The right conclusion to draw is that humans are bad at driving, period. Putting a human behind a wheel in any state is taking a risk, with some humans being riskier than others.
Since we're talking about cars, we obviously need a code analogy. So it's like when your program runs slow, you optimize the worst stuff first. You try to pick the thing that is orders of magnitude slower than the other things, because spending time on those other things will only have a small effect. With cars, fixing the thing that causes the most accidents means removing human operators.
But cap and trade, which is the current favored "solution", is just plain bad legislation that doesn't inspire efficiency, it just creates another market for Goldman Sachs and their ilk to game.
I can't say that I agree with this. What Cap and Trade recognizes is that sometimes, by changing economic incentives, you can make people's self-motivated behavior actually produce the optimal (or close to optimal) solution globally. In CS, you might know the same concept by a different name ("greedy algorithm").
What I do agree with, though, is that changing incentives has all kinds of unintended consequences. Often people can "game" the system, as you point out. You won't really know until you try, but I think to make a convincing argument against Cap and Trade, you have to show that the consequences of doing nothing are better than the consequences of Cap and Trade. Which, I should point out, you have not done here with your "just plain weak" argument.
But it's more than that. You can't just set the bar arbitrarily high and hope that your kids will reach it. Many (most?) of them won't.
Why? Because education is cumulative. The difference between the 8th grade and the 7th grade is supposed to be that the 8th grade students learn more advanced materials based on their learning in the 7th grade. In practice, it doesn't work that way, because curricula are myopic, because teachers don't care/only care about their fiefdom, because students lack any motivation, etc, etc, etc.
Escalante saw all of this and said: OK, let's fix this. Let's start the program early (cumulative). Let's tell kids that this is their way out/their ticket to self-actualization (motivation). Let's make sure the right teachers are on the job (handpicked teachers who care).
Throwing a kid into a calculus class to challenge him when all he's done is geometry is a surefire way to turn a kid off. This happened to me: they threw me into AP physics because I did well in other classes, but I had yet to take precalc, trig, or calculus. That experience turned me off to physics for a long time. I barely scraped by with a D, and I was one of the motivated ones (I won the high school science fair that year, for building a circuit that 'amplified' signals using stochastic resonance). Guess how motivated I was after that failure.
I think the most important thing he did was tie the material to the student's ability level. It is absurd to put a student into a class because they "should know" the material. Sure, lots of things 'should' happen, but they don't. Escalante realized that students were coming into his classes woefully unprepared; it's not surprising that they fail. You can threaten someone into doing math, but you can't threaten them into learning it, but that's exactly what our teachers do. You have to want to do it.
One of the things that people point out about the film is that the compressed time of the movie makes it look like he was some kind of miracle worker, transforming dropouts into math whizzes overnight. This couldn't be further from the truth. Escalante developed an integrated curriculum that began in elementary school.
Escalante pointed out that you need to start early, and keep working through the program, because math knowledge is cumulative. Anyone who has taken advanced college math can plainly see this. Many symbols unpack into very basic operations, but unpacking them goes back a long, long way.
You only think that because you're a citizen of a country with a very large army. Those are rules that the country decides for itself, on land that it claims as a part of its sovereign property. And it should be added that there is a police force that enforces those rules among citizens.
Live someplace with a weak government and you'll see what I mean.
Actually, it looks like this guy has a very long history of being nutty about EMF. I'm inclined to say that he's just nutty. Unfortunately, you can't argue with a nut. The best thing for his neighbor to do is to end this case as quickly as possible and them move to a new neighborhood.
Depends on whether you feel the need to "buy" the software, because it is rarely the case that you have to. When you pay for OSS, you're usually paying for support. Those shops that are UNIX-proficient, and there are many out there, often find that they know more than the guy at the other end of that support call. That's our experience, and so we only pay for support for those bits that are significantly outside of our domain of expertise, like SAN software (and even that is going away now that we're finding that NFS running on a private ethernet network is quite a bit faster than our existing fibre channel network). For everything else, we read the docs, download it, and run it. We save a TON of money this way.
Most people around here are taking Garriott's bait and are picking apart the legal ramifications of his rover ownership, but it's much simpler than that. You own something if you can defend it. I.e., you have an army. Treaties are meaningless outside the context of force. Ever wonder why making someone follow a contract is called 'enforcement'?
And, because R.A.H. is taken as Gospel around here: the moon dwellers didn't gain sovereignty until they showed that they could pummel the bejeezus out of Earth. It turns out that it actually works that way in real life.
MP3 also employs a psychoacoustic model that will remove things that you cannot perceive, not just things that you cannot hear. There's a big difference. Your ear responds to the pressure wave but your brain does not because it's being "masked" by something else. Those sounds are within the audible spectrum.
I made the switch to whiteboard, which I keep on the wall next to my desk. I find that it is better than paper, because paper is almost always too small, and it lets me discuss ideas with other employees a bit easier.
I tried "virtual whiteboard" with pen input recently at my CS department, and I found it very difficult to use, partly because the pen input device I was looking at was not the same thing I was drawing on.
primarily because a paper-based process is tremendously wasteful, expensive, and it cannot take advantage of many efficiencies of keeping documents in the digital domain. For our Boston office alone, we spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on paper, ink, and printer/photocopier maintenance.
What it mostly comes down to for us is screen real-estate; the ability to work from multiple documents at once is essential. We are piloting some very large monitors now (24"+), and the things we're discovering were somewhat unexpected from the IT staff's perspective. Most people, but especially older workers, intensely dislike the large screens.
Their complaints are along the lines of "it's too big" and "sensory overload". It seems that, with their previous displays, which were 15" LCDs, people could tuck their monitor away, and use the computer to augment their work. People universally liked moving from 15" CRTs to 15" LCDs because it made the computer even less obtrusive. However, a shift to a digital workflow is really quite a change, and the large screen reinforces that. It immediately confronts people with the fact that they really have to work on the computer now. Younger employees seem very eager to do this, but older employees, some of whom have worked with a paper process for 20+ years, really do not like this idea at all, and have even recently made childish proclamations like "I reserve the right to print something anytime I want!"
My sense is that this attitude will eventually pass, but it may be a generational thing. As younger employees move into more senior positions, we'll probably see paper go away. Obviously, I'm generalizing here, because some older employees, especially our graphic designers, LOVE the big screens. Their process has been entirely computer based for a long time already. Given that most of the actual work is done by younger employees, we may find ourselves giving the less senior people big screens, and let the more senior people keep what they have. They spend most of their time in meetings anyhow.
I think the key thing is that if you are going to take away flexibility, i.e, the general-purpose nature of a computer, you have to make it compelling in some other way. I think a good touch interface does this. There's nothing more frustrating than having to wade through menus with a stylus when, if the interface were designed correctly, you could just tap the right thing to begin with. Menus imply lots of functionality; lots of hidden functionality. Tablets should not work this way.
I agree, I think the iPad really is going to be a game-changer. Of course, I'm not getting one. I need a little more flexibility, but also, I hate being pointed at an Apple-proprietary solution. Instead, I've been following the Notion Ink Adam with some interest, particularly because it uses a low-power screen that can be read in direct sunlight. I'm thinking of it as a color e-book reader, and for that purpose, I suspect that it will be very handy. I'm sick to death of having to carry textbooks around with me, and I am thrilled at the idea of being able to carry around my entire book collection like I do with my music collection.
Re:A false choice, of course...
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 2, Informative
What's up with this strict Constitutionalist shit? Times have changed! Besides, aren't you glossing over the "general Welfare of the United States" part?
Also, wha? Are you serious? China has no welfare? Well, Jeez, why all the fuss about them being Communist then? China has a huge welfare program, and it's going to get bigger.
Yeah, sure, stop buying insurance from UHC. And trade in the bargaining power of my company for the bargaining power of just me? Sounds like a good deal.
The people do. We elected the people who represent us now. There's nothing illegal about what our representatives are doing.
If you're arguing that the role of the federal government is strictly limited to interstate commerce and international diplomacy and defense, well, I hate to break it to you-- you lost that argument a long time ago.
You're missing the part about how a privately-run system must continue to turn a profit in order to stay in business. You know, the stuff that's left over after costs have been accounted for. By contrast, a government-run single-payer system has no profit requirement. That's money that can be better spent, say, by paying your staff better, or, hey, by not taking it in the first place!
That's also well established. For example, you "purchase" the services of the police, you "purchase" the use of the roads, and you "purchase" the protection of our armed services. It's called "taxation".
Now, the obvious solution here is to make "health care" a service provided-for by taxes. But people seem to blow a fuse when you say it that way, so instead, you force everybody to "purchase" insurance, and we hope that private insurers shape up. See how much better the public option is?
Uh, so what you actually mean is that we went from almost everyone thinking it was a great idea to most? How is that "we don't want this?" Because I sure as hell want it.
Besides, why listen to the people when it's the right thing to do? The whole reason you don't let the general population run the country is because it's a total clusterfuck when they have direct input. Look at California. The electoral system and our politicians suck, but at least the country functions with them around. Keep in mind how many people were against the minimum wage, universal suffrage, and civil rights. Those things are the right thing to do.
I'm going to assume that you've never taken a civics or rhetoric course, and so I'm going to premise this with a small admonishment that if you treat the person you're debating with a little respect, you'll get your way more often. Starting with "you lie" is no way to make friends. In fact, it just makes me want to say "fuck you". But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
I'm going to counter your argument with this: it's still compensation. Where do you think the money came from? It didn't magically appear. In what way does a person taking $1 billion not act as a drain on the rest of us? I can't think of any job that deserves that kind of compensation. BTW, a 40-fold increase in value (which is what the article says) is still $25 million, in 1991 dollars. Seriously, you think that's not disgusting either?
Notice how I didn't call your argument a "knee-jerk conservative name-calling" or some-such? I actually refuted your point. Try it sometime.
Now, that is the right kind of question to ask. The basic premise is right: that by forcing everyone to be insured, we expand the "healthy" pool. This should allow insurers to bring health costs down. If they don't, and I'm not sure if the bill requires them to, then in a lot of ways, we are worse off. The key thing is that there are lots of people who can't afford insurance no matter how affordable you make it, so you have to give them an option; you cannot penalize them for something they have no control over. In our system, that means expanding our existing public option, Medicare. That's actually not such a bad option, given that, compared to the private industry, Medicare is actually a fairly well-run system. E.g., administrative costs are very low. It has other problems, though, like the doctor reimbursement rates being low enough for some things that doctors take a loss to see those patients. But those kind of things are easier to fix than someone not having access to a doctor in the first place.
Re:A false choice, of course...
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
When our government starts taking away our liberties (forcing people to buy health care, taking away private property to give to another private party are just two examples)
I'm guessing that you chose those two examples because they are hot-button issues, but the reality of it is: you never had those liberties, but because they never affected you, you thought that you did.
Eminent Domain predates the founding of this country. It sucks, especially when it affects you (my great-grandfather's farm was largely seized to build a school), but there are many, many cases where there is indeed a greater good served by it. The discussion really shouldn't be "should we have it?" but "when should we have it?" Eliminating it is not practical.
You already pay for health care, but like so many other things (roads, police, schools, car insurance), you don't see those costs directly. If, for instance, you saw an itemized car insurance bill explaining that most of your insurance money goes to paying out drunk driving accidents, or say, minor scratches on someone's Lexus, you would probably be pissed off (fun story: I bumped a Lexus once with my car-- it cost the insurance $1200, for a SCRATCH-- given that my insurance bill for the year is roughly half that, who do you think pays for it? Hint: you). Now there are many, many reasons why health care costs are going up. Medical practitioners are in short supply, medicine and equipment are very expensive (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not), but most importantly, because the ratio of healthy people to sick (and by sick, I really mean, people needing care) people is swinging rapidly toward more sick people: baby boomers.
If you're insured, you're paying for them already. Because I work for a large company, and they have good bargainers, we only pay about $300/mo per single employee. I contribute half of that. But ever try to get insurance yourself on the private market? Good luck affording it!
Now, it can (and should) be argued that health insurance itself is part of the problem, and I agree. Insurance is supposed to be a hedge against catastrophe. You know, brain cancer. The kind of thing where the expense is so astronomical, that it would ruin you. Instead, we have insurers covering viagra (only actually necessary in very rare cases-- I have a friend with a rare pulmonary disorder, and strangely enough, viagra is an effective treatment for her) and elective surgery, because people don't want to pay for them themselves. This abuse has done nothing to control costs. It's a travesty that an out-of-pocket visit to your general practitioner can cost you a week's wages. I had an X-ray done recently-- it was $1000. We're talking about 19th century technology here, people. So anyway, now it covers the routine stuff, but often not the catastrophic stuff. They'll deny you coverage! WTF!
But hey, this is what we have. Do we:
Dive in and fix the problem?
Let everyone get increasingly fucked over
Keep in mind that while there are millions of people who can't get healthcare at all, due to cost, the CEO of United Healthcare recently received a 1 billion dollar (US) bonus. That, my friends, is fucked up. This man could personally pay for doctor visits for hundreds of thousands of people.
As many people here have said, they're trapped in their bad employment situations because they have a sick spouse or child. Imagine having to go to work someplace where they treat you like dirt for years on end because, without them, your loved one dies? That is slavery, plain and simple.
Personal health is a prerequisite for a healthy economy. If that guy could leave his job for a better one, without worrying that it would end his wife's leukemia treatments, or
Slashdot Mirror
The right conclusion to draw is that humans are bad at driving, period. Putting a human behind a wheel in any state is taking a risk, with some humans being riskier than others.
Since we're talking about cars, we obviously need a code analogy. So it's like when your program runs slow, you optimize the worst stuff first. You try to pick the thing that is orders of magnitude slower than the other things, because spending time on those other things will only have a small effect. With cars, fixing the thing that causes the most accidents means removing human operators.
But cap and trade, which is the current favored "solution", is just plain bad legislation that doesn't inspire efficiency, it just creates another market for Goldman Sachs and their ilk to game.
I can't say that I agree with this. What Cap and Trade recognizes is that sometimes, by changing economic incentives, you can make people's self-motivated behavior actually produce the optimal (or close to optimal) solution globally. In CS, you might know the same concept by a different name ("greedy algorithm").
What I do agree with, though, is that changing incentives has all kinds of unintended consequences. Often people can "game" the system, as you point out. You won't really know until you try, but I think to make a convincing argument against Cap and Trade, you have to show that the consequences of doing nothing are better than the consequences of Cap and Trade. Which, I should point out, you have not done here with your "just plain weak" argument.
But it's more than that. You can't just set the bar arbitrarily high and hope that your kids will reach it. Many (most?) of them won't.
Why? Because education is cumulative. The difference between the 8th grade and the 7th grade is supposed to be that the 8th grade students learn more advanced materials based on their learning in the 7th grade. In practice, it doesn't work that way, because curricula are myopic, because teachers don't care/only care about their fiefdom, because students lack any motivation, etc, etc, etc.
Escalante saw all of this and said: OK, let's fix this. Let's start the program early (cumulative). Let's tell kids that this is their way out/their ticket to self-actualization (motivation). Let's make sure the right teachers are on the job (handpicked teachers who care).
Throwing a kid into a calculus class to challenge him when all he's done is geometry is a surefire way to turn a kid off. This happened to me: they threw me into AP physics because I did well in other classes, but I had yet to take precalc, trig, or calculus. That experience turned me off to physics for a long time. I barely scraped by with a D, and I was one of the motivated ones (I won the high school science fair that year, for building a circuit that 'amplified' signals using stochastic resonance). Guess how motivated I was after that failure.
I think the most important thing he did was tie the material to the student's ability level. It is absurd to put a student into a class because they "should know" the material. Sure, lots of things 'should' happen, but they don't. Escalante realized that students were coming into his classes woefully unprepared; it's not surprising that they fail. You can threaten someone into doing math, but you can't threaten them into learning it, but that's exactly what our teachers do. You have to want to do it.
One of the things that people point out about the film is that the compressed time of the movie makes it look like he was some kind of miracle worker, transforming dropouts into math whizzes overnight. This couldn't be further from the truth. Escalante developed an integrated curriculum that began in elementary school.
Escalante pointed out that you need to start early, and keep working through the program, because math knowledge is cumulative. Anyone who has taken advanced college math can plainly see this. Many symbols unpack into very basic operations, but unpacking them goes back a long, long way.
You only think that because you're a citizen of a country with a very large army. Those are rules that the country decides for itself, on land that it claims as a part of its sovereign property. And it should be added that there is a police force that enforces those rules among citizens.
Live someplace with a weak government and you'll see what I mean.
Actually, it looks like this guy has a very long history of being nutty about EMF. I'm inclined to say that he's just nutty. Unfortunately, you can't argue with a nut. The best thing for his neighbor to do is to end this case as quickly as possible and them move to a new neighborhood.
Depends on whether you feel the need to "buy" the software, because it is rarely the case that you have to. When you pay for OSS, you're usually paying for support. Those shops that are UNIX-proficient, and there are many out there, often find that they know more than the guy at the other end of that support call. That's our experience, and so we only pay for support for those bits that are significantly outside of our domain of expertise, like SAN software (and even that is going away now that we're finding that NFS running on a private ethernet network is quite a bit faster than our existing fibre channel network). For everything else, we read the docs, download it, and run it. We save a TON of money this way.
Most people around here are taking Garriott's bait and are picking apart the legal ramifications of his rover ownership, but it's much simpler than that. You own something if you can defend it. I.e., you have an army. Treaties are meaningless outside the context of force. Ever wonder why making someone follow a contract is called 'enforcement'?
And, because R.A.H. is taken as Gospel around here: the moon dwellers didn't gain sovereignty until they showed that they could pummel the bejeezus out of Earth. It turns out that it actually works that way in real life.
What, those hippies? I want something Fair and Balanced!
MP3 also employs a psychoacoustic model that will remove things that you cannot perceive, not just things that you cannot hear. There's a big difference. Your ear responds to the pressure wave but your brain does not because it's being "masked" by something else. Those sounds are within the audible spectrum.
Fortunately, conservatives will be distracted by their own imaginary arguments to oppose it.
Uh, hey, news flash. The guys who write the software also write the license. They can change it if they want to.
I think they said "too obscure". I know, it sounds the same.
I made the switch to whiteboard, which I keep on the wall next to my desk. I find that it is better than paper, because paper is almost always too small, and it lets me discuss ideas with other employees a bit easier.
I tried "virtual whiteboard" with pen input recently at my CS department, and I found it very difficult to use, partly because the pen input device I was looking at was not the same thing I was drawing on.
primarily because a paper-based process is tremendously wasteful, expensive, and it cannot take advantage of many efficiencies of keeping documents in the digital domain. For our Boston office alone, we spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on paper, ink, and printer/photocopier maintenance.
What it mostly comes down to for us is screen real-estate; the ability to work from multiple documents at once is essential. We are piloting some very large monitors now (24"+), and the things we're discovering were somewhat unexpected from the IT staff's perspective. Most people, but especially older workers, intensely dislike the large screens.
Their complaints are along the lines of "it's too big" and "sensory overload". It seems that, with their previous displays, which were 15" LCDs, people could tuck their monitor away, and use the computer to augment their work. People universally liked moving from 15" CRTs to 15" LCDs because it made the computer even less obtrusive. However, a shift to a digital workflow is really quite a change, and the large screen reinforces that. It immediately confronts people with the fact that they really have to work on the computer now. Younger employees seem very eager to do this, but older employees, some of whom have worked with a paper process for 20+ years, really do not like this idea at all, and have even recently made childish proclamations like "I reserve the right to print something anytime I want!"
My sense is that this attitude will eventually pass, but it may be a generational thing. As younger employees move into more senior positions, we'll probably see paper go away. Obviously, I'm generalizing here, because some older employees, especially our graphic designers, LOVE the big screens. Their process has been entirely computer based for a long time already. Given that most of the actual work is done by younger employees, we may find ourselves giving the less senior people big screens, and let the more senior people keep what they have. They spend most of their time in meetings anyhow.
I agree completely.
I think the key thing is that if you are going to take away flexibility, i.e, the general-purpose nature of a computer, you have to make it compelling in some other way. I think a good touch interface does this. There's nothing more frustrating than having to wade through menus with a stylus when, if the interface were designed correctly, you could just tap the right thing to begin with. Menus imply lots of functionality; lots of hidden functionality. Tablets should not work this way.
I agree, I think the iPad really is going to be a game-changer. Of course, I'm not getting one. I need a little more flexibility, but also, I hate being pointed at an Apple-proprietary solution. Instead, I've been following the Notion Ink Adam with some interest, particularly because it uses a low-power screen that can be read in direct sunlight. I'm thinking of it as a color e-book reader, and for that purpose, I suspect that it will be very handy. I'm sick to death of having to carry textbooks around with me, and I am thrilled at the idea of being able to carry around my entire book collection like I do with my music collection.
What's up with this strict Constitutionalist shit? Times have changed! Besides, aren't you glossing over the "general Welfare of the United States" part?
Also, wha? Are you serious? China has no welfare? Well, Jeez, why all the fuss about them being Communist then? China has a huge welfare program, and it's going to get bigger.
Yeah, sure, stop buying insurance from UHC. And trade in the bargaining power of my company for the bargaining power of just me? Sounds like a good deal.
The people do. We elected the people who represent us now. There's nothing illegal about what our representatives are doing.
If you're arguing that the role of the federal government is strictly limited to interstate commerce and international diplomacy and defense, well, I hate to break it to you-- you lost that argument a long time ago.
You're missing the part about how a privately-run system must continue to turn a profit in order to stay in business. You know, the stuff that's left over after costs have been accounted for. By contrast, a government-run single-payer system has no profit requirement. That's money that can be better spent, say, by paying your staff better, or, hey, by not taking it in the first place!
That's also well established. For example, you "purchase" the services of the police, you "purchase" the use of the roads, and you "purchase" the protection of our armed services. It's called "taxation".
Now, the obvious solution here is to make "health care" a service provided-for by taxes. But people seem to blow a fuse when you say it that way, so instead, you force everybody to "purchase" insurance, and we hope that private insurers shape up. See how much better the public option is?
Uh, so what you actually mean is that we went from almost everyone thinking it was a great idea to most? How is that "we don't want this?" Because I sure as hell want it.
Besides, why listen to the people when it's the right thing to do? The whole reason you don't let the general population run the country is because it's a total clusterfuck when they have direct input. Look at California. The electoral system and our politicians suck, but at least the country functions with them around. Keep in mind how many people were against the minimum wage, universal suffrage, and civil rights. Those things are the right thing to do.
I'm going to assume that you've never taken a civics or rhetoric course, and so I'm going to premise this with a small admonishment that if you treat the person you're debating with a little respect, you'll get your way more often. Starting with "you lie" is no way to make friends. In fact, it just makes me want to say "fuck you". But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
I'm going to counter your argument with this: it's still compensation. Where do you think the money came from? It didn't magically appear. In what way does a person taking $1 billion not act as a drain on the rest of us? I can't think of any job that deserves that kind of compensation. BTW, a 40-fold increase in value (which is what the article says) is still $25 million, in 1991 dollars. Seriously, you think that's not disgusting either?
Notice how I didn't call your argument a "knee-jerk conservative name-calling" or some-such? I actually refuted your point. Try it sometime.
Now, that is the right kind of question to ask. The basic premise is right: that by forcing everyone to be insured, we expand the "healthy" pool. This should allow insurers to bring health costs down. If they don't, and I'm not sure if the bill requires them to, then in a lot of ways, we are worse off. The key thing is that there are lots of people who can't afford insurance no matter how affordable you make it, so you have to give them an option; you cannot penalize them for something they have no control over. In our system, that means expanding our existing public option, Medicare. That's actually not such a bad option, given that, compared to the private industry, Medicare is actually a fairly well-run system. E.g., administrative costs are very low. It has other problems, though, like the doctor reimbursement rates being low enough for some things that doctors take a loss to see those patients. But those kind of things are easier to fix than someone not having access to a doctor in the first place.
When our government starts taking away our liberties (forcing people to buy health care, taking away private property to give to another private party are just two examples)
I'm guessing that you chose those two examples because they are hot-button issues, but the reality of it is: you never had those liberties, but because they never affected you, you thought that you did.
Eminent Domain predates the founding of this country. It sucks, especially when it affects you (my great-grandfather's farm was largely seized to build a school), but there are many, many cases where there is indeed a greater good served by it. The discussion really shouldn't be "should we have it?" but "when should we have it?" Eliminating it is not practical.
You already pay for health care, but like so many other things (roads, police, schools, car insurance), you don't see those costs directly. If, for instance, you saw an itemized car insurance bill explaining that most of your insurance money goes to paying out drunk driving accidents, or say, minor scratches on someone's Lexus, you would probably be pissed off (fun story: I bumped a Lexus once with my car-- it cost the insurance $1200, for a SCRATCH-- given that my insurance bill for the year is roughly half that, who do you think pays for it? Hint: you). Now there are many, many reasons why health care costs are going up. Medical practitioners are in short supply, medicine and equipment are very expensive (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not), but most importantly, because the ratio of healthy people to sick (and by sick, I really mean, people needing care) people is swinging rapidly toward more sick people: baby boomers.
If you're insured, you're paying for them already. Because I work for a large company, and they have good bargainers, we only pay about $300/mo per single employee. I contribute half of that. But ever try to get insurance yourself on the private market? Good luck affording it!
Now, it can (and should) be argued that health insurance itself is part of the problem, and I agree. Insurance is supposed to be a hedge against catastrophe. You know, brain cancer. The kind of thing where the expense is so astronomical, that it would ruin you. Instead, we have insurers covering viagra (only actually necessary in very rare cases-- I have a friend with a rare pulmonary disorder, and strangely enough, viagra is an effective treatment for her) and elective surgery, because people don't want to pay for them themselves. This abuse has done nothing to control costs. It's a travesty that an out-of-pocket visit to your general practitioner can cost you a week's wages. I had an X-ray done recently-- it was $1000. We're talking about 19th century technology here, people. So anyway, now it covers the routine stuff, but often not the catastrophic stuff. They'll deny you coverage! WTF!
But hey, this is what we have. Do we:
Keep in mind that while there are millions of people who can't get healthcare at all, due to cost, the CEO of United Healthcare recently received a 1 billion dollar (US) bonus. That, my friends, is fucked up. This man could personally pay for doctor visits for hundreds of thousands of people.
As many people here have said, they're trapped in their bad employment situations because they have a sick spouse or child. Imagine having to go to work someplace where they treat you like dirt for years on end because, without them, your loved one dies? That is slavery, plain and simple.
Personal health is a prerequisite for a healthy economy. If that guy could leave his job for a better one, without worrying that it would end his wife's leukemia treatments, or