If shouting 'FIRE' in a crowed theater is a acceptable limitation of free speech, so is campaign finance limitations. The first amendment is important to a functioning representative democray, but it is not the be-all-and-end-all of a democratic republic.
The first amendment guarantees your right to speak and express yourself freely, but not to buy influence by directly or indirectly funding candidates in voting.
As a respresentative democracy, the government is who we vote in. However, as long as billionaires and their corporations control political funding, there is no chance that we will be able to vote in people that can make a real difference. It also does not help that they fund polarizing news organizations that discourages debate and promotes ridgid ideological agendas.
Overthrowing the government is useless. Any new government that forms will immediately be under the influence of vested interests. We need real political finance reform in order to have lasting effect.
Most people that support universal healthcare don't believe that the ACA is the end-state. It's not the ideal system, but more of a first-step in getting there.
The corporations (and other moneyed interests) don't have to do any of that because it pays the government du jour to do its bidding. The whole idea of representative democracy is to prevent and minimize that by introducing checks on power by the public.
Regulations that protect the public from profiteering corporations == good.
Regulations that protect profiteering corporations from competition to maintain profits == bad.
Seems easy enough to understand. The problem is not regulations, but what it achieves (and how it does it). Spend too much time thinking about the means and you'll lose sight of the ends.
Actually, you can spend all the money you want to get all the care you want in the UK. You can buy private coverage, or your employer can buy it for you. The UK system is not a single payer system like Canada. The NHS as a nationalised health service covers almost care to a high standard, but you can buy as much add-ons as you want. There are private clinics and hospitals that welcome your custom.
I already responded in the post below. Ok, several orders of magnitude may be a exaggeration for effect, but only slightly. NHS admin costs are less than half than in the US as a percentage of health costs. Health costs in the UK is also half of that in the US. Per capita, health admin costs are 2 orders of magnitude lower in the UK compared to the US.
You can find more stats like these at the Commonwealth fund. NHS admin costs are summarized in papers available online as PDFs.
Someone has to decide what your insurance covers in the end. Actuaries have jobs to do. Insurance companies set coverage policies. If you happen to fall foul of one, or if your insurance company decides to decline your claim for whatever reason, what recourse do you have?
The National Centre of Clinical Excellence sets standards on what is covered and not under the NHS. This is all transparent and you can lobby to change this if you so desire. Contrary to popular belief in the UK, the NHS is not a third world healthcare system. In fact, it rates highly among developed nations. Life threatening illnesses are prioritised and taken care of immediate. Cancer care is generally very good. Those areas that are not, are generally improving.
The Canadian single payer system is a single payer per province. How hard is that to understand? If the federal government in Canada wants to standardise the billing practises they can of course, but then people like you will complain that the federal government has too much power.
It's also telling that you missed out the UK. That's true single payer system. A very large majority of procedures aren't even billed for in the traditional sense as most hospitals are public managed under the NHS.
I don't know where you get your numbers but UK healthcare spend is 8% of the economy while in the US it is over 15%. You can compare all of these stats and more at the Commonwealth Fund.
Hey, how about some graphs to illustrate the point?
Buying private cover in the UK is surprisingly cheap. A top-up plan for a family of four that covers extras like private hospital rooms and private surgical procedure cost as little as 30 pounds a month. This is because the care offered by the NHS is already to a high standard. Private providers need to compete in order to make people feel that additional insurance has value.
The NHS spends roughly 14% on admin costs within the past decade, less than half of the US. While not an order of magnitude in base 10, it's a very big difference.
What you described is usually due to governments holding debt in a currency it cannot control. No matter how much domestic money supply is increased, the debts denominated in a foreign currency remains. This was the cause of the Latin America sovereign debt crises in the 80's and almost all of the debt crises in developing countries are because of this. A lot of international development loans are made to developing countries that are denominated in foreign currency, such as USD. These loans are the single biggest contributor to sovereign default.
When debt is held in the sovereign currency, the risk of total collapse in the value of the currency is negligible as there are always indirect ways in which the government can direct the increased money supply to the treasury. This causes inflation (as in the traditional sense in the money supply) which ends in currency devaluation but the pain is usually short and stimulates exports. One example of this is the Icelandic banking crisis after the banks failed (which is a great case study as currency devaluation was a direct result of the government having to bail out the failed banks, not due to government overspending in anyway).
Secondly, healthcare is always rationed. In the US, this rationing is done by the insurance company determining which procedure will and will not be covered. In public healthcare systems, it is done in exactly the same way. There is always an organization that determines what procedures will and will not be covered. The organization in the UK that does this is called the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. The good thing about doing it this way is that the process is completely transparent and the public has much greater say, compared to how it's done in insurance companies. Death panels are a complete and total fabrication and nobody would take you seriously in any informed debate when you use these phrases.
Depends on the drive. Sandforce drives tend to drop out. The drive disappears from the SATA bus. With the M500, the Marvell controller actually corrupts the file system. I had to reinstall my laptop with a 960GB M500 twice before confirming that the issue is due to ALPM.
A lot of SSDs support SATA Aggessive Link Power Management (ie. SATA powersaving), but has stability issues when it is enabled. To fix this under Linux -
I have no idea how to disable this under Windows, but having turned off ALPM, all of my Sandforce SSDs have been rock solid. Even my Crucial M500 has problems with ALPM on max, I had to turn it down to medium to prevent it from crashing regularly and taking the filesystem with it.
The NHS is funded by general taxation. If the government is insolvent, then it's not just the NHS that has a problem.
On the other hand, it's unlikely the the UK will default on its debt any time soon. First of all, Parliament is actually functional, you can't have a group of legislators holding to population to ransom by refusing to fund government. This is because the government is formed by a majority in the House of Commons, any time a budgetary vote is lost, confidence in the government is lost, Parliament is dissolved, and new elections called.
In any case, what you said doesn't make any sense whatsoever? What's going to go up? Your insurance premiums? There isn't any? Taxes? Well it funds a lot more than the NHS. You don't seem to have any concept of the political atmosphere in the UK do you? People in the UK are, by and large, happy to pay taxes to keep their health service public - even the conservative here tread very carefully, any government giving any indication that the NHS might be harmed will get kicked of office instantly.
Oh, you mean your doctors? Doctors in the NHS decide on treatment, with guidelines from NICE. For some more complex procedures you have a team of doctors that reviews and approves this on a case-by-case basis, but life-threatening cases are always prioritised.
I salute you. You have quoted an article from a source less reputable than even the Daily Mail. Well trolled.
In any case the NHS 'crisis' is mostly manufactured. The NHS is constantly fighting for budget (as with all other parts of government), while the private sector wants a piece of the action. Everybody's got an agenda, but by and large, the British are very happy with the NHS.
It's only not cheaper if it's done the US way. Especially because in the US the profit motive drives healthcare providers to order pointless tests. Everywhere else preventative care saves money.
The NHS is free at the point of delivery, or in different words, free in at the time of need - which is what the care in healthcare is all about.
No-one said the NHS is free. Someone has to pay for it in the end. The beautiful thing about the NHS is that is you don't have to worry. You don't have to worry money when you are sick, or when you loved ones are sick. You don't have to worry about co-pays, or what this insurance covers and what it doesn't. You don't have to worry about dealing with insurance companies or with your company on healthcare coverage. And on top of that, if you want 'luxuries' like jumping the queue, or private en-suites, you can have that as well, by buying additional private cover.
What you said about NI funding the NHS is not entirely true. Only a very small amount of NI actually ends up in the NHS. The NHS is funded by and large by general taxation. It is budgeted according to need and is relatively efficient - around 8% of GDP is spent on healthcare in the UK, half of what is spent in the US, while covering 100% of the population.
Actually, no. It's well known Markos has always wanted a single payer system. Which wasn't obtainable as congress did not have enough votes to pass one.
The left compromised to get the ACA signed into law. For them, it's not perfect, far from it. But they recognised that to govern, compromise is necessary. A useful lesson that would have saved taxpayers millions if only the Tea Party caucus took heed.
This thing you call "maintenance" is actually called preventative care. It helps keep healthcare costs low by spotting issues before they develop into seriousness.
What is really killing the American healthcare system isn't that, but rather the prohibitive cost of major procedures and drugs, and the ever rising cost of administration due to the complex system there.
Slashdot Mirror
If shouting 'FIRE' in a crowed theater is a acceptable limitation of free speech, so is campaign finance limitations. The first amendment is important to a functioning representative democray, but it is not the be-all-and-end-all of a democratic republic.
The first amendment guarantees your right to speak and express yourself freely, but not to buy influence by directly or indirectly funding candidates in voting.
Sometimes the controller reset after leaving it unplugged for a long time. Could be a number of days.
As a respresentative democracy, the government is who we vote in. However, as long as billionaires and their corporations control political funding, there is no chance that we will be able to vote in people that can make a real difference. It also does not help that they fund polarizing news organizations that discourages debate and promotes ridgid ideological agendas.
Overthrowing the government is useless. Any new government that forms will immediately be under the influence of vested interests. We need real political finance reform in order to have lasting effect.
Most people that support universal healthcare don't believe that the ACA is the end-state. It's not the ideal system, but more of a first-step in getting there.
The corporations (and other moneyed interests) don't have to do any of that because it pays the government du jour to do its bidding. The whole idea of representative democracy is to prevent and minimize that by introducing checks on power by the public.
Regulations that protect the public from profiteering corporations == good.
Regulations that protect profiteering corporations from competition to maintain profits == bad.
Seems easy enough to understand. The problem is not regulations, but what it achieves (and how it does it). Spend too much time thinking about the means and you'll lose sight of the ends.
Actually, you can spend all the money you want to get all the care you want in the UK. You can buy private coverage, or your employer can buy it for you. The UK system is not a single payer system like Canada. The NHS as a nationalised health service covers almost care to a high standard, but you can buy as much add-ons as you want. There are private clinics and hospitals that welcome your custom.
I already responded in the post below. Ok, several orders of magnitude may be a exaggeration for effect, but only slightly. NHS admin costs are less than half than in the US as a percentage of health costs. Health costs in the UK is also half of that in the US. Per capita, health admin costs are 2 orders of magnitude lower in the UK compared to the US.
You can find more stats like these at the Commonwealth fund. NHS admin costs are summarized in papers available online as PDFs.
Someone has to decide what your insurance covers in the end. Actuaries have jobs to do. Insurance companies set coverage policies. If you happen to fall foul of one, or if your insurance company decides to decline your claim for whatever reason, what recourse do you have?
The National Centre of Clinical Excellence sets standards on what is covered and not under the NHS. This is all transparent and you can lobby to change this if you so desire. Contrary to popular belief in the UK, the NHS is not a third world healthcare system. In fact, it rates highly among developed nations. Life threatening illnesses are prioritised and taken care of immediate. Cancer care is generally very good. Those areas that are not, are generally improving.
Just a few hospitals' list of departments. Try calling them yourself and ask for billing. You'd probably be transferred to admissions.
http://www.uhb.nhs.uk/contact-a-department.htm
http://www.ruh.nhs.uk/finding/maps.asp?menu_id=3
http://www.chelwest.nhs.uk/your-visit/wards-and-departments
The Canadian single payer system is a single payer per province. How hard is that to understand? If the federal government in Canada wants to standardise the billing practises they can of course, but then people like you will complain that the federal government has too much power.
It's also telling that you missed out the UK. That's true single payer system. A very large majority of procedures aren't even billed for in the traditional sense as most hospitals are public managed under the NHS.
I don't know where you get your numbers but UK healthcare spend is 8% of the economy while in the US it is over 15%. You can compare all of these stats and more at the Commonwealth Fund.
Hey, how about some graphs to illustrate the point?
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/Issue%20Brief/2011/Jul/PDF_1533_Anderson_multinational_comparisons_2010_OECD_pfd.pdf
Buying private cover in the UK is surprisingly cheap. A top-up plan for a family of four that covers extras like private hospital rooms and private surgical procedure cost as little as 30 pounds a month. This is because the care offered by the NHS is already to a high standard. Private providers need to compete in order to make people feel that additional insurance has value.
The NHS spends roughly 14% on admin costs within the past decade, less than half of the US. While not an order of magnitude in base 10, it's a very big difference.
Hospitals in the UK don't even have a billing department. Administration costs in the NHS is orders of magnitude less than in the US.
What you described is usually due to governments holding debt in a currency it cannot control. No matter how much domestic money supply is increased, the debts denominated in a foreign currency remains. This was the cause of the Latin America sovereign debt crises in the 80's and almost all of the debt crises in developing countries are because of this. A lot of international development loans are made to developing countries that are denominated in foreign currency, such as USD. These loans are the single biggest contributor to sovereign default.
When debt is held in the sovereign currency, the risk of total collapse in the value of the currency is negligible as there are always indirect ways in which the government can direct the increased money supply to the treasury. This causes inflation (as in the traditional sense in the money supply) which ends in currency devaluation but the pain is usually short and stimulates exports. One example of this is the Icelandic banking crisis after the banks failed (which is a great case study as currency devaluation was a direct result of the government having to bail out the failed banks, not due to government overspending in anyway).
Secondly, healthcare is always rationed. In the US, this rationing is done by the insurance company determining which procedure will and will not be covered. In public healthcare systems, it is done in exactly the same way. There is always an organization that determines what procedures will and will not be covered. The organization in the UK that does this is called the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. The good thing about doing it this way is that the process is completely transparent and the public has much greater say, compared to how it's done in insurance companies. Death panels are a complete and total fabrication and nobody would take you seriously in any informed debate when you use these phrases.
Depends on the drive. Sandforce drives tend to drop out. The drive disappears from the SATA bus. With the M500, the Marvell controller actually corrupts the file system. I had to reinstall my laptop with a 960GB M500 twice before confirming that the issue is due to ALPM.
A lot of SSDs support SATA Aggessive Link Power Management (ie. SATA powersaving), but has stability issues when it is enabled. To fix this under Linux -
https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Power_Management_Guide/ALPM.html
I have no idea how to disable this under Windows, but having turned off ALPM, all of my Sandforce SSDs have been rock solid. Even my Crucial M500 has problems with ALPM on max, I had to turn it down to medium to prevent it from crashing regularly and taking the filesystem with it.
The NHS is funded by general taxation. If the government is insolvent, then it's not just the NHS that has a problem.
On the other hand, it's unlikely the the UK will default on its debt any time soon. First of all, Parliament is actually functional, you can't have a group of legislators holding to population to ransom by refusing to fund government. This is because the government is formed by a majority in the House of Commons, any time a budgetary vote is lost, confidence in the government is lost, Parliament is dissolved, and new elections called.
In any case, what you said doesn't make any sense whatsoever? What's going to go up? Your insurance premiums? There isn't any? Taxes? Well it funds a lot more than the NHS. You don't seem to have any concept of the political atmosphere in the UK do you? People in the UK are, by and large, happy to pay taxes to keep their health service public - even the conservative here tread very carefully, any government giving any indication that the NHS might be harmed will get kicked of office instantly.
Oh, you mean your doctors? Doctors in the NHS decide on treatment, with guidelines from NICE. For some more complex procedures you have a team of doctors that reviews and approves this on a case-by-case basis, but life-threatening cases are always prioritised.
I salute you. You have quoted an article from a source less reputable than even the Daily Mail. Well trolled.
In any case the NHS 'crisis' is mostly manufactured. The NHS is constantly fighting for budget (as with all other parts of government), while the private sector wants a piece of the action. Everybody's got an agenda, but by and large, the British are very happy with the NHS.
It's only not cheaper if it's done the US way. Especially because in the US the profit motive drives healthcare providers to order pointless tests. Everywhere else preventative care saves money.
True, but it was the only thing politically achievable at that time. Now that Obama's grown a spine, there's still hope...
The NHS is free at the point of delivery, or in different words, free in at the time of need - which is what the care in healthcare is all about.
No-one said the NHS is free. Someone has to pay for it in the end. The beautiful thing about the NHS is that is you don't have to worry. You don't have to worry money when you are sick, or when you loved ones are sick. You don't have to worry about co-pays, or what this insurance covers and what it doesn't. You don't have to worry about dealing with insurance companies or with your company on healthcare coverage. And on top of that, if you want 'luxuries' like jumping the queue, or private en-suites, you can have that as well, by buying additional private cover.
What you said about NI funding the NHS is not entirely true. Only a very small amount of NI actually ends up in the NHS. The NHS is funded by and large by general taxation. It is budgeted according to need and is relatively efficient - around 8% of GDP is spent on healthcare in the UK, half of what is spent in the US, while covering 100% of the population.
Actually, no. It's well known Markos has always wanted a single payer system. Which wasn't obtainable as congress did not have enough votes to pass one.
The left compromised to get the ACA signed into law. For them, it's not perfect, far from it. But they recognised that to govern, compromise is necessary. A useful lesson that would have saved taxpayers millions if only the Tea Party caucus took heed.
This thing you call "maintenance" is actually called preventative care. It helps keep healthcare costs low by spotting issues before they develop into seriousness.
What is really killing the American healthcare system isn't that, but rather the prohibitive cost of major procedures and drugs, and the ever rising cost of administration due to the complex system there.