Your stats are pretty much junk. OF COURSE we spend more, we have more people than any other country in the modern world, including Australia, Canada and the UK and our health care system is among the best (if not the best) in the world.
Personally, I don't see what all the hubbub was about with healthcare in the first place. Did we have uninsured? Yes. Where they getting necessary treatment? Yes. They just waked into the emergency room and got treatment, regardless of their ability to pay or who they where...
Where there *some* issues? Yes, but no system is perfect, including the UK, Australia's and Canada's systems where cost controls necessitate limits on what medical care can be given on the public dime, or bankruptcy comes quickly.
But we digress... Until you put people back in charge of paying their medical bills, the only thing you can do to control cost is to put price controls in place and ration services though some kind of rules. That's all you got, and that just means that doctors get less, pharmaceutical companies get less and the person receiving the care gets less.
I say that we let the free market fix this by putting people back into a position of responsibility for the costs of their healthcare. There are many ways to do this, but it starts with consumers having to pay their own bills directly (Not that insurance doesn't reimburse but that YOU write the check to the provider) and if you incur less cost for your care, it benefits you.
IF you do the above, I can guarantee that medical bills will quickly become understandable by the average consumer because the person who's cutting the checks for the bills will demand it.
I'm fully aware that medical services sometimes cannot be known in advance, especially in emergencies. However, the BULK of medical costs ARE foreseeable and you CAN control the point of service based on cost as an individual. I can choose to hit up the Emergency room Sunday afternoon for my runny nose and headache and they WILL treat me, but I can also wait for Monday, call my primary care physician and go see him for a LOT less. If it's not an emergency, there needs to be an incentive to not head to the ER and cost is a great incentive.
What I'm suggesting is that we simply publish costs in advance for the various services and provide "good faith" estimates for things like delivering a baby or that diagnostic outpatient test your doctor wants you to have. We require auto mechanics and contractors to provide estimates then barring any unusual unforeseen circumstances we hold them to that. This is no different. Something unforeseen pops up? Costs can change, estimates can be wrong. But that MRI of you knee should cost what they tell you.
Because what we have NOW, where as a consumer I don't have any incentive to curb my consumption because I don't directly pay the provider in the first place, isn't working. We need to return to the time where I PAY for the services I USE. I may have an insurance carrier that pays part of my costs, but they should pay ME and then I should pay the provider. The insurance carrier should act as my advocate with the provider like they do now, but I should be the one actually cutting the checks for the services I use.
At the VA.... Oh, you have a pressing emergency cancer treatment? Yea, we can start you on that treatment in about 9 months..... Too bad if you die in the mean time or your cancer becomes untreatable....
The term is "negotiated prices" by insurance, and it is nothing more than a racket. One of the fixes I propose is Single Price healthcare, where prices are the same no matter who, or how it is paid.
Where I don't disagree in principle, I think that any such law should allow for discounts for pay upon receipt of service. If you pay the provider at the time the service is provided and don't force them to file your insurance, wait for the payment and incur all the costs for staff, billing, postage (etc) and they want to offer you a discount, they should be allowed to do that. However, outside of that, everybody pays the same price for the specified service and these prices MUST be disclosed IN ADVANCE of service... I'm with you.
Single payer would bring this under taxpayer control.
The hell it would. Single payer would put it under the control of a HUGE bureaucracy. Bureaucracies, as they get bigger, NEVER lead to more transparency or control by taxpayers. In fact, they lead to exactly the opposite, less visibility into what's actually going on, less control because they are hard to change.
What brings this under control is putting the customer who received the medical services in charge of paying the bills. If the customer doesn't have skin in the game, they won't care and if somebody else is paying the bills, I'm unlikely to care, Single payer only puts some low level government worker in charge of this, and they REALLY don't care. It's not their money, it's not their medical bill they won't care a bit.
how would 'single payer' do anything beside create more of a shadow for corruption to hide in?
Truth be told, you are correct. The fact that people have become used to not paying their own medical bills is the problem. If you don't pay the bill yourself, you don't care what it's for as much and it's not worth your time to review all those cryptic medical codes. The insurance is going to pay it anyway.
What we NEED is for people to have skin in this game, for them to pay directly for their medical care, where they can review the bills and question the charges and possibly save themselves money. Medical providers will QUICKLY see the need for clear understandable billing and those getting care will better manage what care they seek and at what cost.
Until the people receiving the care are motivated to review the charges personally, nothing will change. Single payer is exactly the WRONG step here.
Not true, C# has been off of Windows for a long time by way of Mono.
Mono with.NET support is at the whim of Microsoft's choice to release the.NET framework into open source.
Not to mention that Mono exists at the pleasure of Micro$oft who could easily kill it with a simple infringement lawsuit. I'm not saying they'd win, only that such a suit would kill Mono which has no resources to fight such a thing.
My only problem with C# is that pesky vendor lock in. For now, you gota run that on Windows. I don't mind Windows, but I do mind being forced to use it.
I'll bet that you don't reload and activate using stolen keys or keys which while valid haven't actually been issued to anybody yet.
The reason they are going after this IP is because they've been using stolen keys, keys that haven't been issued yet and apparently doing a LOT of activations. I'm guessing the stolen key thing is what got the spotlight put on them and the excessive activations is what made it worth Micro$oft's time to go after them.
Here we go again.. The guy was opposed to the WATER TOWER being built and spoiling his view. His argument was about the TRAFFIC that fracking would produce and not an opposition to the practice. He was opposed to the water tower and the traffic it would produce ruining his peaceful backyard. He was saying build the tower lower or some other place, which doesn't have anything directly to do with fracking.
I got paid to see ST4... Yea, really. I was a projectionist at the time. I had pretty high expiations at the time, we actually pre-screened it the Thursday before it opened. I figured it wouldn't do well...
The government of Argentina doesn't have the resources to actually ENFORCE the laws they have now, what makes you think they could enforce a new one?
I'm pretty sure they have laws about converting out of the local currency into just about everything. In fact, they probably have some seriously tight currency exchange rules to keep the locals from ditching their currency and say floating into Dollars, Euros, Mexican Pecos, Oreo Cookies and poker chips, you name it. NOBODY wants to hold the local currency, at least not for long. BTC likely affords the locals a way to quickly convert to *something* other than the local script, and most likely they are willing to convert at many times the "official" exchange rate.
The government cannot pay it's debts now, so I'm sure that hiring a police force to catch and prosecute people breaking the currency trade rules doesn't rate very high on the priority list.
I think it's more of a damning comment on Argentinian currency rather than a spotlight on the quality and fungibility of bitcoins.
EXACTLY... Argentina's currency is in SERIOUS trouble and has been in decline for a decade or more. It's where Greece is headed, and the whole EU if they don't disconnect from Greece or just outright forgive the bulk of their debt. The biggest problem they face is there is literally NOTHING they can do about the devaluation of their currency except abruptly stop nearly ALL government spending, but that would leave the country in anarchy, the government out of power and the country rife for being taken over by less than desirables. We are quite literally seeing them fall into the third world, where they once where a thriving industrial and agricultural power house.
BitCoin is just the latest symptom of the debt sickness that's killing them.
Slashdot Mirror
Your stats are pretty much junk. OF COURSE we spend more, we have more people than any other country in the modern world, including Australia, Canada and the UK and our health care system is among the best (if not the best) in the world.
Personally, I don't see what all the hubbub was about with healthcare in the first place. Did we have uninsured? Yes. Where they getting necessary treatment? Yes. They just waked into the emergency room and got treatment, regardless of their ability to pay or who they where...
Where there *some* issues? Yes, but no system is perfect, including the UK, Australia's and Canada's systems where cost controls necessitate limits on what medical care can be given on the public dime, or bankruptcy comes quickly.
But we digress... Until you put people back in charge of paying their medical bills, the only thing you can do to control cost is to put price controls in place and ration services though some kind of rules. That's all you got, and that just means that doctors get less, pharmaceutical companies get less and the person receiving the care gets less.
I say that we let the free market fix this by putting people back into a position of responsibility for the costs of their healthcare. There are many ways to do this, but it starts with consumers having to pay their own bills directly (Not that insurance doesn't reimburse but that YOU write the check to the provider) and if you incur less cost for your care, it benefits you.
IF you do the above, I can guarantee that medical bills will quickly become understandable by the average consumer because the person who's cutting the checks for the bills will demand it.
It's a work in progress.... Wonder how long they think they can get away with it once they start infringing in earnest...
It will just turn into more fodder for the RIAA's legal team....
I'm fully aware that medical services sometimes cannot be known in advance, especially in emergencies. However, the BULK of medical costs ARE foreseeable and you CAN control the point of service based on cost as an individual. I can choose to hit up the Emergency room Sunday afternoon for my runny nose and headache and they WILL treat me, but I can also wait for Monday, call my primary care physician and go see him for a LOT less. If it's not an emergency, there needs to be an incentive to not head to the ER and cost is a great incentive.
What I'm suggesting is that we simply publish costs in advance for the various services and provide "good faith" estimates for things like delivering a baby or that diagnostic outpatient test your doctor wants you to have. We require auto mechanics and contractors to provide estimates then barring any unusual unforeseen circumstances we hold them to that. This is no different. Something unforeseen pops up? Costs can change, estimates can be wrong. But that MRI of you knee should cost what they tell you.
Because what we have NOW, where as a consumer I don't have any incentive to curb my consumption because I don't directly pay the provider in the first place, isn't working. We need to return to the time where I PAY for the services I USE. I may have an insurance carrier that pays part of my costs, but they should pay ME and then I should pay the provider. The insurance carrier should act as my advocate with the provider like they do now, but I should be the one actually cutting the checks for the services I use.
Even easier... Change the name of an existing city to "Mars" and you are done...
Oh yea, "I came home from Mars just last week.".. Or, "I'm going to Mars to live for the next 10 years."
Where's my $5K?
On Mars.
But only after you stay for 10 years will they let you cash the check they had JPL put inside Spirit....
At the VA.... Oh, you have a pressing emergency cancer treatment? Yea, we can start you on that treatment in about 9 months..... Too bad if you die in the mean time or your cancer becomes untreatable....
The term is "negotiated prices" by insurance, and it is nothing more than a racket. One of the fixes I propose is Single Price healthcare, where prices are the same no matter who, or how it is paid.
Where I don't disagree in principle, I think that any such law should allow for discounts for pay upon receipt of service. If you pay the provider at the time the service is provided and don't force them to file your insurance, wait for the payment and incur all the costs for staff, billing, postage (etc) and they want to offer you a discount, they should be allowed to do that. However, outside of that, everybody pays the same price for the specified service and these prices MUST be disclosed IN ADVANCE of service... I'm with you.
Single payer would bring this under taxpayer control.
The hell it would. Single payer would put it under the control of a HUGE bureaucracy. Bureaucracies, as they get bigger, NEVER lead to more transparency or control by taxpayers. In fact, they lead to exactly the opposite, less visibility into what's actually going on, less control because they are hard to change.
What brings this under control is putting the customer who received the medical services in charge of paying the bills. If the customer doesn't have skin in the game, they won't care and if somebody else is paying the bills, I'm unlikely to care, Single payer only puts some low level government worker in charge of this, and they REALLY don't care. It's not their money, it's not their medical bill they won't care a bit.
how would 'single payer' do anything beside create more of a shadow for corruption to hide in?
Truth be told, you are correct. The fact that people have become used to not paying their own medical bills is the problem. If you don't pay the bill yourself, you don't care what it's for as much and it's not worth your time to review all those cryptic medical codes. The insurance is going to pay it anyway.
What we NEED is for people to have skin in this game, for them to pay directly for their medical care, where they can review the bills and question the charges and possibly save themselves money. Medical providers will QUICKLY see the need for clear understandable billing and those getting care will better manage what care they seek and at what cost.
Until the people receiving the care are motivated to review the charges personally, nothing will change. Single payer is exactly the WRONG step here.
Perhaps, but in this case it is clear that it's not manmade...
Not true, C# has been off of Windows for a long time by way of Mono.
Mono with .NET support is at the whim of Microsoft's choice to release the .NET framework into open source.
Not to mention that Mono exists at the pleasure of Micro$oft who could easily kill it with a simple infringement lawsuit. I'm not saying they'd win, only that such a suit would kill Mono which has no resources to fight such a thing.
My only problem with C# is that pesky vendor lock in. For now, you gota run that on Windows. I don't mind Windows, but I do mind being forced to use it.
A TOR exit node operated by the LA PD? Makes sense in a evil big brother kind of way..
https://db-ip.com/74.111.202.3...
Whitehouse.gov or some other top level domain like whitehouse.com?
Now if that's where this IP physically terminates, that's interesting..
Where you give up your phone number..... Nice..
I'll bet that you don't reload and activate using stolen keys or keys which while valid haven't actually been issued to anybody yet.
The reason they are going after this IP is because they've been using stolen keys, keys that haven't been issued yet and apparently doing a LOT of activations. I'm guessing the stolen key thing is what got the spotlight put on them and the excessive activations is what made it worth Micro$oft's time to go after them.
Here we go again.. The guy was opposed to the WATER TOWER being built and spoiling his view. His argument was about the TRAFFIC that fracking would produce and not an opposition to the practice. He was opposed to the water tower and the traffic it would produce ruining his peaceful backyard. He was saying build the tower lower or some other place, which doesn't have anything directly to do with fracking.
I got paid to see ST4... Yea, really. I was a projectionist at the time. I had pretty high expiations at the time, we actually pre-screened it the Thursday before it opened. I figured it wouldn't do well...
Well, that and the block chains... About the only thing holding up values is the cost of mining hardware.... Wait, is that possible?
BUT... BUT... It's not GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED!
Oh, wait... Might that actually end up being a problem too?
Don't I recall a bunch of folks up in arms at all the BitCoin exchanges "loosing" (I mean stealing) the depositor's funds.... There should be a law...
Oh no you don't.. It's not the year of bitcon until AFTER the year Linux takes over the desktop..
The government of Argentina doesn't have the resources to actually ENFORCE the laws they have now, what makes you think they could enforce a new one?
I'm pretty sure they have laws about converting out of the local currency into just about everything. In fact, they probably have some seriously tight currency exchange rules to keep the locals from ditching their currency and say floating into Dollars, Euros, Mexican Pecos, Oreo Cookies and poker chips, you name it. NOBODY wants to hold the local currency, at least not for long. BTC likely affords the locals a way to quickly convert to *something* other than the local script, and most likely they are willing to convert at many times the "official" exchange rate.
The government cannot pay it's debts now, so I'm sure that hiring a police force to catch and prosecute people breaking the currency trade rules doesn't rate very high on the priority list.
Yes sir, this is by far the best of the bad solutions we have sir.
I think it's more of a damning comment on Argentinian currency rather than a spotlight on the quality and fungibility of bitcoins.
EXACTLY... Argentina's currency is in SERIOUS trouble and has been in decline for a decade or more. It's where Greece is headed, and the whole EU if they don't disconnect from Greece or just outright forgive the bulk of their debt. The biggest problem they face is there is literally NOTHING they can do about the devaluation of their currency except abruptly stop nearly ALL government spending, but that would leave the country in anarchy, the government out of power and the country rife for being taken over by less than desirables. We are quite literally seeing them fall into the third world, where they once where a thriving industrial and agricultural power house.
BitCoin is just the latest symptom of the debt sickness that's killing them.
We cry for YOU Argentina.