If people can get maintenance care for little or no cost, they are far more likely to avoid the extreme costs of critical care
Then have insurance plans take this into account. Preventive/maintenance medical care isn't that expensive. I've seen CASH medical checkups, with a doctor, for about $50. Except for special cases, it should be less than $100.
For that matter, most people still the oil changed in their car regularly, even though that costs money. Rational people would place their health over their car's.
I remembered the name, but not the specifics. Quick google check fixed that.
I was thinking more along the lines of the Sentinels, personaly. Having a list of mutants would of made their job easier, but like with the gun registry, they'd be getting mostly the law-abiding mutants who meekly signed up because it was the law.
That's the problem, the employees made it conditional. You don't make it conditional.
"Excuse me Sir, you have to leave now" would have worked. Still, any of the 'performers' who refused could have been hauled into court for trespassing.
Now, I require a car to get to work (miles down a highway, no alternative route and nasty weather), but I drive a small fuel efficient car. If I need to move something big, I'll rent something. It's not that expensive.
Meanwhile I have lots of coworkers driving trucks or SUV's and complaining about gas prices.
The worst she could legally do to them, lacking a 'no blue shirts' type policy, and probably even then, would be to tell them that they have to leave, that they're not welcome at the store anymore. If they refused to leave the store in an expedient fashion(you don't have to run, but don't linger), then she could have the police charge them with trespassing. With it being a store, permission for the public to be on the property is assumed.
This was eventually done, at which point the people left.
For that matter, what effect would 'registration' have? How would having a list of 'Human WMDs' enhance your safety? It's like a gun registry. It only helps you when you feel the need to collect them from the law-abiding group who registered them according to the laws. The criminals aren't going to tell you about them. Besides, if you know enough to go after them for being a unregistered WMD, can't the government note that down in the list that way?
GURPs superheroes had a service where you could register your paranormal powers at an agency. If a situation came up that you'd be useful for, you could be called up and hired as a temporary contractor for extremely good money.
Do you have the ability to shrink down to 6" while retaining your normal strength? Well, Timmy fell down this well...
That's why smart people will buy insurance for the critical and expensive but unlikely medical needs. That's what insurance is for. Insurance isn't supposed to be used multiple times a year.
That's strange, my brother broke his arm, by paying cash he got half off for the x-ray & doctor's visit. Note: This wasn't being personally billed, which as a rather high non-pay rate, this is handing cold currency to the staff in the office.
Now, yes, many places do do this, because the insurance companies have forced the prices for them down and they're trying to make it up with the rare cash customer. If enough people paid cash however, that would change.
But if you're willing to work on it a bit, you can negotiate with them as well. It can even be illegal in some areas to charge the cash customer more.
This is why I'd prefer to seperate a person's job and their healthcare. Right now it's extremely expensive for an individual to obtain healthcare insurance on their own, and the tax benefits of employer provided healthcare too high.
It wouldn't be that difficult to adjust the laws such that people would be able to obtain their own healthcare solutions. Personally, I like the idea of healthcare savings plans backed up by a high-deductible insurance program. If you dump the amount that the average person costs per year to insure into a savings program, then assume that the majority don't spend all that money every year, especially during their early years, it's easy for the average person to accumulate enough money through retirement to cover even fairly major problems through cash reserves alone. Those with greater healthcare needs would be covered through insurance, or failing that, government assistance that meets the definition of 'rare'.
Add in some laws forbidding dumping/refusing of 'undesirables' and you're done.
Then stand up and say 'I refuse to work in these conditions'. Sure, you might have to take a lesser paying job and not be able to afford that SUV or 200,000 square foot house, but who really needs those? Are having those worth the extra medical bills?
Personal responsability. Take some. I get 30 days of holiday a year, not including most bank holidays. Sometimes I end up working them, due to 24 hour requirements for my shop.
You need to go back to school and learn the difference between feudalism and anarchy. Feudalism essentially a pyramid scheme of government, where successivly larger landowners gives fealty/loyalty to the next bigger one, promising to provide troops and support when asked. You're talking about anarchy, where there's no government.
As for privatizing municipal services, what's wrong with that? I mean, a coop is a private company, technically. What's wrong with having private companies haul garbage, provide phone service, etc...?
Wait, I thought the free market and privatization was supposed to make things cheaper? While state-run systems like the British NHS were supposed to be horribly inefficient and expensive?
I blame it on the fact that we don't have a true free market, privatized health care system. I mean, when was the last time you paid more than a deductable for your health care? Did you have a choice of more than one company for health care, choosen by your employer?
Truly privatized would be your work place paying you money to obtain your own health care. Whether you bank it and pay straight cash after that(frequently gets a 50% discount), or buy a health care insurance program, or some combination of the two is up to you.
For that matter, it's been estimated that half the cost of healthcare in the USA is paperwork. You have the clinics fighting the insurance companies for money. This costs money. I've heard about some doctors getting frustrated, then refusing to take any healthcare plans, finding that they can offer their services for cash, and still cover expenses while charging less than many people's deductables.
I'll also note on the whole 10 days thing that I've never heard of a place that doesn't give you at least two weeks. And there's plenty of people who don't get 'bank holidays'. 24 hour manned jobs, most storefronts, etc...
Don't need the whole thing along the entire border. That'd be the spots at highest risk of crossings.
Heck, if they reformed immigration & drug policy like I'd like them to, we'd be able to assume anybody crossing illegally is really bad. Tamper resistant motion sensors & cameras backed up by armed patrols. And of course the walls would be topped by concertia wire.
Chickenpox- You might want to have your kids to have the vaccine for chicken pox. Turns out that there's a chance 40-60 years down the road of developing shingles, a more serious disease, if you've had the chickenpox.
I've read enough literature that indicates that the body is designed such that it expects a certain amount of attacks, if it doesn't get them, you run an increased risk of immune response.
That's doesn't necessarily mean that you need to give all the shots at once, that's a political/cost savings measure, they're afraid that parent's won't bring their kids in often enough to get all the shots.
I mean, to get the full list of shots* now is something like 5-8 visits over the course of 20 years, and there are still lots of kids without them, enough to reduce the effectivness of herd immunity in some areas.
Then there's the difference between live and dead vaccines. General wisdom is that dead's safer, live results in better immunity. Why not give them the dead vaccine first, then switch to the live for a booster?
*Disregarding some of the more unusual ones I've had like smallpox and anthrax. The new lots of anthrax are far better than the old ones, side effect wise(the last old one I got burned like a SOB)
Makes sense, many of them have to travel miles and miles on foot in order to enter the USA. Many don't have vehicles even in the states. The ones in bad health tend to stay at home, or die on the way.
However, just because they're healtier on average doesn't mean much if they're not vaccinated and become a vector for spreading disease.
My quick solution: free vaccinations, no questions asked.
Personally I'd like to see them all deported and then have to apply to get back into the country. They broke the law and came here illegally and should have to suffer the punishment.
And I agree with you, while thinking that legal immigration should be far easier. Of course, I didn't like the pardon they gave all the vietnam war era draft dodgers either.
I'll accept a pardon/amnesty if I have to to get the overall fix of reforming our immigration policies.
Then we put some of them to work building the wall on the southern border. Being military, I think two walls, with a minefield in between would be good. Of course, they find 2-3 tunnels a season, often hundreds of yards long, that are mostly used for smuggling drugs. Of course, I'd legalize them as well.
Just what I was thinking. I've done some international travel, and yes, they really like looking at vaccination records.
In many cases, 'it's against my religion' won't work. Some countries will even tell you not to come if you can't be vaccinated due to having medical problems with vaccines such as being allergic to them.
My doctor agreed at the time that it wasn't safe for me to get another one in the future, but even so, when I've had to go to the health department to get shots for overseas travel, they give me the 3rd degree like I'm some sort of wacko anti-vaccine crusader.
Do you tell them that you had a bad reaction? Tetanus is potentially fatal, that's probably why they're concerned.
Personally, I'd check the box 'Have you ever had a bad reaction to...'. That'll get their attention.
But, as we're seeing in this article, if you allow immunity levels to drop such as by dropping vaccinations, the diseases can quickly come back.
My grandfather had polio, ended up on the iron lung for a while. He still walks with a limp, and he was one of the lucky ones.
I've been vaccinated for just about everything under the sun. Polio, Smallpox, you name it, I've had it, likely a couple extra times(docs lost my records a few times when I was a baby).
As for vaccinating your baby daughter against an STD, well, I'll say that vaccination should occur shortly before the potential infectious period. Given todays habits(and I'm talking averages, not your daughter), I'd say 15 is a good start time. By the way, what STD vaccine are you talking about?
As for anti-virals, have any of them been shown to work or do they only maybe-do-something?
Think about all the AIDs drugs. They work, at least for a time. There are a number that work, it's just that they're only effective against one virus, so it's just not worth it to develop them for non-fatal diseases. Many of them work kinda like artificial antibodies. They connect to the virus's protein body, preventing it from injecting it's payload. Some bind to the same sites as the virus, again, preventing it from injecting.
First, we know there have been a number of human bird flu deaths. So we know that it at least occasionally mutates into a form that can infect humans. Thus far, those mutations haven't been found to be infectious from a human host. This limits it's spread in humans, but your average viral infection involves millions of viral bodies, many of them mutated. All it takes is a 'lucky' mutation, then you have a highly infectious, highly deadly virus spreading among humans and killing a good percentage.
My hope is that when it does find that mutation, it's no longer infectious with birds. That'll at least limit the spread.
Simply having the surgery site open for less time would, in theory, lead to less complications due to blood loss, tissue oxidation and contamination. Surgical anaesthetics are not "good for you" and the less time spent on the table, the lower the risk from complications with these chemicals.
Agreed, for the most part. However, the quote of "$20,000 cheaper", would, on average indicate that these issues are less indicative than the benefits of taking their time and doing it the 'bloodless' way. Besides saving the $500 or so per pint of blood not used, the quicker recovery time allows the patient to be out of the hospital faster. Of course, $20,000 would be about a day's hospital stay in critical care.
It seems like most of the 'bloodless surgury' thing is more along the lines of surgeons being more careful and doing less damage. You could say the same thing about small-incision techniques, where they go from a foot long cut to a couple, each less than an inch.
If the JW's want to be this way and end up being the guinea pigs for the development of these techniques, let them. It extends the blood supply(I donate) for those who still need transfusions(accident cases where victim has already lost alot of blood), and speeds the development of better techniques that can be used for everyone.
The USA doesn't 'buy' blood either...
on
Bloodless Surgery
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· Score: 1
My understanding is that a unit of blood costs $500 Australian dollars - in a system that doesn't price blood for sale or pay donors to donate.
The costs will be higher in countries that do (eg., USA)
The USA doesn't buy blood either. Bought blood in the USA can only be used for non-human testing purposes. Anything to be used in a human being has to be donated.
There are provisions for funding red cross for the actual collection purposes.
It might seem strange, but blood products intended for research can be cheaper than the donated materials. The money they pay the donors is lost in the shuffle, and is compensated by greater efficiency of labor.
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If people can get maintenance care for little or no cost, they are far more likely to avoid the extreme costs of critical care
Then have insurance plans take this into account. Preventive/maintenance medical care isn't that expensive. I've seen CASH medical checkups, with a doctor, for about $50. Except for special cases, it should be less than $100.
For that matter, most people still the oil changed in their car regularly, even though that costs money. Rational people would place their health over their car's.
I remembered the name, but not the specifics. Quick google check fixed that.
I was thinking more along the lines of the Sentinels, personaly. Having a list of mutants would of made their job easier, but like with the gun registry, they'd be getting mostly the law-abiding mutants who meekly signed up because it was the law.
That's the problem, the employees made it conditional. You don't make it conditional.
"Excuse me Sir, you have to leave now" would have worked. Still, any of the 'performers' who refused could have been hauled into court for trespassing.
Sounds like my plan for years.
Now, I require a car to get to work (miles down a highway, no alternative route and nasty weather), but I drive a small fuel efficient car. If I need to move something big, I'll rent something. It's not that expensive.
Meanwhile I have lots of coworkers driving trucks or SUV's and complaining about gas prices.
The worst she could legally do to them, lacking a 'no blue shirts' type policy, and probably even then, would be to tell them that they have to leave, that they're not welcome at the store anymore. If they refused to leave the store in an expedient fashion(you don't have to run, but don't linger), then she could have the police charge them with trespassing. With it being a store, permission for the public to be on the property is assumed.
This was eventually done, at which point the people left.
For that matter, what effect would 'registration' have? How would having a list of 'Human WMDs' enhance your safety? It's like a gun registry. It only helps you when you feel the need to collect them from the law-abiding group who registered them according to the laws. The criminals aren't going to tell you about them. Besides, if you know enough to go after them for being a unregistered WMD, can't the government note that down in the list that way?
GURPs superheroes had a service where you could register your paranormal powers at an agency. If a situation came up that you'd be useful for, you could be called up and hired as a temporary contractor for extremely good money.
Do you have the ability to shrink down to 6" while retaining your normal strength? Well, Timmy fell down this well...
That's why smart people will buy insurance for the critical and expensive but unlikely medical needs. That's what insurance is for. Insurance isn't supposed to be used multiple times a year.
That's strange, my brother broke his arm, by paying cash he got half off for the x-ray & doctor's visit. Note: This wasn't being personally billed, which as a rather high non-pay rate, this is handing cold currency to the staff in the office.
Now, yes, many places do do this, because the insurance companies have forced the prices for them down and they're trying to make it up with the rare cash customer. If enough people paid cash however, that would change.
But if you're willing to work on it a bit, you can negotiate with them as well. It can even be illegal in some areas to charge the cash customer more.
This is why I'd prefer to seperate a person's job and their healthcare. Right now it's extremely expensive for an individual to obtain healthcare insurance on their own, and the tax benefits of employer provided healthcare too high.
It wouldn't be that difficult to adjust the laws such that people would be able to obtain their own healthcare solutions. Personally, I like the idea of healthcare savings plans backed up by a high-deductible insurance program. If you dump the amount that the average person costs per year to insure into a savings program, then assume that the majority don't spend all that money every year, especially during their early years, it's easy for the average person to accumulate enough money through retirement to cover even fairly major problems through cash reserves alone. Those with greater healthcare needs would be covered through insurance, or failing that, government assistance that meets the definition of 'rare'.
Add in some laws forbidding dumping/refusing of 'undesirables' and you're done.
Then stand up and say 'I refuse to work in these conditions'. Sure, you might have to take a lesser paying job and not be able to afford that SUV or 200,000 square foot house, but who really needs those? Are having those worth the extra medical bills?
Personal responsability. Take some. I get 30 days of holiday a year, not including most bank holidays. Sometimes I end up working them, due to 24 hour requirements for my shop.
You need to go back to school and learn the difference between feudalism and anarchy.
Feudalism essentially a pyramid scheme of government, where successivly larger landowners gives fealty/loyalty to the next bigger one, promising to provide troops and support when asked.
You're talking about anarchy, where there's no government.
As for privatizing municipal services, what's wrong with that? I mean, a coop is a private company, technically. What's wrong with having private companies haul garbage, provide phone service, etc...?
Then what's the plan for those people who end up working holidays, such as EMT's, storefront workers, 24 hour manned shops, etc?
Wait, I thought the free market and privatization was supposed to make things cheaper? While state-run systems like the British NHS were supposed to be horribly inefficient and expensive?
I blame it on the fact that we don't have a true free market, privatized health care system. I mean, when was the last time you paid more than a deductable for your health care? Did you have a choice of more than one company for health care, choosen by your employer?
Truly privatized would be your work place paying you money to obtain your own health care. Whether you bank it and pay straight cash after that(frequently gets a 50% discount), or buy a health care insurance program, or some combination of the two is up to you.
For that matter, it's been estimated that half the cost of healthcare in the USA is paperwork. You have the clinics fighting the insurance companies for money. This costs money. I've heard about some doctors getting frustrated, then refusing to take any healthcare plans, finding that they can offer their services for cash, and still cover expenses while charging less than many people's deductables.
I'll also note on the whole 10 days thing that I've never heard of a place that doesn't give you at least two weeks. And there's plenty of people who don't get 'bank holidays'. 24 hour manned jobs, most storefronts, etc...
Personally I've become all for gun turrets at the border.
How about declaring a hunting season along the border? I mean, you'd get people to pay to play.
Of course, I have to point out this part of my post: thinking that legal immigration should be far easier
I'm talking of a level where it's cheaper(compared to hiring a mule), safer, and easier to come legally.
Don't need the whole thing along the entire border. That'd be the spots at highest risk of crossings.
Heck, if they reformed immigration & drug policy like I'd like them to, we'd be able to assume anybody crossing illegally is really bad. Tamper resistant motion sensors & cameras backed up by armed patrols. And of course the walls would be topped by concertia wire.
Chickenpox- You might want to have your kids to have the vaccine for chicken pox. Turns out that there's a chance 40-60 years down the road of developing shingles, a more serious disease, if you've had the chickenpox.
I've read enough literature that indicates that the body is designed such that it expects a certain amount of attacks, if it doesn't get them, you run an increased risk of immune response.
That's doesn't necessarily mean that you need to give all the shots at once, that's a political/cost savings measure, they're afraid that parent's won't bring their kids in often enough to get all the shots.
I mean, to get the full list of shots* now is something like 5-8 visits over the course of 20 years, and there are still lots of kids without them, enough to reduce the effectivness of herd immunity in some areas.
Then there's the difference between live and dead vaccines. General wisdom is that dead's safer, live results in better immunity. Why not give them the dead vaccine first, then switch to the live for a booster?
*Disregarding some of the more unusual ones I've had like smallpox and anthrax. The new lots of anthrax are far better than the old ones, side effect wise(the last old one I got burned like a SOB)
Makes sense, many of them have to travel miles and miles on foot in order to enter the USA. Many don't have vehicles even in the states. The ones in bad health tend to stay at home, or die on the way.
However, just because they're healtier on average doesn't mean much if they're not vaccinated and become a vector for spreading disease.
My quick solution: free vaccinations, no questions asked.
Personally I'd like to see them all deported and then have to apply to get back into the country. They broke the law and came here illegally and should have to suffer the punishment.
And I agree with you, while thinking that legal immigration should be far easier. Of course, I didn't like the pardon they gave all the vietnam war era draft dodgers either.
I'll accept a pardon/amnesty if I have to to get the overall fix of reforming our immigration policies.
Then we put some of them to work building the wall on the southern border. Being military, I think two walls, with a minefield in between would be good. Of course, they find 2-3 tunnels a season, often hundreds of yards long, that are mostly used for smuggling drugs. Of course, I'd legalize them as well.
Just what I was thinking. I've done some international travel, and yes, they really like looking at vaccination records.
In many cases, 'it's against my religion' won't work. Some countries will even tell you not to come if you can't be vaccinated due to having medical problems with vaccines such as being allergic to them.
My doctor agreed at the time that it wasn't safe for me to get another one in the future, but even so, when I've had to go to the health department to get shots for overseas travel, they give me the 3rd degree like I'm some sort of wacko anti-vaccine crusader.
Do you tell them that you had a bad reaction? Tetanus is potentially fatal, that's probably why they're concerned.
Personally, I'd check the box 'Have you ever had a bad reaction to...'. That'll get their attention.
But, as we're seeing in this article, if you allow immunity levels to drop such as by dropping vaccinations, the diseases can quickly come back.
My grandfather had polio, ended up on the iron lung for a while. He still walks with a limp, and he was one of the lucky ones.
I've been vaccinated for just about everything under the sun. Polio, Smallpox, you name it, I've had it, likely a couple extra times(docs lost my records a few times when I was a baby).
As for vaccinating your baby daughter against an STD, well, I'll say that vaccination should occur shortly before the potential infectious period. Given todays habits(and I'm talking averages, not your daughter), I'd say 15 is a good start time. By the way, what STD vaccine are you talking about?
As for anti-virals, have any of them been shown to work or do they only maybe-do-something?
Think about all the AIDs drugs. They work, at least for a time.
There are a number that work, it's just that they're only effective against one virus, so it's just not worth it to develop them for non-fatal diseases. Many of them work kinda like artificial antibodies. They connect to the virus's protein body, preventing it from injecting it's payload. Some bind to the same sites as the virus, again, preventing it from injecting.
First, we know there have been a number of human bird flu deaths. So we know that it at least occasionally mutates into a form that can infect humans. Thus far, those mutations haven't been found to be infectious from a human host. This limits it's spread in humans, but your average viral infection involves millions of viral bodies, many of them mutated. All it takes is a 'lucky' mutation, then you have a highly infectious, highly deadly virus spreading among humans and killing a good percentage.
My hope is that when it does find that mutation, it's no longer infectious with birds. That'll at least limit the spread.
Simply having the surgery site open for less time would, in theory, lead to less complications due to blood loss, tissue oxidation and contamination. Surgical anaesthetics are not "good for you" and the less time spent on the table, the lower the risk from complications with these chemicals.
Agreed, for the most part. However, the quote of "$20,000 cheaper", would, on average indicate that these issues are less indicative than the benefits of taking their time and doing it the 'bloodless' way. Besides saving the $500 or so per pint of blood not used, the quicker recovery time allows the patient to be out of the hospital faster. Of course, $20,000 would be about a day's hospital stay in critical care.
It seems like most of the 'bloodless surgury' thing is more along the lines of surgeons being more careful and doing less damage. You could say the same thing about small-incision techniques, where they go from a foot long cut to a couple, each less than an inch.
If the JW's want to be this way and end up being the guinea pigs for the development of these techniques, let them. It extends the blood supply(I donate) for those who still need transfusions(accident cases where victim has already lost alot of blood), and speeds the development of better techniques that can be used for everyone.
My understanding is that a unit of blood costs $500 Australian dollars - in a system that doesn't price blood for sale or pay donors to donate.
The costs will be higher in countries that do (eg., USA)
The USA doesn't buy blood either. Bought blood in the USA can only be used for non-human testing purposes. Anything to be used in a human being has to be donated.
There are provisions for funding red cross for the actual collection purposes.
It might seem strange, but blood products intended for research can be cheaper than the donated materials. The money they pay the donors is lost in the shuffle, and is compensated by greater efficiency of labor.