There's a flip side to this. Many of the younger programmers show up with an attitude of "the system is rigged" plus "the company owes me" combined with a horrible work ethic, and most important - very poor relationship skills. They cause all kinds of problems for management (the nail that sticks up gets the hammer)... And then when they get sacked they complain about how clueless management is, and how they are so much smarter, etc.
And this attitude is not helped by the "corporations are evil monsters" that politicians peddle because they want your money and support. Are there bad apples? Sure there are. But they are the exception, not the rule. But for the most part employers need to get X amount of work done, in order to service the customers, who in turn pay the salaries of the developers - with minimal DRAMA and teamwork.
I'm in the field, and about to turn 60, and outside of Silicon Valley I know nothing of age discrimination. Yeah, I hear complaints about it - from guys who refuse to learn new skills, or are horrible at relationships.
Yep. Increased spending on schools equals more money for the NTA and NEA, which spoiler alert are two of the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party. We spend more per capita to get less results than any other country on earth! But the DNC, they are making out just fine, and they keep pushing the message that we need to spend, spend, spend on Education as they watch the money flow into their coffers. Of course in an honest country, this would be called "money laundering" or "theft from the taxpayers" but not in the new America. It's now called "Business as Usual":-)
You are absolutely correct on all counts. And don't forget a media who looks at the Stock Market and tells us how that proves how grand the economy is doing, when it's the result of all the money being pumped into the system... When times are tough, new development projects are cancelled. That's why we are laying people off in the software business, duh...
The whole immigration debate is about buying votes at the expense of all of our future, only a complete idiot would be in favor of adding millions of people to the workforce. What I wonder is how did we end up with so many gullible people with no common sense? This seems like the problem that needs fixing...
Does it enable the developer to derive a new type from an existing type? One would assume so. In which case all the type safe arguments in the world mean nothing. Can't cast a string to a SQL type? Create a new class that allows this, and provides a mechanism to cast to a SQL type, security hole created...
Or just do half decent Q/A... Which costs a lot less than training staff on a new language to solve a problem that's really developer competency.
Microsoft tried the compiled web page idea with.net, it was called a "Smart Client". You wrote a desktop app, basically, that was "served" through the browser (which, of course, had to be IE). In essence it was the "browser as MSI delivery system on the fly". Managed a team of guys who wrote a large, complicated labor tracking/payroll system in it. When it worked, it was awesome. Sadly that wasn't as often as management liked...
Remember the versioning issues all these compiled solutions had? The "Smart Client" solution (compiled web pages) didn't account for different versions of IE, and of course the IE guys and the.net guys never talked to each other. So as long as you had.net run time version 1.2.6.9982 and MDAC version 2.8.9.3345 and IE6 version 6.0.22.3.44.54588 it worked great! Otherwise nobody got paid, sorry.
So if we could just get everyone to run the same, exact browser on desktops & mobile devices... then Url would be a grand and glorious solution, provided we had a single entity who controlled it... that we paid the requisite licensing fee too... and we all upgraded en masse. Oh, wait a minute, isn't this the same, exact state of the world before the Internet came along? That we never quite achieved, because no one company could ever dominate anything?
So if the government just mandated that we all use Url, on a specific hardware configuration, all using the same everything... this could work! I'd wager that's the dream of the ivory tower Gruberist folks at M.I.T.....
More likely they are trying to assure the readership that the Democratic Party getting the worst electoral shellacking since the 1920's is not the end of the world...
The Enterprise shops are very hot on Xamarin, because it means the existing.net resources can make phone apps... that easily talk to the existing.net based services...
Yes, the mean.js/node.js stack is in demand right now, but that doesn't mean Java is killing.net. Most of the enterprise shops I know (twenty or so) are.net....
This "standardization" is a good thing; otherwise it is impossible to make meaningful comparisons between plans.
By this logic, if all the automakers of the world offered just 4 cars the world would be a much better place. If there were only four house plans, it would be so great! And really, there should only be four sizes of clothes, and if they don't fit you, too bad.
Really, you're a funny guy. You clearly have no clue how rigid ICD-9 standards are, so I'm not even going to try and explain what "Utilization and Review" is inside a hospital...
I suppose you can always hide behind I am making all of this up... Or please, go ask someone who is actually in the business...
Post ACA there are two kinds of Health Insurance in America, QHP plans, and PHSP plans. QHP plans, a.k.a. ObamaCare, come in four flavors, known as bronze, silver, gold, and platinum.
Well, not quite. While it is true that insurance plans that are carried on exchanges must be standardized, companies are still free to offer non-standard plans through their own sales channels. This "standardization" is a good thing; otherwise it is impossible to make meaningful comparisons between plans.
You don't know the difference between QHP and PHSP, do you? You do understand my company writes software for insurance companies, don't you?
Do you understand how egregious of a lie it is to make claims about payments being lowered without releasing the statistics about the covered plan enrollees distribution above and below FPL -- which would enable subsidy payments to be deducted, which would show the TRUE cost, something they are DESPERATELY trying to cover up?
This might have been an interesting assertion, but you failed to provide any citations, so for all I know it's just some bullshit some random dude on the internet made up. That said, nobody has made the claim that payments have been lowered, and if you have purchased a candy bar anytime in the last 20 year you will understand that sometimes providers change what's in the package to be able to change the price they charge for it. That isn't a "lie", that's "Sales & Marketing".
You said that premiums have gone down. So let me explain this to you, really slowly... Because this is how lies are told and spread by people such as yourself.
A QHP plan administered through a HIX is the insurance industry term for the four flavors of Obamacare. QHP is an acryonym for "Qualified Health Plan" - meaning that the applicant qualifies for a subsidy depending on the delta between his income and FPL. Do you know what FPL is? It's the Federal Poverty Level. So, smarty pants intellectual, if the premium for the bronze plan is $384.00 a month, and the subsidy for Joe applicant is $200 a month, what is his premium? It's $384 a month. Because that is the amount guaranteed to the insurance company by HHS. But if you redefine the definition of the word "premium" to "what the applicant actually paid" then and only then can you make the claim that "premiums went down"
HHS has not released payment data about enrollees with respect to income. Gee I wonder why? Could it be because they lied about premiums going down? Gee, could be.
HHS also admitted that they failed to verify the income of enrollees - leaving that to the IRS. So how many enrollees lied about their income? Given that the plan calculators created by the exchanges allowed people to see exactly what income got what premium... probably quite a few. So the reality is that without the actual numbers from HHS, that show the distribution on policy holders relative to FPL, ANY CLAIM ABOUT PREMIUMS BEING LOWERED IS BASED ON VAPOR, thin air, they are lies.
So let me explain the enrolled lie. In the insurance industry, a prospect is a person who's indicated interest (e.g. visited your website). An applicant is a person who has applied for coverage. An enrollee is a person who's payment has cleared, and if he shows up at a provider he will be able to get care. From Day 1 HHS redefined the meaning of enrolled to say "Someone who signed up". And released scant, if any statistics of people who have actually paid, claiming "they don't know". In fact, in the early days, they made wild claims about enrollments without even having a system in place to process payments! Now once people start lying, in my experience they don't wake up one day and suddenly start telling the truth.
So last year they cancelled some six million policies, and enrolled 8 million. The 2 million new enrollees were mostly low income people who were pushed into Medicare - but HHS counted them as Obama
No, No, No you just don't get it!!! The TRUTH is what WE SAY IT IS and it's only valid for TODAY!!! We will not be tricked into discussing the TRUTH of YESTERDAY it does not exist...
The "deniers" of the TRUTH of TODAY - they aren't simply intelligent people offering viewpoints in an open exchange of ideas, they are evil, pure evil, ignorant hayseeds who are radical and dangerous for America. They must be ridiculed, and removed from the discourse entirely dare they question the TRUTH that is Today's Truth.
But the people telling the TRUTH they are the most tolerant, understanding, open people on earth! Just ask them, and they will tell you. Unless, of course, you deny the TRUTH of TODAY.
How dare you question the superior intellect of the people in charge of dispensing the truth of today?
I really wish I was making this up, but it's how the comments on this thread read to me.
I can always tell when I am making points with liberals because they become very insulting and call me all kinds of names, that almost always become gruberisms "I am so much smarter than you. You are an ignorant hayseed, unable to think rationally".
Because where *I* live, I was able to choose from dozens of different plans from eight different insurers and NONE of them were the Federal government.
Post ACA there are two kinds of Health Insurance in America, QHP plans, and PHSP plans. QHP plans, a.k.a. ObamaCare, come in four flavors, known as bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. No matter what the carriers rebrand these as, they are all the same, exact four plans. So to take your method of communication, your statement is indicative of your immense and astounding ignorance, these four plan designations, including DRG/ICD-9 provider payment caps, formularies, co-pays, and deductibles are all MANDATED by the Federal Government. To be honest, I don't think you're immensely and astoundingly ignorant, I think you're repeating a set of talking points that appeals to your emotions, and that you can't accept that these talking points are made by propagandists. You're not stupid, just naive and gullible.
Do you know what "managed care" actually is? Do you understand that managed care is rationed care? Do you understand manipulating the cost curve by cutting provider payments and refactoring formularies is the only way this thing can stay afloat, and that this is the exact, same thing they are doing to Medicare, and that they really are "starving grandma" and lowering the quality of care for absolutely everyone while at the same time pumping taxpayer money into insurance companies? That a crime of astounding proportions is being committed right now, today... against the very people the proponents of the legislation claim to care about?
Do you understand how egregious of a lie it is to make claims about payments being lowered without releasing the statistics about the covered plan enrollees distribution above and below FPL -- which would enable subsidy payments to be deducted, which would show the TRUE cost, something they are DESPERATELY trying to cover up? IF THERE'S NOTHING TO HIDE THEN RELEASE ALL THE NUMBERS. Instead we get the astounding lie "We really don't know...." It's as insane as not being able to type "Select Count(*) From SignUp_Table" something they said they couldn't do for what, eight months?
Your CBO insistence, yet another carefully crafted lie, Sir. The CBO has not rated ObamaCare's effect on the deficit since 2012. It's another one of those arguments from the liberal little red book of Internet talking points...
Hillary Care, and ObamaCare, were mostly negotiated behind closed doors, with a few town halls for show. That's why Mz. Pelosi said we have to pass the bill to find out what's in it. As Gruber so eloquently stated, had the people been told the truth about it, it never would have passed.
In liberal land, facts are what liberals say they are. Let's try a simple test. Without using Google, do you know the Insurance Industry standard definition for "Enrolled"? Can you explain how the term enrolled was completely redefined by HHS, the Obama Administration, and the Democratic Party in order to create a new set of "facts" that fit the perception of the politics they were trying to sell? And that they continue to tell this lie, to this day? If the numbers look so good, why lie about it?
If you were the guy who had to tell the employees their health care costs were going up... Or the guy who took a cut in pay to help cover the cost increase for the employees.. perhaps you'd understand how offensive that remark is.
As a small business owner, I talk to lots of other small business owners, and I do not know a single one who has had an experience any different from mine. Our insurance - which was awesome - was cancelled. The new Obama Care compliant insurance costs us more, costs our employees more, is not better coverage, has higher deductibles, and generally just pissed absolutely everybody off. Who do you think the employees complain too? Me.
First we, the public, were told "The Average Family of Four would see a reduction in $2,500 per year". This was a lie. Everybody knew it was a lie, you can't cover MORE people for less. Now the story is "The rate of increase has been slowed". This is also a lie. It's the same made up bullshit statistic as "jobs created or saved". As the employer mandate has not kicked in, and there are little to no statistics being released about overall QHP plan premiums that include subsidies, or percentages of insured above and below the FPL there is simply no way to know this. Most likely, premiums are going way up, but a carefully crafted lie has been released. Why? Because that's how every single aspect of this law has been handled. They re-invented the term enrolled for crissakes!! Who does that? Really? Can we ever trust someone who does things like that?
You want to argue liberal talking points, that's fine and dandy. My opinion is from someone who is actually living with this crap. And no, I'm not going to scour the web for "opposing view points" and have a "debate" over them, why should I bother? Anyone actually in the trenches with this thing knows what a pig in a poke it is.
Had the Administration told the truth.... Had they held open hearings... They had a GOLDEN opportunity to do something really good for people. But no. Greed took over. Arrogance took over. And then when it went to shit, they were too arrogant, too full of themselves, too convinced that everyone else was stupid, and ignorant. So they made a bad situation far, far worse. And then, they rewrote the law by executive fiat - how many times? And no, you can't blame everybody else for this failure. Funny thing, these new Democrats, nothing is ever their fault. I can say that, I am an ex-Democrat myself, OK?
Anyone who argues what a grand and glorious thing the ACA is - they are either a paid OFA troll, or a die hard ideologue, so totally brainwashed they are hopeless and not worth the time of day. When you spoke a small piece of the truth - that the insurance industry is the one that got the best deal - I had hope.... I really did... Because they went in to negotiate with the insurance folks, and just like every time before and after they talked a big talk, and gave away the whole store and got NOTHING in return. Nothing. And you watch, the Insurance companies will come back and win - again. Their profits have been increased at the cost of increasing the national debt. What a GREAT DEAL!!
What's going to happen next, with the Republicans in Congress, assuming they actually grow a spine, is going to make everything much, much worse for everybody. And had the Democrats not been such toxic, hateful, insulting little trolls none of this had to happen. None of it.
Am I bitter about this. Yes..... Because I want to provide the best possible health care for my employees. I don't want to be rammed into a one size fits all Federally Mandated you have no choices group insurance plan.
It's a nice comeback. But in LA in those years, they probably would have... Real cops aren't the guys you see on TV:-) Had a good friend on LAPD, if half the stories he told were 25% true...
You do make a valid point. And I think I do too:-) So we can part friends, we'll meet again on/.
My my my I am impressed. It's a nice one sided pitch for one the bigger shams ever perpetrated on (in the words of Gruber) an ignorant public.
Our group plan went up 30% last year when we were cancelled. This year it went up 20%. Premiums will continue to rise at alarming levels because there are new hands in the till. The lie that premiums didn't go up is an astounding lie that the OFA started right after six million plans were cancelled. As soon as you told that I knew exactly who I am talking to. Your link from Kaiser says the uninsured has dropped by.2%. That's only significant if you are making political hay. The promise was that ALL THE UNINSURED WOULD BE COVERED, remember? That, too, was a lie.
We were all told the ACA would actually reduce the deficit, it will add 1 trillion dollars - about the cost of the Iraq war.
Apparently you don't understand how politics work. You give the insurance companies a blowjob, you get something in return. Maybe they buy you a new yacht, or pay for your convention hotel, or donate to your super pac. Both parties believe they own each other. A giant lie is told, ALWAYS laced with a big emotional heart strings tugging argument (your post is full of them oh sniff sniff boo hoo), and a portrait of the opposition as evil, uncaring, ignorant, racist. The PR trolls go out on the Internet and post glorious lies to thousands of comment boards that are offset the by the opposition who usually just quotes facts - which makes them racists of coruse.
Having been involved in the Healthcare and Insurance industry since the mid 80's from the software side I can assure you that in my experience 90% of whats wrong with Healthcare was caused directly by the Federal Government fucking with it. But keep those emotionally charged arguments coming, and that Marxist rhetoric where profit is a demon, there are still a few people who believe that nonsense and none of them are going to argue with you... Please, go move to a country that has single payer, please, please please please I hear Cuba is open...
In my direct experience the large group of humans called "government".vs. a large group of humans called "corporations" operate at completely different levels of efficiency. The excuse that Government "is not a corporation and cannot be run like one" is nonsense. It's a great ivory tower view....
I'll look up the Medicare claim for you when I have a chance, the fraud level in Medicare is enormous - as it is with most programs run the the Feds.
The ACA was a giant payoff to the insurance companies with quid pro quo to the DNC that has blown up in their faces. Any other view is naive my friend...
And sure, there are good corporations and bad corporations. And sure you can cherry pick any singular example, but it's cherry picking....
I think it all depends on the jurisdiction, the people involved, the exact circumstances...
Many years ago I lived in Los Angeles, California. I rode a motorcycle. Was working late, parked the cycle next to the door of the office. I come out and find some cretin pushing it down the street. I confront this cretin and ask him what the fuck is he doing? He makes up some bullshit story, I take a threatening stance, he drops the bike in the middle of the street and runs.
Wanting insurance to fix the cracked fairing and broken turn signals, I call LAPD. Do you know what they said?
"Why didn't you just shoot the son of a bitch? We'd have backed you up 100% if you did. Would have saved us a lot of work."
I kid you not... In New York I'd probably be sued for violating the perp's civil rights...
Yes, you live in a country where there is not a totalitarian, absolutist system where laws are rigidly enforced with no accounting for human kindness and compassion.
If that's what you prefer there are many places you could move to. I don't think you'd like them very much though:-) In these countries no exceptions are ever made, if you are suspected of a crime you are simply guilty, and the punishments very pleasant either. The law is absolute, in some cases attributed to a higher deity, and you, the citizen, has zero rights of any kind. Somebody doesn't like you? You're guilty, off with your head. You didn't know that pointing at Dear Leader's picture was a crime? Too bad, twenty years slave labor. Seriously. That's what enforcing the law absolutely in all cases irrespective of circumstances works out to be.
I don't mean to be rude. I don't mean to throw flames, I don't mean to insult you. I am simply making a point, which seems really obvious but a lot of folks on this thread just don't seem to want to admit... Which is that philosophy... and reality... aren't always the same thing. And in my experience it's the high minded intellectually superior arrogant ones who are the first to break all the rules when it is their own precious asses that are on the line...
What we did post 9/11 was wrong. Killing families with drone attacks because we suspect someone in the house might be a terrorist is wrong. Dropping bombs on civilians is wrong. Shipping terrorists to other counties where we know they will be tortured (really tortured not what we did which was actually pretty tame) is wrong. But all of these actions were justifiable at the time they occurred, because people were in fear, downright terrified in fact, and the folks who made these decisions were looking out for your family and my family. So anyone screaming righteously indignant shit today about these things has a political axe to grind and their motives are not pure.
The plain truth is that this administration has decided to simply kill people it doesn't like, instead of capturing them, and squeezing them for intel. This is a pansy chicken shit way to not get their own hands dirty and it's really stupid. Human intelligence is the only way we are ever going to defeat terrorists. Duh. And to keep our own hands clean, we're killing women, children, and other innocent bystanders. Which is even more wrong than water boarding people, or force feeding people who are on a hunger strike, or sleep deprivation. So we have the big smokescreen going on to cover up the truth and the facts. And that is also very wrong. We're killing these people without due process - while screaming out of the other side of our mouths how much we care about due process - that's called blatant hypocrisy!!
So please give me a list of all of the cases where a big Federal Agency other than the Military has been a model of efficiency, as error free as any similarly sized public corporation, achieved cost reduction, achieved the objectives set out for it, reduced the budget on it's own in a quest for efficiency, increased employee productivity, improved service levels to it's customers....
You can't. Because there aren't any.
A single Medicare fraud case a few years back cost the taxpayers an amount of money equivalent to the profits of the entire Healthcare Insurance Industry - for one year! Was anything done? Nope. The $500 hammers and $10,000 Toilet Seats aren't jokes, they are the status quo. The lavish vacations at taxpayer expense for employees to attend "conferences" - these are also common place. Have you worked for, or with, or as a vendor to any Federal Agency?
I'm not biased at all. I've seen this with my own eyes, Sir. It's not "isolated examples" at all. You're being suckered by a false portrayal of Government by people in Government who want more of your money in their pockets...
The cops would sit behind the one way mirror and cheer. Because they have families too.
This isn't an intellectual ethics question in a philosophy class. It's what people are going to do in the real world. Do you have a wife? A family of your own?
Clearly you don't... Big surprise, the law is selectively enforced, humans are involved, humans have feelings and compassion for one another... If you get pulled over for some minor traffic infraction and you're an asshole you might end up in jail, if you're nice and respectful you'll probably get off with a warning. This is how the world works, like it or not. If you jump out of the car, put your hands up, and scream don't shoot PIG you might get your head blown off, ooopsie, well you probably deserved it will be the thinking down at the station...
So you get a call from the police. Your wife and children are being held hostage, there is a time bomb with a combination lock, they have the bomber, but he won't reveal the code. You get put in the room with bomber and the police leave.
100% of high minded intellectually superior smug ass hats, along with 100% of the common sense rational people, beat the living shit out of the guy to save their wife and children.
But Healthcare, oh the government can run that without corruption. And education, there's no pork barrel nudge nudge wink wink shit going on. Infrastructure with the Teamsters, why it's pure as the driven snow! And tax collecting, not a smidgen of corruption there, Obama has assured us and that's all I need! Global warming/cooling/er CHANGE the Federal government is the only solution. National Energy policy, there's no possibility of any corruption, why hardly any money is involved. Nuclear plants? Only the government should do that, they are the most qualified...
Coming up next on Slashdot a story about how Big Government solutions are needed to save us all from ourselves. Passionate Progs will be ripping the small government folks, telling them how stupid and ignorant they are.
The headline should read "American public continues to believe socialist fantasies despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary"
I think that the GP was just making a point that many of the global warming proponents have oversold their agenda.
Thank You. The TRUTH about Global warming/cooling/climate change/whatever the hell it's now called is that the proponents have done more harm to climate science, and environmentalism than anyone else, because of human greed. But if one dares point out past observations - that have nor just been wrong, but gloriously spectacularly wrong - one is branded an ignorant hayseed DENIER and therefore a sub-human form of non intelligent life.
Of course if it was an eeeeevil horrible corporation making over the top marketing claims about some product these same folks would be screaming for the heads of the corporation to be crucified and their ill-gotten wealth confiscated in the public square....
And when we have another one of those "climate conferences" where all those "environmentalists" show up in their corporate jets, and the sit around sipping $100 a bottle designer water, that's a good thing. But a group of bankers doing the same thing....
Slashdot Mirror
There's a flip side to this. Many of the younger programmers show up with an attitude of "the system is rigged" plus "the company owes me" combined with a horrible work ethic, and most important - very poor relationship skills. They cause all kinds of problems for management (the nail that sticks up gets the hammer)... And then when they get sacked they complain about how clueless management is, and how they are so much smarter, etc.
And this attitude is not helped by the "corporations are evil monsters" that politicians peddle because they want your money and support. Are there bad apples? Sure there are. But they are the exception, not the rule. But for the most part employers need to get X amount of work done, in order to service the customers, who in turn pay the salaries of the developers - with minimal DRAMA and teamwork.
I'm in the field, and about to turn 60, and outside of Silicon Valley I know nothing of age discrimination. Yeah, I hear complaints about it - from guys who refuse to learn new skills, or are horrible at relationships.
Yep. Increased spending on schools equals more money for the NTA and NEA, which spoiler alert are two of the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party. We spend more per capita to get less results than any other country on earth! But the DNC, they are making out just fine, and they keep pushing the message that we need to spend, spend, spend on Education as they watch the money flow into their coffers. Of course in an honest country, this would be called "money laundering" or "theft from the taxpayers" but not in the new America. It's now called "Business as Usual" :-)
You are absolutely correct on all counts. And don't forget a media who looks at the Stock Market and tells us how that proves how grand the economy is doing, when it's the result of all the money being pumped into the system... When times are tough, new development projects are cancelled. That's why we are laying people off in the software business, duh...
The whole immigration debate is about buying votes at the expense of all of our future, only a complete idiot would be in favor of adding millions of people to the workforce. What I wonder is how did we end up with so many gullible people with no common sense? This seems like the problem that needs fixing...
Does it enable the developer to derive a new type from an existing type? One would assume so. In which case all the type safe arguments in the world mean nothing. Can't cast a string to a SQL type? Create a new class that allows this, and provides a mechanism to cast to a SQL type, security hole created...
Or just do half decent Q/A... Which costs a lot less than training staff on a new language to solve a problem that's really developer competency.
Microsoft tried the compiled web page idea with .net, it was called a "Smart Client". You wrote a desktop app, basically, that was "served" through the browser (which, of course, had to be IE). In essence it was the "browser as MSI delivery system on the fly". Managed a team of guys who wrote a large, complicated labor tracking/payroll system in it. When it worked, it was awesome. Sadly that wasn't as often as management liked...
.net guys never talked to each other. So as long as you had .net run time version 1.2.6.9982 and MDAC version 2.8.9.3345 and IE6 version 6.0.22.3.44.54588 it worked great! Otherwise nobody got paid, sorry.
Remember the versioning issues all these compiled solutions had? The "Smart Client" solution (compiled web pages) didn't account for different versions of IE, and of course the IE guys and the
So if we could just get everyone to run the same, exact browser on desktops & mobile devices... then Url would be a grand and glorious solution, provided we had a single entity who controlled it... that we paid the requisite licensing fee too... and we all upgraded en masse. Oh, wait a minute, isn't this the same, exact state of the world before the Internet came along? That we never quite achieved, because no one company could ever dominate anything?
So if the government just mandated that we all use Url, on a specific hardware configuration, all using the same everything... this could work! I'd wager that's the dream of the ivory tower Gruberist folks at M.I.T.....
Slate Magazine? Really? Credible... on ANYTHING?
More likely they are trying to assure the readership that the Democratic Party getting the worst electoral shellacking since the 1920's is not the end of the world...
Xamarin may or may not have an effect here.
.net resources can make phone apps... that easily talk to the existing .net based services...
.net. Most of the enterprise shops I know (twenty or so) are .net....
The Enterprise shops are very hot on Xamarin, because it means the existing
Yes, the mean.js/node.js stack is in demand right now, but that doesn't mean Java is killing
This "standardization" is a good thing; otherwise it is impossible to make meaningful comparisons between plans.
By this logic, if all the automakers of the world offered just 4 cars the world would be a much better place. If there were only four house plans, it would be so great! And really, there should only be four sizes of clothes, and if they don't fit you, too bad.
Really, you're a funny guy. You clearly have no clue how rigid ICD-9 standards are, so I'm not even going to try and explain what "Utilization and Review" is inside a hospital...
I suppose you can always hide behind I am making all of this up... Or please, go ask someone who is actually in the business...
Post ACA there are two kinds of Health Insurance in America, QHP plans, and PHSP plans. QHP plans, a.k.a. ObamaCare, come in four flavors, known as bronze, silver, gold, and platinum.
Well, not quite. While it is true that insurance plans that are carried on exchanges must be standardized, companies are still free to offer non-standard plans through their own sales channels. This "standardization" is a good thing; otherwise it is impossible to make meaningful comparisons between plans.
You don't know the difference between QHP and PHSP, do you? You do understand my company writes software for insurance companies, don't you?
Do you understand how egregious of a lie it is to make claims about payments being lowered without releasing the statistics about the covered plan enrollees distribution above and below FPL -- which would enable subsidy payments to be deducted, which would show the TRUE cost, something they are DESPERATELY trying to cover up?
This might have been an interesting assertion, but you failed to provide any citations, so for all I know it's just some bullshit some random dude on the internet made up. That said, nobody has made the claim that payments have been lowered, and if you have purchased a candy bar anytime in the last 20 year you will understand that sometimes providers change what's in the package to be able to change the price they charge for it. That isn't a "lie", that's "Sales & Marketing".
You said that premiums have gone down. So let me explain this to you, really slowly... Because this is how lies are told and spread by people such as yourself.
A QHP plan administered through a HIX is the insurance industry term for the four flavors of Obamacare. QHP is an acryonym for "Qualified Health Plan" - meaning that the applicant qualifies for a subsidy depending on the delta between his income and FPL. Do you know what FPL is? It's the Federal Poverty Level. So, smarty pants intellectual, if the premium for the bronze plan is $384.00 a month, and the subsidy for Joe applicant is $200 a month, what is his premium? It's $384 a month. Because that is the amount guaranteed to the insurance company by HHS. But if you redefine the definition of the word "premium" to "what the applicant actually paid" then and only then can you make the claim that "premiums went down"
HHS has not released payment data about enrollees with respect to income. Gee I wonder why? Could it be because they lied about premiums going down? Gee, could be.
HHS also admitted that they failed to verify the income of enrollees - leaving that to the IRS. So how many enrollees lied about their income? Given that the plan calculators created by the exchanges allowed people to see exactly what income got what premium... probably quite a few. So the reality is that without the actual numbers from HHS, that show the distribution on policy holders relative to FPL, ANY CLAIM ABOUT PREMIUMS BEING LOWERED IS BASED ON VAPOR, thin air, they are lies.
So let me explain the enrolled lie. In the insurance industry, a prospect is a person who's indicated interest (e.g. visited your website). An applicant is a person who has applied for coverage. An enrollee is a person who's payment has cleared, and if he shows up at a provider he will be able to get care. From Day 1 HHS redefined the meaning of enrolled to say "Someone who signed up". And released scant, if any statistics of people who have actually paid, claiming "they don't know". In fact, in the early days, they made wild claims about enrollments without even having a system in place to process payments! Now once people start lying, in my experience they don't wake up one day and suddenly start telling the truth.
So last year they cancelled some six million policies, and enrolled 8 million. The 2 million new enrollees were mostly low income people who were pushed into Medicare - but HHS counted them as Obama
No, No, No you just don't get it!!! The TRUTH is what WE SAY IT IS and it's only valid for TODAY!!! We will not be tricked into discussing the TRUTH of YESTERDAY it does not exist...
The "deniers" of the TRUTH of TODAY - they aren't simply intelligent people offering viewpoints in an open exchange of ideas, they are evil, pure evil, ignorant hayseeds who are radical and dangerous for America. They must be ridiculed, and removed from the discourse entirely dare they question the TRUTH that is Today's Truth.
But the people telling the TRUTH they are the most tolerant, understanding, open people on earth! Just ask them, and they will tell you. Unless, of course, you deny the TRUTH of TODAY.
How dare you question the superior intellect of the people in charge of dispensing the truth of today?
I really wish I was making this up, but it's how the comments on this thread read to me.
Let's simply rebrand freedom as tyranny and be done with it.
Because where *I* live, I was able to choose from dozens of different plans from eight different insurers and NONE of them were the Federal government.
Post ACA there are two kinds of Health Insurance in America, QHP plans, and PHSP plans. QHP plans, a.k.a. ObamaCare, come in four flavors, known as bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. No matter what the carriers rebrand these as, they are all the same, exact four plans. So to take your method of communication, your statement is indicative of your immense and astounding ignorance, these four plan designations, including DRG/ICD-9 provider payment caps, formularies, co-pays, and deductibles are all MANDATED by the Federal Government. To be honest, I don't think you're immensely and astoundingly ignorant, I think you're repeating a set of talking points that appeals to your emotions, and that you can't accept that these talking points are made by propagandists. You're not stupid, just naive and gullible.
Do you know what "managed care" actually is? Do you understand that managed care is rationed care? Do you understand manipulating the cost curve by cutting provider payments and refactoring formularies is the only way this thing can stay afloat, and that this is the exact, same thing they are doing to Medicare, and that they really are "starving grandma" and lowering the quality of care for absolutely everyone while at the same time pumping taxpayer money into insurance companies? That a crime of astounding proportions is being committed right now, today... against the very people the proponents of the legislation claim to care about?
Do you understand how egregious of a lie it is to make claims about payments being lowered without releasing the statistics about the covered plan enrollees distribution above and below FPL -- which would enable subsidy payments to be deducted, which would show the TRUE cost, something they are DESPERATELY trying to cover up? IF THERE'S NOTHING TO HIDE THEN RELEASE ALL THE NUMBERS. Instead we get the astounding lie "We really don't know...." It's as insane as not being able to type "Select Count(*) From SignUp_Table" something they said they couldn't do for what, eight months?
Your CBO insistence, yet another carefully crafted lie, Sir. The CBO has not rated ObamaCare's effect on the deficit since 2012. It's another one of those arguments from the liberal little red book of Internet talking points...
Hillary Care, and ObamaCare, were mostly negotiated behind closed doors, with a few town halls for show. That's why Mz. Pelosi said we have to pass the bill to find out what's in it. As Gruber so eloquently stated, had the people been told the truth about it, it never would have passed.
In liberal land, facts are what liberals say they are. Let's try a simple test. Without using Google, do you know the Insurance Industry standard definition for "Enrolled"? Can you explain how the term enrolled was completely redefined by HHS, the Obama Administration, and the Democratic Party in order to create a new set of "facts" that fit the perception of the politics they were trying to sell? And that they continue to tell this lie, to this day? If the numbers look so good, why lie about it?
If you were the guy who had to tell the employees their health care costs were going up... Or the guy who took a cut in pay to help cover the cost increase for the employees.. perhaps you'd understand how offensive that remark is.
As a small business owner, I talk to lots of other small business owners, and I do not know a single one who has had an experience any different from mine. Our insurance - which was awesome - was cancelled. The new Obama Care compliant insurance costs us more, costs our employees more, is not better coverage, has higher deductibles, and generally just pissed absolutely everybody off. Who do you think the employees complain too? Me.
First we, the public, were told "The Average Family of Four would see a reduction in $2,500 per year". This was a lie. Everybody knew it was a lie, you can't cover MORE people for less. Now the story is "The rate of increase has been slowed". This is also a lie. It's the same made up bullshit statistic as "jobs created or saved". As the employer mandate has not kicked in, and there are little to no statistics being released about overall QHP plan premiums that include subsidies, or percentages of insured above and below the FPL there is simply no way to know this. Most likely, premiums are going way up, but a carefully crafted lie has been released. Why? Because that's how every single aspect of this law has been handled. They re-invented the term enrolled for crissakes!! Who does that? Really? Can we ever trust someone who does things like that?
You want to argue liberal talking points, that's fine and dandy. My opinion is from someone who is actually living with this crap. And no, I'm not going to scour the web for "opposing view points" and have a "debate" over them, why should I bother? Anyone actually in the trenches with this thing knows what a pig in a poke it is.
Had the Administration told the truth.... Had they held open hearings... They had a GOLDEN opportunity to do something really good for people. But no. Greed took over. Arrogance took over. And then when it went to shit, they were too arrogant, too full of themselves, too convinced that everyone else was stupid, and ignorant. So they made a bad situation far, far worse. And then, they rewrote the law by executive fiat - how many times? And no, you can't blame everybody else for this failure. Funny thing, these new Democrats, nothing is ever their fault. I can say that, I am an ex-Democrat myself, OK?
Anyone who argues what a grand and glorious thing the ACA is - they are either a paid OFA troll, or a die hard ideologue, so totally brainwashed they are hopeless and not worth the time of day. When you spoke a small piece of the truth - that the insurance industry is the one that got the best deal - I had hope.... I really did... Because they went in to negotiate with the insurance folks, and just like every time before and after they talked a big talk, and gave away the whole store and got NOTHING in return. Nothing. And you watch, the Insurance companies will come back and win - again. Their profits have been increased at the cost of increasing the national debt. What a GREAT DEAL!!
What's going to happen next, with the Republicans in Congress, assuming they actually grow a spine, is going to make everything much, much worse for everybody. And had the Democrats not been such toxic, hateful, insulting little trolls none of this had to happen. None of it.
Am I bitter about this. Yes..... Because I want to provide the best possible health care for my employees. I don't want to be rammed into a one size fits all Federally Mandated you have no choices group insurance plan.
It's a nice comeback. But in LA in those years, they probably would have... Real cops aren't the guys you see on TV :-) Had a good friend on LAPD, if half the stories he told were 25% true...
:-) So we can part friends, we'll meet again on /.
You do make a valid point. And I think I do too
Our group plan went up 30% last year when we were cancelled. This year it went up 20%
I own the company. Are you calling me a liar?
My my my I am impressed. It's a nice one sided pitch for one the bigger shams ever perpetrated on (in the words of Gruber) an ignorant public.
.2%. That's only significant if you are making political hay. The promise was that ALL THE UNINSURED WOULD BE COVERED, remember? That, too, was a lie.
Our group plan went up 30% last year when we were cancelled. This year it went up 20%. Premiums will continue to rise at alarming levels because there are new hands in the till. The lie that premiums didn't go up is an astounding lie that the OFA started right after six million plans were cancelled. As soon as you told that I knew exactly who I am talking to. Your link from Kaiser says the uninsured has dropped by
We were all told the ACA would actually reduce the deficit, it will add 1 trillion dollars - about the cost of the Iraq war.
Apparently you don't understand how politics work. You give the insurance companies a blowjob, you get something in return. Maybe they buy you a new yacht, or pay for your convention hotel, or donate to your super pac. Both parties believe they own each other. A giant lie is told, ALWAYS laced with a big emotional heart strings tugging argument (your post is full of them oh sniff sniff boo hoo), and a portrait of the opposition as evil, uncaring, ignorant, racist. The PR trolls go out on the Internet and post glorious lies to thousands of comment boards that are offset the by the opposition who usually just quotes facts - which makes them racists of coruse.
Having been involved in the Healthcare and Insurance industry since the mid 80's from the software side I can assure you that in my experience 90% of whats wrong with Healthcare was caused directly by the Federal Government fucking with it. But keep those emotionally charged arguments coming, and that Marxist rhetoric where profit is a demon, there are still a few people who believe that nonsense and none of them are going to argue with you... Please, go move to a country that has single payer, please, please please please I hear Cuba is open...
In my direct experience the large group of humans called "government" .vs. a large group of humans called "corporations" operate at completely different levels of efficiency. The excuse that Government "is not a corporation and cannot be run like one" is nonsense. It's a great ivory tower view....
I'll look up the Medicare claim for you when I have a chance, the fraud level in Medicare is enormous - as it is with most programs run the the Feds.
The ACA was a giant payoff to the insurance companies with quid pro quo to the DNC that has blown up in their faces. Any other view is naive my friend...
And sure, there are good corporations and bad corporations. And sure you can cherry pick any singular example, but it's cherry picking....
I think it all depends on the jurisdiction, the people involved, the exact circumstances...
Many years ago I lived in Los Angeles, California. I rode a motorcycle. Was working late, parked the cycle next to the door of the office. I come out and find some cretin pushing it down the street. I confront this cretin and ask him what the fuck is he doing? He makes up some bullshit story, I take a threatening stance, he drops the bike in the middle of the street and runs.
Wanting insurance to fix the cracked fairing and broken turn signals, I call LAPD. Do you know what they said?
"Why didn't you just shoot the son of a bitch? We'd have backed you up 100% if you did. Would have saved us a lot of work."
I kid you not... In New York I'd probably be sued for violating the perp's civil rights...
Yes, you live in a country where there is not a totalitarian, absolutist system where laws are rigidly enforced with no accounting for human kindness and compassion.
:-) In these countries no exceptions are ever made, if you are suspected of a crime you are simply guilty, and the punishments very pleasant either. The law is absolute, in some cases attributed to a higher deity, and you, the citizen, has zero rights of any kind. Somebody doesn't like you? You're guilty, off with your head. You didn't know that pointing at Dear Leader's picture was a crime? Too bad, twenty years slave labor. Seriously. That's what enforcing the law absolutely in all cases irrespective of circumstances works out to be.
If that's what you prefer there are many places you could move to. I don't think you'd like them very much though
I don't mean to be rude. I don't mean to throw flames, I don't mean to insult you. I am simply making a point, which seems really obvious but a lot of folks on this thread just don't seem to want to admit... Which is that philosophy... and reality... aren't always the same thing. And in my experience it's the high minded intellectually superior arrogant ones who are the first to break all the rules when it is their own precious asses that are on the line...
What we did post 9/11 was wrong. Killing families with drone attacks because we suspect someone in the house might be a terrorist is wrong. Dropping bombs on civilians is wrong. Shipping terrorists to other counties where we know they will be tortured (really tortured not what we did which was actually pretty tame) is wrong. But all of these actions were justifiable at the time they occurred, because people were in fear, downright terrified in fact, and the folks who made these decisions were looking out for your family and my family. So anyone screaming righteously indignant shit today about these things has a political axe to grind and their motives are not pure.
The plain truth is that this administration has decided to simply kill people it doesn't like, instead of capturing them, and squeezing them for intel. This is a pansy chicken shit way to not get their own hands dirty and it's really stupid. Human intelligence is the only way we are ever going to defeat terrorists. Duh. And to keep our own hands clean, we're killing women, children, and other innocent bystanders. Which is even more wrong than water boarding people, or force feeding people who are on a hunger strike, or sleep deprivation. So we have the big smokescreen going on to cover up the truth and the facts. And that is also very wrong. We're killing these people without due process - while screaming out of the other side of our mouths how much we care about due process - that's called blatant hypocrisy!!
So please give me a list of all of the cases where a big Federal Agency other than the Military has been a model of efficiency, as error free as any similarly sized public corporation, achieved cost reduction, achieved the objectives set out for it, reduced the budget on it's own in a quest for efficiency, increased employee productivity, improved service levels to it's customers....
You can't. Because there aren't any.
A single Medicare fraud case a few years back cost the taxpayers an amount of money equivalent to the profits of the entire Healthcare Insurance Industry - for one year! Was anything done? Nope. The $500 hammers and $10,000 Toilet Seats aren't jokes, they are the status quo. The lavish vacations at taxpayer expense for employees to attend "conferences" - these are also common place. Have you worked for, or with, or as a vendor to any Federal Agency?
I'm not biased at all. I've seen this with my own eyes, Sir. It's not "isolated examples" at all. You're being suckered by a false portrayal of Government by people in Government who want more of your money in their pockets...
The cops would sit behind the one way mirror and cheer. Because they have families too.
This isn't an intellectual ethics question in a philosophy class. It's what people are going to do in the real world. Do you have a wife? A family of your own?
Clearly you don't... Big surprise, the law is selectively enforced, humans are involved, humans have feelings and compassion for one another... If you get pulled over for some minor traffic infraction and you're an asshole you might end up in jail, if you're nice and respectful you'll probably get off with a warning. This is how the world works, like it or not. If you jump out of the car, put your hands up, and scream don't shoot PIG you might get your head blown off, ooopsie, well you probably deserved it will be the thinking down at the station...
So you get a call from the police. Your wife and children are being held hostage, there is a time bomb with a combination lock, they have the bomber, but he won't reveal the code. You get put in the room with bomber and the police leave.
100% of high minded intellectually superior smug ass hats, along with 100% of the common sense rational people, beat the living shit out of the guy to save their wife and children.
Case closed.
But Healthcare, oh the government can run that without corruption. And education, there's no pork barrel nudge nudge wink wink shit going on. Infrastructure with the Teamsters, why it's pure as the driven snow! And tax collecting, not a smidgen of corruption there, Obama has assured us and that's all I need! Global warming/cooling/er CHANGE the Federal government is the only solution. National Energy policy, there's no possibility of any corruption, why hardly any money is involved. Nuclear plants? Only the government should do that, they are the most qualified...
Coming up next on Slashdot a story about how Big Government solutions are needed to save us all from ourselves. Passionate Progs will be ripping the small government folks, telling them how stupid and ignorant they are.
The headline should read "American public continues to believe socialist fantasies despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary"
Oh wait, that will NEVER HAPPEN.
Perfect. Motorcycles in the back of the pickup are OK. As is a large, gas guzzling fishing boat on a trailer.
Kids toys, a load of Wal-Mart crap, it's a penis candidate no question about it.
I think that the GP was just making a point that many of the global warming proponents have oversold their agenda.
Thank You. The TRUTH about Global warming/cooling/climate change/whatever the hell it's now called is that the proponents have done more harm to climate science, and environmentalism than anyone else, because of human greed. But if one dares point out past observations - that have nor just been wrong, but gloriously spectacularly wrong - one is branded an ignorant hayseed DENIER and therefore a sub-human form of non intelligent life.
Of course if it was an eeeeevil horrible corporation making over the top marketing claims about some product these same folks would be screaming for the heads of the corporation to be crucified and their ill-gotten wealth confiscated in the public square....
And when we have another one of those "climate conferences" where all those "environmentalists" show up in their corporate jets, and the sit around sipping $100 a bottle designer water, that's a good thing. But a group of bankers doing the same thing....
But there's no hypocrisy in any of this!