No, we socialize INSURANCE. We need to socialize CARE. The rest of the developed world socializes CARE and they get better results.
You seem to acknowledge that what the UK does is vastly more effective for the money, why don't we do what they do? Doesn't that seem obvious? Doing what others who are succeeding are doing?
READ AGAIN, for comprehension this time. IF we switched to socialized medicine, we can provide for the entire country and have the total spend remain level. That is, spend what we spend now in total, only everyone is covered.
Is that REALLY so hard to understand? What I find hard to understand is how anyone could be against that and claim to be fiscally responsible.
In this case the change seems to be good, but I do have misgivings about a car I am accustomed to changing it's handling characteristics literally overnight.
Medicare is routinely sabotaged by bizarre rules about what it cannot cover and when it cannot negotiate. It is primarily members of the GOP whose stated goal is to make government programs fail at all cost who saddle it with those rules.
If it REALLY wanted to succeed (that is, if our "representatives" really wanted it to succeed), it would provide the healthcare directly like the rest of the world does.. That would be very bad for the insurance companies since everyone would demand medicare and drop their private policies.
The ACA was a desperate attempt to make some improvement to healthcare in America without cutting the insurance companies out.
Nine people try strategy A and succeed. One tries strategy B and fails. Next round, should that 1 that failed
these shows have some intelligent content for those of us with a brain (e.g. smart humor in The Simpsons) mixed in with more obvious entertainment for the masses.
That has been true for a very long time. Shakespeare typically included a fair bit of lowbrow humor for the groundlings as well as more insightful commentary for those open to it.
It's still deceptive. Watching Netflix seems a lot like watching television to me, so people who watch Netflix are television viewers but apparently not surveyed by Nielson.
Meanwhile, lets look at that direct quote from Nielson's own website again:
Chosen at random through proven methodology, Nielsen’s U.S. TV families represent a cross-section of representative homes throughout the country.
Except for homes that don't watch enough content from people that pay them for survey results.
Bending over backwards to not step on the toes of insurance companys' toes (as well as pharmaceutical companys' toes) is why medicare's funding isn't adequate. Tell them and other for-profit healthcare companys to sod off if they don't like it would make medicare's funding adequate.
Wakey Wakey! The poster you are replying to is from the U,K, where they socialized the whole damned thing. It worked out well.
Let's see now, what are we doing here that produces such terrible results? I know, we run our medicare/medicaid as an insurance program paying private industry instead of running healthcare as a public service! We should stop doing that.
So clearly the problem is that we are being too carefull not to step on corporate toes here. We should spend more efficiently by modeling one of the many example systems that work better.
If 9 people go with strategy A and succeed, and 1 tries strategy B and fails, which strategy is better?
Or are you claiming that Americans are uniquely incompetent? If so, wouldn't it make sense for incompetent Americans to quit second-guessing their demonstrably more competent peers?
The problem is that those payments are piecemeal and packed with sabotage to make sure it isn't accidentally socialist. For example, why isn't medicare allowed to haggle over the cost of prescription meds?
Given your extraordinary claim that doing the opposite of everyone else's demonstrably superior strategy is better, where is your extraordinary proof?
Everything in the US costs several times more than it does in other countries. Military expenses, education, healthcare, take your pick.
Note that like healthcare, education is much more socialized in Europe, so you're arguing my point there. As for military, that's because we keep starting wars all over the place. We should stop doing that.
As for being healthier, have you seen the per-capita beer consumption in the U.K.? Have you ever heard of poutine? Time to stop making lame excuses. Europeans are healthier because they can afford to go to the doctor and take their prescribed meds.
And the procedures, rules and quirks have nothing to do with government regs. They are all about maximizing the chances to deny a claim and making sure other company's plans cost more. Also about confusing the patient and maximizing co-pays. Much of it is the clash between people at the insurance company with no medical training but a lot of incentive to find nearly everything unnecessary and people at hospitals (also with no medical training) with a lot of incentive to find nearly everything absolutely necessary. The stereotypical fast talking used car salesman looks honest by comparison. Put the cool-aid down.
Given that the U.S. is the outlier by far, it is your claim that is extraordinary, bu instead of matching extraordinary proof,t you offer only handwaving.
It's funny how they were all about flawless diamonds with perfect clarity until people figured out how to make perfect synthetic diamonds. Now they're all about the natural beauty of flawed natural diamonds.
It was YOUR analogy! Don't complain to me if it's broken!
The thing is, there is nothing niche about internet connected devices needing security updates. There is also nothing unusual about woefully out of date cellphones because the carrier or manufacturer wrote the devices off within a year of sale and locked the owner out of 3rd party updates. It is not unreasonable that the owner of any device should expect that no special measures have been taken to prevent their personal modifications to the device beyond any intrinsic difficulty. That was finally made law in the case of automobiles, I don't see why it shouldn't be in the case of cellphones. The manufacturers are well aware that people want at least the ability to update their phones, they just don't care.
Well they decided to glue the handle of my screwdriver on rather than screw it on which means I can't repurpose the components like I would be able to do had they made it easy to separate them, are you rallying against the manufacturers of screwdrivers with the handles glued on?
Actually, they are interference fitted, not glued. And it wasn't done at extra expense to make it harder for you to modify the screwdriver. In contrast, the bootloader lockdowns require extra effort on their part and it is to keep you from loading a different OS image.
Now, can you name phones that have unlocked bootloaders or are you just "sure" there must be some? In fact,
there are but the list grows shorter by the day and most require begging the manufacturer and the cooperation of the carrier.
So, if you try to use a screwdriver as an improvised deadbolt, do you expect a defeat device to activate to eject the screwdriver? If you try to use duck tape as a textile, do you expect a special mechanism to unravel it?
Why should anyone expect a device to have a "feature" specifically to keep them from modifying it and potentially re-purposing it? Further, why should they be stuck paying extra for the engineering behind the anti-feature?
And no, there is no user preference to a locked down device. It's just that that's all that's on offer.
When the PC came out, nobody at all imagined that they would one day be running a variant of Unix and acting as publicly accessible servers. It wasn't designed to run a variety of OSes, it just wasn't designed specifically NOT to. Interestingly, the entire intel 80x86 processor line wasn't designed to be a main processor, it was supposed to be an I/O coprocessor. The chip intended to be the main processor was so over-compiliaced that engineers discovered that the machine ran much faster if they ignored it and did the computation on the "i/o coprocessors). Again, a good thing the "co-processors" weren't specifically designed to NOT be useful as a CPU.
Except that our healthcare costs us several times more than it does in countries with socialized medicine.
Meanwhile, try actually hanging out in a business office for a few days. Just watch and listen. Never again will you be able to claim that business is run efficiently with a straight face.
Because of multiple insurance companies all with their own huge set of billing procedures, rules, and quirks, medical billing actually requires a 6 month course to absorb the specialized knowledge needed above and beyond being competent in managing accounts receivable.
Proper design and easy access to factory images prevents users from bricking their phones. Bricking happens because users are forced to use hacks to get around locked boot loaders.
A properly designed phone won't brick even if you deliberately flash random data over the OS. It just won't be usable until you re-flash a valid os image over the random data.
You're making a LOT of false assumptions. For one, half of my family lives in the north, and in fact weren't even in this country at the time of the Civil War. The other half were definitely not slave owners either. In fact, most people are not descendants of slave owners. You had to have big bux to afford a slave.
For another, if you read carefully, I have not at any point attempted to excuse the antebellum south for slavery. In fact, what I am doing is pointing out that the north should not be excused either. Is it possible that that is what you are actually upset about?
If you want to see forces that acted against slavery at that time for ethical reasons, look to individuals on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. It is they who eventually prevailed and got slavery out of the U.S.
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No, we socialize INSURANCE. We need to socialize CARE. The rest of the developed world socializes CARE and they get better results.
You seem to acknowledge that what the UK does is vastly more effective for the money, why don't we do what they do? Doesn't that seem obvious? Doing what others who are succeeding are doing?
READ AGAIN, for comprehension this time. IF we switched to socialized medicine, we can provide for the entire country and have the total spend remain level. That is, spend what we spend now in total, only everyone is covered.
Is that REALLY so hard to understand? What I find hard to understand is how anyone could be against that and claim to be fiscally responsible.
Of course if it plays follow the leader and the driver of the leader falls asleep and drives over a cliff, you also don't want your car to follow.
In this case the change seems to be good, but I do have misgivings about a car I am accustomed to changing it's handling characteristics literally overnight.
Medicare is routinely sabotaged by bizarre rules about what it cannot cover and when it cannot negotiate. It is primarily members of the GOP whose stated goal is to make government programs fail at all cost who saddle it with those rules.
If it REALLY wanted to succeed (that is, if our "representatives" really wanted it to succeed), it would provide the healthcare directly like the rest of the world does.. That would be very bad for the insurance companies since everyone would demand medicare and drop their private policies.
The ACA was a desperate attempt to make some improvement to healthcare in America without cutting the insurance companies out.
Nine people try strategy A and succeed. One tries strategy B and fails. Next round, should that 1 that failed
these shows have some intelligent content for those of us with a brain (e.g. smart humor in The Simpsons) mixed in with more obvious entertainment for the masses.
That has been true for a very long time. Shakespeare typically included a fair bit of lowbrow humor for the groundlings as well as more insightful commentary for those open to it.
It's still deceptive. Watching Netflix seems a lot like watching television to me, so people who watch Netflix are television viewers but apparently not surveyed by Nielson.
Meanwhile, lets look at that direct quote from Nielson's own website again:
Chosen at random through proven methodology, Nielsen’s U.S. TV families represent a cross-section of representative homes throughout the country.
Except for homes that don't watch enough content from people that pay them for survey results.
RIGHT!! That's why we should spend the money more like the UK does. Then we could cover everyone for no more than we spend on just the elderly now.
Bending over backwards to not step on the toes of insurance companys' toes (as well as pharmaceutical companys' toes) is why medicare's funding isn't adequate. Tell them and other for-profit healthcare companys to sod off if they don't like it would make medicare's funding adequate.
Wakey Wakey! The poster you are replying to is from the U,K, where they socialized the whole damned thing. It worked out well.
Let's see now, what are we doing here that produces such terrible results? I know, we run our medicare/medicaid as an insurance program paying private industry instead of running healthcare as a public service! We should stop doing that.
So clearly the problem is that we are being too carefull not to step on corporate toes here. We should spend more efficiently by modeling one of the many example systems that work better.
If 9 people go with strategy A and succeed, and 1 tries strategy B and fails, which strategy is better?
Or are you claiming that Americans are uniquely incompetent? If so, wouldn't it make sense for incompetent Americans to quit second-guessing their demonstrably more competent peers?
The problem is that those payments are piecemeal and packed with sabotage to make sure it isn't accidentally socialist. For example, why isn't medicare allowed to haggle over the cost of prescription meds?
Given your extraordinary claim that doing the opposite of everyone else's demonstrably superior strategy is better, where is your extraordinary proof?
Everything in the US costs several times more than it does in other countries. Military expenses, education, healthcare, take your pick.
Note that like healthcare, education is much more socialized in Europe, so you're arguing my point there. As for military, that's because we keep starting wars all over the place. We should stop doing that.
As for being healthier, have you seen the per-capita beer consumption in the U.K.? Have you ever heard of poutine? Time to stop making lame excuses. Europeans are healthier because they can afford to go to the doctor and take their prescribed meds.
And the procedures, rules and quirks have nothing to do with government regs. They are all about maximizing the chances to deny a claim and making sure other company's plans cost more. Also about confusing the patient and maximizing co-pays. Much of it is the clash between people at the insurance company with no medical training but a lot of incentive to find nearly everything unnecessary and people at hospitals (also with no medical training) with a lot of incentive to find nearly everything absolutely necessary. The stereotypical fast talking used car salesman looks honest by comparison. Put the cool-aid down.
Given that the U.S. is the outlier by far, it is your claim that is extraordinary, bu instead of matching extraordinary proof,t you offer only handwaving.
Actually, my wife prefers amethyst.
It's funny how they were all about flawless diamonds with perfect clarity until people figured out how to make perfect synthetic diamonds. Now they're all about the natural beauty of flawed natural diamonds.
It was YOUR analogy! Don't complain to me if it's broken!
The thing is, there is nothing niche about internet connected devices needing security updates. There is also nothing unusual about woefully out of date cellphones because the carrier or manufacturer wrote the devices off within a year of sale and locked the owner out of 3rd party updates. It is not unreasonable that the owner of any device should expect that no special measures have been taken to prevent their personal modifications to the device beyond any intrinsic difficulty. That was finally made law in the case of automobiles, I don't see why it shouldn't be in the case of cellphones. The manufacturers are well aware that people want at least the ability to update their phones, they just don't care.
There do have to be limits, but pretty much the entire developed world that is not the U.S. seems to manage it OK.
Well they decided to glue the handle of my screwdriver on rather than screw it on which means I can't repurpose the components like I would be able to do had they made it easy to separate them, are you rallying against the manufacturers of screwdrivers with the handles glued on?
Actually, they are interference fitted, not glued. And it wasn't done at extra expense to make it harder for you to modify the screwdriver. In contrast, the bootloader lockdowns require extra effort on their part and it is to keep you from loading a different OS image.
Now, can you name phones that have unlocked bootloaders or are you just "sure" there must be some? In fact, there are but the list grows shorter by the day and most require begging the manufacturer and the cooperation of the carrier.
Did you save up enough to cover that $20K every year for the rest of your life?
So, if you try to use a screwdriver as an improvised deadbolt, do you expect a defeat device to activate to eject the screwdriver? If you try to use duck tape as a textile, do you expect a special mechanism to unravel it?
Why should anyone expect a device to have a "feature" specifically to keep them from modifying it and potentially re-purposing it? Further, why should they be stuck paying extra for the engineering behind the anti-feature?
And no, there is no user preference to a locked down device. It's just that that's all that's on offer.
When the PC came out, nobody at all imagined that they would one day be running a variant of Unix and acting as publicly accessible servers. It wasn't designed to run a variety of OSes, it just wasn't designed specifically NOT to. Interestingly, the entire intel 80x86 processor line wasn't designed to be a main processor, it was supposed to be an I/O coprocessor. The chip intended to be the main processor was so over-compiliaced that engineers discovered that the machine ran much faster if they ignored it and did the computation on the "i/o coprocessors). Again, a good thing the "co-processors" weren't specifically designed to NOT be useful as a CPU.
Except that our healthcare costs us several times more than it does in countries with socialized medicine.
Meanwhile, try actually hanging out in a business office for a few days. Just watch and listen. Never again will you be able to claim that business is run efficiently with a straight face.
Because of multiple insurance companies all with their own huge set of billing procedures, rules, and quirks, medical billing actually requires a 6 month course to absorb the specialized knowledge needed above and beyond being competent in managing accounts receivable.
Then you develop a chronic condition that the insurance company assures you is definitely not catastrophic but you find the bills certainly are.
What we need is to quit messing around with individual insurance and just socialize the whole damned thing.
Had your argument held sway in the late '70s and early '80s, there would be no Windows or Linux. We would all still be dinking around on DOS 32.5
Perhaps YOU have no such expectation, but people who know what they're doing do have such an expectation.
Proper design and easy access to factory images prevents users from bricking their phones. Bricking happens because users are forced to use hacks to get around locked boot loaders.
A properly designed phone won't brick even if you deliberately flash random data over the OS. It just won't be usable until you re-flash a valid os image over the random data.
You're making a LOT of false assumptions. For one, half of my family lives in the north, and in fact weren't even in this country at the time of the Civil War. The other half were definitely not slave owners either. In fact, most people are not descendants of slave owners. You had to have big bux to afford a slave.
For another, if you read carefully, I have not at any point attempted to excuse the antebellum south for slavery. In fact, what I am doing is pointing out that the north should not be excused either. Is it possible that that is what you are actually upset about?
If you want to see forces that acted against slavery at that time for ethical reasons, look to individuals on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. It is they who eventually prevailed and got slavery out of the U.S.