There have been prosthetics based on measuring signals from the spinal column or peripheral nerves, but they usually still use implanted electrodes because nerve signals are much weaker than myoelectric signals.
"Perhaps the biggest difference between our two approaches is the extent to which Germany has managed to rein in the cost of healthcare for consumers
Quite right. Does ACA do that? No. Instead it redistributes money from high income earners to low income earners, gives massive subsidies, mandates people to pay for crap they never want or need, and lacks meaningful cost controls. The ACA is a massive crony-capitalist handout to Democratic donors, and it moves us even further away from rational, affordable health care.
Every system has constraints, but near universal coverage with low out of pocket costs is something we should strive for. [...] It may not be single payer, but a single payment negotation is also something Americans should not only dream about, but should demand.
If Obama had spent his time putting German-style cost negotiations and controls in place just for Medicare/Medicaid, then Medicare/Medicaid coverage could be extended to all Americans with no changes at all to the private system and no tax increases or increases in Medicare/Medicaid contributions. But Obama was politically incapable of implementing such cost controls because his party is in the pockets of the medical establishment and big pharma, and that is not going to change.
Your misinformed [nih.gov], or lying [theatlantic.com].
I see nothing in the NIH article that contradicts what I said. As for The Atlantic, it contains several errors; that's typical, and it's too much effort to debunk the crap they publish, so don't bother citing them again (ditto for the NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, or WaPo).
As I stated, tax increases don't directly increase prices
Yes, you said that; in different words, that was your strawman.
What I said was:
In a competitive market, tax increases will usually get passed on almost fully to consumers.
As I pointed out repeatedly, there are many different ways those tax increases can be passed on: price increases, product changes, market exits, deflation, etc.
Your problem is that you keep confusing "passing tax increases on to consumers" with "increasing prices on the taxed products".
The CMU statement is technically true but trivial; when people say that "companies pass on taxes as higher prices", they are implicitly talking about fairly inelastic demand curves. For elastic demand curves, it is true that prices don't go up much, but that doesn't mean that companies eat the difference. I leave it as an exercise to you to figure out what happens in that case. Apparently, such simple economic reasoning is beyond the people teaching Econ101 at CMU. As for the NYT quote, it's just ridiculous.
But thanks for providing those two quotes: it just shows what kind of incredibly stupid people are in charge at NYT and CMU these days.
The ACA could become the german system with few tweaks
Turning the ACA into the German system would require massive cuts in services and coverage, eliminating Medicare/Medicaid entirely, as well as giving up on the kind of premises that the ACA is based on (equality, redistribution, using healthcare for social policy). I don't see any chance that Democrats are going to let that happen.
Most people only need basic coverage. You can talk about outliers, but letting people see a doctor or take insurance with them is a life changer, even if it a low bar.
Yes. The German system delivers that.
The ACA and the crony capitalist crap that Democrats have been proposing as "single payer" does not.
And some companies will just have to be happy with slightly lower profits.
Profits may go down slightly, but there usually is very little room there; that is, most companies operate close to the minimum profit margins at which it is worthwhile for them to stay in business.
You guys act like this has never happened in the history of corporations.
I was carefully stating this: Companies usually can't lower profits (they lose investors) or lower bonuses/salaries (they lose workers). But if they happen to be in a position to do either of those things, it means that groups like retirees or employees make less money, which effectively translates into higher prices for those groups.
Coverage is universal for all legal residents. About 85 percent of the population is covered by social health insurance and 10 percent by substitutive private health insurance.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say there. "Social health insurance" is still a system administered by private insurance companies and paid for by individual premiums; it's simply highly regulated. And "mandatorily covered" means that you are required by law to buy coverage under certain conditions (and under other conditions, you are prohibited from buying coverage).
Note about the German system: (1) it is not paid for out of taxes but out of premiums, (2) the rich don't subsidize the poor (in fact, the rich can do whatever they want), (3) both the "public" system and the private system balance their budgets (the public system cuts back its services as needed), (4) you are not automatically insured or covered, and around a million Germans are not insured. Germany has nothing like Medicare/Medicaid.
But the point I was making was how companies vary in how they pass costs to consumers or employees.
Yes, they vary in how they pass it on: some companies pay you more and reduce benefits, other companies pay less and increase benefits. Some companies lay off part of their workforce.
Likewise, when you tax products, some companies explicitly raise prices, other companies lower quality or decrease quantities, and yet others just get out of the market. Economically, all of those amount to "raising prices".
Duh, larger pools for insurance, lower overhead, standardized costs, portability when you change jobs; what doesn't make sense? Why is America too incompetent to do what every other country in the world is doing?
We have a huge public health care system in the US, and far from delivering "lower overhead, standardized costs", it costs about 3x as much as the British NHS. If the US lowered the costs of Medicare/Medicaid to that of the UK, we could already cover everybody out of existing contributions. Forcing everybody into the inefficient government system we have makes things worse, not better.
As for the rest of it, most countries have nothing like what people like Clinton, Sanders, or US Democrats and progressives propose. Britain, for example, has nationalized health care providers. Germany has a strictly regulated, two-tier private insurance system (low income earners get limited and poor service, high income earners get stellar service). Any of those systems would indeed be better than what we have. Instead, Democrats and progressives are proposing a massive crony capitalist scheme that ensures that every American will be forced to pay absurdly inflated prices, often for services they don't need or want.
The insurance market is crazy. It only exists because of government intervention and there is no reason we can't change that.
So your solution to an insurance market made crazy by government intervention is... to hand government even more power to screw up the insurance market and engage in even more crony capitalism?
Again, I didn't say that progressives "support" crony capitalism, I said they "promote" it.
No distinction or difference.
"Promote" in the sense of "cause to happen, facilitate", not in the sense of "advocate": for progressives and Democrats, there is a strong contradiction between what they say they stand for and what their policies actually cause.
Hand waiving.
No, not handwaving. American Democrats and progressives were responsible for segregation, eugenics, and corporatism; they sympathized with European fascists, and their political programs continue to overlap strongly with traditional fascist political programs.
No my question specifically was how do you unlock an Android with a rear-facing fingerprint sensor if your phone is lying down. Your solution was to bypass the security altogether
No, my solution is to pick it up, like normal people do.
A higher tax might mean a lower profit to shareholders, slower expansion, lower bonuses, higher prices, or lower salaries.
Companies usually can't lower profits (they lose investors) or lower bonuses/salaries (they lose workers). But if they happen to be in a position to do either of those things, it means that groups like retirees or employees make less money, which effectively translates into higher prices for those groups. If companies expand slower, that means lower supply, and hence higher prices. And if they pass on the taxes as higher prices, well, then they pass on the taxes as higher prices, q.e.d. No matter how you look at it, as a group, consumers are ultimately going to pay for the tax in higher prices. Even worse, because the government then goes on and spends the tax dollars in some other sector of the economy, it increases demand in that sector and increases prices there as well.
Totalitarianism? Fascism? That's what your preaching, it's just not coming from the elected gov, but our duly appointed corporate overlords.
No, it's what you are preaching: strong government intervention in the economy and services like healthcare. That's the essence of totalitarianism (the state should intervene in all aspects of people's lives for their benefit and the benefit of society) and fascism. Corporatism, monopolies, and corporate overlords are a natural consequence of those kinds of policies. Heck, since you demand single payer healthcare, you literally want a strict monopoly on healthcare provided by a state-run corporate overlord.
Fidelity doesn't seem much of an issue in the matrilineal societies I know of.
Yes, tiny, marginal societies, and for good reason.
There never has been a society with sex only within the bounds of marriage.
Yes, and most societies traditionally had strong sanctions against premarital sex, marital infidelity and illegitimate children. These days, we encourage and subsidize these destructive behaviors.
When I was young, behaviors we'd now consider extreme cases of sexual harassment would be considered normal,
Yes: harmless verbal behavior is penalized strongly these days, while irresponsible sex is not just tolerated but encouraged.
Those problems were more common in less enlightened eras
We live in a less enlightened era now. You're living proof of that. It's self-limiting, however: societies embracing your kind of ideology simply don't survive in the long term.
So why not tax companies at 50%? At 100%? At 200%?
Your strawman is showing.
That's not a "strawman", it's a valid question: if you say "taxes are not passed onto consumers", why not increase taxes even more?
Not true, this was just a classic small company, small pool, big cost vs. larger pool and lower cost
You gave it as an example in the context of a discussion about passing on costs. Now you say it was an example of big pool/small pool. Now, that's a straw man.
After I changed jobs again, a bigger company (school) was paying less towards my plan for better coverage. This is why single payer makes sense.
Pnutjam: "Totalitarianism and fascism. It just makes sense to me."
Progressives are at "the top of the list" for supporting crony capitalism
Again, I didn't say that progressives "support" crony capitalism, I said they "promote" it. That is, the policies they actually implement lead to widespread crony capitalism, even though they say they oppose it. That's a fundamental problem with progressives: the policies they implement frequently (and predictably) achieve the opposite of what they claim to stand for.
right-wing conservatives are "at the top of the list" for supporting abortion rights and gun control, or how libertarians are at "the top of the list" for supporting nationalization of industry.
Right wing conservatives neither support nor promote abortion rights or gun controls, and libertarians do not promote anything because they have no political power.
No, what we are talking about is what to do with the fingerprint sensor once you have already decided you are going to get rid of a physical home button. Android found a good place for it that works well in most situations, while Apple just got rid of it.
The fact you keep obsessing about is simply irrelevant.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like they are actually just implementing myoelectric prosthetics. Note that that is measuring muscle signals, not nerve signals. Similar technology has been used for subvocalized speech recognition
There have been prosthetics based on measuring signals from the spinal column or peripheral nerves, but they usually still use implanted electrodes because nerve signals are much weaker than myoelectric signals.
Quite right. Does ACA do that? No. Instead it redistributes money from high income earners to low income earners, gives massive subsidies, mandates people to pay for crap they never want or need, and lacks meaningful cost controls. The ACA is a massive crony-capitalist handout to Democratic donors, and it moves us even further away from rational, affordable health care.
If Obama had spent his time putting German-style cost negotiations and controls in place just for Medicare/Medicaid, then Medicare/Medicaid coverage could be extended to all Americans with no changes at all to the private system and no tax increases or increases in Medicare/Medicaid contributions. But Obama was politically incapable of implementing such cost controls because his party is in the pockets of the medical establishment and big pharma, and that is not going to change.
I see nothing in the NIH article that contradicts what I said. As for The Atlantic, it contains several errors; that's typical, and it's too much effort to debunk the crap they publish, so don't bother citing them again (ditto for the NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, or WaPo).
Yes, you said that; in different words, that was your strawman.
What I said was:
As I pointed out repeatedly, there are many different ways those tax increases can be passed on: price increases, product changes, market exits, deflation, etc.
Your problem is that you keep confusing "passing tax increases on to consumers" with "increasing prices on the taxed products".
The CMU statement is technically true but trivial; when people say that "companies pass on taxes as higher prices", they are implicitly talking about fairly inelastic demand curves. For elastic demand curves, it is true that prices don't go up much, but that doesn't mean that companies eat the difference. I leave it as an exercise to you to figure out what happens in that case. Apparently, such simple economic reasoning is beyond the people teaching Econ101 at CMU. As for the NYT quote, it's just ridiculous.
But thanks for providing those two quotes: it just shows what kind of incredibly stupid people are in charge at NYT and CMU these days.
Turning the ACA into the German system would require massive cuts in services and coverage, eliminating Medicare/Medicaid entirely, as well as giving up on the kind of premises that the ACA is based on (equality, redistribution, using healthcare for social policy). I don't see any chance that Democrats are going to let that happen.
Apple is a luxury brand with a monopoly, catering mostly to rich, spoiled millennials.
Most businesses cannot. Unlike you, I actually checked the data. I suggest you do it: you'll be surprised (if you actually manage to understand it).
Yes. The German system delivers that.
The ACA and the crony capitalist crap that Democrats have been proposing as "single payer" does not.
How is picking up your f*cking phone like normal people do and using the fingerprint sensor on the back "not a solution"?
Profits may go down slightly, but there usually is very little room there; that is, most companies operate close to the minimum profit margins at which it is worthwhile for them to stay in business.
I was carefully stating this: Companies usually can't lower profits (they lose investors) or lower bonuses/salaries (they lose workers). But if they happen to be in a position to do either of those things, it means that groups like retirees or employees make less money, which effectively translates into higher prices for those groups.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say there. "Social health insurance" is still a system administered by private insurance companies and paid for by individual premiums; it's simply highly regulated. And "mandatorily covered" means that you are required by law to buy coverage under certain conditions (and under other conditions, you are prohibited from buying coverage).
Note about the German system: (1) it is not paid for out of taxes but out of premiums, (2) the rich don't subsidize the poor (in fact, the rich can do whatever they want), (3) both the "public" system and the private system balance their budgets (the public system cuts back its services as needed), (4) you are not automatically insured or covered, and around a million Germans are not insured. Germany has nothing like Medicare/Medicaid.
Yes, they vary in how they pass it on: some companies pay you more and reduce benefits, other companies pay less and increase benefits. Some companies lay off part of their workforce.
Likewise, when you tax products, some companies explicitly raise prices, other companies lower quality or decrease quantities, and yet others just get out of the market. Economically, all of those amount to "raising prices".
We have a huge public health care system in the US, and far from delivering "lower overhead, standardized costs", it costs about 3x as much as the British NHS. If the US lowered the costs of Medicare/Medicaid to that of the UK, we could already cover everybody out of existing contributions. Forcing everybody into the inefficient government system we have makes things worse, not better.
As for the rest of it, most countries have nothing like what people like Clinton, Sanders, or US Democrats and progressives propose. Britain, for example, has nationalized health care providers. Germany has a strictly regulated, two-tier private insurance system (low income earners get limited and poor service, high income earners get stellar service). Any of those systems would indeed be better than what we have. Instead, Democrats and progressives are proposing a massive crony capitalist scheme that ensures that every American will be forced to pay absurdly inflated prices, often for services they don't need or want.
So your solution to an insurance market made crazy by government intervention is... to hand government even more power to screw up the insurance market and engage in even more crony capitalism?
"Promote" in the sense of "cause to happen, facilitate", not in the sense of "advocate": for progressives and Democrats, there is a strong contradiction between what they say they stand for and what their policies actually cause.
No, not handwaving. American Democrats and progressives were responsible for segregation, eugenics, and corporatism; they sympathized with European fascists, and their political programs continue to overlap strongly with traditional fascist political programs.
Again... You want to debate the semantics of "getting rid of the home button"? Get fucking real.
You wrote: "This is why single payer makes sense."
No, my solution is to pick it up, like normal people do.
Companies usually can't lower profits (they lose investors) or lower bonuses/salaries (they lose workers). But if they happen to be in a position to do either of those things, it means that groups like retirees or employees make less money, which effectively translates into higher prices for those groups. If companies expand slower, that means lower supply, and hence higher prices. And if they pass on the taxes as higher prices, well, then they pass on the taxes as higher prices, q.e.d. No matter how you look at it, as a group, consumers are ultimately going to pay for the tax in higher prices. Even worse, because the government then goes on and spends the tax dollars in some other sector of the economy, it increases demand in that sector and increases prices there as well.
No, it's what you are preaching: strong government intervention in the economy and services like healthcare. That's the essence of totalitarianism (the state should intervene in all aspects of people's lives for their benefit and the benefit of society) and fascism. Corporatism, monopolies, and corporate overlords are a natural consequence of those kinds of policies. Heck, since you demand single payer healthcare, you literally want a strict monopoly on healthcare provided by a state-run corporate overlord.
Yes, tiny, marginal societies, and for good reason.
Yes, and most societies traditionally had strong sanctions against premarital sex, marital infidelity and illegitimate children. These days, we encourage and subsidize these destructive behaviors.
Yes: harmless verbal behavior is penalized strongly these days, while irresponsible sex is not just tolerated but encouraged.
We live in a less enlightened era now. You're living proof of that. It's self-limiting, however: societies embracing your kind of ideology simply don't survive in the long term.
Oh, I see: the justification is "FYTW"
Regulators gonna regulate.
Seriously? You want to debate the semantics of "getting rid of the home button"? Get fucking real.
That's not a "strawman", it's a valid question: if you say "taxes are not passed onto consumers", why not increase taxes even more?
You gave it as an example in the context of a discussion about passing on costs. Now you say it was an example of big pool/small pool. Now, that's a straw man.
Pnutjam: "Totalitarianism and fascism. It just makes sense to me."
Again, I didn't say that progressives "support" crony capitalism, I said they "promote" it. That is, the policies they actually implement lead to widespread crony capitalism, even though they say they oppose it. That's a fundamental problem with progressives: the policies they implement frequently (and predictably) achieve the opposite of what they claim to stand for.
Right wing conservatives neither support nor promote abortion rights or gun controls, and libertarians do not promote anything because they have no political power.
No, what we are talking about is what to do with the fingerprint sensor once you have already decided you are going to get rid of a physical home button. Android found a good place for it that works well in most situations, while Apple just got rid of it.
The fact you keep obsessing about is simply irrelevant.
Your posting is as fact free as your previous postings.
The problem there being Java.