What are they going to do, not make the drug at all?
Yeah, like a lack of profit stopped ugg from making the wheel.
Considering how many people die in America for being unable to afford drugs, the profit model is extremely harmful - indeed, it's a national security risk. Look what happened with the flu vaccine shortage last year.
Take profit out of pharmaceuticals. Necessity will always be the mother of invention. What idiot thinks that these CEOs would just rather go without medicine that'll later save their lives?
Besides... pharmaceuticals rely mostly on Government - via university research. Taxpayer funded research, thankyouverymuch.
Th Comissioner of the MA state health insurance authority was on NPR yesterday. The Mass law makes denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions ILLEGAL!. Clearly, though you might be an agant, you're one who doesn't know what they're taking about!
I never said people would be denied coverage. I said the premiums would go right through the roof. Do not lecture me on knowing what I'm talking about when it is clear as the cloudless day that you mis-read what I wrote.
Either that or if there are caps on premiums, there'll be hell to pay for the insurance companies themselves, at least in the minds of their shareholders.
That's my point, but we have to tear that system down one piece at a time.
Right now we need to prove that health insurance companies, when allowed free reign in places like Massachusetts, will bring ruin to a state. Next we need to prove that health insurance companies bring ruin, period.
Considering that 197,000 deaths occur each year due to medical malpractice - in the private field - private industry has no high ground over the VA system.
Those middle class people in Massachusetts who have pre-existing conditions, will be driven into homelessness. For absolutely certain. No questions asked. Out the door and to the loaves and fishes NOW.
These people will pay $1000 premiums per month - I work with these insurance companies and I see it happening daily in California - and in many cases their contractually agreed upon coverage will get denied.
The raw numbers cannot be denied, and cannot be resisted. The numbers - the the number of people with pre-existing conditions, their income, and their health insurance premiums - all clearly say that a large number of lower and middle-middle class will start paying fines, or going homeless, or leaving Massachusetts.
This is all out war on the middle class, and many will leave, and when they do, the rich will be paying more to support the health care-driven tax increases to support the poor and then the rich will start leaving and badebadebadethatsallfolks!
I hope this law is rigorously enforced. Tie it into SSN's and whichever SSN isn't insured, fine 'em. That'll bring quite a swift end to this law.:)
I was objecting to the idea that profit should be removed from the equation. Expanding state-funded insurance which still uses for-profit agencies to provide health care does not contradict that.
But that is not what you initially said, you backpedaling crybaby. That's what you added after you got challenged. That's what people do when they're caught red handed making the kind of boo boo that you made.
Let me repeat: neither I, nor anyone else, believe you meant "Just so you know, I wouldn't be against expanding the state run systems on a state by state basis." You added that after you got busted as a way to gain some sympathy for poor widdle ol' you.
This is what you actually said:
You don't always get what you want. And you also don't always get what you need.
Translation: "you've got cancer, you can't afford care, too bad, so sad."
Since you would have no problem taking the husband and father from my wife and children, perhaps you need to consider having your own father removed... or you (or your husband) leaving your own.
I would have no problem seeing you being a victim of your own belief system. That is, the beliefs you stated before someone challenged you and forced you into damage control mode.
You would fit right in at a Stalinist era trial, you know that?
Wow, that really offended you, didn't it? Join the crowd. "You don't always get what you want. And you also don't always get what you need" offended me. Your dishonest explanations of what you supposedly "meant" offend me even more because you take me for gullible and homey don't play dat.
And now, wishing you became a victim of your own medicine, is the same as being a Stalinist death squad yanking you out of bed at night to put you on a show trial. Ah hah. I wouldn't waste the lightning bolt on you if I were Zeus. Why? Because you're not only heartless, you're also a dishonest little backpedaler, and your character will bring you the kind of ruin worth watching, and rewinding over and over again.
Nice intellectually dishonest and cowardly misdirection.
Here is what you said:
I suppose you're talking about food, which is more important than healthcare. Also housing I guess should also never be for-profit either. Energy? Well, everyone needs gas and electricity so let's nationalize that. Phone service? Why let a corporation profit from something everyone uses. Entertainment? Well, those are public airwaves... can we make sure that a correct viewpoint gets on once in awhile?
Sorry, doesn't work for me. You don't always get what you want. And you also don't always get what you need.
Now you're trying to worm your way out by "adding" that you don't mind expanding the state run systems. You said nothing to indicate that before, when you said, coldly and heartlessly, "And you also don't always get what you need."
Well, asshole this, dude. As I said before, I say it again - I hope you also experience not getting what you need sometime. Especially, in light of this story, critical life-saving health care. I hope you are a victim of your own line of thinking. Asshole? No. That's called making you take your own medicine. The asshole was you for saying that crap in the first place.
Here's a lesson for the future: don't dish out what you can't take.
that Earth is the only planet with life in the universe, with dumb, racist, sexist, warmongering, Walmart-shopping, Country music-listening humans as its stewards?
Sorry asshole, I've already had cancer and you can't even imagine how far you diminish yourself by saying that.
Aw, poor baby! You wish upon 300 million Americans a line of thinking that gets countless people killed for no other reason but that they don't have enough little green pieces of combustible paper, and then you cry when someone rejoices over the possibility of you becoming a VICTIM of your own thinking? Spare me. You ought to get exactly what you give. You diminish America with your Ebenezer Scrooge line of thinking. I wish Darwin would make a public example of you.
When you are hungry, the local loaves and fishes provides you with food.
When you need early cancer treatment to keep breast cancer from going terminal, and you have no money, where do you go for that? Nowhere, in capitalism. You die.
Breast cancer is instant and certain death for the poor.
I for one hope you get just that, right after your employer goes overseas and your stocks go south - oh and yes, it can indeed happen to men.
I can say you're right on the mark with that last part. They actually look at the financial status of that area more than the racial composition now.
Also, the law says you as an agent cannot refuse to do business with someone in (name your bad area). When someone calls from name-your-poor-area, you can't refuse outright to deal with them. But you as an agent can decline to go door to door in that area, what with these people being 99.99% unlikely to call or visit you if your office is in a really good area.
Under this current proposed law, the first time an employer ASKS you to have an RFID implant, they've broken the law and are in deep poodoo.
The employer is free to not hire someone who doesn't take the RFID implant, but then they're free to report said employer for even requesting it, and California is free to fine/imprison/punish the employer.
The question then boils down to enforcement. How likely then is the company to get punished for breaking the law, and to what magnitude? That is where we ought to be asking the biggest questions.
Games will all be web based, using some souped up evolution of Flash or whatever, and you'll have to log in to play; this will make any kind of piracy irrelevant. The servers will control all access to the game and thus you always need access rights. And cheating will then be impossible, too.
Of course 10ghz multi core processors with 64gb RAM will be the norm by 2027... *eek*
Make ALL personal information your personal property, the use of which is revocable at will, like the RIAA does with copying music. Anyone you aren't doing business with (say, Choicepoint, Lexis/Nexis, USSEARCH.COM etc.), who is trying to share your personal information around, has to ask for permission and pay royalties for transactions. Just like with the RIAA.
If someone posts their phone number or picture online and removes it tomorrow with a notice not to copy, you have to remove it. Period. The RIAA has that right, why can't we?
Enforce it with DMCA-level punishments. Infringers pay attorney costs as well as the judgement, just like copyright violations.
Oh wait, I know why you're about to disagree with this... the RIAA is a multi billion dollar corporation and personal information pertains to worthless little peons, right?
And I don't want to spend much time talking about the unspoken ideological underpinnings of the urge to space colonization, other than to point out that they're there, that the case for space colonization isn't usually presented as an economic enterprise so much as a quasi-religious one. "We can't afford to keep all our eggs in one basket" isn't so much a justification as an appeal to sentimentality, for in the hypothetical case of a planet-trashing catastrophe, we (who currently inhabit the surface of the Earth) are dead anyway. The future extinction of the human species cannot affect you if you are already dead: strictly speaking, it should be of no personal concern.
I wonder if this "sci fi writer" realizes that what he just said was as much a quasi-religious belief as the beliefs he's criticizing.
Allow me to break this down: if wanting to NOT keep your eggs in one basket is a quasi-religious belief, not caring if we do is the quasi-religious belief that it doesn't matter. Denial can sometimes be considered ignorance. I know plenty of sci-fi writers equate quasi-religious ideas, much less religion itself, with ignorance, and that equation itself is a quasi-religious belief. Indeed, saying that the potential extinction of humanity should be of no personal concern because it's in the all too distant future, is the very height of ignorance. Not to mention apathy.
When the religious and quasi-religious boogeyman comes to oppress us with his dogma, ironically it's ignorance and apathy - the "it should be of no personal concern" crowd - that are his sycophants. And when the very real threat of overpollution or overconsumption finally mature and come due and payable for humanity in the future it will be the "it should be of no personal concern" crowd that bears half the karmic fault for that.
If there was no way for piracy to take place, people would buy more movies. This is self evident. Piracy cannot be used as justification for piracy, that's just silly.
Actually, people might resort to other, free methods of entertainment.
Slashdot Mirror
I say bankrupt them.
What are they going to do, not make the drug at all?
Yeah, like a lack of profit stopped ugg from making the wheel.
Considering how many people die in America for being unable to afford drugs, the profit model is extremely harmful - indeed, it's a national security risk. Look what happened with the flu vaccine shortage last year.
Take profit out of pharmaceuticals. Necessity will always be the mother of invention. What idiot thinks that these CEOs would just rather go without medicine that'll later save their lives?
Besides... pharmaceuticals rely mostly on Government - via university research. Taxpayer funded research, thankyouverymuch.
This analogy was a very bad one.
I never said people would be denied coverage. I said the premiums would go right through the roof. Do not lecture me on knowing what I'm talking about when it is clear as the cloudless day that you mis-read what I wrote.
Either that or if there are caps on premiums, there'll be hell to pay for the insurance companies themselves, at least in the minds of their shareholders.
That's my point, but we have to tear that system down one piece at a time.
Right now we need to prove that health insurance companies, when allowed free reign in places like Massachusetts, will bring ruin to a state. Next we need to prove that health insurance companies bring ruin, period.
Baby steps and all.
Considering that 197,000 deaths occur each year due to medical malpractice - in the private field - private industry has no high ground over the VA system.
(I am a licensed insurance agent)
:)
Those middle class people in Massachusetts who have pre-existing conditions, will be driven into homelessness. For absolutely certain. No questions asked. Out the door and to the loaves and fishes NOW.
These people will pay $1000 premiums per month - I work with these insurance companies and I see it happening daily in California - and in many cases their contractually agreed upon coverage will get denied.
The raw numbers cannot be denied, and cannot be resisted. The numbers - the the number of people with pre-existing conditions, their income, and their health insurance premiums - all clearly say that a large number of lower and middle-middle class will start paying fines, or going homeless, or leaving Massachusetts.
This is all out war on the middle class, and many will leave, and when they do, the rich will be paying more to support the health care-driven tax increases to support the poor and then the rich will start leaving and badebadebadethatsallfolks!
I hope this law is rigorously enforced. Tie it into SSN's and whichever SSN isn't insured, fine 'em. That'll bring quite a swift end to this law.
But that is not what you initially said, you backpedaling crybaby. That's what you added after you got challenged. That's what people do when they're caught red handed making the kind of boo boo that you made.
Let me repeat: neither I, nor anyone else, believe you meant "Just so you know, I wouldn't be against expanding the state run systems on a state by state basis." You added that after you got busted as a way to gain some sympathy for poor widdle ol' you.
This is what you actually said:
Translation: "you've got cancer, you can't afford care, too bad, so sad."
I would have no problem seeing you being a victim of your own belief system. That is, the beliefs you stated before someone challenged you and forced you into damage control mode.
Wow, that really offended you, didn't it? Join the crowd. "You don't always get what you want. And you also don't always get what you need" offended me. Your dishonest explanations of what you supposedly "meant" offend me even more because you take me for gullible and homey don't play dat.
And now, wishing you became a victim of your own medicine, is the same as being a Stalinist death squad yanking you out of bed at night to put you on a show trial. Ah hah. I wouldn't waste the lightning bolt on you if I were Zeus. Why? Because you're not only heartless, you're also a dishonest little backpedaler, and your character will bring you the kind of ruin worth watching, and rewinding over and over again.
Here is what you said:
Now you're trying to worm your way out by "adding" that you don't mind expanding the state run systems. You said nothing to indicate that before, when you said, coldly and heartlessly, "And you also don't always get what you need."
Well, asshole this, dude. As I said before, I say it again - I hope you also experience not getting what you need sometime. Especially, in light of this story, critical life-saving health care. I hope you are a victim of your own line of thinking. Asshole? No. That's called making you take your own medicine. The asshole was you for saying that crap in the first place.
Here's a lesson for the future: don't dish out what you can't take.
that Earth is the only planet with life in the universe, with dumb, racist, sexist, warmongering, Walmart-shopping, Country music-listening humans as its stewards?
Aw, poor baby! You wish upon 300 million Americans a line of thinking that gets countless people killed for no other reason but that they don't have enough little green pieces of combustible paper, and then you cry when someone rejoices over the possibility of you becoming a VICTIM of your own thinking? Spare me. You ought to get exactly what you give. You diminish America with your Ebenezer Scrooge line of thinking. I wish Darwin would make a public example of you.
When you are hungry, the local loaves and fishes provides you with food.
When you need early cancer treatment to keep breast cancer from going terminal, and you have no money, where do you go for that? Nowhere, in capitalism. You die.
Breast cancer is instant and certain death for the poor.
I for one hope you get just that, right after your employer goes overseas and your stocks go south - oh and yes, it can indeed happen to men.
That's a law that should be more proactive than reactive.
How about an additional law that makes telephone companies responsible for allowing caller ID spoofing to happen?
Or is that too difficult to prevent?
they'd better check and see in a few weeks if they're still allowed to fly. :)
I can say you're right on the mark with that last part. They actually look at the financial status of that area more than the racial composition now.
Also, the law says you as an agent cannot refuse to do business with someone in (name your bad area). When someone calls from name-your-poor-area, you can't refuse outright to deal with them. But you as an agent can decline to go door to door in that area, what with these people being 99.99% unlikely to call or visit you if your office is in a really good area.
would allow that to happen.
Pitching RFID at all, in the workplace, should be illegal.
That is indeed a potential loophole.
Under this current proposed law, the first time an employer ASKS you to have an RFID implant, they've broken the law and are in deep poodoo.
The employer is free to not hire someone who doesn't take the RFID implant, but then they're free to report said employer for even requesting it, and California is free to fine/imprison/punish the employer.
The question then boils down to enforcement. How likely then is the company to get punished for breaking the law, and to what magnitude? That is where we ought to be asking the biggest questions.
Myself? Heck no. I subscribe to the Dr Leonard McCoy school of "eh, how do I know my soul goes along with my body?"
:)
I'll wait for the whole space folding / gate warping thing, where I can physically step from one spot to another (see: Stargate), thankyouverymuch.
Measured in nuclear reactors, I mean.
"Teleporting one quantum dot will take 5 nuclear reactors", and such.
I hope you're caught driving behind one of those cell phoners.
:)
Have a nice commute.
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Games will all be web based, using some souped up evolution of Flash or whatever, and you'll have to log in to play; this will make any kind of piracy irrelevant. The servers will control all access to the game and thus you always need access rights. And cheating will then be impossible, too.
Of course 10ghz multi core processors with 64gb RAM will be the norm by 2027... *eek*
Make ALL personal information your personal property, the use of which is revocable at will, like the RIAA does with copying music. Anyone you aren't doing business with (say, Choicepoint, Lexis/Nexis, USSEARCH.COM etc.), who is trying to share your personal information around, has to ask for permission and pay royalties for transactions. Just like with the RIAA.
If someone posts their phone number or picture online and removes it tomorrow with a notice not to copy, you have to remove it. Period. The RIAA has that right, why can't we?
Enforce it with DMCA-level punishments. Infringers pay attorney costs as well as the judgement, just like copyright violations.
Oh wait, I know why you're about to disagree with this... the RIAA is a multi billion dollar corporation and personal information pertains to worthless little peons, right?
You really ARE a ronin.
I'd put Barack Obama as President and Ron Paul as Speaker of the House, or vice-versa.
Talk about balancing each other out.
I wonder if this "sci fi writer" realizes that what he just said was as much a quasi-religious belief as the beliefs he's criticizing.
Allow me to break this down: if wanting to NOT keep your eggs in one basket is a quasi-religious belief, not caring if we do is the quasi-religious belief that it doesn't matter. Denial can sometimes be considered ignorance. I know plenty of sci-fi writers equate quasi-religious ideas, much less religion itself, with ignorance, and that equation itself is a quasi-religious belief. Indeed, saying that the potential extinction of humanity should be of no personal concern because it's in the all too distant future, is the very height of ignorance. Not to mention apathy.
When the religious and quasi-religious boogeyman comes to oppress us with his dogma, ironically it's ignorance and apathy - the "it should be of no personal concern" crowd - that are his sycophants. And when the very real threat of overpollution or overconsumption finally mature and come due and payable for humanity in the future it will be the "it should be of no personal concern" crowd that bears half the karmic fault for that.
(I am a licensed insurance agent)
a zard_in_Insurance
You're right. It's called a moral hazard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard#Moral_H
The writer of this article needs to apologize publicly for encouraging this.
Actually, people might resort to other, free methods of entertainment.