Re:What is good for GM is good for America
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The 700MHz Question
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My point was that if New Orleans were really worth billions of dollars they wouldn't have any trouble fixing things on their own. That high dollar value was one of the reasons put forth for bothering to fix it at all.
If New Orleans can't afford to fix things on their own then in fact it isn't worth all that much in the first place.
And mortgages are the way you extract real dollars (cash) out of property valuations.
Re:What is good for GM is good for America
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The 700MHz Question
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Not to mention that even if some kind of oil port facility were required for the sake of national infrastructure (ideally funded by taxes on oil passing through it), there is no reason it would have to be located EXACTLY where New Orleans is. A port a few miles upriver or along the cost would be just as convenient.
Also - a port facility needs SOME housing for workers, but not a whole city.
In any case, as you say - if the city were really worth billions of dollars they could just raise taxes and build their own levy system. Everybody could just mortgage 10% of their home and they'd have 100's of millions of dollars right there. Of course, the reality is that those building might have COST that much to build, but they're probably not actually WORTH that much today...
Makes perfect sense to me - as long as they can prescribe medication.
In the US it is illegal to trade in most medications without a prescription from a doctor. Hence, even if you're very confident you know what is wrong you still end up seeing a doctor just to get a piece of paper saying its OK to buy some ear drops.
Well, graylisting will always serve at least one purpose - delaying spam until you have rules to catch it. In theory if you have a fast-responding ruleset that is updated more frequently than the graylisting delay then spam will get caught by the rules update.
They could just offer money and they'd have no trouble hiring the top 5%.
There are lots of good programmers out there. There just aren't that many willing to work for $60k, or willing to relocate for $80k. And a lot of companies probably resent paying over $50k...
And of course the best and brightest won't enter the field out of college with that kind of salary situation - from birth they'll get steered to find other areas of work more interesting.
Simple economic theory should state having medical care being as cheap as your pet's veterinarian or hair stylist. So just why is it so damn expensive?
There still aren't nearly enough doctors to properly serve the population. When you look at medical school application records and see 250 people applying for one seat, what should that tell you? Probably that we need more medical schools.
The problem is that a smart guy with lots of money can't just start up a new medical school to start raking in the cash - there are all kinds of barriers to entry. Essentially the medical profession has worked to ensure that there remains a shortage of good doctors in order to prevent a total collapse in pricing (you can't charge $100k for medical school if people only make $50k/yr as doctors).
I was told elsewhere on this site that doctors are essentially forced to see people every 10 minutes to keep costs down. However, that is only one way of looking at it. Doctors get paid by the patient. Insurance company cuts amount of reimbursement per patient. Doctor has a choice: He can continue to give the same quality of care and get a paycut, or he can turn his practice into a body shop and see 10 people an hour and make just as much as before the cut. Now, part of the problem is that the doctor sunk huge costs like medical school thinking that he'd be making $200k/yr and now he is faced with making $80k, and malpractice bills don't get smaller just because the doctor chooses to take his time with patients. So his choice is essentially made up for him.
Medical education doesn't HAVE to be so expensive though. Having more schools would automatically lower prices (supply/demand). You can also tailor your classes and modernize - a general practitioner probably doesn't need to know how to use a scalpel, but probably could stand about 4 more semesters worth of pharmaceutics and related coursework. A few courses on bedside manner probably wouldn't hurt either. A less traditional approach could probably greatly reduce the time spent in unproductive classwork and at least get doctors into intern positions where they can offset their costs with productivity (ie pay). The intern program could probably be greatly reformed as well (for starters get rid of the long shifts - there is no reason that doctors should have to work more than 8 hours per day except for long procedures - and reducing hours will probably greatly increase safety - it seems like we regulate truckers more strictly in this regard).
If you turn medicine into a profession that pays reasonably well but without the huge recipe for burnout you'll get a lot more people to go into it. And I'm talking about qualified people who otherwise end up doing something else. Tort reform of some kind would probably be good as well (to go along with procedural improvements that actually fix the medical quality issues). Any time I hear about a doctor's lifestyle the first thing I think is that you couldn't pay me enough to live it - you work yourself to death and then reward yourself with a very nice vacation. I think most normal folks would prefer to simply live a decent life year-round.
BTW - I did want to respond to somebody else's comment about having to run through patients every 10 minutes to remain solvent. I do sympathize with this and clearly this is no way to properly practice medicine, and doctors are stuck in this mess as much as many patients are.
The only thing I'd encourage is that more doctors need to treat their patients with dignity and with decent people-skills. When you need to get them in and out at least try to explain why thing seem so rushed - maybe they'll call up their congressman and complain about insurance companies instead of signing up for eastern meditation...
Ok, a little more detail since it seems to be everybody's favorite reaction to just assume that this couldn't be all that serious and there must be another explanation...
This isn't a case of doctor shopping either. My friend continues to see most of those specialists for follow-up, and this is just one more specialist to deal with one of the more chronic issues she is facing.
Yes, I realize that it is very unusual for people to have a laundry list of acute and chronic problems. My friend has only heard this a half dozen times as each specialist admits that something serious is going on.
By the way, the story with this particular specialist isn't entirely a bad one. The specialist uncovered a potential chronic problem that might have contributed to many of the acute ones, although more testing is required to confirm this. Of course, I ended up having to talk my friend into taking her doctor's advice seriously because he had managed to mess up his doctor-patient relationship from the start making any good medical advice he did administer just as likely to get ignored...
Bottom line - patients are humans. You don't need to be a psychologist to treat them like humans...
The same exists in the US (probably with a different name), but it is very hard to prove.
If the employer fires you the next day for embarassing them (and tells you that and somebody testifies to this fact) then you'd have them nailed to the wall.
Most likely, however, it wouldn't end this way. You'd start getting below-average performance reviews. You wouldn't get bonuses (which aren't contractually obligated). You'd never be promoted. You'd get the least interesting assignments at work (they wouldn't switch you from fixing computers to cleaning toilets, but you might get the office with the flaky air conditioning unit / etc). You'd probably get minimal raises. You'd never get a good reference and NOBODY else would ever hire you. If you ask for reasons you'd get them - and they'd all be good reasons for treating you in this way (well, your work isn't horrible, but you really just get by - or, there were a lot of other strong performers this year and your work just wasn't as good - or whatever). Everybody makes mistakes, and any that you make will get noticed where otherwise they'd tend to be overlooked. Everybody does good work on occasion as well - and yours will never be recognized.
It would be very hard to make a court case out of any of this. Unless you aspire only to make a minimal paycheck without any career advancement you're going to end up being miserable. And if that is all you aspire to then you're not likely to be the sort of person who rocks the boat by posting on a blog anyway...
Uh, this "hypochondriac" has been in intensive care three times in about a year with a recurrant life-threatening condition. Most insurance companies won't fund a week-long intensive care stay (list price of $10k/day) for somebody who reports that they get lots of headaches.
I'd just as soon not post her medical history on slashdot, but there are a dozen doctors who would readily attest that she has some serious problems.
Yes, but this wouldn't be the 4 creams she put on her foot.
This would be multiple hopitalizations (including cardiothoracic surgery in one case, minor surgey (with significant risk of complications) in another case, and intensive-care in all cases), and history with about a dozen different doctors for several different problems over the last 24 months or so. This particular specialist was a bit more tangential to her acute problems, but very relevant to her chronic problems.
And the medication history would be about 20 different prescription medications prescribed by a variety of specialists over the last few years.
And on a side note, I might prefer not to listen to somebody try to sound intelligent for 10 minutes who doesn't know what they're talking about in my line of work, but sometimes you just need to take time to gain a client's respect. There are ways of dealing with customers who repeatedly badger you, but we're talking about 5 minutes - not 45 minutes here.
In any case, when I see professionals scratch their head about why people go to chiropractors for anything other than temporary relief of acute back pains I realize that they're missing the one thing that the alternative medicine practicioners provide - the personal touch. Granted, good doctors are also probably missing the willingness to promise success with no risk of side effect - and that is a real problem with the alternative medicine crowd. However, doctors would do well to work on the personal touch and educate their patients in the benefits of science-based medicine - rather than just having an attitude that they know what is better for the patient than the patient does (which might be factually true, but the attitude really puts people off).
Well, they do cost money - they probably didn't advertise it because they wanted their customers not to request them.
Just about every company I do business is constantly offering to switch me to "free" electronic statements.:) I prefer paper and stick with it, although electronic would probably be more reliable if anything.
You do hit on an important point - people want to be treated by people who actually seem to care about the fact that they're suffering.
Too many doctors just poke, prod, wrap it up in 3 minutes, and generally act like you're a nuiscience that they have to endure to collect their paycheck.
I know somebody who had to wait a long time to visit a specialist, and took time to write up a brief one-page history of her condition and the various treatments to date and how they generally worked out. She also wrote up a list of medications (current, ones successfully used in the past, allergies, and unsuccessful medications). She also had a log of daily diagnostic tests as well.
The doctor couldn't really be bothered to read any of it and frequently asked questions that would have been covered in the history. The answers to those questions weren't nearly as complete as what would have been found in the history as well. The doctor would suggest stuff contradicted by stuff tried in the past, which would get pointed out. Despite going around in circles a few time he still didn't bother to read the history. In the end he ordered some tests and sent her home (where she'll no doubt need to bug him to follow up).
Would it have really hurt the doctor to spend all of 3 minutes reading the one page piece of paper which was obviously extremely important to his patient? Sure, he might notice a few mistakes in reasoning, and might be skeptical about some of the patient's conclusions, but perhaps it would at least reassure the patient if it seemed like the doctor even remotely cared about whether the patient actually recovered? And maybe the doctor would improve his success rate by at least considering all the information available - maybe it would contain some clue that would shape his reasoning?
I work in IT and am often confronted with customers who have misdiagnosed the source of their technical problems. I just patiently listen to them, gather additional information, and then explain what my thoughts are and why I think they are correct. If you take the time to treat your customers as if they have a brain they will generally respect your opinions (they're coming to you for help, after all). If on the other hand you just brush them off without explaining yourself then you'll find yourself with few customers. And the medical profession is in for one heck of a shock when the voters are done with them at the rate they're currently going...
I'm more than happy to see this codified into law. What's your point? I'm arguing how courts SHOULD work - not how they currently do. The way the laws/courts operate SHOULD be just - and I'm perfectly willing to admit that sometimes they aren't in reality.
Does ING actually provide paper statements? It seems like charging for paper statements is becoming standard practice in many arenas. In some cases it is standard but there is a monthly charge just for having an account...
Whistleblowers serve the public interest. They should be encouraged to speak up and shielded in any way which is just.
If somebody says something libelous (anonymous or otherwise) I'm fine with the courts having power to punish them. However, people should be subject to the courts and not the other way around - the courts don't exist simply to help you silence your critics.
Judges should be able to evaluate the merits and facts of a case, and choose to not grant discovery of an identity in cases where there are not sufficient grounds to win a lawsuit. It wouldn't be hard to do - if a blog is libelous then the company should be able to show that it is factually incorrect and caused harm. Neither of these require disclosure of the blogers identity.
The issue is that many plaintiffs file a John Doe lawsuit against somebody, get their identity, and then drop the lawsuit and pursue other means of retribution.
For example, a company suspects that a bloger saying bad but true things about the company is an employee. They know that they can't legally do anything about it - a trial will uncover the facts and show that the statements are true and thus not libel. However, they file a suit anyway to find out who the employee is. Then they drop the suit (since they'd lose it anyway). At this point that employee starts having performance problems, gets lousy assignments, and generally suffers until they quit - but of course nothing is attributed to the blog and nothing is done that would give the employee grounds to sue. Other employees of course get the message and learn not to post bad things about the company on the blog, which is what the company set out to accomplish in the first place.
That's the problem with these sorts of lawsuits - they aren't about using the courts to obtain justice - they're about using the courts as a tool to remove the shield of anonymity used by weak people confronting strong ones who are doing something wrong.
If the hospital were genuinely concerned about patient privacy they should go to the Feds and point out the issue and let them deal with it. The federal government would perform an investigation while protecting anonymity, and they'd be genuinely looking out for patients without an agenda of covering up hospital mistakes.
You neglect to mention why. Netbank doesn't have minimum balance fees or anyting onerous in general, although if you open an account with $100 and proceed to write 75 checks for $1000 each you would easily run into the scenario you describe at any bank.
Netbank grew so big by being one of the few banks that DIDN'T charge fees for anything and everything. Generally the only thing they charged fees for was stuff that you'd expect - frequent withdrawls on a money market account, overdrafts, etc. This stuff incurs cost and isn't normal business and have been subject to fees by just about every bank since the dawn of time.
But the ultimate culprits are the (all but unregulated) mortgage companies, who loan the money then promptly sell the paper - they've taken their money and profit and are walking away virtually scott free from this developing crisis.
I dunno - they wouldn't do it if people didn't buy the paper.
Suppose I find ten homeless people and loan them $100 each, and then sell those loans to somebody for $1100 - netting $100 in the process? As long as I was honest about what I was selling, have I done anything wrong? Sure, whoever bought the loans will lose just about everything they bought, but as long as I was honest about what I was selling isn't that on them?
The real culprits are people who buy loans without any care for whether the debtors can make the payments. And we needn't be too upset about them - they'll just lose their shirts when the market corrects themselves.
It largely depends. Many banks have "money market" accounts that are classified as savings accounts as far as the FDIC is concerned and are insured. Many money market accounts are in fact uninsured as well.
Netbank had a "money market" account which was FDIC insured - at least as far as I'm aware (and I did take the time to find out).
I'm guessing it comes down to whether the bank wanted to follow FDIC rules regarding investments/limits/reserves/etc. Most money market mutual funds don't - but they're still very safe due to their investment profile. Also - most non-FDIC-insured money market funds tend to be privately insured against anything but investment risk.
Bottom line is - anybody with any kind of account no matter what it is called or where it is held should be aware of its FDIC-insurance status. Many banks have both insured and non-insured investment products.
Yup - why anybody would deposit more than $100k in a bank account is beyond me. Banks pay horrible interest - they're only useful for day-to-day liquid activities without large balance requirements, and due to the fact that in the US they're insured up to $100k.
If you have more than that you're much better-off investing in a mutual fund of some sort. Even if it is just a money-market fund. Most of those at least have private insurance - it won't protect you if the stock market completely crashes, but it will protect you if your investment company goes out of business and somebody walks off with the funds.
The FDIC was designed to keep average Americans from losing their shirt in the event of a bank failure, and to promote general confidence in the banking system by average people. It wasn't designed to cover people with hundreds of thousands of dollars - these are not people who should require government bailouts. If you can earn that kind of cash you should have enough sense to read up on what to do with it. Sure, lots of middle-class Americans have that kind of cash in their retirement accounts, but somebody with a decent-paying job that likely required a college education should know not to just take bank ads at face value...
Yes, and if you actually enact policies that substantially increase that danger you're going to have to pay the cops an awful lot more.
In theory US soldiers are paid for hazardous duty but look at how well recruitment is going right now. There's a difference between getting paid to potentially put your life on the line but with the ability to shoot back and with the knowledge that your superiors are going to go a long way towards safeguarding their life, and getting paid to be a target.
You also have to look at risk exposure. Hazmat teams wear protective gear in environments that ordinary people have been walking around in for days without apparent harm. The issue is that walking through mercury vapor for a day or two is far different from working in it 250 days a year.
Cops have a lot more opportunity to get shot than ordinary citizens - pay or not. If you don't want them getting shot left and right you need to safeguard them to some extent. And keep in mind that I'm normally a fairly libertarian-leaning person...
It depends - even with a dead man's switch it may be preferable to shoot a bomber at a time when they are not in a position to inflict as many casualties. If they are detonated at a point where nobody is standing around that would be preferable than letting them walk into a crowd or next to a load-bearing wall.
In any case, my point is that police receiving complaints of suspicious devices in high-profile crowded areas are going to respond with a well-armed force ready to shoot upon even a fairly minor provocation. I'm not convinced that any other posture would really be appropriate, unless you're willing to find police willing to go into harm's way with a don't-shoot-first-ever rule of engagement. That could be a recipe for dead cops...
I'd say the same thing applies in many regulated industries where it is required to document that a computer system meets various quality standards.
Far more money gets spent on documenting that the system works correctly than actually making the system work correctly. Often you end up with a system that looks great on paper that has lots of bugs in actual operation. Lots of tests get written that look like they test something but which rarely uncover bugs. The whole exercise costs a fortune, and largely exists to satisfy auditors (whether internal or external to the company performing the exercise).
Techniques like agile programming, automated testing, code reviews, etc are shunned because they're non-traditional and don't generate lots of paper. There is a fear that in an audit a government representative who hasn't signed on to the methodology might hammer you to death over not having a 2000 page design specification and a load of tests written and executed by everybody from the programmers, to IT QA, to end users (often the same exact test gets reformatted and run by all parties just so that it can be said that everybody had a hand in testing).
I once had to evaluate whether it was safe to directly modify a particular database field in an application, and was relieved to see that this application had one of those aforementioned thick design specifications. Then I was dismayed to find out that the only documentation there was on the field was the fact that it existed, what table it was in, what it was called, what kind of field it was, and what it contained (WidgetCorrectionFactor = Factor used to Correct the Widget value - really helpful as if I couldn't have guessed that much from the field name!). Absent was any kind of documentation as to what code might reference that field or what tables might join to it. I could search the source for the field name, but then there wasn't any kind of documentation or flow charts indicating the typical system workflow or in what order the various routines might get called. It was like documenting all the cell types in an animal without bothering to indicate what the actual animal looked like and how everything went together. But the auditors loved the document.
The issue is that most often QA and management and external auditors have no way of knowing whether a piece of code actually works or not. So, instead they look for stuff they can understand - paperwork. The paperwork does tend to lead to some basic form of quality, but rarely does it lead to code that doesn't break down on all the various one-off-cases that don't make their way into human-executed tests. I'll take a simple automated test that can be executed against a matrix of input values against a complex human-executed test that only ever gets run once (and is likely not repeated every time a piece of seemingly-unrelated code is touched) any day!
Uh, what exactly was she protesting against? Police responding to threats of suicide bombers? If she did this in Texas in a location other than an airport she'd probably have been gunned down by 14 helpful citizens.
This isn't a case of a college kid protesting against government oppression. This is some kid with a chip on her shoulder.
And when a real suicide bomber threatens to kill dozens of people in a crowded area do you really want the police trying to figure out if the wires on their explosives appear to be properly attached? Wearing what would appear to be a bomb and then being evasive when questioned about it is about as smart as pointing an unloaded gun at a police officer and being surprised at the outcome...
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My point was that if New Orleans were really worth billions of dollars they wouldn't have any trouble fixing things on their own. That high dollar value was one of the reasons put forth for bothering to fix it at all.
If New Orleans can't afford to fix things on their own then in fact it isn't worth all that much in the first place.
And mortgages are the way you extract real dollars (cash) out of property valuations.
Not to mention that even if some kind of oil port facility were required for the sake of national infrastructure (ideally funded by taxes on oil passing through it), there is no reason it would have to be located EXACTLY where New Orleans is. A port a few miles upriver or along the cost would be just as convenient.
Also - a port facility needs SOME housing for workers, but not a whole city.
In any case, as you say - if the city were really worth billions of dollars they could just raise taxes and build their own levy system. Everybody could just mortgage 10% of their home and they'd have 100's of millions of dollars right there. Of course, the reality is that those building might have COST that much to build, but they're probably not actually WORTH that much today...
Makes perfect sense to me - as long as they can prescribe medication.
In the US it is illegal to trade in most medications without a prescription from a doctor. Hence, even if you're very confident you know what is wrong you still end up seeing a doctor just to get a piece of paper saying its OK to buy some ear drops.
A tiered system seems like a decent compromise.
Well, graylisting will always serve at least one purpose - delaying spam until you have rules to catch it. In theory if you have a fast-responding ruleset that is updated more frequently than the graylisting delay then spam will get caught by the rules update.
They could just offer money and they'd have no trouble hiring the top 5%.
There are lots of good programmers out there. There just aren't that many willing to work for $60k, or willing to relocate for $80k. And a lot of companies probably resent paying over $50k...
And of course the best and brightest won't enter the field out of college with that kind of salary situation - from birth they'll get steered to find other areas of work more interesting.
Like anything - you get what you pay for...
Simple economic theory should state having medical care being as cheap as your pet's veterinarian or hair stylist. So just why is it so damn expensive?
There still aren't nearly enough doctors to properly serve the population. When you look at medical school application records and see 250 people applying for one seat, what should that tell you? Probably that we need more medical schools.
The problem is that a smart guy with lots of money can't just start up a new medical school to start raking in the cash - there are all kinds of barriers to entry. Essentially the medical profession has worked to ensure that there remains a shortage of good doctors in order to prevent a total collapse in pricing (you can't charge $100k for medical school if people only make $50k/yr as doctors).
I was told elsewhere on this site that doctors are essentially forced to see people every 10 minutes to keep costs down. However, that is only one way of looking at it. Doctors get paid by the patient. Insurance company cuts amount of reimbursement per patient. Doctor has a choice: He can continue to give the same quality of care and get a paycut, or he can turn his practice into a body shop and see 10 people an hour and make just as much as before the cut. Now, part of the problem is that the doctor sunk huge costs like medical school thinking that he'd be making $200k/yr and now he is faced with making $80k, and malpractice bills don't get smaller just because the doctor chooses to take his time with patients. So his choice is essentially made up for him.
Medical education doesn't HAVE to be so expensive though. Having more schools would automatically lower prices (supply/demand). You can also tailor your classes and modernize - a general practitioner probably doesn't need to know how to use a scalpel, but probably could stand about 4 more semesters worth of pharmaceutics and related coursework. A few courses on bedside manner probably wouldn't hurt either. A less traditional approach could probably greatly reduce the time spent in unproductive classwork and at least get doctors into intern positions where they can offset their costs with productivity (ie pay). The intern program could probably be greatly reformed as well (for starters get rid of the long shifts - there is no reason that doctors should have to work more than 8 hours per day except for long procedures - and reducing hours will probably greatly increase safety - it seems like we regulate truckers more strictly in this regard).
If you turn medicine into a profession that pays reasonably well but without the huge recipe for burnout you'll get a lot more people to go into it. And I'm talking about qualified people who otherwise end up doing something else. Tort reform of some kind would probably be good as well (to go along with procedural improvements that actually fix the medical quality issues). Any time I hear about a doctor's lifestyle the first thing I think is that you couldn't pay me enough to live it - you work yourself to death and then reward yourself with a very nice vacation. I think most normal folks would prefer to simply live a decent life year-round.
BTW - I did want to respond to somebody else's comment about having to run through patients every 10 minutes to remain solvent. I do sympathize with this and clearly this is no way to properly practice medicine, and doctors are stuck in this mess as much as many patients are.
The only thing I'd encourage is that more doctors need to treat their patients with dignity and with decent people-skills. When you need to get them in and out at least try to explain why thing seem so rushed - maybe they'll call up their congressman and complain about insurance companies instead of signing up for eastern meditation...
Ok, a little more detail since it seems to be everybody's favorite reaction to just assume that this couldn't be all that serious and there must be another explanation...
This isn't a case of doctor shopping either. My friend continues to see most of those specialists for follow-up, and this is just one more specialist to deal with one of the more chronic issues she is facing.
Yes, I realize that it is very unusual for people to have a laundry list of acute and chronic problems. My friend has only heard this a half dozen times as each specialist admits that something serious is going on.
By the way, the story with this particular specialist isn't entirely a bad one. The specialist uncovered a potential chronic problem that might have contributed to many of the acute ones, although more testing is required to confirm this. Of course, I ended up having to talk my friend into taking her doctor's advice seriously because he had managed to mess up his doctor-patient relationship from the start making any good medical advice he did administer just as likely to get ignored...
Bottom line - patients are humans. You don't need to be a psychologist to treat them like humans...
The same exists in the US (probably with a different name), but it is very hard to prove.
If the employer fires you the next day for embarassing them (and tells you that and somebody testifies to this fact) then you'd have them nailed to the wall.
Most likely, however, it wouldn't end this way. You'd start getting below-average performance reviews. You wouldn't get bonuses (which aren't contractually obligated). You'd never be promoted. You'd get the least interesting assignments at work (they wouldn't switch you from fixing computers to cleaning toilets, but you might get the office with the flaky air conditioning unit / etc). You'd probably get minimal raises. You'd never get a good reference and NOBODY else would ever hire you. If you ask for reasons you'd get them - and they'd all be good reasons for treating you in this way (well, your work isn't horrible, but you really just get by - or, there were a lot of other strong performers this year and your work just wasn't as good - or whatever). Everybody makes mistakes, and any that you make will get noticed where otherwise they'd tend to be overlooked. Everybody does good work on occasion as well - and yours will never be recognized.
It would be very hard to make a court case out of any of this. Unless you aspire only to make a minimal paycheck without any career advancement you're going to end up being miserable. And if that is all you aspire to then you're not likely to be the sort of person who rocks the boat by posting on a blog anyway...
Uh, this "hypochondriac" has been in intensive care three times in about a year with a recurrant life-threatening condition. Most insurance companies won't fund a week-long intensive care stay (list price of $10k/day) for somebody who reports that they get lots of headaches.
I'd just as soon not post her medical history on slashdot, but there are a dozen doctors who would readily attest that she has some serious problems.
Yes, but this wouldn't be the 4 creams she put on her foot.
This would be multiple hopitalizations (including cardiothoracic surgery in one case, minor surgey (with significant risk of complications) in another case, and intensive-care in all cases), and history with about a dozen different doctors for several different problems over the last 24 months or so. This particular specialist was a bit more tangential to her acute problems, but very relevant to her chronic problems.
And the medication history would be about 20 different prescription medications prescribed by a variety of specialists over the last few years.
And on a side note, I might prefer not to listen to somebody try to sound intelligent for 10 minutes who doesn't know what they're talking about in my line of work, but sometimes you just need to take time to gain a client's respect. There are ways of dealing with customers who repeatedly badger you, but we're talking about 5 minutes - not 45 minutes here.
In any case, when I see professionals scratch their head about why people go to chiropractors for anything other than temporary relief of acute back pains I realize that they're missing the one thing that the alternative medicine practicioners provide - the personal touch. Granted, good doctors are also probably missing the willingness to promise success with no risk of side effect - and that is a real problem with the alternative medicine crowd. However, doctors would do well to work on the personal touch and educate their patients in the benefits of science-based medicine - rather than just having an attitude that they know what is better for the patient than the patient does (which might be factually true, but the attitude really puts people off).
Well, they do cost money - they probably didn't advertise it because they wanted their customers not to request them.
:) I prefer paper and stick with it, although electronic would probably be more reliable if anything.
Just about every company I do business is constantly offering to switch me to "free" electronic statements.
You do hit on an important point - people want to be treated by people who actually seem to care about the fact that they're suffering.
Too many doctors just poke, prod, wrap it up in 3 minutes, and generally act like you're a nuiscience that they have to endure to collect their paycheck.
I know somebody who had to wait a long time to visit a specialist, and took time to write up a brief one-page history of her condition and the various treatments to date and how they generally worked out. She also wrote up a list of medications (current, ones successfully used in the past, allergies, and unsuccessful medications). She also had a log of daily diagnostic tests as well.
The doctor couldn't really be bothered to read any of it and frequently asked questions that would have been covered in the history. The answers to those questions weren't nearly as complete as what would have been found in the history as well. The doctor would suggest stuff contradicted by stuff tried in the past, which would get pointed out. Despite going around in circles a few time he still didn't bother to read the history. In the end he ordered some tests and sent her home (where she'll no doubt need to bug him to follow up).
Would it have really hurt the doctor to spend all of 3 minutes reading the one page piece of paper which was obviously extremely important to his patient? Sure, he might notice a few mistakes in reasoning, and might be skeptical about some of the patient's conclusions, but perhaps it would at least reassure the patient if it seemed like the doctor even remotely cared about whether the patient actually recovered? And maybe the doctor would improve his success rate by at least considering all the information available - maybe it would contain some clue that would shape his reasoning?
I work in IT and am often confronted with customers who have misdiagnosed the source of their technical problems. I just patiently listen to them, gather additional information, and then explain what my thoughts are and why I think they are correct. If you take the time to treat your customers as if they have a brain they will generally respect your opinions (they're coming to you for help, after all). If on the other hand you just brush them off without explaining yourself then you'll find yourself with few customers. And the medical profession is in for one heck of a shock when the voters are done with them at the rate they're currently going...
I'm more than happy to see this codified into law. What's your point? I'm arguing how courts SHOULD work - not how they currently do. The way the laws/courts operate SHOULD be just - and I'm perfectly willing to admit that sometimes they aren't in reality.
Does ING actually provide paper statements? It seems like charging for paper statements is becoming standard practice in many arenas. In some cases it is standard but there is a monthly charge just for having an account...
Whistleblowers serve the public interest. They should be encouraged to speak up and shielded in any way which is just.
If somebody says something libelous (anonymous or otherwise) I'm fine with the courts having power to punish them. However, people should be subject to the courts and not the other way around - the courts don't exist simply to help you silence your critics.
Judges should be able to evaluate the merits and facts of a case, and choose to not grant discovery of an identity in cases where there are not sufficient grounds to win a lawsuit. It wouldn't be hard to do - if a blog is libelous then the company should be able to show that it is factually incorrect and caused harm. Neither of these require disclosure of the blogers identity.
The issue is that many plaintiffs file a John Doe lawsuit against somebody, get their identity, and then drop the lawsuit and pursue other means of retribution.
For example, a company suspects that a bloger saying bad but true things about the company is an employee. They know that they can't legally do anything about it - a trial will uncover the facts and show that the statements are true and thus not libel. However, they file a suit anyway to find out who the employee is. Then they drop the suit (since they'd lose it anyway). At this point that employee starts having performance problems, gets lousy assignments, and generally suffers until they quit - but of course nothing is attributed to the blog and nothing is done that would give the employee grounds to sue. Other employees of course get the message and learn not to post bad things about the company on the blog, which is what the company set out to accomplish in the first place.
That's the problem with these sorts of lawsuits - they aren't about using the courts to obtain justice - they're about using the courts as a tool to remove the shield of anonymity used by weak people confronting strong ones who are doing something wrong.
If the hospital were genuinely concerned about patient privacy they should go to the Feds and point out the issue and let them deal with it. The federal government would perform an investigation while protecting anonymity, and they'd be genuinely looking out for patients without an agenda of covering up hospital mistakes.
You neglect to mention why. Netbank doesn't have minimum balance fees or anyting onerous in general, although if you open an account with $100 and proceed to write 75 checks for $1000 each you would easily run into the scenario you describe at any bank.
Netbank grew so big by being one of the few banks that DIDN'T charge fees for anything and everything. Generally the only thing they charged fees for was stuff that you'd expect - frequent withdrawls on a money market account, overdrafts, etc. This stuff incurs cost and isn't normal business and have been subject to fees by just about every bank since the dawn of time.
But the ultimate culprits are the (all but unregulated) mortgage companies, who loan the money then promptly sell the paper - they've taken their money and profit and are walking away virtually scott free from this developing crisis.
I dunno - they wouldn't do it if people didn't buy the paper.
Suppose I find ten homeless people and loan them $100 each, and then sell those loans to somebody for $1100 - netting $100 in the process? As long as I was honest about what I was selling, have I done anything wrong? Sure, whoever bought the loans will lose just about everything they bought, but as long as I was honest about what I was selling isn't that on them?
The real culprits are people who buy loans without any care for whether the debtors can make the payments. And we needn't be too upset about them - they'll just lose their shirts when the market corrects themselves.
It largely depends. Many banks have "money market" accounts that are classified as savings accounts as far as the FDIC is concerned and are insured. Many money market accounts are in fact uninsured as well.
Netbank had a "money market" account which was FDIC insured - at least as far as I'm aware (and I did take the time to find out).
I'm guessing it comes down to whether the bank wanted to follow FDIC rules regarding investments/limits/reserves/etc. Most money market mutual funds don't - but they're still very safe due to their investment profile. Also - most non-FDIC-insured money market funds tend to be privately insured against anything but investment risk.
Bottom line is - anybody with any kind of account no matter what it is called or where it is held should be aware of its FDIC-insurance status. Many banks have both insured and non-insured investment products.
Yup - why anybody would deposit more than $100k in a bank account is beyond me. Banks pay horrible interest - they're only useful for day-to-day liquid activities without large balance requirements, and due to the fact that in the US they're insured up to $100k.
If you have more than that you're much better-off investing in a mutual fund of some sort. Even if it is just a money-market fund. Most of those at least have private insurance - it won't protect you if the stock market completely crashes, but it will protect you if your investment company goes out of business and somebody walks off with the funds.
The FDIC was designed to keep average Americans from losing their shirt in the event of a bank failure, and to promote general confidence in the banking system by average people. It wasn't designed to cover people with hundreds of thousands of dollars - these are not people who should require government bailouts. If you can earn that kind of cash you should have enough sense to read up on what to do with it. Sure, lots of middle-class Americans have that kind of cash in their retirement accounts, but somebody with a decent-paying job that likely required a college education should know not to just take bank ads at face value...
Yes, and if you actually enact policies that substantially increase that danger you're going to have to pay the cops an awful lot more.
In theory US soldiers are paid for hazardous duty but look at how well recruitment is going right now. There's a difference between getting paid to potentially put your life on the line but with the ability to shoot back and with the knowledge that your superiors are going to go a long way towards safeguarding their life, and getting paid to be a target.
You also have to look at risk exposure. Hazmat teams wear protective gear in environments that ordinary people have been walking around in for days without apparent harm. The issue is that walking through mercury vapor for a day or two is far different from working in it 250 days a year.
Cops have a lot more opportunity to get shot than ordinary citizens - pay or not. If you don't want them getting shot left and right you need to safeguard them to some extent. And keep in mind that I'm normally a fairly libertarian-leaning person...
It depends - even with a dead man's switch it may be preferable to shoot a bomber at a time when they are not in a position to inflict as many casualties. If they are detonated at a point where nobody is standing around that would be preferable than letting them walk into a crowd or next to a load-bearing wall.
In any case, my point is that police receiving complaints of suspicious devices in high-profile crowded areas are going to respond with a well-armed force ready to shoot upon even a fairly minor provocation. I'm not convinced that any other posture would really be appropriate, unless you're willing to find police willing to go into harm's way with a don't-shoot-first-ever rule of engagement. That could be a recipe for dead cops...
I'd say the same thing applies in many regulated industries where it is required to document that a computer system meets various quality standards.
Far more money gets spent on documenting that the system works correctly than actually making the system work correctly. Often you end up with a system that looks great on paper that has lots of bugs in actual operation. Lots of tests get written that look like they test something but which rarely uncover bugs. The whole exercise costs a fortune, and largely exists to satisfy auditors (whether internal or external to the company performing the exercise).
Techniques like agile programming, automated testing, code reviews, etc are shunned because they're non-traditional and don't generate lots of paper. There is a fear that in an audit a government representative who hasn't signed on to the methodology might hammer you to death over not having a 2000 page design specification and a load of tests written and executed by everybody from the programmers, to IT QA, to end users (often the same exact test gets reformatted and run by all parties just so that it can be said that everybody had a hand in testing).
I once had to evaluate whether it was safe to directly modify a particular database field in an application, and was relieved to see that this application had one of those aforementioned thick design specifications. Then I was dismayed to find out that the only documentation there was on the field was the fact that it existed, what table it was in, what it was called, what kind of field it was, and what it contained (WidgetCorrectionFactor = Factor used to Correct the Widget value - really helpful as if I couldn't have guessed that much from the field name!). Absent was any kind of documentation as to what code might reference that field or what tables might join to it. I could search the source for the field name, but then there wasn't any kind of documentation or flow charts indicating the typical system workflow or in what order the various routines might get called. It was like documenting all the cell types in an animal without bothering to indicate what the actual animal looked like and how everything went together. But the auditors loved the document.
The issue is that most often QA and management and external auditors have no way of knowing whether a piece of code actually works or not. So, instead they look for stuff they can understand - paperwork. The paperwork does tend to lead to some basic form of quality, but rarely does it lead to code that doesn't break down on all the various one-off-cases that don't make their way into human-executed tests. I'll take a simple automated test that can be executed against a matrix of input values against a complex human-executed test that only ever gets run once (and is likely not repeated every time a piece of seemingly-unrelated code is touched) any day!
Uh, what exactly was she protesting against? Police responding to threats of suicide bombers? If she did this in Texas in a location other than an airport she'd probably have been gunned down by 14 helpful citizens.
This isn't a case of a college kid protesting against government oppression. This is some kid with a chip on her shoulder.
And when a real suicide bomber threatens to kill dozens of people in a crowded area do you really want the police trying to figure out if the wires on their explosives appear to be properly attached? Wearing what would appear to be a bomb and then being evasive when questioned about it is about as smart as pointing an unloaded gun at a police officer and being surprised at the outcome...