He returned to France, had chemo, and is still living some 10 years later. Keep your job & insurance.
Or move to France. In 2003 the UK spent about 8%/GDP on healthcare (6% for the NHS), France 11% and the US 16%. There is no indication that the US receives better medical care than many other countries despite its exorbitant spending, but France's 11% may have benefits over the UK's 8%.
In the US if you're under 65 and loose your job and your health insurance you're much worse off than in the UK. Basically you're screwed unless you can get Medicaid, and that's often iffy. You can keep your health insurance for up to 18 months after you loose your job via COBRA, but that means paying the full cost of the premiums at the very time when you can least afford it. If the company goes under you even loose COBRA.
OTOH if you're 65 or older in the US it's not bad, as we have Medicare (a taxpayer funded single payer system for the elderly). I believe we instituted it shortly before we called the Kremlin, said we were admitted defeat in the Cold War, and adopted a Marxist/Leninist government. That's what Ronald Reagan and the AMA warned us would happen.
What the militia-loving fantasists overlook in their zealousness is that a militia never overcame a large military power.
What they also overlook is that most revolutions and other takeovers that resulted in totalitarian regimes had the support of the military. For example, that was true with both the Nazis and the Bolsheviks (the latter not having the support of general officers, but of the soldiers and sailors who actually wielded weapons). So if their real concern is a totalitarian regime in the US, their recommendation should be to eliminate the military, or at the very least dramatically scale it down (say 90% reduction or more). This is perfectly in line with the views of the Founding Fathers, many of whom thought that standing armies were the enemies of liberty.
They have outrageous malpractice insurance premiums...
Cry me a river. They're one of the highest paid specialties, even after taking into account malpractice insurance costs (any intelligent income survey considers malpractice insurance premiums a business cost, not part of compensation). Ob/gyn's have the highest malpractice insurance premiums. Their after-premium compensation is lower than anesthesiologists, and their work requires more skill and knowledge. It's not all stirrups. Amongst other things they do certain types of surgery (e.g. C-sections).
Gotta love medical billing. I still have an unpaid $2k bill from an anesthesiologist that I refuse to pay because he won't accept anything close what insurance would have paid him. That's $2k for maybe an hour's work. If he took half (still more than what insurance would pay) I'd send him a check today. Greedy bastards.
Anesthesiologists are amongst the worst rip off artists. People can often pick the surgeon but get an anesthesiologist that's luck of the draw. Conveniently, they never take your insurance and stick you with the bill. That happened when my wife needed an unplanned C-section. The surgery was done by her regular ob/gyn, so no problem. The anesthesiologist conveniently didn't take our insurance. I paid that one right off because it was "only" a few hundred. But $2k for a 10 minute surgery? Small wonder they're amongst the highest paid doctors, and I doubt following standardized procedures for administering anesthesia is all that difficult.
P.S. Sorry for the redundant post -must have accidentally checked "Post as AC".
Hear, hear! I used to be part of a small 4 person consulting outfit. One of the reasons we had to close up shop is because we couldn't afford the medical insurance. Yes, it was cheaper than an individual plan, but still close to 2x what a large company would pay.
Without the insurance regime I know in advance that healthcare is my responsibility and I do what most people use to do: I find myself a good GP who doesn't cost an arm and a leg long before I'm ever in crises.
So having a good GP means that you'll never be in an accident or develop, say, some awful cancer?
Blue Cross/Shield were originally founded as non-profits (they actually used to be pretty good) by the doctors and hospitals because they weren't getting paid by people who needed lots of medical care (regardless of whether they'd had good GP's). That was in 1929, so what do you mean by "what most people used to do"? In the 19th century?
A gun is the difference between a citizen and a subject...
Huh? What century do you think you are living in???
Three cornered hats are coming back into style.
Nevertheless, the Internet is still a useful reference when one wants to post such insightful and original slogans as the GP. Robert Heinlein would be proud. Sci-fi writers who target a somewhat more mature audience, not so much.
The idea is to have high res cameras to be able to catch everyone, everywhere, guilty of something or not.
In the same spirit as the USSR. They didn't have this fancy tech, but they tried. What many people don't know is that their law enforcement was terrible, in the sense of catching the bad guys. They simply wanted to sniff up everybody's butt. Some people like doing that, and will use anything to rationalize it. But honest-to-goodness law enforcement actually requires work, lots of it, and leads to fewer sweetheart contracts for useless equipment. American law enforcement is better is better precisely because of the Bill of Rights, not in spite of it. It forces law enforcement to justify their actions, and provide real evidence, instead of lazily saying "lock this guy up, case closed, we're going home".
Who the fuck cares about facial recognition, I say arm the citizens and save money and time.
Nice of you to promote your pet cause. Despite the protests of the NRA, you can buy firearms, even in Boston. Perhaps you're not satisfied with the citizen's choice to call the BPD instead of foolishly getting his head blown off. I might point out, that despite not playing Rambo, the actions of said citizen did lead to catching the perpetrators. I think that's a good thing - how about you?
If Dzhokhar is deemed an enemy combatant, all the victims would lose their health insurance coverage.
But regardless of whether he is declared an enemy combatant, he will receive any medical care he may need. God bless America, where we help the criminals/terrorists, but the victims can go screw themselves.
The same thing happened after 9/11. Many of the people who helped at the site, like construction workers who volunteered literally before the dust settled, and who were rightly hailed as heroes, got screwed on medical care. It was a national shame and little reported.
This is the biggest myth about health care: That people make "rational, informed" choices.... There is a massive barrier to entry in providing services... It ain't a "free market,"
Good arguments, but no good ideologue will let reality interfere with his beliefs.
Such things are always handled much more efficiently by the private market. If we had single payer, every Tom, Dick, and Harry would be going to the doctor every time they got a sniffle and the bill would be Trillions.
Houston, we have a problem. The proponents of "privately funded" healthcare now make arguments so absurd and divorced from reality that I have trouble telling them from sarcasm. AC: please clarify.
before this case is even brought before a courtroom, police have already done the finger pointing, and the court of public opinion has already found him guilty
The police always do their finger pointing before the case is brought before a courtroom. Otherwise why would he be in the courtroom?
And I wouldn't worry too much about the court of public opinion. Odds are nobody here will serve on the jury, and nobody here is suggesting vigilante justice. I wouldn't even worry too much about him being railroaded since his trial will be very high profile. The real railroading occurs out of public scrutiny.
Why would I bother hiring IBM to do that when I can do it myself?
I think more (former) IBM customers are starting to figure that out. Here's an interesting story about IBM losing the contracts for Hilton Hotels and ServiceMaster due to bad service. The ServiceMaster one is particularly interesting. Despite the incredible shortage of good IT people, which necessitates tripling the H-1B quota, they had a job fair one Saturday and were able to hire everybody they needed for their new in-house IT operation. I'd bet they saved money on it too. So the offshoring that IBM does is basically a way of taking money out of the pockets of productive Americans and funneling it to their execs and shareholders. It does not save money, and it certainly doesn't get anything done better.
I hope this trend of seeing that the emperor has no clothes continues. For decades the conventional wisdom was that IBM wasn't cheap, but you always got quality and reliable service. Now the three letters mean nothing.
It's not the party that gets 15% of the vote that concern me. It's the one that gets 2%, gets 5 seats and then effects significant shifts in national policy as other major parties solicit its support.
Germany's Bundestag takes care of that by having a 5% threshold for representation by PR. I'm not sure I agree w/ that approach, but it would avoid the potential problem that concerns you.
Good for them. I wish them good health for at least a century. However, there are over 300 million people in the US, so you might want to look at something called "statistics".
As to the smokers, that may be true but the point is I still have to pay for their medical costs...
You don't get it. Smokers save you money. Even if they didn't pay higher health insurance premiums, their shorter life spans mean that on average smokers have lower lifetime medical costs. They especially save on Medicare and Social Security costs. If you were actually interested in fairness you'd say that, if they pay higher insurance premiums before 65, they should have a reduction in their Medicare and Social Security taxes. And that analysis doesn't even include the "sin taxes" they pay on tobacco, which reduce your other taxes.
Most likely thought you don't give a rat's ass about fairness, except when your misinformation allows you to sanctimoniously complain about other people. Other countries do not have premiums that depend on smoking, weight, or even age. In Germany it only varies based of the cost of living in your area. In other countries even that doesn't matter. And it works. Other countries pay at least 1/3 less than the US (as a percentage of GDP, even greater savings if you use exchange rate or PPP), for medical care that's just as good or better than what we have in the US, and covers everyone. Complain about Obamacare because it doesn't go far enough, and is more of a customer guarantee for medical insurance and pharmaceutical companies than a plan for universal health care and cost savings.
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations on not having a clue how health care works.
Congratulations on a well articulated rebuttal.
Like I said per capita I think we typically make out spending the same as the U.S. on health care
No way. The US health care spending is at least 50% greater per capita, no matter how you measure it. Basically we're getting ripped off.
He returned to France, had chemo, and is still living some 10 years later. Keep your job & insurance.
Or move to France. In 2003 the UK spent about 8%/GDP on healthcare (6% for the NHS), France 11% and the US 16%. There is no indication that the US receives better medical care than many other countries despite its exorbitant spending, but France's 11% may have benefits over the UK's 8%.
In the US if you're under 65 and loose your job and your health insurance you're much worse off than in the UK. Basically you're screwed unless you can get Medicaid, and that's often iffy. You can keep your health insurance for up to 18 months after you loose your job via COBRA, but that means paying the full cost of the premiums at the very time when you can least afford it. If the company goes under you even loose COBRA.
OTOH if you're 65 or older in the US it's not bad, as we have Medicare (a taxpayer funded single payer system for the elderly). I believe we instituted it shortly before we called the Kremlin, said we were admitted defeat in the Cold War, and adopted a Marxist/Leninist government. That's what Ronald Reagan and the AMA warned us would happen.
What the militia-loving fantasists overlook in their zealousness is that a militia never overcame a large military power.
What they also overlook is that most revolutions and other takeovers that resulted in totalitarian regimes had the support of the military. For example, that was true with both the Nazis and the Bolsheviks (the latter not having the support of general officers, but of the soldiers and sailors who actually wielded weapons). So if their real concern is a totalitarian regime in the US, their recommendation should be to eliminate the military, or at the very least dramatically scale it down (say 90% reduction or more). This is perfectly in line with the views of the Founding Fathers, many of whom thought that standing armies were the enemies of liberty.
They have outrageous malpractice insurance premiums ...
Cry me a river. They're one of the highest paid specialties, even after taking into account malpractice insurance costs (any intelligent income survey considers malpractice insurance premiums a business cost, not part of compensation). Ob/gyn's have the highest malpractice insurance premiums. Their after-premium compensation is lower than anesthesiologists, and their work requires more skill and knowledge. It's not all stirrups. Amongst other things they do certain types of surgery (e.g. C-sections).
There will be no 'showdown'.
You're probably right. At least when Andy Jackson told the Supreme Court to go screw itself, you knew he was throwing the Constitution in the toilet.
Gotta love medical billing. I still have an unpaid $2k bill from an anesthesiologist that I refuse to pay because he won't accept anything close what insurance would have paid him. That's $2k for maybe an hour's work. If he took half (still more than what insurance would pay) I'd send him a check today. Greedy bastards.
Anesthesiologists are amongst the worst rip off artists. People can often pick the surgeon but get an anesthesiologist that's luck of the draw. Conveniently, they never take your insurance and stick you with the bill. That happened when my wife needed an unplanned C-section. The surgery was done by her regular ob/gyn, so no problem. The anesthesiologist conveniently didn't take our insurance. I paid that one right off because it was "only" a few hundred. But $2k for a 10 minute surgery? Small wonder they're amongst the highest paid doctors, and I doubt following standardized procedures for administering anesthesia is all that difficult.
P.S. Sorry for the redundant post -must have accidentally checked "Post as AC".
But it's "efficient"! Which has been re-defined to mean a bunch of rent-seeking parasitical scum get rich off it while adding no value.
Lack of single payer is hurting the economy.
Hear, hear! I used to be part of a small 4 person consulting outfit. One of the reasons we had to close up shop is because we couldn't afford the medical insurance. Yes, it was cheaper than an individual plan, but still close to 2x what a large company would pay.
Without the insurance regime I know in advance that healthcare is my responsibility and I do what most people use to do: I find myself a good GP who doesn't cost an arm and a leg long before I'm ever in crises.
So having a good GP means that you'll never be in an accident or develop, say, some awful cancer?
Blue Cross/Shield were originally founded as non-profits (they actually used to be pretty good) by the doctors and hospitals because they weren't getting paid by people who needed lots of medical care (regardless of whether they'd had good GP's). That was in 1929, so what do you mean by "what most people used to do"? In the 19th century?
A gun is the difference between a citizen and a subject ...
Huh? What century do you think you are living in???
Three cornered hats are coming back into style.
Nevertheless, the Internet is still a useful reference when one wants to post such insightful and original slogans as the GP. Robert Heinlein would be proud. Sci-fi writers who target a somewhat more mature audience, not so much.
Mod parent up! Not sure if it was meant to be a parody, but it sure works as one.
Install Cygwin.
The idea is to have high res cameras to be able to catch everyone, everywhere, guilty of something or not.
In the same spirit as the USSR. They didn't have this fancy tech, but they tried. What many people don't know is that their law enforcement was terrible, in the sense of catching the bad guys. They simply wanted to sniff up everybody's butt. Some people like doing that, and will use anything to rationalize it. But honest-to-goodness law enforcement actually requires work, lots of it, and leads to fewer sweetheart contracts for useless equipment. American law enforcement is better is better precisely because of the Bill of Rights, not in spite of it. It forces law enforcement to justify their actions, and provide real evidence, instead of lazily saying "lock this guy up, case closed, we're going home".
Who the fuck cares about facial recognition, I say arm the citizens and save money and time.
Nice of you to promote your pet cause. Despite the protests of the NRA, you can buy firearms, even in Boston. Perhaps you're not satisfied with the citizen's choice to call the BPD instead of foolishly getting his head blown off. I might point out, that despite not playing Rambo, the actions of said citizen did lead to catching the perpetrators. I think that's a good thing - how about you?
If Dzhokhar is deemed an enemy combatant, all the victims would lose their health insurance coverage.
But regardless of whether he is declared an enemy combatant, he will receive any medical care he may need. God bless America, where we help the criminals/terrorists, but the victims can go screw themselves.
The same thing happened after 9/11. Many of the people who helped at the site, like construction workers who volunteered literally before the dust settled, and who were rightly hailed as heroes, got screwed on medical care. It was a national shame and little reported.
This is the biggest myth about health care: That people make "rational, informed" choices. ... There is a massive barrier to entry in providing services ... It ain't a "free market,"
Good arguments, but no good ideologue will let reality interfere with his beliefs.
Such things are always handled much more efficiently by the private market. If we had single payer, every Tom, Dick, and Harry would be going to the doctor every time they got a sniffle and the bill would be Trillions.
Houston, we have a problem. The proponents of "privately funded" healthcare now make arguments so absurd and divorced from reality that I have trouble telling them from sarcasm. AC: please clarify.
Could you please stick to nerdy stuff?
There only 2 postings out of 23 today that dealt with the Boston bombings.
inflammatory jokes get modded down
Inflammatory? Wow, new frontiers in political correctness.
Better to deal with it and try harder next time than to gripe about it.
Don't gripe? This is Slashdot!
before this case is even brought before a courtroom, police have already done the finger pointing, and the court of public opinion has already found him guilty
The police always do their finger pointing before the case is brought before a courtroom. Otherwise why would he be in the courtroom?
And I wouldn't worry too much about the court of public opinion. Odds are nobody here will serve on the jury, and nobody here is suggesting vigilante justice. I wouldn't even worry too much about him being railroaded since his trial will be very high profile. The real railroading occurs out of public scrutiny.
Why would I bother hiring IBM to do that when I can do it myself?
I think more (former) IBM customers are starting to figure that out. Here's an interesting story about IBM losing the contracts for Hilton Hotels and ServiceMaster due to bad service. The ServiceMaster one is particularly interesting. Despite the incredible shortage of good IT people, which necessitates tripling the H-1B quota, they had a job fair one Saturday and were able to hire everybody they needed for their new in-house IT operation. I'd bet they saved money on it too. So the offshoring that IBM does is basically a way of taking money out of the pockets of productive Americans and funneling it to their execs and shareholders. It does not save money, and it certainly doesn't get anything done better.
I hope this trend of seeing that the emperor has no clothes continues. For decades the conventional wisdom was that IBM wasn't cheap, but you always got quality and reliable service. Now the three letters mean nothing.
It's not the party that gets 15% of the vote that concern me. It's the one that gets 2%, gets 5 seats and then effects significant shifts in national policy as other major parties solicit its support.
Germany's Bundestag takes care of that by having a 5% threshold for representation by PR. I'm not sure I agree w/ that approach, but it would avoid the potential problem that concerns you.
P.S. Why don't you like cheese?
but they ought to just drop the M and call themselves 'International Business'.
Correction: 'India Business'.
Both my parents are above 70 and ...
Good for them. I wish them good health for at least a century. However, there are over 300 million people in the US, so you might want to look at something called "statistics".
As to the smokers, that may be true but the point is I still have to pay for their medical costs ...
You don't get it. Smokers save you money. Even if they didn't pay higher health insurance premiums, their shorter life spans mean that on average smokers have lower lifetime medical costs. They especially save on Medicare and Social Security costs. If you were actually interested in fairness you'd say that, if they pay higher insurance premiums before 65, they should have a reduction in their Medicare and Social Security taxes. And that analysis doesn't even include the "sin taxes" they pay on tobacco, which reduce your other taxes.
Most likely thought you don't give a rat's ass about fairness, except when your misinformation allows you to sanctimoniously complain about other people. Other countries do not have premiums that depend on smoking, weight, or even age. In Germany it only varies based of the cost of living in your area. In other countries even that doesn't matter. And it works. Other countries pay at least 1/3 less than the US (as a percentage of GDP, even greater savings if you use exchange rate or PPP), for medical care that's just as good or better than what we have in the US, and covers everyone. Complain about Obamacare because it doesn't go far enough, and is more of a customer guarantee for medical insurance and pharmaceutical companies than a plan for universal health care and cost savings.