If you really believe in it, sell everything you own right now (including the computer you typed up your response on) and send the money to Africa through one of the many reputable poverty abatement programs. That money will save many lives.
Do it or you're being selfish and letting children die!
I'll keep an eye on your user name to see if you're posting anymore after today. If you are, I know that you rationalized why you get to keep your stuff and it's not selfish.
If the guy shows up at the ER with a massive coronary from over-indulging on Big Macs his whole life, sure they try to stabilize him. Then they either send him to the morgue or send him home asking him to take better care of himself.
Now when that person who's never paid a dime into the system tax or premium-wise goes to get a check-up and the doctor orders a triple-bypass, he gets very expensive surgery, the doctor makes even more money, and the insurance company gets reimbursed by tax payers. Then he still stuffs his face with Big Macs and shows up later at the ER.
I think I'd rather that the guy live with the stigma of not having insurance and have us all realize that it's WRONG for people to have no thoughts of taking care of themselves, buying health insurance, saving for a rainy day, etc.
Really, we're just legitimizing and encouraging shitty behavior without attacking the bigger problem of letting consumers make smart decisions about the costs of health care which would force health care providers to provide quality health care at a low cost. The doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies still get to play all their same games with hidden costs, unnecessary procedures, and no accountability.
Calling everyone "insured" seems like a feel-good measure that has the unintended consequence of putting even more people into doctors' offices where they're going to be receiving more unnecessary high-priced procedures.
Right! Everything we get is from our government and a society that takes care of us and to which we owe everything. We should happily work like drones for the good of everyone and smile at the little scraps that our all-wise leaders let us keep for ourselves. Hell, we don't even deserve those anyway!
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Yeah, I really understand where you're coming from, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
I completely disagree with that premise. Money isn't just a piece of paper to me. It's all the hard work I've done my whole life, all the sacrifices I've made, all the pain I've been through, all the fun I DIDN'T have so that I could keep the paper. More than that, it's all the future plans I have for it. It's the health and welfare of MY family... MY children. It's my retirement and MY health as my life progresses and expensive procedures and surgeries may be required to ensure my continuing quality of life.
At its very core, money is the freedom I have carved out of this world for myself. It's the freedom to spend my time and my efforts toward the things that I care about; whether I actively do those things today or I work hard to save my money so I can do them next year.
For someone to come along and imply that my life's work is "only money" that they are going to decide to spend however they want because they have the power of force over me is the ultimate insult. Fuck them. I want my freedom. I want my money. I earned it and they're fucking leeches who hold popularity contests to get themselves elected and then they steal from hard workers to pay off their friends and their co-conspirators.
I blame the Republicans for not doing more to force competition amongst insurance companies across the country and transparency between doctors, insurance companies, and hospitals back when they had control of Washington.
Now we're stuck with this half-assed socialistic non-solution power and money grab.
What about my coworkers who refuse to walk up one flight of stairs or drink a liter of Pepsi every day? Why should I have to pay for their medical expenses when they can't be bothered to take care of themselves?
I know. It sucks. You work hard to pay your bills, get educated, take care of your family, exercise, keep yourself out of trouble, and for what? Some jackass politician just walks in and takes away things from you that represent a great deal of denying yourself pleasures along the way.
The constant erosion of freedom and opportunity in this country just makes me heart sick. Makes me just want to say "fuck it", and figure out ways to game the system like everyone else.
A bill worked out behind closed doors with a historically massive price just made its way through congress, and you're celebrating because your team scored one? "likely won't change much of anything in their lives"? Really? So that trillion dollars is just going to be paid by other folks, right?
I don't care which party does it. Every time "significant legislation" makes its way through congress that increases the size of government, it's always a nightmare and a step backward.
"stops insurance companies basically doing whatever they like"... it plugs a few gaps, I guess. More than anything it theoretically eliminates the "uninsured"; but now the rest of us officially pay for them when we were only unofficially paying for them before. How does that help?
On top of that, what happens when someone who has no health insurance and who hasn't paid any fines goes to the emergency room? Are they turned away now? Or given free insurance on the spot?
"not affect anyone who is currently happy with their insurance"
Who is happy with their insurance? Premiums have been skyrocketing because insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors practically collude to hide the massive amounts of money that they move into their pocketbooks. Now they still get to do that, but we have an extra trillion dollars (and do you think that's the total bil??) to pay for with taxes and other costs that will make it back to consumers.
You can decry the Fox news bogey man all you want, but this bill looks like a disaster from what I've read so far.
It's the truth that the feds should shut down sites that create nothing, contribute nothing, and make someone money?
Are you on crack?
Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
I saw George Stephansnufalufagous mentioning it on GMA this morning. The context was that the bill proponents were happy that the cost was under a trillion dollars... but that was only by about 80 billion.
Re:This bill has nothing to do with health care.
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
I just read through that "rational free-market plan". That sums up a good number of the common sense approaches I've read.
Amazingly, it's just a few simple rules and laws to make that happen. Even congress wouldn't need more than a hundred pages to describe those measures, but they would turn the health care industry in this country on its collective ear - forcing competition and a dramatic drop in prices.
That this kind of system isn't even under consideration is a direct indicator of the corruption and incompetence of government and the stupidity of voters who keep putting these jerks into office.
Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
Why does it cost almost a trillion dollars to set up mandates and some oversight?
The best thing that a health care bill could do is to open up competition and transparency.
If only you could buy health care insurance as an individual from anywhere in the US. If only doctors and hospitals would be forced to give health care consumers basic pricing information that applied equally whether I was paying with insurance or cash. These games they play with the insurance companies to increase revenue for both is ridiculous.
For example, I was planning to have a minor routine procedure this year; so last year I was considering carefully how much money to put into my FSA. My doctor had done thousands of this procedure, but his office could not give me a price or even a good ballpark. As a developer, if I couldn't give a customer a price ahead of time for something routine that I had specialized in and been doing for years, I wouldn't expect that customer to work with me.
Is your premise true? That the US health care system is under the management of private industry?
I would argue that the health care system we have is a monopoly that is shored up by wiling politicians who at best refuse to take simple steps to promote competition and transparency of costs and who pays what to consumers.
I don't understand how someone could say that tort reform is a red herring.
In terms of the direct financial impact of malpractice insurance and litigation costs, tort reform doesn't help more than a few percent or so. But in terms of the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on unnecessary treatment because doctors are paralyzed to do anything besides order the extra tests and procedures, tort reform would make a HUGE difference.
Unnecessary treatment should have been dealt with head on, and tort reform is a key part of it since being sued is the excuse that doctors give for ordering all of that and the excuse that insurance companies give for allowing it. In reality, they LOVE it. Doctors get paid extra per procedure, and insurance companies just pass the costs on through premiums, making sure to collect their extra percentages.
Law suits are like terrorism. They affect the whole system in an extremely disproportionate measure beyond their direct impact due to the way that people change their behavior.
Yeah, since voters have such a great track record for understanding what happens on the political landscape, how it affects the future, and then holding them accountable.
No, that doesn't happen. People are too stupid to vote on candidate performance records and issues using logic and some kind of understanding of policy impact. They vote for their political teams, for the guy that's physically attractive, well spoken, is the right color, went to the right church, was a celebrity in hollywood, or had a professional sports career.
Integrity, intelligence, consistency, willingness to put the office and the people and society ahead of their own naked ambitions? Nah, not so important.
Really, we're fucked. It'll take a bloody revolution against an oppressive government somewhere in the world to forge a new society that properly distrusts government like our founding fathers did. Then maybe something besides this socialistic mediocrity that we put up with now will shine for a few centuries until stupid people inevitably pull it down again.
People are stupid and too short-sighted to understand the impact of handing government more and more power.
Pretty much as you imply, telecom companies fail at good capitalism virtues of efficiency and rapid increase in value because they're monopolies. Government is the ultimate monopoly... the worst one of all since they're the only entity in the country that can legally come in and use force to make you comply with their policies.
Keep voting for politicians who know how to grab and keep power.
Keep voting for politicians who will buy votes with "free" health care, farm subsidies, and the eternal money pit of social welfare programs.
Keep voting for politicians who will wage endless expensive wars in other countries or against drugs or against poverty.
Keep voting for politicians so in bed with obviously toxic society-destroying entities like the teachers' unions, the American Bar Association, PACs, etc.
Keep voting for politicians who are okay with special privileges only for them and their political friends.
Keep voting for politicians who keep raising taxes and the debt ceiling because obviously they haven't received enough money and power yet.
Go ahead, look at that list above and pick out the things that "the other party" does and nod your head in agreement. Ignore the equally destructive sins of your own party since their shiny beads are worth selling your soul for.
Meh, it depends. My wife is a teacher by trade and has moved through public and private school teaching circles for quite some years now.
Some teachers take their work home with them and work the extra hours. They spend all their time at school teaching which means they have to grade papers, plan lessons, and do other things after hours. These types of teachers normally don't give out tons of homework since they cover so much in class. These are good teachers who care about what they're doing. It's likely that they're underpaid for what they do, although I think you exaggerate the work load when you factor in the hugely generous vacation schedule. Compare the typical 20-25 days off that most American companies offer vs the 70-80 days off that teachers get.
Some teachers get their grading and other work done during school hours when they could be teaching. They'll teach for a while and then give the class lots of "assignments" or in-class work that leaves them time to get their non-teaching work finished. These are sometimes okay teachers depending upon how effectively they use their teaching time and how carefully they're planning out lessons. You can usually see the lack of effort in the presentation of the class when you visit and in the stories from students. Homework load in these teachers' classes is normally heavier. These teachers are a necessary evil in most places. It's hard to find really motivated employees in every industry.
Some teachers spend most of their in-class time reading books, reading email, gossipping with other teachers, and just generally wasting time. They give their students lots of self-study time where they are required to open their books up and work out how to solve the problems and learn the material that the teacher should have been helping them with. Homework load is high, which is actually a bit of a misleading indicator to some parents who think "more homework == harder class == better education". In reality, the more homework stems from the fact that the teacher just isn't covering much in class. These teachers should be fired as soon as possible without having to go to some teachers' union to prove beyond all shadow of a doubt that they're child molesters. Schools should be run like businesses where you keep the great employees, you get rid of the crappy ones, and you try to teach everyone you keep employed to do a better job.
If this were just the accuser vs the teacher in something that resembled a court of law, then I'd agree with you.
The unions and weak politicians have created such a mess though, there is almost no limit to what a teacher can do wrong and still just be classified as "accused".
It’s because I’ve found, over the years, that insisting on a contract before development starts will result either in a delayed start or even a project being shelved
So he isn't clear and up front with his clients and then his business dealings get confused... um.... duh?
I create a Statement of Work for every client that clearly spells out what I'm doing, what they get, how it should work, what they're paying for, and sometimes what they are NOT paying for. I've lost a negligible percentage of projects because I wrote up a SOW and the client didn't go through with it; and to the ones I did lose I say "good riddance". Any client who can't sign a piece of paper to protect both parties is normally the kind of client that knows how to take advantage of a contractor more easily without an agreement in place.
Okay, the guy is 81. I hate to rip on him too much, but it really seems like he's mostly known for submitting patents.
None of the floppy disk history that I looked up mentioned anything about him except that IBM has some deal with him to prevent a "conflict". Patent troll? The CD history I glanced through didn't mention him either. At best, I think he could say that he made some minor contribution to the CD - not that he had invented it. The video showed a bunch of his other inventions, like a magical chair that makes you more creative or something. He mentioned that a US cancer patient wanted to sit in it. And that proves what? Quack quack quack.
Then he's ragging on Edison in the video... a guy who actually invented useful shit.
Seems like a bit of a whack job with an image of himself out of proportion to what he's actually accomplished.
Slashdot Mirror
Inflammatory bullshit.
If you really believe in it, sell everything you own right now (including the computer you typed up your response on) and send the money to Africa through one of the many reputable poverty abatement programs. That money will save many lives.
Do it or you're being selfish and letting children die!
I'll keep an eye on your user name to see if you're posting anymore after today. If you are, I know that you rationalized why you get to keep your stuff and it's not selfish.
How is it any more efficient?
If the guy shows up at the ER with a massive coronary from over-indulging on Big Macs his whole life, sure they try to stabilize him. Then they either send him to the morgue or send him home asking him to take better care of himself.
Now when that person who's never paid a dime into the system tax or premium-wise goes to get a check-up and the doctor orders a triple-bypass, he gets very expensive surgery, the doctor makes even more money, and the insurance company gets reimbursed by tax payers. Then he still stuffs his face with Big Macs and shows up later at the ER.
I think I'd rather that the guy live with the stigma of not having insurance and have us all realize that it's WRONG for people to have no thoughts of taking care of themselves, buying health insurance, saving for a rainy day, etc.
Really, we're just legitimizing and encouraging shitty behavior without attacking the bigger problem of letting consumers make smart decisions about the costs of health care which would force health care providers to provide quality health care at a low cost. The doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies still get to play all their same games with hidden costs, unnecessary procedures, and no accountability.
Calling everyone "insured" seems like a feel-good measure that has the unintended consequence of putting even more people into doctors' offices where they're going to be receiving more unnecessary high-priced procedures.
Right! Everything we get is from our government and a society that takes care of us and to which we owe everything. We should happily work like drones for the good of everyone and smile at the little scraps that our all-wise leaders let us keep for ourselves. Hell, we don't even deserve those anyway!
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Yeah, I really understand where you're coming from, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
humans are way more important than money
I completely disagree with that premise. Money isn't just a piece of paper to me. It's all the hard work I've done my whole life, all the sacrifices I've made, all the pain I've been through, all the fun I DIDN'T have so that I could keep the paper. More than that, it's all the future plans I have for it. It's the health and welfare of MY family... MY children. It's my retirement and MY health as my life progresses and expensive procedures and surgeries may be required to ensure my continuing quality of life.
At its very core, money is the freedom I have carved out of this world for myself. It's the freedom to spend my time and my efforts toward the things that I care about; whether I actively do those things today or I work hard to save my money so I can do them next year.
For someone to come along and imply that my life's work is "only money" that they are going to decide to spend however they want because they have the power of force over me is the ultimate insult. Fuck them. I want my freedom. I want my money. I earned it and they're fucking leeches who hold popularity contests to get themselves elected and then they steal from hard workers to pay off their friends and their co-conspirators.
I blame the Republicans for not doing more to force competition amongst insurance companies across the country and transparency between doctors, insurance companies, and hospitals back when they had control of Washington.
Now we're stuck with this half-assed socialistic non-solution power and money grab.
What about my coworkers who refuse to walk up one flight of stairs or drink a liter of Pepsi every day? Why should I have to pay for their medical expenses when they can't be bothered to take care of themselves?
I know. It sucks. You work hard to pay your bills, get educated, take care of your family, exercise, keep yourself out of trouble, and for what? Some jackass politician just walks in and takes away things from you that represent a great deal of denying yourself pleasures along the way.
The constant erosion of freedom and opportunity in this country just makes me heart sick. Makes me just want to say "fuck it", and figure out ways to game the system like everyone else.
A bill worked out behind closed doors with a historically massive price just made its way through congress, and you're celebrating because your team scored one? "likely won't change much of anything in their lives"? Really? So that trillion dollars is just going to be paid by other folks, right?
I don't care which party does it. Every time "significant legislation" makes its way through congress that increases the size of government, it's always a nightmare and a step backward.
"stops insurance companies basically doing whatever they like"... it plugs a few gaps, I guess. More than anything it theoretically eliminates the "uninsured"; but now the rest of us officially pay for them when we were only unofficially paying for them before. How does that help?
On top of that, what happens when someone who has no health insurance and who hasn't paid any fines goes to the emergency room? Are they turned away now? Or given free insurance on the spot?
"not affect anyone who is currently happy with their insurance"
Who is happy with their insurance? Premiums have been skyrocketing because insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors practically collude to hide the massive amounts of money that they move into their pocketbooks. Now they still get to do that, but we have an extra trillion dollars (and do you think that's the total bil??) to pay for with taxes and other costs that will make it back to consumers.
You can decry the Fox news bogey man all you want, but this bill looks like a disaster from what I've read so far.
Right, it's a question of which is cheaper; the fine or the insurance.
It's the truth that the feds should shut down sites that create nothing, contribute nothing, and make someone money?
Are you on crack?
I saw George Stephansnufalufagous mentioning it on GMA this morning. The context was that the bill proponents were happy that the cost was under a trillion dollars... but that was only by about 80 billion.
I just read through that "rational free-market plan". That sums up a good number of the common sense approaches I've read.
Amazingly, it's just a few simple rules and laws to make that happen. Even congress wouldn't need more than a hundred pages to describe those measures, but they would turn the health care industry in this country on its collective ear - forcing competition and a dramatic drop in prices.
That this kind of system isn't even under consideration is a direct indicator of the corruption and incompetence of government and the stupidity of voters who keep putting these jerks into office.
Why does it cost almost a trillion dollars to set up mandates and some oversight?
The best thing that a health care bill could do is to open up competition and transparency.
If only you could buy health care insurance as an individual from anywhere in the US. If only doctors and hospitals would be forced to give health care consumers basic pricing information that applied equally whether I was paying with insurance or cash. These games they play with the insurance companies to increase revenue for both is ridiculous.
For example, I was planning to have a minor routine procedure this year; so last year I was considering carefully how much money to put into my FSA. My doctor had done thousands of this procedure, but his office could not give me a price or even a good ballpark. As a developer, if I couldn't give a customer a price ahead of time for something routine that I had specialized in and been doing for years, I wouldn't expect that customer to work with me.
Is your premise true? That the US health care system is under the management of private industry?
I would argue that the health care system we have is a monopoly that is shored up by wiling politicians who at best refuse to take simple steps to promote competition and transparency of costs and who pays what to consumers.
I don't understand how someone could say that tort reform is a red herring.
In terms of the direct financial impact of malpractice insurance and litigation costs, tort reform doesn't help more than a few percent or so. But in terms of the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on unnecessary treatment because doctors are paralyzed to do anything besides order the extra tests and procedures, tort reform would make a HUGE difference.
Unnecessary treatment should have been dealt with head on, and tort reform is a key part of it since being sued is the excuse that doctors give for ordering all of that and the excuse that insurance companies give for allowing it. In reality, they LOVE it. Doctors get paid extra per procedure, and insurance companies just pass the costs on through premiums, making sure to collect their extra percentages.
Law suits are like terrorism. They affect the whole system in an extremely disproportionate measure beyond their direct impact due to the way that people change their behavior.
Yeah, since voters have such a great track record for understanding what happens on the political landscape, how it affects the future, and then holding them accountable.
No, that doesn't happen. People are too stupid to vote on candidate performance records and issues using logic and some kind of understanding of policy impact. They vote for their political teams, for the guy that's physically attractive, well spoken, is the right color, went to the right church, was a celebrity in hollywood, or had a professional sports career.
Integrity, intelligence, consistency, willingness to put the office and the people and society ahead of their own naked ambitions? Nah, not so important.
Really, we're fucked. It'll take a bloody revolution against an oppressive government somewhere in the world to forge a new society that properly distrusts government like our founding fathers did. Then maybe something besides this socialistic mediocrity that we put up with now will shine for a few centuries until stupid people inevitably pull it down again.
People are stupid and too short-sighted to understand the impact of handing government more and more power.
Pretty much as you imply, telecom companies fail at good capitalism virtues of efficiency and rapid increase in value because they're monopolies. Government is the ultimate monopoly... the worst one of all since they're the only entity in the country that can legally come in and use force to make you comply with their policies.
Go ahead, look at that list above and pick out the things that "the other party" does and nod your head in agreement. Ignore the equally destructive sins of your own party since their shiny beads are worth selling your soul for.
Meh, it depends. My wife is a teacher by trade and has moved through public and private school teaching circles for quite some years now.
Some teachers take their work home with them and work the extra hours. They spend all their time at school teaching which means they have to grade papers, plan lessons, and do other things after hours. These types of teachers normally don't give out tons of homework since they cover so much in class. These are good teachers who care about what they're doing. It's likely that they're underpaid for what they do, although I think you exaggerate the work load when you factor in the hugely generous vacation schedule. Compare the typical 20-25 days off that most American companies offer vs the 70-80 days off that teachers get.
Some teachers get their grading and other work done during school hours when they could be teaching. They'll teach for a while and then give the class lots of "assignments" or in-class work that leaves them time to get their non-teaching work finished. These are sometimes okay teachers depending upon how effectively they use their teaching time and how carefully they're planning out lessons. You can usually see the lack of effort in the presentation of the class when you visit and in the stories from students. Homework load in these teachers' classes is normally heavier. These teachers are a necessary evil in most places. It's hard to find really motivated employees in every industry.
Some teachers spend most of their in-class time reading books, reading email, gossipping with other teachers, and just generally wasting time. They give their students lots of self-study time where they are required to open their books up and work out how to solve the problems and learn the material that the teacher should have been helping them with. Homework load is high, which is actually a bit of a misleading indicator to some parents who think "more homework == harder class == better education". In reality, the more homework stems from the fact that the teacher just isn't covering much in class. These teachers should be fired as soon as possible without having to go to some teachers' union to prove beyond all shadow of a doubt that they're child molesters. Schools should be run like businesses where you keep the great employees, you get rid of the crappy ones, and you try to teach everyone you keep employed to do a better job.
If this were just the accuser vs the teacher in something that resembled a court of law, then I'd agree with you.
The unions and weak politicians have created such a mess though, there is almost no limit to what a teacher can do wrong and still just be classified as "accused".
Read TFA. It's very different.
The author of TFA says it best:
So he isn't clear and up front with his clients and then his business dealings get confused... um.... duh?
I create a Statement of Work for every client that clearly spells out what I'm doing, what they get, how it should work, what they're paying for, and sometimes what they are NOT paying for. I've lost a negligible percentage of projects because I wrote up a SOW and the client didn't go through with it; and to the ones I did lose I say "good riddance". Any client who can't sign a piece of paper to protect both parties is normally the kind of client that knows how to take advantage of a contractor more easily without an agreement in place.
People peeing on bushes are the rare outliers that no one is really gunning for. Removing them from any lists should be a priority.
You'll forgive me if I don't shed too many tears for the repeat offenders who should have been castrated.
Okay, the guy is 81. I hate to rip on him too much, but it really seems like he's mostly known for submitting patents.
None of the floppy disk history that I looked up mentioned anything about him except that IBM has some deal with him to prevent a "conflict". Patent troll? The CD history I glanced through didn't mention him either. At best, I think he could say that he made some minor contribution to the CD - not that he had invented it. The video showed a bunch of his other inventions, like a magical chair that makes you more creative or something. He mentioned that a US cancer patient wanted to sit in it. And that proves what? Quack quack quack.
Then he's ragging on Edison in the video... a guy who actually invented useful shit.
Seems like a bit of a whack job with an image of himself out of proportion to what he's actually accomplished.