their life that wasn't required by some teacher.
They really are setting the bar high in Kentucky.
Are you implying the site should be made more difficult to use so that people with poor educations can't get health insurance? Hmm, I think you might have a promising future as a Republican congressman...
Since you are getting all partisan-y, have you ever thought that there may be connections between the need to dumb down the website for a govt program designed to buy the votes of a population which has been educated in a govt-run school system and the facts that the govt program was created by the Dem Party and that the govt-run school system is joined at the hip with the Dem Party? Hmm?
The FFs recognized the need for an educated population in order to make self-govt work, but the DP fights any effort to weaken the monopolistic control of a terrible, govt-run education system.
They believed in a Republican presidency, so they prepared everything for the arrival of Romneycare. And apart from the nickname change and the Republicans disowning it, it actually arrived.
"[T]he content was written at a sixth-grade reading level so it would be as easy to understand as possible."
They really are setting the bar high in Kentucky.
FWIW, "Harry Potter" is written at a "Sixth Grade" reading level although a number of kids start reading that book in third or fourth grade.
"What I want to know is who they had to waterboard to get insurance companies to provide information about their policies written at a 6th-grade level..."
Arguably no one. Much of the point in the exchange was that it provides a few tiers of identical insurance levels that don't allow for dropping of preexisting conditions or much BS. This is why these plans cost a bit more than the really cheap cut rate plans, because they can't drop you for the most part. So in reality the government set the standard, which is readable at a 6th grade level and let insurance companies provide policies that conformed with it. (Insurance companies could choose to offer plans on the exchanges or not, the exchange policies are very simplified and controlled, all health insurance can't drop you for preexisting conditions, but non exchange policies may be more complicated)
Also, most newspapers and magazines target around a "Sixth Grade" reading level. There are in-depth articles that are occasionally the exception
The average American reads at a "Seventh Grade" reading level so targeting "Sixth Grade" gives you a wider audience.
So, is Kentucky procedural or event-driven?
I'm from Indiana, so we just program all our state apps in Brainfuck and get it over with.
What I want to know is who they had to waterboard to get insurance companies to provide information about their policies written at a 6th-grade level...
One benefit of Obamacare is standardizing insurance policies for what they will cover, eliminating many fine print items (like pre-existing conditions, age restrictions, setting standard limits for copays and out-of-pocket expenses). The only major differences are deductible, premiums, and doctor's network within an insurance class on the exchanges. This makes it much easier to make apples-to-apples comparisons and actually makes the free market of the exchanges work better for consumers.
Cite? Because if you want to go there I have at least four that state otherwise. Read "Savage Inequality" and get back to me.
And this is why it works. Sounds like there were some actual proper software engineers involved in this and not just web "ooh, shiny!" developers.
What Kentucky is doing is expanding Medicaid enrollment. Very few are buying. So, you can look forward to more tax increases on those who actually produce to pay for more parasites. Greece and Portugal aren't really that bad. Why shouldn't the U.S. be just like them?
That was probably supposed to be funny, but in reality a LARGE portion of folks can't even function at a 6th grade level and I'm speaking from experience at my current job where I work with professionals. People skim what you write and make it mean what they think it means and ask questions that were answered in the message.
I've found that to have any chance at effectively communicating to a large group of people you really do have to dumb it down to a point bordering on ridiculous.
Either way, it all ends the same.
Why the hell do we have a news story about website design? The GOP are making a big political issue out of it, but I don't see that being much of a problem to anybody. Plenty of people have signed-up, and those that haven't probably weren't stopped by site problems, but just chose not to.
What will make or break Obamacare is the PRICE of the insurance plans, and nothing says Kentucky's prices are any lower than if they'd just let the Fed do, or any of the several other states with their own ACA website.
Personally, I was happy with my high deductible "catastrophic" plan for $70/month. Now ACA says nobody over 30 is allowed to chose that option, and even if you were, it has doubled in price. Now the lowest-priced health insurance plan I can get is 3X what I was paying, and is only slightly better than what I had before.
That is what will make or break Obamacare... Will healthy, middle-class folks pay hundreds of dollars per month for health insurance they are unlikely to use (on top of already paying out 1/3rd of their income in state/federal taxes), to subsidize the insurance prices for unhealthy and lower-income people?
And will the working poor, who are just barely able to make it paycheck-to-paycheck, find a way to muster up another $100/month to pay for their health insurance? Or will the tax penalty at the end of the year eat up their refund and really make their precarious situations completely untenable?
Failing to take one step further and making it a simple, automatic, single-payer system, supported out of income taxes, really is a mistake we'll be paying for, for a long time to come.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You obviously haven't read the 1000s of ACA regulations that the (evil) Insurance companies must comply with.
That's probably why the GP said he passed certification, which is true. So it seems that he can academically pass muster. While his current skills as a physician are debatable (I've haven't heard of any problems, and I practice ~40 miles away from him), I think forming a new board due to ethical disagreements with the current board speaks well of his skills as a leader and politician.
Here's a shocking idea... why didn't we do this through the states in the first place!?
All the states that want it... get it. All the states that don't... don't.
Democracy. Instead... we have this...
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
They must still have a few old geezers from Bullit County who are smart enough to get it done.
Joking aside, it's a *fast* web site; but you sill have to enable scripting. It's a bit of a "wall of text" which is surprising to me. Also, like all the exchanges I've seen so far, including California's, it's got those stupid social networking buttons on it. To Kentucky's credit, at least they're tucked way down at the bottom. Why, oh why do we need a friggin YouTube button on such a site??? WTF, really? You're gonna FaceBook a link to the page where you signed up, which shouldn't populate with data anyway. Please tell me it doesn't transmit all the form fields if you press the social networking buttons...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'm curious.
Considering the fact that the ACA is (for now?) a federally mandated law, users shouldn't have to deal with much legalese in the first place.
When you signed onto social security did you have to read and sign a huge legal document? Of course not, cause the government opted you in without your permission anyway! Simple right?
Gee, isn't that the lesson of Google's initial success? Keep it simple and clean. No need for eye candy and extra bells and whistles. They add bugs and detract from the purpose of the site. As time has gone on, Google has drifted away from this concept, but the KISS principle remains valid and clearly had worked well for Kentucky.
Web sites, especially those with a single purpose, don't need 7 fonts, cool graphics, Flash flash, Java, or even CSS. Not that any of these (excepting Flash flash) are bad, but too many web designers seem to think that they are mandatory. The cost in development times, reliability, and ease of use is only justified by ego of developers and their managers. The purpose of the site is to provide important information and not to make health insurance look sexy!
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
I worked as a developer in electronic healthcare for a bit. I got out quite soon.
A quick example, when people started talking about electronic medical records, their eyes light up and it turns to databases of information, classification of everything, optimizing treatments and data... MORE DATA... MORE DATA
In reality, the first use case for medical records that most people and physicians see is just being able to see the healthcare records. If a patient shows up at a walk-in clinic at another provider, the doctor there is able to pull up the record.
Something as simple as just being able to store the scanned copies of documents and test results would have been an amazing first step. You don't need a very high resolution copy. I know the storage equation might be an issue, but they don't really write essays. From there, they could move on to more standardization of others...
I'm glad Kentucky kept it simple. It really is the best way to get something going out of a complex system.
From a rational standpoint, the incentive is to wean those adults off of govt programs,
When you "wean" a baby off milk, you don't do it by starving them to death. You do it be introducing desirable alternatives. Yet the "wean" usually discussed is more like a drug treatment plan cold turkey. That's not a wean. If it is a wean, please specify the alternative they are being weaned onto, and how it's more desireable for the person being weaned than what they are on now.
It is extremely difficult to reintroduce the shame and stigma of receiving charity once a generation of children have grown up in families almost wholly dependent on govt programs and it is only that reintroduction which will cure the disease.
What are you, Catholic? We need to control people through guilt and shame? Really? That's a US view that's not seen elsewhere. And, having been to places where being on the doll/benefit isn't looked down on the way it still is in the US, the US has the worse system and still more "shame" to it. Yes, kids in school get picked on for having discount lunches. I've seen them beat up for it. And you want to make life harder on them because you feel there's insufficient "shame".
Shame and guilt are a sign of a conscience which is what keeps people from misbehaving without the need for the use of police force.
Doesn't work for corporate executives. They show shame and guilt when ordered by their lawyers, and yet offend at a rate greater than any minority slums (they just have legal representation to get the charged dismissed/reduced)..
Learn to love Alaska
if the main problem with the federal exchange site is a lack of load tolerance, then start by *reducing the load*. Assign sign-on days by birth month, birth year or SSN prefix. Alternatively, create draft lotteries and designate sign-on days based on the "draft" number. This is the government after-all; it's not like people are going to run off and find another web site.
Because his "competition" is a rubber-stamp, rather than an actual substantive alternative.
Well, it wasn't a HUGE form..but I did have to fill one out, along with the rest of my classmates in 9th grade typing class.
I wish I knew then, what I know now...and would have refused to sign up citing religious reasons, and never had to participate in the pyramid scheme that is Social Security.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"I ain't never went to college."-- John Knolls
Isaac Asimov wrote at an eighth grade level. Kentucky is smart to do this, those with dyslexia or other learning disabilities need health care, too. The simpler and easier to use they make it, the better.
Free Martian Whores!
https://kyenroll.ky.gov/PreScreening/IndividualCalculator
select Out of State from the drop down with 400k , 40 , 3 for income , age and family members
An error has occurred while processing your request. Please contact Customer Service at 1-855-4kynect (459-6328) TTY: 1-855-326-4654 Customer Service is available Monday – Friday, 8 A.M. to 7 P.M. Saturday hours vary. While contacting customer service, please provide this number CHFS93675967 for reference. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
Also -- back button is disabled.
And one of the drawback of the standardizing of insurance policies is that one size does not fit all.
As a male that really doubts he'll change his plans on having a child...I don't think I should be forced to buy a policy that covers female birth control, or maternity needs, etc.
I'm all in favor of chicks doing birth control, but personally, the pill isn't gonna do me any good. Why should that be on MY policy?
When I was going some 1099 work a couple years back, I did a high deductible policy, $1200 /yr deductible, and about $220/mo (I have pre-existing conditions and still got the policy)....to be used ONLY as emergency care, heart attack or hit by a bus.
I used that in conjunction with a HSA (Health Savings Account) and socked about about $3K a year pre-tax, for my routine meds and Dr. visits. I paid for my routine maintenance with this.
Why not do this, something simple....allows folks to be covered for emergencies, but yet responsible to save for their routine care (just like we save for rent, food, gas, etc).
This type of policy I described is PERFECT for a young person starting a business, etc. Yet...Obamacare, despite Obama's promises, is causing people that were happy with this policy to lose it...and be forced to pay for more $$$ policies that include coverage that doesn't apply to their situation.
That sucks.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Muphrey's Law strikes every time.
Dyslexics of the world....UNTIE!!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Meanwhile the President only speaks at an 8th grade level...
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/state-of-the-union-registers-at-th-grade-reading-level-112236.html
Regarding corporate executives; a good ratio of them are already psychopathic. If fact, it was the lack of feelings and empathy that didn't hold them back. Essentially, shit rises to the surface above everything else.
Life is not for the lazy.
If by "handout" you mean health care so that when they go to the hospital after getting their hand chopped off by a lawnmower, *WE* aren't stuck with the bill, then yes.
I can't believe I'm responding to an AC.... but I hate this ideological shit.
I'm a progressive. I believe capitalism can build good things if government creates the basic infrastructure so that people can get on with their lives. I believe !@#$ing selfish "I got mine, fuck everyone else" Righties take that basic infrastructure for granted.
"negative effects of govt programs which have fostered dependency" You're pulling that out of your ass. I grew up POOOORRRRR... we got WIC, food stamps, lunch assistance. I got Pell grants to go to college. I assure you, I've paid back every dime and then some through my taxes. That's how the system is supposed to work, that's how it often works. You give someone a hand up, and they pay it back. Yes, there are exceptions. No, they are not the rule.
"the incentive is to wean those adults off of govt programs" Like what already happens?
"inherently destructive and dysfunctional as Obamacare" How would you know? We've barely started the damn thing. And what's so !@#$ing wrong about making everyone buy medical insurance? Where's the government takeover? What's the problem here?
"The moral hazards of charity" /eyeroll
"It is extremely difficult to reintroduce the shame and stigma of receiving charity " We're in the biggest recession since the !#$!ing Great Depression. Now is a fine time for a little charity. So fuck off. And we all know the "recovery" is fine at the top, but it's not over down here at the bottom.
"wholly dependent on govt programs" I hate this one most of all. My neighbors are Poor. 30 years old, 5 kids. They are the nicest people on the planet, they give, they have a wonderful family.... and they work HARD. Harder than me, harder than you. I grew up poor. I've seen it. Poor people work HARD. Often they have 2 or 3 jobs, they wake up early, the work late, they go to work sick so they don't get canned. Their KIDS work under the table! Fuck your myth of government dependance. If that family is getting help from the government, I'm happy for them.
If companies would pay a damn decent wage in this country, they wouldn't have to work so hard. But all those chain stores (which seems to be most of our economy these days) can pay low wages, and that's that. The companies COUNT on the government to pick up their slack with assistance.
"progressive political ideology seeks to eliminate all societal standards of behavior and the very concept of of personal responsibility" I never knew I was such a bastard. Here I thought I was for building basic infrastructure and getting the hell out of the way so everyone can make a buck and get on with their lives. I thought I wanted well regulated economic institutions, so we all can get on with our businesses without fearing undue risk with our protected money. Here I thought I just wanted justice for those that fucked our entire economy. Here I thought I just wanted the government to mind the constitution and not wiretap folks without at LEAST a rubber stamped warrant.
If progressives have one weakness, it's that we want things to be FAIR. We want a level playing field. Joe Millionaire Senator Buddy shouldn't be able to murder and hooker and get away with it just because he's rich. Rich people SHOULD pay more taxes ON THEIR EXCESSIVE wealth, because by the nature of DOING BUSINESS, they USE MORE OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE and BENEFIT FROM IT MORE than we little poeple do.
What bastards, us progressives.
The whole post above is an ideological rant that demonizes "the other guy". It's all too common, and I apologize for my own part in it above. Most Righties just want to be left alone. Everyone hates taxes. Everyone hates beaurocratic stupidity and money wasting. People feel powerless these days and it's too easy to blame "Them". But please, everyone, don't demonize the other side.
Also, I'm kind of hating how all these stories lately digress into ideological wars instead of commenting on the original topic. Kentucky built something good, to help it's citizens. Good for them! I hope it works.
The cryptic stuff comes because they used techno-geeks to build the sites. The techno-geeks talked to the insurance geeks and the new Geek-O-Rama was stillborn.
It is really hard work creating good user interfaces. Skimp on that or turn it over to people who don't converse well with the regular society and we get crap interfaces we have to suffer from. And it doesn't necessarily restricted to gui elements. I especially love the Verizon phone jungle where you can go around loops which are 9 interactions long:
Phone Systerm: Please allow us to direct your call to the responsible party.
Me: You have included a charge on my bill for feature A I did not ask for?
PS: Please press the correct button to choose features of feature A:
1. Would you like feature A to walk the dog?
2. Would you like to link feature A to feature B (but only if you choose feature C)?
3. Would you like to pay even more for feature A?
Me: Errr...none of those.
PS: We work to ensure your enjoyment with this new feature for you.
Me: I don't want it.
PS: Please press the # key for instructions on how to use your new feature.
Me: I DON'T WANT IT.
PS: Please allow us to direct your call to the responsible party.
What I've found is best to do in these situations is keep hammering one button until it screws up the interface and a person comes on. It works at least some of the time.
Sure. Next you're going to demand that people participate in politics and start governing themselves. You big dreamer.
What are you, Catholic? We need to control people through guilt and shame? Really?
That's not what GP said - the idea is to introduce the idea of having those traits in a societal context, so that people will have an incentive to do more than just collect a dole every month.
Let me put it this way - late last year, I stood behind someone in line at the local store, and they proudly spoke about their new Kindle Fire while simultaneously using an EBT card. Something is heinously wrong with that...
As far as your point, it is still a good one - to wean, not cut-off. I humbly suggest the following means to help do so:
1) All able-bodied recipients of the dole should be required to either perform some menial and publicly visible work for at least 8-16 hours a week (e.g. pick up trash on the highways, clean up graffiti, etc), or help babysit for those who do. Special-colored jumpsuits should be provided so no one gets their normal clothes dirty.
2) EBT cards should be a fluorescent pink with white stripes, or some other easily-identifiable color scheme. It would however be preferable to go back to the paper system they once had for food stamps with the funny-coloring, so that everyone in line sees the food stamps (or EBT card) being used.
3) Random weekly drug tests should be mandatory while on the dole. Anyone who fails should either be cut off, fined, or put into mandatory rehab - no exceptions outside of holding a valid prescription for the drug in question. Any children involved should be put into CPS care on the spot (as much as I detest how they're generally run, the threat should be more than sufficient.)
4) Barring actual disability, there should be a lifetime limit, as well as a limit on how long one is on the dole, with sufficient warning and/or notices given as the clock winds down - sort of like how unemployment insurance has such time limits.
Doesn't work for corporate executives. They show shame and guilt when ordered by their lawyers, and yet offend at a rate greater than any minority slums (they just have legal representation to get the charged dismissed/reduced)..
Dude wasn't talking about reforming robber barons - that's an entirely different problem which requires a different solution (personally, I'd like to see all C-level board members forced to put a substantial personal stake and liability in the company beyond mere stockholding; when it's your skin in the game, suddenly acting in the best interests of the customer becomes a good thing.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
"I'm all in favor of chicks doing birth control, but personally, the pill isn't gonna do me any good. Why should that be on MY policy?"
1. Chicks hate it when you call them Chicks. The "doing birth control" doesn't make you sound like a winner either....
2. Are you planning on having sex sometime? Then the Pill is indeed going to do you some good. I'll give you a tip (phrasing!)... Your chances of having sex will go up if you don't spout this stupid crap in front of women.
3. The whole point of insurance is to minimize risk. Everyone pays a little bit, and the money is doled out to the few that need it. You're not paying FOR YOU. You're paying a little bit for EVERONE, and getting covered just in case something bad happens to you.
3 again. Just in case you didn't get that. With insurance, you're not paying for healthcare. You're paying for reduced risk.
50% of humans are women (Not "chicks"), and we all benefit from them being able to have sex without worrying about pregnancy. So stop being an ass, shut up, and go get laid. And seriously, lose the attitude, it'll help.
Oh, and one more thing... I have a HSA. I have a high deductable insurance($2000/year).. and oddly enough, I still have it. Obamacare didn't kill it. Still have my insurance.
Seems to me that being certified to practice medicine by the medical organization of which you are president is a bit shaky. Of course, I doubt he'll use his medical degree again now that he's drunk the waters of political power so it's really a moot point.
If you didn't know it, 50% of the US population performs above average in all nationwide studies.
What the above stats really say is that 56-59% of US adults in the lowest level on the literacy scale AREN'T living in poverty. Think about that for a moment.
Of course, this is meaningless without the stat of what % of US adults are living in poverty. Put those two stats together, and we begin to get useful information.
Let's take 2010's stat of 15.1% of US adults living in poverty. I'll let someone else crunch the numbers for population representation.
It's easy....the problem with the federal site is that everything is bigger. They have to handle the user load from all of the states that decided not to do their own thing. They have to maintain connectivity and exchange data with the insurance companies and plans for every one of those states. They have to interface with their own back-end systems for subsidy eligibility and everything else for all of those states. None of that is easy to coordinate or implement. In Kentucky, you have a total population of less than 5 million and according to the state, less than 700k are uninsured. (http://insurance.ky.gov/Static_Info.aspx?Static_ID=119&Div_id=16). That's not a huge number of potential hits. A large percentage of the uninsured are eligible for Medicaid under the expansion, which makes the processing even simpler. You limit the number of users, the number of private insurers, and the number of potential plans by doing this at a single state level. The same would not be true for CA, TX, or probably even FL or NY, where there are simply more people and more players. I believe the states that didn't do their own Medicaid expansion or their own website dumped into the federal government's lap something that is simply too big to manage. I know a lot of money was spent, but can you imagine trying to get all of that data to work back and forth with all of those players? If one of the insurers didn't play ball, did the federal site just kick them out of the exchange? If one of the states waited until the last possible minute to say no to doing their own, what position does it put the DHHS? What about the infrastructure and the development teams? I hear comparisons on TV to Facebook or other mega websites. The comparison is wrong. Every major website I can think of started as something small and built up to what they are now. A dorm room, a garage, or someone's basement, up to a bajillion dollar a year giant. You don't just set a date for a website and say, "Have at it." I can't even think of an instance where this user count has ever been dropped onto a single site on its first day.....can you? Is it possible to make it work? Absolutely. Is it simple? Heck no.
Yes. The above smug BS written by Cal programmers about Ky is appalling.
Why is mainstream media ignoring this success?
The FFs recognized the need for an educated population in order to make self-govt work,
Nope. They recognized the populous will always be about 1/2 below average (and average is pretty low). That's why the Senate and Electoral College exist. So that we don't have a direct democracy. We have a representative one. Only the rich and educated can run, so we are run by the rich and educated. What the FFs didn't plan on is the elite ruling class destroying the country for self-gain. The rich/educated do not act in any better interest than the poor, they just have more skin in the game, so they are presumed to be more forward thinking (not as in liberal, but as in long-term vision).
Learn to love Alaska
What are you, new?
You do it be introducing desirable alternatives.
There are not always desirable alternatives. What if there are no alternatives?
What are you, Catholic? We need to control people through guilt and shame? Really?
The strategy of guilt and shame as a motivator has been working for millennia, which is why most religions employ it. It's so effective most people use it.
And, having been to places where being on the doll/benefit isn't looked down on the way it still is in the US, the US has the worse system and still more "shame" to it.
It's looked down upon because those who are providing for themselves may feel burdened by those who are refusing to do it (this excludes those who are unable to do it).
Doesn't work for corporate executives.
How do you think they got to be corporate executives? You can achieve a whole host of things when conscience is no longer a burden.
I wonder what kind of mandate they'll have to come up with to make patients comply with doctors orders and recommendations.... you know, those pesky things like reality that truly affect health? I guess just having health insurance is enough to make everyone healthy! Wish I knew that before. I've had personal and employer subsidized health insurance for decades. Still got high blood pressure though.
"More accurately, the negative effects of govt programs which have fostered dependency which has in turn caused the proliferation of social pathologies including poverty and low educational achievement"
There was a time when govt didnt help the poor.
What are the differences between those periods?
Personally, I know we have had poverty since before these programs. My gut says it was probably worse then.
emt 377 emt 4
Which is why one of my email signatures has been (for a long time), "I lose sleep over what I might have agreed to in the EULA."
School district total expenditures are not representative of the amount spent on children. Last I saw, its about 50% for the amount spent on administration, and increasing much faster than the in-room expenses.
Republicans sabotage public school then complain it's doing poorly. I expect the same with ACA. Doesn't mean it is a failure, just means it's inefficient. And that's the point of the political in-fighting. The Republicans will sacrifice millions of students to get their precious vouchers.
Learn to love Alaska
This!^ If I had mod points they would be yours.
82% of those counted as signing up for ACA actually signed up for medicade and won't be contributing financially to the ACA program. If this is success, then failure must be the objective.
The basic skills of the students were dramatically improved and at a cost per student which was well below that of the Minneapolis public school system.
When I see the costs compared, they never compare in-room education costs of private to public school. The few times I have been able to deduce those numbers from the presentation, public is cheaper than private. Private is only cheaper when you have elementary schools staffed by retired teachers volunteering for the church (yes, I've seen it, and those numbers get counted for why private schools are cheaper). The non-union private schools often pay better than the unionized public schools, and thus cost more to run.
But the public schools are saddled with all sorts of testing, regulation on standards, care of "underperforming" students, and an administration put in place by conservative politicians determined to make them expensive, even if they aren't. Private schools don't have that. When you compare the "average class" expenses (not the average "class expenses"), public school is cheaper, in almost all cases.
Learn to love Alaska
You obviously believe that most of those regulations will be enforced. I've got a bridge to sell you.
What if there are no alternatives?
Then stand up and say that you believe they should just go starve to death in a ditch somewhere out of your sight.
At least that's the intellectually honest answer. Most people would rather just pretend that there's no problem and that if they keep screaming that it's the fault of the millions of unemployed that there aren't millions of job openings, they won't have to have bad feelings about it.
Unless you're Amish and work for yourself or another Amish employer, the US government doesn't recognize any objections to participation unless you don't want to be employed at all.
You can opt out (well, your parents can; you can't rescind participation once you reach the age of majority, unlike every other legally binding agreement your parents enter you into) as long as you never try to make any money. And of course the IRS doesn't allow for the cost of your time and effort, which you can never recover, as an exemption against "income" earned. Time is only worth something in their eyes if it increases your tax burden.
If I'm working, I have zero income, because I'm trading something which is absolutely unrecoverable in exchange for that paycheck. It's too bad so many either fail to understand that or, worse, don't care.
I don't understand you here.
My parent's never entered me into any kind of agreement...
It isn't like THEY signed me up for SS...as I mentioned, I signed up for in in a 9th grade typing class at school, something of a "class project". I wish I hadn't back then.
I would have much rather have taken all that SS money I've contributed over the years...and put it into investments for retirement myself and used that money to make money.
I would definitely find out about what religion to 'join' to get out of it, if I had the choice back then link here to exception page
But again to the point...I'm confused when you say my parents obligated me to something, it isn't like they signed me up for social security or anything....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
There are not always desirable alternatives. What if there are no alternatives?
The quote you are looking for Mr. Scrooge is:
"If they'd rather die then perhaps they had better do so and decrease the surplus population"
It's looked down upon because those who are providing for themselves may feel burdened by those who are refusing to do it (this excludes those who are unable to do it).
In practice it doesn't exclude those unable to do it.
Learn to love Alaska
The other meaning of common as in plain, simple, dull, not the more "common" usage of frequently, often.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Medical specialty board certification doesn't work that way.
... but there is no competing organization.
It is not (NOT!) required to practice medicine.
State licensure and credentialing by each facility is required to practice medicine.
Board certification for many specialties is not even possible until the physician is 2 or 3 years out of residency training. Of course they are working and practicing in the specialty during that time. These physicians are usually referred to as "board eligible" because they're in the examination process.
There are many phsyicians in all specialties who are not "certified" by their respective specialty boards. They may have been unable to pass the exams. They may have never bothered to take the exams. They may have been certified previously, but chosen not to pay the high fees and jump through the hoops (many of which are silly) to recertify. They can still practice medicine. There is something of a growing stigma to not being board certified, but it isn't unheard of.
Full disclosure: I'm a physician, certified by my specialty board. I value board certification and think it means something when it comes to the competence of a physician. But it's not the end all, be all.
My specialty's board can be an expensive pain in the ass. More than once I've wished I could just give them the finger and get certified by a competing organization
To reiterate the subject line of this thread: Wow.
All of your suggestions seem to be based on a single flawed assumption: that there are a significant number of people receiving welfare/EBT that wouldn't do anything to get away from needing them. There's already a huge punishment for living off welfare/EBT: all you have to live off of is the tiny amount of money welfare/EBT pays. Their lives already suck, you really don't need to make them suck more.
That's not to say that there's nothing the government could do to reduce the number of people on benefits, but making them worse is not the answer. That's asking individuals to solve a structural problem. More effective would be offering effective job training/placement, having more affordable housing, and other things that would save poor people time/money so they would find it easier to get out of their horrible situations.
And lastly, the woman on EBT talking about her Kindle Fire was almost certainly given it as a gift. Unless you're arguing that poor people shouldn't have supportive family/friends willing to buy them one of the cheapest computers around which has the ability to provide them with very inexpensive entertainment and access to information.
I wrote my first computer program in Kentucky.
I wrote my first program in FORTRAN. I can't find any Kentucky examples on the web...got any code samples?
That sounds suspiciously like an alternative...
What are you, Catholic? We need to control people through guilt and shame? Really?
That's not what GP said
Then I read "Shame and guilt are a sign of a conscience which is what keeps people from misbehaving without the need for the use of police force." in a different manner from you. They indicated that guilt and shame are directly linked to keeping people from misbehaving.
Learn to love Alaska
When I see the costs compared, they never compare in-room education costs of private to public school. The few times I have been able to deduce those numbers from the presentation, public is cheaper than private. Private is only cheaper when you have elementary schools staffed by retired teachers volunteering for the church (yes, I've seen it, and those numbers get counted for why private schools are cheaper). The non-union private schools often pay better than the unionized public schools, and thus cost more to run.
Yes, looking through advertised prices I came to a similar conclusion. There are often good nominal prices for a church run K-4 or K-6, because, as your suggest, a smart parent with a HS diploma is enough of an expert with a few hints from a volunteer retired teacher. But the prices rapidly after elementary school because random well-meaning parents are not necessary good enough when the topics start getting a little bit hard. Private schools climb very rapidly on price after 6th grade. The cheaper ones may be slightly less expensive than what the taxpayer pays for public, but the difference is not large. A lot of private schools are much more expensive overall.
Private schools do not necessarily pay more to the teachers. Some do, but the majority pay less. The teachers have the benefit of avoiding the certification rigamarole and have a bit more moral authority to deal with behavior problems, so some good teachers are willing to make do with less pay.
I think you forgot to mention the part where poor girls had to be sexually available for everyone willing to pay for it, and the workhouse where the orphans were put up. You should really visit Ireland - they used this approach until a few decades ago. Just as many other countries did. Of course, such measures don't actually combat poverty - they intimidate the poor into servitude, which is the entire purpose of the measures.
To even discuss these things in the middle of an economic crisis shows how much you're out of touch with the lives of ordinary people. Nothing more.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
So your idea of reforming welfare is to humiliate the recipients, remove children if there's any failure on weekly drug tests, and throw them off on a fixed schedule. I fail to see anything positive, like trying to help them get useful skills and become employable.
Last I looked, most people got on welfare because they hit a hard spot, and stayed on welfare for an average of three years (which means a lot of people on for a year or two for every welfare queen). The large majority are trying to get off welfare anyway, and I doubt public shame will be much of an additional incentive.
What we need to provide instead is job training and access to affordable health care and child care once they're actually working. (Most people don't move from welfare to a job with decent medical benefits, and losing medical assistance is a serious danger to a mother with a young child. The ACA should be very helpful here.) It's generally more effective to help somebody reach a goal rather than make their life miserable until they do.
As far as that Kindle Fire...a Fire is a general-purpose Android tablet, and that's quite handy to find a job. It's capable of surfing job boards and allowing access to gmail or such services, and all it requires is free wireless. It's much more convenient than waiting at a library or job center for a PC to free up. It's about as low-cost a way to get that functionality as you're going to get. If you actually wanted people off welfare, as opposed to making them as miserable as possible for no reason I see, you'd be in favor of cheap Android tablets for the poor.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You're lucky...many folks with policies they like are being dropped from them and made to go on more $$ ones due to the new 'minimums' obamacare is forcing upon them and their insurance companies.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The other cost driver I didn't mention is the special needs kids. There is a student in Anchorage School District with an in-home nurse paid for by the school (technically illegal, but court ordered, so legal). When my nephew had learning issues, the district spend more than the tutor requested to fight the request. The legal department at the school district is huge, for a school. I didn't hear of a single lawyer at the private schools I attended.
As for paying the teachers more, I went to St. Mark's School of Texas, and they do pay more than public, from what I could gather asking teachers about their salary. Though they also get some newer ones as interns that the public schools aren't well set up to do.
Learn to love Alaska
You obviously haven't read the 1000s of ACA regulations that the (evil) Insurance companies must comply with.
Oh noes! The insurance company's lawyers might have to deal with leagalese !!1!
Couldn't have happened to a better group of people.
These things vary by school district, especially when it comes to special needs. The public schools are usually legally required to provide service, but whether they do a good jobvaries greatly. The private schools have a free hand to abuse children with difficulties and label them lazy (my wife, who used to tutor HS math on the side, has seen such cases). (Not saying private all or usually do that, but there is no legal redress if they choose to do so.) My local public school district had an excellent reputation on this score, a close friend of mine was tremendously pleased with the assistance to his son, though I am unsure how they fared after recent budget cuts.
Yep, too many developers love the complicated stuff, want to turn the web into a full application, and think that just having information and some boxes to fill in is too old fashioned. Meanwhile people on Windows XP and a dialup modem can't even access those pages.
one which is so inherently destructive and dysfunctional as Obamacare.
The moral hazards of charity, esp. the impersonal, coerced charity of govt programs, has been understand for centuries. Sadly, the power-hungry and the well-intentioned, but naive, keep destroying people's lives by pushing more people into govt dependency./quote]
However there is no effective charitable base to take over! US citizens, who give far more to charity than a lot of other countries, just do not pick up the slack. I've had coworkers express disbelief that I even give money to charities, calling it stupid. Others will gripe when very rich people have charitable foundations and accuse them of being done just to shelter from taxes, a way to promote their own products, or that the charity is ineffective. There are people today living on the streets and no one feeds them except for a very few people who can't manage to help them all. There are single mothers with no ability to get a job because they have no childcare, and yet there are extremely few charitable daycare centers to help them out. Even many religious groups who will go to the bat to block abortion will be very reluctant to adopt babies (especially if they have developmental problems).
The average US citizen will give money if there's a big storm or natural disaster that makes the news, but at other times they tend to ignore the problems around them. People will help their own, but rarely want to help strangers. Thus they'll assist the poor shutins and widows in their church, but not the people on the other side of town or in other towns or states.
And this is not a new problem that occured only when the government started up programs. We started up social security precisely because the private charities were not able to handle the problem. It would be great if government wasn't needed here but currently it is necessary because the alternatives don't work either.
"What are you, Catholic? We need to control people through guilt and shame? Really? That's a US view that's not seen elsewhere"
Why is it that all you people on the left recoil at the idea that anybody should be responsible for him/herself and that part of that mechanism ought to be shame for those who do not, and pride for those who do? You seem to have no problem hurtling all manner of insults at productive people if they object in any way to your use of the government to TAKE by FORCE what you want. You all appear to hold the view that decent, productive citizens should stand still and allow themselves to be robbed at gunpoint with the proceeds funneled to the lazy/incompetent and you demand they feel SHAME and GUILT if they resist or object to your theft-by-proxy politics. You are not content to just commit the mugging (well, you lack the guts to do it yourselves, so you have the government do it on your behalf) you insist that the recipients of the stolen goods should not even feel guilt! Absolutely amazing!
If ANYBODY in society needs to feel shame and guilt it surely should be those who live as parasites on the backs of hard working people and ought to be motivated by any means possible to STOP IT. The arrogant presumption that a lazy or incompetent person has ANY moral claim on the work product of another human being is repugnant
That was more my point. The "expensive" kids come back to public schools. They are counted in the count inflating the costs of public schools.
I'm all for vouchers for private schools. With a few requirements. Any school that accepts a voucher must accept the voucher as payment in full, and may not reject any student for any reason. Those are the rules the public schools operate under.
Learn to love Alaska
My neighbors are Poor. 30 years old, 5 kids.
So your neighbors made the same mistake five different times, and you want me to pay for it?
I thought I wanted well regulated economic institutions, so we all can get on with our businesses without fearing undue risk with our protected money.
Regulation of the sort that "progressives" want allows those like Jon Corzine, who've made frequent use of the revolving door between regulator and regulated, to steal and piss away hundreds of millions of dollars of customer money. Even worse are the neo-Keynesian shenanigans that pass for fiscal and monetary policy, which have greatly devalued the purchasing power of ordinary Americans.
afaik not every doctor has to recertify, old boys were grandfathered in and this is why he created competing organization. Even your wikipedia link says so.
It's always easy to win an argument when you just make up your own definitions.
wean:
1: to accustom (as a young child or animal) to take food otherwise than by nursing
2: to detach from a source of dependence; also to free from a usually unwholesome habit or interest
3: to accustom to something from an early age
Obviously, it's the second meaning that's being used here, which does not necessitate any form of replacement. The distinction between weaning and cold-turkey in drug dependency isn't the presence or a substitute, but gradation. My wife was on some nasty anti-migraine medication that she had to be weaned off before she could fall pregnant. The weaning process involved gradually decreasing the dose of medication daily, until it fell below therepeutic levels, not by substituting another drug.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
The last time Kentucky went Democratic in the Presidential election was for John F. Kennedy in 1960.
Did you do dictionary shopping? "accustom (someone) to managing without something which they have become dependent on." is the closest I get from more generic definition search ("wean definition" on Google).
Learn to love Alaska
No, this is a left wing parent telling their child to walk several miles to school because they don't believe in using fossil fuels for transportation. You see, because the law was deemed constitutional, their constituents have to comply with it as part of Federal Law. So instead of making it as easy as possible for your state's people to comply, you lump them in with 20-some other states who are also "protesting," resulting in a clusterfuck that they still have to deal with. You could have helped YOUR OWN people, and you chose not to just to make a political point.
Well done. I hope whomever runs against them points out how easy other states have had it, and that the only reason your constituents had to suffer through this awful roll-out was because of political posturing.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The Miriam-Webster was the second entry on Google for "define wean", and the only one I checked. I went for it over the first entry, thefreedictionary.com, as I figured it was more reputable, although checking now, thefreedictionary has a similar definition: "To detach from that to which one is strongly habituated or devoted:"
The other top five definitions include:
- "to withdraw (a person, the affections, one's dependency, etc.) from some object, habit, form of enjoyment, or the like" (dictionary.reference.com)
- "accustom (someone) to managing without something which they have become dependent on "(oxforddictionaries.com)
- " to make someone gradually stop depending on something that they like and have become used to, especially a drug or a bad habit" (macmillandictionary.com)
All of which support my statement.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
And refusal to acknowledge it as such is dishonest.
Umm, is not the point of the programs to be to accomplish those positive things? If not, it's a poorly designed program.
Public school is already free. I guess this once again points to poorly designed programs.
My ultimate takeaway from all this is the same takeaway I've always had: Democrats are fools who are more interested in throwing money at any cause that claims to benefit the poor, regardless of effectiveness or cost. The end result normally fosters dependence and entitlement complexes rather than societal benefit.
Like me. The HDHP I was on increased 91% in premium cost, so I had to shift to a different HDHP which offered less benefits than the one I was on.
That's because the Board has changed its own rules of certification. Whereas the certifications used to last for a lifetime, they are now only good for 10 years.
But that's not relevant to the argument, that Rand Paul's reading comprehension is perfectly fine and above that of an average American.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You may else remain blind for life, if the doctor, who could've saved your vision chose not to bother with the tedium and odium of recertification and decided to become an engineer (or a politician) instead.
The certifying bodies themselves can compete with each other. If a particular one develops the reputation of certifying too many charlatans, it will lose business and close down. For example, I trust Consumer Reports, but not Consumer Digest currently — why can't professionals (like lawyers, doctors, or plumbers and electricians) be certified by competing bodies?
And a fool falling for your pitch would deserve what happens to him just as a buyer of a crappy TV deserves electric shocks and bad picture. He would still be able to sue you for negligence, however, and is likely to win. His vision may not be restored, but you would not be able to pull the same stunt again...
But all of this is off-topic. All I said was, that Rand Paul passed the certification of the Board of Opthalmology, which is testament to his ability to read rather well. That his certification "expired" 10 years later is irrelevant to the subject.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I've been laid off for awhile and I try not to complain. I have chosen as an older student to go back to school. It is a struggle but I have a little saved up.
I struggle with homework, look for work where I can find it and trying to keep things together.
But the government is making it harder for me each day - first ending an opportunity to help create a new medical device and now getting a letter that I am loosing my health insurance. Not sure I can afford the new plans and I might not even qualify for the exchange plans due to quirks in who qualifies under the poverty rules.
I am being pushed from paying for health care into being enrolled into medicaid. Can't wait to see what else happens when they decide to stop giving out waivers.
Now I am getting adverts in the mail saying don't worry about things - you can simply sign up for food stamps and free phones.
I am being actively encouraged to simply give up and have things given to me as long as I want.
Well those things that others decide is simply best for me without asking but what the hell, I can probably simply give up and let you call simply provide for me.
The only thing that is stopping me is I keep asking what sort of life is that?
ooh sorry forgot to add that you should look up the stats from the irs - you might be surprised to learn you are actually "the rich" and didn't realize it
It's a language from the days of wooden computers and iron programmers.
"The wisdom of the Patriarchs was that they *knew* they were fools." --Master Foo
Unwanted children are generally bad for society, easily available birth control reduces the number of unwanted children, and thus is a net benefit for everyone, including you.
Public school is free up to a certain age level, and does not offer training for all vocations.
Suppose a tool and die maker, age 40, is replaced by something from Milltronics. How is public school going to do him any good?
That last sentence is unsupported, and indeed false as far as I can tell. The average stay on welfare at least used to be three years, which means that most (not all) wanted to get off it. In that case, for most people it does not foster dependence or entitlement complexes, and it does serve a social benefit, namely allowing somebody to resume being a productive citizen after some hard times. You may want to do your own research.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
So your idea of reforming welfare is to humiliate the recipients, remove children if there's any failure on weekly drug tests, and throw them off on a fixed schedule. I fail to see anything positive, like trying to help them get useful skills and become employable.
Welfare should not be something that you're ok with staying on. Welfare is a sign that your life sucks. It's often the fault of the recipient but not always, but regardless of the circumstances, the recipient should feel the driving need to get away from it. Some people have that drive due to the way they were raised or due to some innate part of their personality. Some don't. Some have to be pushed by other means.
Pre or post reform? Because the Clinton reforms are largely viewed as a success in reducing dependence on the system by reducing the false positive rate: http://www.fordschool.umich.edu/research/poverty/pdf/Isrconference.pdf. Studies on welfare outside of the US seem to concur with a similar view on dependence as well, such as this study from Canada:
You also seem to ignore the other entitlements as well, since welfare is not the end all of dependency syndrome. It is in fact one of our best designed safety nets since its reform in '92.
You misunderstand. I concur that safety nets in general serve a societal benefit. However, the statement I made is that Demcorats generally believe that any spending on any implementation of a "safety net" is a net win for society, regardless of effectiveness or design. And I'm saying that the effect is a net loss for society. Safety net programs require careful design, limits, and milestones -- they must be designed to fight the human predisposition to take advantage, as well as designed to teach people to be "fishermen" rather than just "giving out fish". Democrats are very poor at this, generally (and naively) viewing that any opportunity to yank money out of a rich man's pockets and give it to a poorer person is a "win". It's also largely what fuels the "taxes as theft" argument amongst Repbulicans. If Democrats truly cared about an effective program, they'd be far more judicial with their handouts, requiring more accountability in the programs.
What are you, Catholic? We need to control people through guilt and shame? Really? That's a US view that's not seen elsewhere. And, having been to places where being on the doll/benefit isn't looked down on the way it still is in the US, the US has the worse system and still more "shame" to it. Yes, kids in school get picked on for having discount lunches. I've seen them beat up for it. And you want to make life harder on them because you feel there's insufficient "shame".
Shame has been shown to be one of the biggest motivators to shape behavior and it is much more powerful in the rest of the world, especially outside of the West. Scroll down to see about 30 results, there are plenty of papers and articles here.
Doesn't work for corporate executives. They show shame and guilt when ordered by their lawyers, and yet offend at a rate greater than any minority slums (they just have legal representation to get the charged dismissed/reduced)..
Isn't the 1% a pretty small and biased sample size?
Word!
Shame has been shown to be one of the biggest motivators to shape behavior and it is much more powerful in the rest of the world, especially outside of the West.
The real problem with it is that it's arbitrary and capricious. The president has an affair and tells the truth about it and is impeached. Countless congressmen have affairs, and lie about it and are given sympathy for their predicament (especially if they are anti-gay and it's a gay affair). Guilt and shame are arbitrary and inconsistent (and often unpredictable). They make very poor motivators, if the goal is "equal protection." If you are going for a class society where the rich can steal billions with impunity, but the poor are hanged for stealing bread, then by all means, advocate shame and guilt for population control.
Learn to love Alaska
Shame was not advocated, it was shown to be effective by the link I posted. Shame is a very good motivator in certain societies; one of the search results talks about just how effective it is in Japan, for example. You also see shame used by judges, on occasion, throughout the US: the convicted standing on a street corner wearing a sign that says "I am an/a XYZ..." Assuming my advocacy of shame as a motivator by me sharing a link is incorrect.
The president did not tell the truth about the affair: "Now, I have to go back to work on my State of the Union speech. And I worked on it until pretty late last night. But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people. Thank you!"
Perhaps posting some relevant stats would be useful here; generalities, blatant accusations without proof, and incorrect facts serve little purpose except to confirm current parroted memes.
Word!
The president did not tell the truth about the affair:
He did on the record to the judge that was the "official" reason he was impeached, for the perjury he didn't commit.
Learn to love Alaska
A recorded public statement is just as valid as what he said in front of a judge. In his first statement, he lied. By your logic, only statements given in front of a judge are valid--this is patently false.
Word!
By my logic, only perjury should be prosecuted as perjury.
Learn to love Alaska
I call BS. I think you made it all up.
You expect me to believe that a laid off (for "a while") student HAD insurance? Bwaaahahahahah. Not unless it was through the school.
Then you trot out the shit about medical devices (A link to an obamacare tax).
Then you throw out some FUD about how you, a laid off student, might not count for poverty levels, so you probably won't get the subsidy.... If you're really a laid off worker turned Student, you're about the one person who's absolutely going to get the stupid subsidy...
Then some more FUD about being forced to enroll in medicaid. And THEN some more about free phones?
OK Mr. AC. I think you're a republican shill. You've hit every talking point, and done so badly. I hope you get fired, because you're being WAY too obvious. In your defense, at least you didn't mention the muslim thing....