Frankly, I don't even find the show entertaining. I find it extremely disappointing that entertainment - even on cable - has fallen that far. I feel like I'm being ripped off every time I see it (my wife enjoys it so I tolerate it while she watches it). The biggest thing that irks me about that show is how they'll take some random sound clip and then molest it to make it sound like it is saying something (the words to which they of course provide).
Hence if I were to try to counter their bullshit I would probably set up microphone arrays in rooms to figure out where a sound is actually coming from. They like to say "over there" or "in that room" but that isn't meaningful or the least bit precise. Find the squeaky door or post and show why the sound is coming from where it is. Then treat as appropriate and show that the sound doesn't come back the following day.
The tougher part would be the temperature shifts they like to talk about. Drafts can be very elusive, but not impossible to address. You'd need so fast and accurate temperature gauges - again set out like arrays - to show the direction of temperature currents. Then you can at least get an idea of where it is coming from before you start attacking a 100+ year old home with gaffer tape and expanding foam.
And then of course when they ask you about the various light anomalies that the nutjobs like to show on TV, just point them to the Monster Quest episode on Rods, and your job will be complete.
And of course, don't forget to send a hefty bill when you're done.
You'll notice that the criteria don't include "intellectual fulfillment." Actuaries rate pretty highly in all the criteria the study considers, but perhaps their job is not as interesting as some others.
To play the devil's advocate I can think of one reason why someone might want to become an actuary rather than any of the other highly-rated jobs from the survey.
That reason is one of the key things that sets that job apart - nobody ever (possibly in the history of all humankind) calls an actuary beyond business hours. You might need a software engineer in the very wee hours of the morning (perhaps because the attached project has foreign clients) but you can't say the same for actuaries. Hell I'm a graduate student in the biological sciences and I bet I've had more off-hours calls related to my work while working on my PhD than most actuaries will receive in their entire lifetimes.
That said, I still wouldn't want that career path for myself. I suspect I'd find 24hour on-call plumbing more rewarding.
You'll notice that the criteria don't include "intellectual fulfillment." Actuaries rate pretty highly in all the criteria the study considers, but perhaps their job is not as interesting as some others.
I know some actuaries, and they find their jobs very intellectually stimulating and fulfilling.
However, at least in the US, the results the actuaries come up with are invariably used to screw people out of money. No insurance rates have ever gone down as a result of an actuary's work - the results are used only to decide which group of people a company can justify screwing just a little bit harder.
Hence those of us who don't find that kind of work to be interesting or fulfilling then also find that the work is on ethically shaky ground as well. And those of us who would find the work to be interesting or fulfilling would still find the work to be ethically questionable.
Frankly from my vantage point pimps and drug dealers are more honest than insurance company employees. Insurance companies I place on the same level ethically as politicians and used car salesman.
I'm astonished that would be the top job last year. Personally, I'd rather shoot myself than be an actuary. But of course, a good actuary would already know that...
... And then don't do anything those idiots do. They are as valid as the con-artist "psychics" that used to tour the country. If you go in to a situation like that wanting to see something, you will see it, of course. Creaking doors will suddenly be talking to you, because that is what you want to hear.
What you need to do is find the "evidence" that people are looking at, and find plausible explanations for them. A lot of the "haunted" bullshit is just normal noise for an old house; if you're dealing with a >100 year old house, of course it's going to creak in the night - and in the day, too - just find the source of the noise and call it a day.
I'm surprised that third-world hellhole has the technology to measure such subtle variations in the earth's magnetic field. I would have expected that, much like with Cuba, we would have banned the sale of such things to them.
It's no small wonder that an asshole like yourself with such terrible reading abilities to boot has such an extensive freaks list. Are you an asshole professionally, or is it just a hobby of yours? I haven't known anyone who can make money doing it, but you do have that talent honed.
But hell, you didn't want to actually discuss anything with me anyways. We both know that from the first reply you wrote to me.
In spite of your own demonstration of your lack of reading comprehension, I was going to reply to you and continue this discussion because you almost said a few things that were worthwhile - or at least worth replying to.
Then, I reached the point where you insulted my wife. At that point you showed yourself to not be simply a poor reader (and generally misinformed) but an asshole to boot.
You're no longer worth my time. Go take your shitty assumptions and lack of reading ability and shove it up your own ass
I see no reason to expect that they are going to drop their sotware prices by 90% tomorrow.
No one but you claimed Adobe is going to make an immediate change
I made no such claim; actually I suggested they would make no immediate change.
Adobe now has to compete on price
I would be shocked if they suddenly felt that to be true
Suddenly users are going to be aware of competitors like the much cheaper, faster, but slightly less featureful Pixelmator
Of only slight importance, really. Because no matter how much people might think that to be a great program, it still isn't Photoshop.
potentially even free, open source apps like GIMP
Of pretty well zero importance to Adobe.
While I use Gimp regularly, professionals will continue to turn their noses up at it. My wife is a graphic designer and wouldn't consider using Gimp for her work, regardless of how expensive Photoshop is. And I'm quite sure she's never even heard of the program you mentioned earlier - she knows of Gimp because I use it all the time for my work where I don't need all the features and compatibility of Photoshop.
Being as they are the most important software company for the Mac today...
You're living in the past man. Macs have not been just niche computers for graphics geeks for a long time.
Funny, I don't seem to recall alleging that they were... oh, yeah because I didn't say that.
I was talking about the importance of a software company, which comes down to a lot more than just unit sales. If that was all we were talking about than clearly Apple would be the most important software company for Macs, since they sell a copy of OS X for every system that they sell. But that wouldn't really be a useful measure, would it?
There are a lot more sales of WoW or the Sims than there are of photoshop on the Mac.
Again not important to my argument. Consider how many copies of WoW you need to sell just to reach the cost of a single seat for CS5... And consider for how many macs that CS5 license is absolutely critical...
Macs are first and foremost targeted at the home user, their main demographic
I don't know where you live, but I can tell you that my wife's employer has more macs in their building than the total number of new macs that have been sold for home use in their county. Sure, Apple is marketing to the home user, because they realized they have a new market there. But at the same time, they have an existing relationship with professionals - in more than just graphics - that keeps the company going.
And guess what software is most important to those professionals? Almost without exception, that software is made by Adobe.
They go out of their way to prevent piracy, they certainly aren't about to start distributing their top titles as downloadable applications for $5 a pop.
Ha! Clearly you don't know folks at Adobe. They go out of their way to prevent piracy among corporations, but rely upon piracy among individual developers to promote their products to those who can pay.
In your very strange reply, that may be your strangest comment yet. You are saying that Adobe wants people to pirate their software, as if it would not be well known otherwise? In case you haven't noticed, Photoshop and Illustrator are the standards for their applications, and InDesign is quickly displacing Quark for its own application as well. So no, Adobe has no need to "rely upon piracy".
The summary is overlooking Adobe completely. I see no reason to expect that they are going to drop their sotware prices by 90% tomorrow. Being as they are the most important software company for the Mac today, that is a huge player who won't be in the game. They go out of their way to prevent piracy, they certainly aren't about to start distributing their top titles as downloadable applications for $5 a pop.
If you read the article you'll find that he couldn't have found those planets with a telescope even if he had one. Even the best optics available on earth would be useless for finding those planets.
That said, he did good work in finding the data for those planets in the sets he analyzed. And indeed he didn't use a telescope; but he couldn't have found them with a conventional (optical) telescope anyways.
You say that it is not restricting the number of doctors in the field. If they are setting the accreditation standards so high that there are not enough doctors coming into the field, isn't that a defacto standard?
You seem to be reading-averse when you are trying to defend your opinion. I will state again what I said before, and see if you understand it the second time around.
The AMA accreditation that is important regards the accreditation of medical schools - specifically those that offer MD degrees. And in that regard, they have actually added more MD schools in this country in the past decade. When one actually wants to practice medicine, you need to keep up your board certifications, which is specialty-dependent, not driven by the AMA.
Furthermore, I also pointed out that one can also practice medicine by earning a degree of DO, PA, or NP; none of which have educational programs managed by the AMA that you so love to hate.
Regardless of which organization is restricting the supply, it still does not change the fact that there are not enough doctors, and health care is suffering because of it.
For that matter, you aren't even very accurate in that statement, either. The primary problem is with the shortage of primary care doctors. And increasing the total number of medicine graduates won't solve this problem on its own - part of the reason why so few graduates go into primary care is because it pays poorly. And if you dump more doctors onto the market your fantastic "market forces" will only end up driving down the wages for primary care doctors, which will make the positions less attractive to graduates who have 6 figures in student loan debts.
There will be people who die just because they can't afford health care. DEAL WITH IT
I guess it is nice of you to be straightforward enough to admit that you don't give a shit about the less fortunate and whether or not they can get health care. Fortunately, the civilized world disagrees with you. Unfortunately a lot of poor people are trapped in this uncivilized country in the middle of North America.
However, I feel that paradoxically a greater number of people would survive and be better of without health Insurance
Its a shame that your opinion doesn't just simply become fact because you want it to do so.
Doctors would have to lower their prices.
Have you looked at a medical bill lately? As it is the offices give the lowest prices to insurance companies (because it is the only way the insurance companies will pay anything at all). However a lot of people can't even afford what the insurance companies pay for basic procedures, which will make it even less accessible to the less economically fortunate. However, since you already said you don't care if they die, I guess that isn't important to you.
However, you probably would care if the doctors went out of business. And they do have certain operating (no pun intended) costs that they have to cover just to stay in business. Even if your favorite doctor could stop dealing with all insurance (both patient and malpractice) costs tomorrow, and never have to bother with pesky board certifications again, there are still basic costs of keeping the lights on and keeping reasonably relevant equipment available. Even scales and blood pressure cuffs need to be calibrated periodically, and that isn't done for free.
Hospitals would no longer be able to charge $800 for a tissue culture
I will have to conclude from that statement that you either have no idea what it costs to culture tissue (a treatment method), or you actually meant bacterial culture (a diagnostic method). You likely also don't know much about the training it takes for someone to be adequately skilled at either of those techni
... is the distribution of medical care in the US. If you were to find yourself injured or gravely ill in a remote part of our country and in need of immediate surgery, you might not have the luxury of waiting for a well-rested specialist. There are hospitals in this country that still have very few surgeons of any discipline available for emergency surgery, and if the patient's life is on the line wouldn't it be better to have a drowsy surgeon than none at all?
After all if the chief of surgery is the only surgeon at that hospital who is qualified to do the needed procedure, and his shift ended 5 hours ago but you need to be operated on now, wouldn't you rather he be there than not?
This isn't automatically an issue of a "god complex" or outdated training regimens that are associated with doctors and surgeons in the US. This is, in the end, a matter of patient's lives. And if the life of you or your loved one was on the line before the surgeon arrived, you might feel differently about the doctor's rest.
And you are not just slightly misinformed, rather you are repeatedly misinformed on much of what you are trying to discuss. For starters:
The AMA artificially restricts the number of doctors in the field, thereby endangering the lives of the patients the are supposed to be protecting.
Is not correct. The AMA is responsible for accreditation of medical schools that issue MD degrees. They make sure that schools that issue those degrees meet certain standards, which include student-to-teacher ratios. They have accredited additional schools in the past 10 years that did not exist prior.
Furthermore, you can also attend a medical school in other countries (certain Caribbean nations are currently popular for this) and earn your MD there, and then come to the US for your boards and practice medicine here. You can also attend a DO program which in the US results in you having the same rights as an MD. You could also enter medicine through a PA or NP program as well.
So in other words, you are simply wrong in your assumption that the AMA "artificially restricts the number of doctors in the field".
Unfortunately your next suggestion after "eliminating the AMA" isn't much better:
Eliminate Insurance companies.
While you will be hard pressed to find someone who is more opposed to the for-profit system of health care than myself, eliminating insurance companies and replacing them with nothing is not going to improve the situation, either. Currently with the existing system we see that our country gets health care delivered along lines of ability to pay. If insurance goes away then the ability to pay is taken away from many middle-income patients and health care becomes a product that only the wealthy can afford. Basic care goes down, life expectancy goes down with it. Basically if half of our country can't afford to see a doctor ever (and we aren't that far short of that number already) we quickly see our economy deteriorate.
You then follow up with a fun boogey-man:
Eliminate Malpractice lawyers / insurance
While indeed the malpractice insurance costs have a huge impact on the cost of medicine in the US, eliminating the lawyers and the insurance agents that drive it won't help us much, either. We do need at least some basic accountability because we are talking about human lives here. Now of course if our physicians were to form something analogous to a trade union to manage their risks within their own pool, we could perhaps arrive at a more reasonable alternative. However, tossing all of that out with no replacement won't answer the problem.
These three things would restore market forces to the medical industry
No, actually it wouldn't. For that matter, the malpractice bit is all about market forces; those costs are driven up to "whatever the market can bear".
People decry Obamacare, when they don't realize that we have a defacto socialized system now.
First of all, there is no such thing as Obamacare. The bizarre bill that went through was written by conservatives and has no resemblance to what Obama or any actual democrat would have actually wanted. Blaming this pile of failure on him makes as much sense as blaming the Challenger disaster on GWB.
That said, there is nothing "socialized" about the current system. Socialism implies equality and state control, neither of which exist in the current system.
We instead throw in artificial barriers (insurance companies) whose sole goal is to PROFIT.
That part you are correct on. Indeed the insurance companies don't give half a shit about any of their customers, as long as they still make money. And as we can see they do that quite well.
I'm more surprised by How much weight the ball has gained in the past 30 years. The ball used through 1980 weighed only 150 pounds. Our newest iteration weights over eleven thousand pounds. I know plenty of people who have put on some weight lately, but I don't know anyone currently over the age of 30 who saw their own weight increase one-hundred fold in the past 30 years.
This happens in other sciences, too; a while ago a few species of dinosaurs were recently re-classified as likely being juvenile specimens of other species.
Considering this is Fox News, I also expect the dinosaurs to be re-classified into those that were ridden by cavemen, and those that were not.
This really shouldn't come as much surprise. There are plenty of plants that look dramatically different at different stages of their life; if they were being "discovered" for the first time they could well be called different species. Add to that the differing languages spoken by different botanists when attempting to classify species and the problem grows very quickly.
And for that matter, with molecular biology our notion of "species" is changing as well. Now a species is defined more along the lines of a unique genome (or at least uniquely organized genome) than simply on where and how it grows. Now we realize that - especially in the plant kingdom - there are many pairings of different species of plants that can hybridize and produce viable offspring.
So indeed, the number was due to be corrected at some point. This happens in other sciences, too; a while ago a few species of dinosaurs were recently re-classified as likely being juvenile specimens of other species.
He sure as hell ain't a democrat, not by his policies anyways.
He is a extreme leftist
If by "extreme leftist" you mean "center-right conservative", then sure. Because all the laws he has signed so far as POTUS have been, at most, center-right. There hasn't been a single piece of legislation he has signed yet that has been in any meaningful way left-of-center.
who still answers to corporations
You can't be an "extreme leftist who still answer to corporations". You need to look up what it means to be a "leftist". I'll give you a hint - a true "extreme leftist" would shut down the corporations and have the state doing their functions. Instead we have someone who is pushing people to give their money to corporations - pretty well the antithesis of a leftist.
just like every other President in the last decade or so.
You are pretty close to correct, although really you should be saying more like the last 3 or 4 decades or so have been all pro-corporate presidents in the US.
Since we already have come to see that Obama is essentially another President Bush, who for some reason isn't allowed to run as a Republican, I guess someone thought they'd try to beat the Republicans instead. However, selecting a Republican who has almost no legislative credentials as a hard-core conservative could backfire; Palin could end up as the liberal in the contest in comparison to Obama's continuous march to the right as president.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, I don't even find the show entertaining. I find it extremely disappointing that entertainment - even on cable - has fallen that far. I feel like I'm being ripped off every time I see it (my wife enjoys it so I tolerate it while she watches it). The biggest thing that irks me about that show is how they'll take some random sound clip and then molest it to make it sound like it is saying something (the words to which they of course provide).
Hence if I were to try to counter their bullshit I would probably set up microphone arrays in rooms to figure out where a sound is actually coming from. They like to say "over there" or "in that room" but that isn't meaningful or the least bit precise. Find the squeaky door or post and show why the sound is coming from where it is. Then treat as appropriate and show that the sound doesn't come back the following day.
The tougher part would be the temperature shifts they like to talk about. Drafts can be very elusive, but not impossible to address. You'd need so fast and accurate temperature gauges - again set out like arrays - to show the direction of temperature currents. Then you can at least get an idea of where it is coming from before you start attacking a 100+ year old home with gaffer tape and expanding foam.
And then of course when they ask you about the various light anomalies that the nutjobs like to show on TV, just point them to the Monster Quest episode on Rods, and your job will be complete.
And of course, don't forget to send a hefty bill when you're done.
You'll notice that the criteria don't include "intellectual fulfillment." Actuaries rate pretty highly in all the criteria the study considers, but perhaps their job is not as interesting as some others.
To play the devil's advocate I can think of one reason why someone might want to become an actuary rather than any of the other highly-rated jobs from the survey.
That reason is one of the key things that sets that job apart - nobody ever (possibly in the history of all humankind) calls an actuary beyond business hours. You might need a software engineer in the very wee hours of the morning (perhaps because the attached project has foreign clients) but you can't say the same for actuaries. Hell I'm a graduate student in the biological sciences and I bet I've had more off-hours calls related to my work while working on my PhD than most actuaries will receive in their entire lifetimes.
That said, I still wouldn't want that career path for myself. I suspect I'd find 24hour on-call plumbing more rewarding.
Actuaries are people who didn't have enough personality to be accountants.
Or strong enough ethics to sell hookers and drugs on the street corner.
You'll notice that the criteria don't include "intellectual fulfillment." Actuaries rate pretty highly in all the criteria the study considers, but perhaps their job is not as interesting as some others.
I know some actuaries, and they find their jobs very intellectually stimulating and fulfilling.
However, at least in the US, the results the actuaries come up with are invariably used to screw people out of money. No insurance rates have ever gone down as a result of an actuary's work - the results are used only to decide which group of people a company can justify screwing just a little bit harder.
Hence those of us who don't find that kind of work to be interesting or fulfilling then also find that the work is on ethically shaky ground as well. And those of us who would find the work to be interesting or fulfilling would still find the work to be ethically questionable.
Frankly from my vantage point pimps and drug dealers are more honest than insurance company employees. Insurance companies I place on the same level ethically as politicians and used car salesman.
I'm astonished that would be the top job last year. Personally, I'd rather shoot myself than be an actuary. But of course, a good actuary would already know that...
And apparently overpriced to boot. Over at deals.woot.com they had The full saga as well as just the original trilogy, both on blu-ray through Amazon.
However, not only did they have them posted yesterday, they also had them for lower prices through the same vendor.
If we can't be at least as relevant as woot, why even bother reporting on this?
... And then don't do anything those idiots do. They are as valid as the con-artist "psychics" that used to tour the country. If you go in to a situation like that wanting to see something, you will see it, of course. Creaking doors will suddenly be talking to you, because that is what you want to hear.
What you need to do is find the "evidence" that people are looking at, and find plausible explanations for them. A lot of the "haunted" bullshit is just normal noise for an old house; if you're dealing with a >100 year old house, of course it's going to creak in the night - and in the day, too - just find the source of the noise and call it a day.
I'm surprised that third-world hellhole has the technology to measure such subtle variations in the earth's magnetic field. I would have expected that, much like with Cuba, we would have banned the sale of such things to them.
I guess I'll have to keep the copy of the combo somewhere other than on my PHP server now...
Tell him it will be the cornerstone for his new house, he'll be all over it. He certainly has $500M to spare...
It's no small wonder that an asshole like yourself with such terrible reading abilities to boot has such an extensive freaks list. Are you an asshole professionally, or is it just a hobby of yours? I haven't known anyone who can make money doing it, but you do have that talent honed.
But hell, you didn't want to actually discuss anything with me anyways. We both know that from the first reply you wrote to me.
In spite of your own demonstration of your lack of reading comprehension, I was going to reply to you and continue this discussion because you almost said a few things that were worthwhile - or at least worth replying to.
Then, I reached the point where you insulted my wife. At that point you showed yourself to not be simply a poor reader (and generally misinformed) but an asshole to boot.
You're no longer worth my time. Go take your shitty assumptions and lack of reading ability and shove it up your own ass
I see no reason to expect that they are going to drop their sotware prices by 90% tomorrow.
No one but you claimed Adobe is going to make an immediate change
I made no such claim; actually I suggested they would make no immediate change.
Adobe now has to compete on price
I would be shocked if they suddenly felt that to be true
Suddenly users are going to be aware of competitors like the much cheaper, faster, but slightly less featureful Pixelmator
Of only slight importance, really. Because no matter how much people might think that to be a great program, it still isn't Photoshop.
potentially even free, open source apps like GIMP
Of pretty well zero importance to Adobe.
While I use Gimp regularly, professionals will continue to turn their noses up at it. My wife is a graphic designer and wouldn't consider using Gimp for her work, regardless of how expensive Photoshop is. And I'm quite sure she's never even heard of the program you mentioned earlier - she knows of Gimp because I use it all the time for my work where I don't need all the features and compatibility of Photoshop.
Being as they are the most important software company for the Mac today...
You're living in the past man. Macs have not been just niche computers for graphics geeks for a long time.
Funny, I don't seem to recall alleging that they were ... oh, yeah because I didn't say that.
I was talking about the importance of a software company, which comes down to a lot more than just unit sales. If that was all we were talking about than clearly Apple would be the most important software company for Macs, since they sell a copy of OS X for every system that they sell. But that wouldn't really be a useful measure, would it?
There are a lot more sales of WoW or the Sims than there are of photoshop on the Mac.
Again not important to my argument. Consider how many copies of WoW you need to sell just to reach the cost of a single seat for CS5... And consider for how many macs that CS5 license is absolutely critical...
Macs are first and foremost targeted at the home user, their main demographic
I don't know where you live, but I can tell you that my wife's employer has more macs in their building than the total number of new macs that have been sold for home use in their county. Sure, Apple is marketing to the home user, because they realized they have a new market there. But at the same time, they have an existing relationship with professionals - in more than just graphics - that keeps the company going.
And guess what software is most important to those professionals? Almost without exception, that software is made by Adobe.
They go out of their way to prevent piracy, they certainly aren't about to start distributing their top titles as downloadable applications for $5 a pop.
Ha! Clearly you don't know folks at Adobe. They go out of their way to prevent piracy among corporations, but rely upon piracy among individual developers to promote their products to those who can pay.
In your very strange reply, that may be your strangest comment yet. You are saying that Adobe wants people to pirate their software, as if it would not be well known otherwise? In case you haven't noticed, Photoshop and Illustrator are the standards for their applications, and InDesign is quickly displacing Quark for its own application as well. So no, Adobe has no need to "rely upon piracy".
The summary is overlooking Adobe completely. I see no reason to expect that they are going to drop their sotware prices by 90% tomorrow. Being as they are the most important software company for the Mac today, that is a huge player who won't be in the game. They go out of their way to prevent piracy, they certainly aren't about to start distributing their top titles as downloadable applications for $5 a pop.
If you read the article you'll find that he couldn't have found those planets with a telescope even if he had one. Even the best optics available on earth would be useless for finding those planets.
That said, he did good work in finding the data for those planets in the sets he analyzed. And indeed he didn't use a telescope; but he couldn't have found them with a conventional (optical) telescope anyways.
I'm guessing "Gas worker" is short for "Chemical Engineer.".
Some might suggest you have that backwards...
Concerning the AMA:
You say that it is not restricting the number of doctors in the field. If they are setting the accreditation standards so high that there are not enough doctors coming into the field, isn't that a defacto standard?
You seem to be reading-averse when you are trying to defend your opinion. I will state again what I said before, and see if you understand it the second time around.
The AMA accreditation that is important regards the accreditation of medical schools - specifically those that offer MD degrees. And in that regard, they have actually added more MD schools in this country in the past decade. When one actually wants to practice medicine, you need to keep up your board certifications, which is specialty-dependent, not driven by the AMA.
Furthermore, I also pointed out that one can also practice medicine by earning a degree of DO, PA, or NP; none of which have educational programs managed by the AMA that you so love to hate.
Regardless of which organization is restricting the supply, it still does not change the fact that there are not enough doctors, and health care is suffering because of it.
For that matter, you aren't even very accurate in that statement, either. The primary problem is with the shortage of primary care doctors. And increasing the total number of medicine graduates won't solve this problem on its own - part of the reason why so few graduates go into primary care is because it pays poorly. And if you dump more doctors onto the market your fantastic "market forces" will only end up driving down the wages for primary care doctors, which will make the positions less attractive to graduates who have 6 figures in student loan debts.
There will be people who die just because they can't afford health care. DEAL WITH IT
I guess it is nice of you to be straightforward enough to admit that you don't give a shit about the less fortunate and whether or not they can get health care. Fortunately, the civilized world disagrees with you. Unfortunately a lot of poor people are trapped in this uncivilized country in the middle of North America.
However, I feel that paradoxically a greater number of people would survive and be better of without health Insurance
Its a shame that your opinion doesn't just simply become fact because you want it to do so.
Doctors would have to lower their prices.
Have you looked at a medical bill lately? As it is the offices give the lowest prices to insurance companies (because it is the only way the insurance companies will pay anything at all). However a lot of people can't even afford what the insurance companies pay for basic procedures, which will make it even less accessible to the less economically fortunate. However, since you already said you don't care if they die, I guess that isn't important to you.
However, you probably would care if the doctors went out of business. And they do have certain operating (no pun intended) costs that they have to cover just to stay in business. Even if your favorite doctor could stop dealing with all insurance (both patient and malpractice) costs tomorrow, and never have to bother with pesky board certifications again, there are still basic costs of keeping the lights on and keeping reasonably relevant equipment available. Even scales and blood pressure cuffs need to be calibrated periodically, and that isn't done for free.
Hospitals would no longer be able to charge $800 for a tissue culture
I will have to conclude from that statement that you either have no idea what it costs to culture tissue (a treatment method), or you actually meant bacterial culture (a diagnostic method). You likely also don't know much about the training it takes for someone to be adequately skilled at either of those techni
... is the distribution of medical care in the US. If you were to find yourself injured or gravely ill in a remote part of our country and in need of immediate surgery, you might not have the luxury of waiting for a well-rested specialist. There are hospitals in this country that still have very few surgeons of any discipline available for emergency surgery, and if the patient's life is on the line wouldn't it be better to have a drowsy surgeon than none at all?
After all if the chief of surgery is the only surgeon at that hospital who is qualified to do the needed procedure, and his shift ended 5 hours ago but you need to be operated on now, wouldn't you rather he be there than not?
This isn't automatically an issue of a "god complex" or outdated training regimens that are associated with doctors and surgeons in the US. This is, in the end, a matter of patient's lives. And if the life of you or your loved one was on the line before the surgeon arrived, you might feel differently about the doctor's rest.
The AMA artificially restricts the number of doctors in the field, thereby endangering the lives of the patients the are supposed to be protecting.
Is not correct. The AMA is responsible for accreditation of medical schools that issue MD degrees. They make sure that schools that issue those degrees meet certain standards, which include student-to-teacher ratios. They have accredited additional schools in the past 10 years that did not exist prior.
Furthermore, you can also attend a medical school in other countries (certain Caribbean nations are currently popular for this) and earn your MD there, and then come to the US for your boards and practice medicine here. You can also attend a DO program which in the US results in you having the same rights as an MD. You could also enter medicine through a PA or NP program as well.
So in other words, you are simply wrong in your assumption that the AMA "artificially restricts the number of doctors in the field".
Unfortunately your next suggestion after "eliminating the AMA" isn't much better:
Eliminate Insurance companies.
While you will be hard pressed to find someone who is more opposed to the for-profit system of health care than myself, eliminating insurance companies and replacing them with nothing is not going to improve the situation, either. Currently with the existing system we see that our country gets health care delivered along lines of ability to pay. If insurance goes away then the ability to pay is taken away from many middle-income patients and health care becomes a product that only the wealthy can afford. Basic care goes down, life expectancy goes down with it. Basically if half of our country can't afford to see a doctor ever (and we aren't that far short of that number already) we quickly see our economy deteriorate.
You then follow up with a fun boogey-man:
Eliminate Malpractice lawyers / insurance
While indeed the malpractice insurance costs have a huge impact on the cost of medicine in the US, eliminating the lawyers and the insurance agents that drive it won't help us much, either. We do need at least some basic accountability because we are talking about human lives here. Now of course if our physicians were to form something analogous to a trade union to manage their risks within their own pool, we could perhaps arrive at a more reasonable alternative. However, tossing all of that out with no replacement won't answer the problem.
These three things would restore market forces to the medical industry
No, actually it wouldn't. For that matter, the malpractice bit is all about market forces; those costs are driven up to "whatever the market can bear".
People decry Obamacare, when they don't realize that we have a defacto socialized system now.
First of all, there is no such thing as Obamacare. The bizarre bill that went through was written by conservatives and has no resemblance to what Obama or any actual democrat would have actually wanted. Blaming this pile of failure on him makes as much sense as blaming the Challenger disaster on GWB.
That said, there is nothing "socialized" about the current system. Socialism implies equality and state control, neither of which exist in the current system.
We instead throw in artificial barriers (insurance companies) whose sole goal is to PROFIT.
That part you are correct on. Indeed the insurance companies don't give half a shit about any of their customers, as long as they still make money. And as we can see they do that quite well.
I'm more surprised by How much weight the ball has gained in the past 30 years. The ball used through 1980 weighed only 150 pounds. Our newest iteration weights over eleven thousand pounds. I know plenty of people who have put on some weight lately, but I don't know anyone currently over the age of 30 who saw their own weight increase one-hundred fold in the past 30 years.
This happens in other sciences, too; a while ago a few species of dinosaurs were recently re-classified as likely being juvenile specimens of other species.
Considering this is Fox News, I also expect the dinosaurs to be re-classified into those that were ridden by cavemen, and those that were not.
Actually, I would have expected
With the former also having the subset
Everything else would be under
This really shouldn't come as much surprise. There are plenty of plants that look dramatically different at different stages of their life; if they were being "discovered" for the first time they could well be called different species. Add to that the differing languages spoken by different botanists when attempting to classify species and the problem grows very quickly.
And for that matter, with molecular biology our notion of "species" is changing as well. Now a species is defined more along the lines of a unique genome (or at least uniquely organized genome) than simply on where and how it grows. Now we realize that - especially in the plant kingdom - there are many pairings of different species of plants that can hybridize and produce viable offspring.
So indeed, the number was due to be corrected at some point. This happens in other sciences, too; a while ago a few species of dinosaurs were recently re-classified as likely being juvenile specimens of other species.
There's only one human race.
I suspect some at Fox News might disagree with that.
Obama isn't a Republican
He sure as hell ain't a democrat, not by his policies anyways.
He is a extreme leftist
If by "extreme leftist" you mean "center-right conservative", then sure. Because all the laws he has signed so far as POTUS have been, at most, center-right. There hasn't been a single piece of legislation he has signed yet that has been in any meaningful way left-of-center.
who still answers to corporations
You can't be an "extreme leftist who still answer to corporations". You need to look up what it means to be a "leftist". I'll give you a hint - a true "extreme leftist" would shut down the corporations and have the state doing their functions. Instead we have someone who is pushing people to give their money to corporations - pretty well the antithesis of a leftist.
just like every other President in the last decade or so.
You are pretty close to correct, although really you should be saying more like the last 3 or 4 decades or so have been all pro-corporate presidents in the US.
Since we already have come to see that Obama is essentially another President Bush, who for some reason isn't allowed to run as a Republican, I guess someone thought they'd try to beat the Republicans instead. However, selecting a Republican who has almost no legislative credentials as a hard-core conservative could backfire; Palin could end up as the liberal in the contest in comparison to Obama's continuous march to the right as president.