For Americans 30 years or older in age, 89% of them are clinically overweight or obese. I think this has more to due with our low life expectancy than any other factor.
Correlation is not causation. Yes U.S. mortality is higher, but it's not due to healthcare which is still the best in the world (that's why wealthy Canadians* and Europeans come here). The high mortality rate is due to the fact we are a bunch of overweight or obese pigs, like the humans in Wall-E, so we simply die earlier due to our fat-clogged arteries and hearts.
Even if we had 100% free government-provided healthcare, we'd still die earlier than other 1st world citizens, because we're just do damn fat. (Don't get mad; you know it's true.)
* * * example - Tom Green was diagnosed with testicular cancer. The Canadian system told him to wait 8 months to remove his balls. Since Mr. Green was afraid the cancer might spread and kill him, he flew to the U.S. and had the cancer removed immediately. And while I am posting this message, here are some more stats to consider: UK HEALTHCARE WAITING TIMES 8 months - cataract surgery 11 months- hip replacement 12 months- knee replacement 5 months - slipped disc 5 months - hernia repair SOURCE - The BBC, May 2009
PROSTATE 5-YEAR CANCER SURVIVOR RATE 77% - United Kingdom 90% - Canada 100%- United States
MEP Daniel Hannan said in early August, "The worst thing to be is elderly under the UK Health System..... you will be denied care and left starving in wards."
Yeah but if your insurance company sucks you can dump it and switch to a new one, same as you can dump Microsoft and go with Apple or Linux. With insurance you also have the government's consumer protection laws to back you up, and force the insurance company to provide care. Few companies say "no" because it's easier to just pay for the procedure than to fight a judge.
In contrast you can't dump the government, because government is a monopoly. When the government bureaucrat says "no" that's it. Game over.
BTW:
This is why I don't have insurance or government care. Nobody can tell me "no" when I ask for a healthcare procedure... not the insurance company and not the government. I control my own destiny.
>>>o you're really saying that if you are in a bus accident and your wallet gets lost...
I really hate strawman arguments. If that's what I had meant to say, then I would have said it. NO. I'm saying people should still get mandatory healthcare from hospitals, just like now, but that the cost will not be paid by the government if they are illegal residents or foreign visitors. They will have to pay the bill themselves.
No. It means the cost is borne by the megacorporation that owns the hospital. i.e. The ultrarich pay for the poor. As it should be; that's the progressive ideal. .
>>>Then the private insurance plans fold and everybody but the hyper-rich ends up on the government plan.
>>>many hospitals are funded through their municipalities
Not where I live. All the hospitals are private businesses that rely upon having a positive cash flow to survive. One of them is owned by a church, which is strictly forbidden from receiving ANY taxpayer money (separation of church and state). The biggest hospitals in this region are owned by magacorporations. So when a poor person comes-in for emergency care, and can't pay the bill, the money comes out of the megacorp's pocket.
i.e. The ultrarich cover the cost of the poor who have no money.
As it should be. People say our healthcare system is broken, but that statement makes me think it's almost perfect and just needs some tweaking. Is it expensive? Well of course. So is repairing your car or your house. Turning the repair of your car, your house, or your body over to government is not going to magically make those costs become free.
>>>>>What it did NOT say, which nobody realized until about a week later, is that patients were not required to show any ID >> >>Good laws state WHAT should happen, not HOW it happens.
FALSE. If a law doesn't specify "check patients IDs" then the U.S. federal organization responsible won't be able to check. We just had that problem with the DTV Converter Box Coupon program. Approximately half the coupons expired unused and several million dollars just sat in the Federal Trade Commission's bank account. The head of the FTC said, "We're not allow to reissue expired coupons because the law does not authorize it." So in February Congress passed a additional law to authorize the re-issuing of coupons.
It's the same deal with the Obamacare bill. It might say illegal aliens are not eligible, but if it doesn't authorize the checking of IDs, then the federal organization won't be able to demand your ID. This is how negative law works - the government official does not act unless the law says he can act.
Our constitution is the same deal. Congress may not exercise any power it has not been explicitly given.
The system worked better prior to the U.S. industrial revolution (1870 onward). Before intelligent people had no place to go except government or agriculture, so the halls of government were filled with lots of intelligent persons. But now most intelligent people would rather work for industry, and what's left for government are the not-so-bright.
I will be driving across America this coming spring (I-90, I-5, I-10, and I-95).
This is actually the third time I've done this. If any UK citizens or other Europeans would care to join me, I'll show you the *real* United States. No not New York City and its claustrophobia-inducing skyscrapers (yuck). The real United States is a giant expanse of mostly grass with lots of cows, and just a few oasses of civilization (cities) dotting the landscape.
I expected Chicago to lose. After all the U.S. has been picked rather often lately - Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Salt Lake. We've hogged the Olympics enough. The REAL surprise is that Chicago was voted-off before Madrid, since Madrid was in violation of the unwritten rule - no olympics on the same continent twice in a row. I expected Madrid to be removed first. So Chicago must have really really fraked up.
The Homeland Gestapo wanted to search the trunk of my car. Why I have no idea. Maybe because it was 10 o'clock at night and they thought it odd a Marylander was driving through Texas, and just assumed I was transporting Mexicans. (shrug)
In any case the bastards made me stand in the cold night air for an hour while I steadfastly refused to open my trunk, and then finally let me go.
I should have filed a lawsuit - C64love v. United States
>>>US Residents are also fingerprinted and photographed routinely upon re-entry.
I'm surprised no one's discussed the *internal* border checks... even if you've never crossed an international border you can still be stopped and forced to submit to a search (in contradiction of constitutional law). It's ridiculous. http://www.aclu.org/privacy/37293res20081022.html
This won't be popular but I'm going to say it anyway:
- We are on the verge of an oil drought. If you thought last summer's $150/barrel was bad, just wait. When the Arab countries start running out of black crude, the price per barrel will skyrocket.
- Food shipments are directly tied to oil. If oil is scarce, there won't be any way to get the food to the market.
- The best way to handle a crisis like that is to have as few mouths to feed as possible. The U.S. (and te EU) rather than growing their population via immigration, should be working to close the borders and say, "We're full. No more room. We don't have enough food to feed any more persons."
>>>You can bounce around Europe crossing borders with little more than a wave of your passport and a friendly nod.
Uh. You can do the same thing in America. I routinely drive across borders without needing anything. California has a checking station to control the import/export of food, but that's about it. So when it comes to crossing the member states of the EU, it's actually more difficult than crossing the member states of the U.S.
I'm American. I've vistied NYC twice and hated it both times. (Sorry New Yorkers.) I'd recommend visiting Baltimore or Washington instead.
>>>going to the West Coast,
Other than a narrow strip of green along the ocean, the west coast is mostly barren. Go see the east coast instead. Maybe a nice scenic drive along I-95 from D.C. to Atlanta would be better.
>>>visiting friends in Washington state
Washington State is not bad.
>>>maybe even driving Route 66
Been there; done that; it was boring. Route 66 gets a lot of hype that it doesn't really deserve unless you enjoy looking at cows and desert. The best roads in the U.S. are I-95 (the entire length of it), I-81 (through the appalachian mountains), I-70 (through the colorado rockies, past the St. Louis arch, and along the original national highway into D.C. or Baltimore), and I-90. I also recommend the Alaskan Highway. starting in Alaska and heading south through the Yukon.
Yes that argument works for the Obamacare bill that will eventually be signed into law, but it doesn't work in the case of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act which DOES apply to average people like me. Too bad I don't understand a word it says, and therefore I'm probably breaking that law without even realizing it. So we're back to what I said before - Laws should be written to serve the people, so they can obey it and try to avoid getting jailed.
>>>You have to learn the difference between "a bill" and "the law"
I understand but I don't think you do. A law is simply a bill that has been passed by Congress and signed by the president. There is no major differences between one and the other. Today's Obamacare Bill will eventually become tomorrow's law.
In some cases, if I know that both candidates are equally lousy, I will vote for the one who's not in office. It's good to have change.
Of course this is all academic. The average voter doesn't put ANY thought into his vote. He just walks in, flips switches next to whatever name he recognizes, and goes back to his life. "Hmmmm... for Congress. Windows (D), Mac (R), or Linux (L). I never 'eard of those other guys. I'll just vote Windows. Now I wonder what the old woman's having for supper."
>>>Even a random choice on your part would have diluted their effectiveness.
I can't believe you just said that. Maybe I should have just voted Conyers, because I recognized his name. (rolls eyes). "Guess the answer that sounds familiar" may work on a test because you have nothing to lose, but doing that in a voting booth does have negative consequences - you get the same shitty bum for 30 or 40 years, simply because he has brand recognition.
"I never heard of this Ubuntu or Apple stuff... I'll just buy Windows. Yeah its crap but at least I recognize the name."
(holds up a pamphlet that's being passed-around to soldiers in VA hospitals). "Perhaps it is better to die and cease being a burden on your family..." - While the political rhetoric about death panels was vague, it did have a concrete basis. This was it. They (and I) fear this kind of pamphlet will be spread-around to everybody, as a way for the government to cut its costs, by encouraging people to just give-up on life and accept death. We already have heard cases from Canada and the UK about patients being denied care and left to die, since the procedure was deemed too expensive by some bureaucrat.
Even among younger patients, I've seen interviews with a British girl who was denied a PAP smear at ages 21, 22, and 23. She knew cervical cancer was high-risk in her family, and wanted to prevent it, but the government turned her down. At age 24 she developed the cancer.
If you think care is rationed now, wait until the politicians take-over. It will make Comcast look like a nice company.
Simple. They don't. A robot completely and totally fails to mimic human movement. Even with CGI humans on the screen, they fail spectacularly. The only CGI characters that look real are those that are just simple recordings of real humans... nothing complicated about that.
I thought it was BASIC. Slow execution but very easy to understand. It was intended for the average person to just pick-up and start creating their own code.
>>>They'd be wishing they still had lawyers so they could work out how to get their money back
FLAW - You don't need a lawyer to file a lawsuit and present your case before a jury of your peers. I think if all the lawyers disappeared, and the legal code was frozen in its current state, we'd get along just fine without them.
Also I disagree that we have to complicate things. Some of the greatest ideas wre presented in simple fashion, such as E=mc^2 or F=ma or PE + KE == 0 (conservation of energy). If the complexity of the universe can be boiled-down to a few simple equations, we can do the same with manmade society. Simple is better in almost every situation.
Programming code was written to serve the programmers, so they can debug and update.
But laws are written to serve the people, so they can obey and try to avoid getting jailed. If the people can not read the laws, then the laws are not serving their purpose. (And in my opinion should be nullified by the jury, as it's unreasonable to expect the defendant to obey that which he can not comprehend.)
Slashdot Mirror
>>>We have a Death Panel here in the UK, which with a complete lack of irony we call NICE.
Don't you mean "nasty"? ;-) I hear that's the real name most citizens use for that government-run monopoly.
P.S.
For Americans 30 years or older in age, 89% of them are clinically overweight or obese. I think this has more to due with our low life expectancy than any other factor.
Correlation is not causation. Yes U.S. mortality is higher, but it's not due to healthcare which is still the best in the world (that's why wealthy Canadians* and Europeans come here). The high mortality rate is due to the fact we are a bunch of overweight or obese pigs, like the humans in Wall-E, so we simply die earlier due to our fat-clogged arteries and hearts.
Even if we had 100% free government-provided healthcare, we'd still die earlier than other 1st world citizens, because we're just do damn fat. (Don't get mad; you know it's true.)
*
*
* example - Tom Green was diagnosed with testicular cancer. The Canadian system told him to wait 8 months to remove his balls. Since Mr. Green was afraid the cancer might spread and kill him, he flew to the U.S. and had the cancer removed immediately. And while I am posting this message, here are some more stats to consider:
UK HEALTHCARE WAITING TIMES
8 months - cataract surgery
11 months- hip replacement
12 months- knee replacement
5 months - slipped disc
5 months - hernia repair
SOURCE - The BBC, May 2009
PROSTATE 5-YEAR CANCER SURVIVOR RATE
77% - United Kingdom
90% - Canada
100%- United States
MEP Daniel Hannan said in early August, "The worst thing to be is elderly under the UK Health System..... you will be denied care and left starving in wards."
Yeah but if your insurance company sucks you can dump it and switch to a new one, same as you can dump Microsoft and go with Apple or Linux. With insurance you also have the government's consumer protection laws to back you up, and force the insurance company to provide care. Few companies say "no" because it's easier to just pay for the procedure than to fight a judge.
In contrast you can't dump the government, because government is a monopoly. When the government bureaucrat says "no" that's it. Game over.
BTW:
This is why I don't have insurance or government care. Nobody can tell me "no" when I ask for a healthcare procedure... not the insurance company and not the government. I control my own destiny.
>>>o you're really saying that if you are in a bus accident and your wallet gets lost...
I really hate strawman arguments. If that's what I had meant to say, then I would have said it. NO. I'm saying people should still get mandatory healthcare from hospitals, just like now, but that the cost will not be paid by the government if they are illegal residents or foreign visitors. They will have to pay the bill themselves.
>>>raising the rates of the people who DO pay
No. It means the cost is borne by the megacorporation that owns the hospital. i.e. The ultrarich pay for the poor. As it should be; that's the progressive ideal.
.
>>>Then the private insurance plans fold and everybody but the hyper-rich ends up on the government plan.
Just exactly what happened in the United Kingdom.
>>>many hospitals are funded through their municipalities
Not where I live. All the hospitals are private businesses that rely upon having a positive cash flow to survive. One of them is owned by a church, which is strictly forbidden from receiving ANY taxpayer money (separation of church and state). The biggest hospitals in this region are owned by magacorporations. So when a poor person comes-in for emergency care, and can't pay the bill, the money comes out of the megacorp's pocket.
i.e. The ultrarich cover the cost of the poor who have no money.
As it should be. People say our healthcare system is broken, but that statement makes me think it's almost perfect and just needs some tweaking. Is it expensive? Well of course. So is repairing your car or your house. Turning the repair of your car, your house, or your body over to government is not going to magically make those costs become free.
>>>>>What it did NOT say, which nobody realized until about a week later, is that patients were not required to show any ID
>>
>>Good laws state WHAT should happen, not HOW it happens.
FALSE. If a law doesn't specify "check patients IDs" then the U.S. federal organization responsible won't be able to check. We just had that problem with the DTV Converter Box Coupon program. Approximately half the coupons expired unused and several million dollars just sat in the Federal Trade Commission's bank account. The head of the FTC said, "We're not allow to reissue expired coupons because the law does not authorize it." So in February Congress passed a additional law to authorize the re-issuing of coupons.
It's the same deal with the Obamacare bill. It might say illegal aliens are not eligible, but if it doesn't authorize the checking of IDs, then the federal organization won't be able to demand your ID. This is how negative law works - the government official does not act unless the law says he can act.
Our constitution is the same deal. Congress may not exercise any power it has not been explicitly given.
The system worked better prior to the U.S. industrial revolution (1870 onward). Before intelligent people had no place to go except government or agriculture, so the halls of government were filled with lots of intelligent persons. But now most intelligent people would rather work for industry, and what's left for government are the not-so-bright.
I will be driving across America this coming spring (I-90, I-5, I-10, and I-95).
This is actually the third time I've done this. If any UK citizens or other Europeans would care to join me, I'll show you the *real* United States. No not New York City and its claustrophobia-inducing skyscrapers (yuck). The real United States is a giant expanse of mostly grass with lots of cows, and just a few oasses of civilization (cities) dotting the landscape.
I expected Chicago to lose. After all the U.S. has been picked rather often lately - Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Salt Lake. We've hogged the Olympics enough. The REAL surprise is that Chicago was voted-off before Madrid, since Madrid was in violation of the unwritten rule - no olympics on the same continent twice in a row. I expected Madrid to be removed first. So Chicago must have really really fraked up.
The Homeland Gestapo wanted to search the trunk of my car. Why I have no idea. Maybe because it was 10 o'clock at night and they thought it odd a Marylander was driving through Texas, and just assumed I was transporting Mexicans. (shrug)
In any case the bastards made me stand in the cold night air for an hour while I steadfastly refused to open my trunk, and then finally let me go.
I should have filed a lawsuit - C64love v. United States
>>>US Residents are also fingerprinted and photographed routinely upon re-entry.
I'm surprised no one's discussed the *internal* border checks... even if you've never crossed an international border you can still be stopped and forced to submit to a search (in contradiction of constitutional law). It's ridiculous. http://www.aclu.org/privacy/37293res20081022.html
MAP of Constitution Free Zone: http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/areyoulivinginaconstitutionfreezone.html
This won't be popular but I'm going to say it anyway:
- We are on the verge of an oil drought. If you thought last summer's $150/barrel was bad, just wait. When the Arab countries start running out of black crude, the price per barrel will skyrocket.
- Food shipments are directly tied to oil. If oil is scarce, there won't be any way to get the food to the market.
- The best way to handle a crisis like that is to have as few mouths to feed as possible. The U.S. (and te EU) rather than growing their population via immigration, should be working to close the borders and say, "We're full. No more room. We don't have enough food to feed any more persons."
>>>You can bounce around Europe crossing borders with little more than a wave of your passport and a friendly nod.
Uh. You can do the same thing in America. I routinely drive across borders without needing anything. California has a checking station to control the import/export of food, but that's about it. So when it comes to crossing the member states of the EU, it's actually more difficult than crossing the member states of the U.S.
>>seeing New York
I'm American. I've vistied NYC twice and hated it both times. (Sorry New Yorkers.) I'd recommend visiting Baltimore or Washington instead.
>>>going to the West Coast,
Other than a narrow strip of green along the ocean, the west coast is mostly barren. Go see the east coast instead. Maybe a nice scenic drive along I-95 from D.C. to Atlanta would be better.
>>>visiting friends in Washington state
Washington State is not bad.
>>>maybe even driving Route 66
Been there; done that; it was boring. Route 66 gets a lot of hype that it doesn't really deserve unless you enjoy looking at cows and desert. The best roads in the U.S. are I-95 (the entire length of it), I-81 (through the appalachian mountains), I-70 (through the colorado rockies, past the St. Louis arch, and along the original national highway into D.C. or Baltimore), and I-90. I also recommend the Alaskan Highway. starting in Alaska and heading south through the Yukon.
Yes that argument works for the Obamacare bill that will eventually be signed into law, but it doesn't work in the case of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act which DOES apply to average people like me. Too bad I don't understand a word it says, and therefore I'm probably breaking that law without even realizing it. So we're back to what I said before - Laws should be written to serve the people, so they can obey it and try to avoid getting jailed.
>>>You have to learn the difference between "a bill" and "the law"
I understand but I don't think you do. A law is simply a bill that has been passed by Congress and signed by the president. There is no major differences between one and the other. Today's Obamacare Bill will eventually become tomorrow's law.
In some cases, if I know that both candidates are equally lousy, I will vote for the one who's not in office. It's good to have change.
Of course this is all academic. The average voter doesn't put ANY thought into his vote. He just walks in, flips switches next to whatever name he recognizes, and goes back to his life. "Hmmmm... for Congress. Windows (D), Mac (R), or Linux (L). I never 'eard of those other guys. I'll just vote Windows. Now I wonder what the old woman's having for supper."
>>>Even a random choice on your part would have diluted their effectiveness.
I can't believe you just said that. Maybe I should have just voted Conyers, because I recognized his name. (rolls eyes). "Guess the answer that sounds familiar" may work on a test because you have nothing to lose, but doing that in a voting booth does have negative consequences - you get the same shitty bum for 30 or 40 years, simply because he has brand recognition.
"I never heard of this Ubuntu or Apple stuff... I'll just buy Windows. Yeah its crap but at least I recognize the name."
(holds up a pamphlet that's being passed-around to soldiers in VA hospitals). "Perhaps it is better to die and cease being a burden on your family..." - While the political rhetoric about death panels was vague, it did have a concrete basis. This was it. They (and I) fear this kind of pamphlet will be spread-around to everybody, as a way for the government to cut its costs, by encouraging people to just give-up on life and accept death. We already have heard cases from Canada and the UK about patients being denied care and left to die, since the procedure was deemed too expensive by some bureaucrat.
Even among younger patients, I've seen interviews with a British girl who was denied a PAP smear at ages 21, 22, and 23. She knew cervical cancer was high-risk in her family, and wanted to prevent it, but the government turned her down. At age 24 she developed the cancer.
If you think care is rationed now, wait until the politicians take-over.
It will make Comcast look like a nice company.
Power to the People!
What? I'm serious. Better to put the power in the hands of the people, than a priest class, lawyer class, or some other oligarchy.
Simple. They don't. A robot completely and totally fails to mimic human movement. Even with CGI humans on the screen, they fail spectacularly. The only CGI characters that look real are those that are just simple recordings of real humans... nothing complicated about that.
I thought it was BASIC. Slow execution but very easy to understand. It was intended for the average person to just pick-up and start creating their own code.
>>>They'd be wishing they still had lawyers so they could work out how to get their money back
FLAW - You don't need a lawyer to file a lawsuit and present your case before a jury of your peers. I think if all the lawyers disappeared, and the legal code was frozen in its current state, we'd get along just fine without them.
Also I disagree that we have to complicate things. Some of the greatest ideas wre presented in simple fashion, such as E=mc^2 or F=ma or PE + KE == 0 (conservation of energy). If the complexity of the universe can be boiled-down to a few simple equations, we can do the same with manmade society. Simple is better in almost every situation.
Programming code was written to serve the programmers, so they can debug and update.
But laws are written to serve the people, so they can obey and try to avoid getting jailed. If the people can not read the laws, then the laws are not serving their purpose. (And in my opinion should be nullified by the jury, as it's unreasonable to expect the defendant to obey that which he can not comprehend.)