It would seem fair that 'US-centric' allows for statements that globally apply inside the US, but not outside it. A 'US-centric' site might say something like 'everyone eats at McDonalds', even while this is patently untrue in, say, Antarctica or on Mars. But it is indeed true in the US.
Besides, it isn't as if slashdot saying something would somehow bind hulu into offering you service overseas - which I assume is what you're REALLY after. Otherwise you'd be making quite a lot about almost nothing, and would be doing so to a largely unsympathetic audience. Right?
Insurance companies will no longer have access to profits. Their rates will be capped by the government, and they can no longer be competitive in any way. Every plan will be exactly the same as every other plan, per the law. The notion that all these new customers will aid them in any is based on the false assumption that these new customers will be profitable. They won't. They can't be. The law is designed this way.
If you don't think hospitals have CEO's, then I suggest going to work for one. Did you not notice how much money the hospital associations were putting into the lobbiest effort? Really??
I don't actually argue for the status quo. The middle ground scenario we're presently suffering through is due exclusively to the corruption caused by applying government funds to a capitalist system. There are only two choices. Either:
A) Healthcare is a right, and the government provides all services. There is no opportunity for profit, and each is served according to their need, while everyone pays the same amount via taxes.
OR
B) Healthcare is a business and people are allowed to operate it in the manner most likely to keep their business profitable for their shareholders.
I'm not sure how you can equate a loss at the primary as 'no real influence'. You positioning as if the end result is the only thing that matters. Do you genuinely have no idea how much extra effort her campaign had to exert due to that loss? Really??
I'm genuinely asking, because it seems like you're just being obtuse. That's the gap between what I view as reality and what you're displaying.
Take note, the campaign isn't simply "Obama is the boogey man" but "government is the boogey man". Anti-incumbent sentiment was salient in every race, like the one above that we were just discussing.
You don't necessarily need to agree. Time will tell either way, but I'm mildly annoyed at the level of cynicism you're displaying here. Your opinion seems to be that one of the single greatest grass-roots changes to the political scene is irrelevant. In two short years we've gone from mocking Ron Paul to agreeing with him - in the mainstream! You didn't notice. That's just odd.
One would think that credit analysis would be done by generally accepted rules, like credit score.
It likely is, but this kind of analysis is more expensive. If they can turn away (dirty Javascript blocking) Firefox users (hippies) before they actually have to request and evaluate their (horrible) credit scores, then they save money. Or, likewise, if such a user continues anyway, you know you can up the rate a little at the end. They'll think they're getting a deal!
It makes more sense than you're giving them credit.
It seems just asking for your age would be a better way of determining... well, your age.
If one could prove that age was a deciding factor, wouldn't that necessarily be opening things up to discrimination issues? Perhaps more subtle methods wouldn't do so. Or at a minimum, they might provide plausible deniability.
I would guess that IE trends higher is the less tech savvy regardless of income or education. It's those with tech knowledge that deviate from it (not in all cases, but the majority).
I'd actually put IE above Firefox in the realm of savvy-ness. The truly savvy can safely operate IE, and will do so when it isn't convenient to add another browser to the mix. My grandmother, however, gets zero tech support for anything outside of Firefox. Many, many, many IT pro's I know have taken a similar line.
Maybe 'related to someone savvy' isn't an appreciable category, but I'm willing to be that it is.
The general principle is that any one cause will have myriad effects, all of which will be correlated with one another. By default, assume a common cause.
Lead by example. What's your common cause as to the assumption in this situation?
Housing bubble was caused by false/easy credit. Full stop.
The price of care is/has been rising faster than insurance costs. It will only get worse. Just as the easy credit caused a surplus supply of dollars used to purchase houses, the mandatory insurance will do the same for healthcare. This is simple supply and demand stuff. People will pay all they can bear. Insurance providing a larger chunk of this is irrelevant, because the hospital doesn't get the blame for the greater insurance premiums. So in the end the consumer will pay more in both places, and to add insult to injury, they'll go to prison if they opt out entirely.
I'm not the one arguing that people use it when it is free. That would be the 'wind up in the ER' crowd. Consequently, I think there may be someone else using your account, because you made such a statement only a few posts ago. You might want to change your password...
Continuing my argument, should we get rid of private schools? Home schooling? Dropping out to get a job? Have it so if you do not take enough of the mandatory classes you go to prison? In this country we believe that a reasonable amount of liberty outweighs nearly every public need. Why not likewise in healthcare?
If statistics are your only source of pride as an American, I'd humbly suggest you stop participating in the process. Google 'statistical manipulation'. They are a data point, and nothing more - to a thoughtful person anyway. But you seem to be using them as a reason to undermine basic civil liberties. You're suggesting that the only factor in infant mortality is how strenuously we agree with Obama. And that's just bad logic.
Well, perhaps they would care more about protecting their identity.
Understand that blaming the victim is counterproductive. You'd do as well to advocate that women wear burkas to avoid rape. But in real society we expect men to control their baser urges when confronted by bare flesh. Just as we can rightly expect data miners to control the same when exposed to data they didn't earn.
I understand what you're saying about the marketing ploy, and in the case of MoveOn you may well be right. I can't really say. But in the case of the Tea Party I honestly believe that it only started that way. Or the label did. In fact there have been 'Fair Tax' rallies and the like for years and years. Remember Waco and Ruby Ridge? Remember what those were about? That basic idea (that government needs to stay out of our lives) is deeply a part of what many if not all of the Tea Party people believe. While they're clearly not radicals, they are no longer under the control of the proper Republicans.
Further I think time will show that it isn't the Tea Party people caucusing with the Republicans, but the opposite. Those Bush-era NeoCons have effectively lost their party, and I find it deeply ironic that they probably were the catalyst for the change that brought about their demise.
Now, if you're right and the Red team gets to behave exactly as they used to and face no anger over it, I'd happily apologize. But I'm just not seeing it.
Take Lisa Murkowski. Do you really feel that she's going to turn a blind eye to Tea Party demands once she's in office? It very nearly cost her the last seat, and had Joe Miller not made some costly mistakes, it would have. She got lucky, but if she wants to keep her job, she'd better change her tune. Vis-a-vis every Republican, everywhere.
That's not entirely accurate, and you're moving the goal posts at either end of the field.
Either:
1) They will be on welfare, because they gave up as you're predicting or 2) They won't qualify for subsidies anyway
Either way, the system screws over a lot more people than it helps, and we the people pay for their healthcare AND for their insurance.
What, by the way, do you think the fact that everyone has insurance will do to prices? Look back at the housing bubble with everyone's easy access to credit. Replace credit with insurance and home prices with billed charges. The have-nots are an integral part of any capitalist system. If you want to design a system with equity for every single person no matter what, do so. But take care to not blend such a system with capitalism, because it will be rife with corruption and abuse.
‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome." — Robert A. Heinlein
So long as the bread and circus tickets must still be purchased with money earned, rather than money willed into existence, there's hope that the system can work. In a world where it is a crime to not buy such things - where the able face prison for what the welfare crowd receives for free - you may or may not get the desired result. But either way, the hospital laughs all the way to the bank, and our tax rolls foot the bill.
The insurance company's contracts with the hospitals keep them somewhat under control. They already pay less than half what the government does - could you imagine how bad it would be without any fiduciary interest involved in the pricing whatsoever?
They represent fundamentally different goals for the size and scope of government. Besides if 'has no leadership' is your criteria, and it must be because everything is just a 'puppet' when you take such a cynical view, then you'll simply never be satisfied.
Incidentally, that's not really so different from what we have now -- except that those who don't have health insurance still have a safety net (the ER), where they can go when they have waited long enough for poor medical conditions to become severe and get them treated, at ER-prices, instead of dealing with them in a doctor's office when they were minor (and relatively cheap to address). Worst of both worlds.
Then it seems the simplest solution is to completely subsidize ER care with tax dollars. Or, at least for those that cannot pay on their own. Viola, problem solved and no need to destroy the remainder of the healthcare system in the process.
Slashdot Mirror
Since when did "US-centric" mean "US-only"?
It would seem fair that 'US-centric' allows for statements that globally apply inside the US, but not outside it. A 'US-centric' site might say something like 'everyone eats at McDonalds', even while this is patently untrue in, say, Antarctica or on Mars. But it is indeed true in the US.
Besides, it isn't as if slashdot saying something would somehow bind hulu into offering you service overseas - which I assume is what you're REALLY after. Otherwise you'd be making quite a lot about almost nothing, and would be doing so to a largely unsympathetic audience. Right?
Look into the state that's been offering it. Their leadership automatically declined any increases over 4% - without regard to actual cost.
Isn't 435 the entire House?
Insurance companies will no longer have access to profits. Their rates will be capped by the government, and they can no longer be competitive in any way. Every plan will be exactly the same as every other plan, per the law. The notion that all these new customers will aid them in any is based on the false assumption that these new customers will be profitable. They won't. They can't be. The law is designed this way.
If you don't think hospitals have CEO's, then I suggest going to work for one. Did you not notice how much money the hospital associations were putting into the lobbiest effort? Really??
I don't actually argue for the status quo. The middle ground scenario we're presently suffering through is due exclusively to the corruption caused by applying government funds to a capitalist system. There are only two choices. Either:
A) Healthcare is a right, and the government provides all services. There is no opportunity for profit, and each is served according to their need, while everyone pays the same amount via taxes.
OR
B) Healthcare is a business and people are allowed to operate it in the manner most likely to keep their business profitable for their shareholders.
There is no middle ground that is sustainable.
I'm not sure how you can equate a loss at the primary as 'no real influence'. You positioning as if the end result is the only thing that matters. Do you genuinely have no idea how much extra effort her campaign had to exert due to that loss? Really??
I'm genuinely asking, because it seems like you're just being obtuse. That's the gap between what I view as reality and what you're displaying.
Take note, the campaign isn't simply "Obama is the boogey man" but "government is the boogey man". Anti-incumbent sentiment was salient in every race, like the one above that we were just discussing.
You don't necessarily need to agree. Time will tell either way, but I'm mildly annoyed at the level of cynicism you're displaying here. Your opinion seems to be that one of the single greatest grass-roots changes to the political scene is irrelevant. In two short years we've gone from mocking Ron Paul to agreeing with him - in the mainstream! You didn't notice. That's just odd.
One would think that credit analysis would be done by generally accepted rules, like credit score.
It likely is, but this kind of analysis is more expensive. If they can turn away (dirty Javascript blocking) Firefox users (hippies) before they actually have to request and evaluate their (horrible) credit scores, then they save money. Or, likewise, if such a user continues anyway, you know you can up the rate a little at the end. They'll think they're getting a deal!
It makes more sense than you're giving them credit.
It seems just asking for your age would be a better way of determining... well, your age.
If one could prove that age was a deciding factor, wouldn't that necessarily be opening things up to discrimination issues? Perhaps more subtle methods wouldn't do so. Or at a minimum, they might provide plausible deniability.
I would guess that IE trends higher is the less tech savvy regardless of income or education. It's those with tech knowledge that deviate from it (not in all cases, but the majority).
I'd actually put IE above Firefox in the realm of savvy-ness. The truly savvy can safely operate IE, and will do so when it isn't convenient to add another browser to the mix. My grandmother, however, gets zero tech support for anything outside of Firefox. Many, many, many IT pro's I know have taken a similar line.
Maybe 'related to someone savvy' isn't an appreciable category, but I'm willing to be that it is.
The general principle is that any one cause will have myriad effects, all of which will be correlated with one another. By default, assume a common cause.
Lead by example. What's your common cause as to the assumption in this situation?
Okay, I'm definitely with you on that one. The end isn't particularly relevant.
The only possible angle there would be along the lines of which candidates would more-successfully crash land the plane, if you will.
It isn't that I have any specific example, but it seems similar to claiming that immigration opposition is racist, so it seems congruent to me.
Does not parse.
Housing bubble was caused by false/easy credit. Full stop.
The price of care is/has been rising faster than insurance costs. It will only get worse. Just as the easy credit caused a surplus supply of dollars used to purchase houses, the mandatory insurance will do the same for healthcare. This is simple supply and demand stuff. People will pay all they can bear. Insurance providing a larger chunk of this is irrelevant, because the hospital doesn't get the blame for the greater insurance premiums. So in the end the consumer will pay more in both places, and to add insult to injury, they'll go to prison if they opt out entirely.
I'm not the one arguing that people use it when it is free. That would be the 'wind up in the ER' crowd. Consequently, I think there may be someone else using your account, because you made such a statement only a few posts ago. You might want to change your password...
Continuing my argument, should we get rid of private schools? Home schooling? Dropping out to get a job? Have it so if you do not take enough of the mandatory classes you go to prison? In this country we believe that a reasonable amount of liberty outweighs nearly every public need. Why not likewise in healthcare?
If statistics are your only source of pride as an American, I'd humbly suggest you stop participating in the process. Google 'statistical manipulation'. They are a data point, and nothing more - to a thoughtful person anyway. But you seem to be using them as a reason to undermine basic civil liberties. You're suggesting that the only factor in infant mortality is how strenuously we agree with Obama. And that's just bad logic.
Lack how? Insurance companies exist to profit, just like every company does. The government exists to hemorrhage cash. I'm seeing a gap.
Yes, but only if you're still under warranty.
Well, perhaps they would care more about protecting their identity.
Understand that blaming the victim is counterproductive. You'd do as well to advocate that women wear burkas to avoid rape. But in real society we expect men to control their baser urges when confronted by bare flesh. Just as we can rightly expect data miners to control the same when exposed to data they didn't earn.
Going outside isn't inviting people to follow you. Posting on a public social website is inviting people to read your post.
You're lacking logical congruence. Why?
Going outside is participating in public space.
Posting on a social network is, too.
What objective criteria do you have for claiming otherwise?
I understand what you're saying about the marketing ploy, and in the case of MoveOn you may well be right. I can't really say. But in the case of the Tea Party I honestly believe that it only started that way. Or the label did. In fact there have been 'Fair Tax' rallies and the like for years and years. Remember Waco and Ruby Ridge? Remember what those were about? That basic idea (that government needs to stay out of our lives) is deeply a part of what many if not all of the Tea Party people believe. While they're clearly not radicals, they are no longer under the control of the proper Republicans.
Further I think time will show that it isn't the Tea Party people caucusing with the Republicans, but the opposite. Those Bush-era NeoCons have effectively lost their party, and I find it deeply ironic that they probably were the catalyst for the change that brought about their demise.
Now, if you're right and the Red team gets to behave exactly as they used to and face no anger over it, I'd happily apologize. But I'm just not seeing it.
Take Lisa Murkowski. Do you really feel that she's going to turn a blind eye to Tea Party demands once she's in office? It very nearly cost her the last seat, and had Joe Miller not made some costly mistakes, it would have. She got lucky, but if she wants to keep her job, she'd better change her tune. Vis-a-vis every Republican, everywhere.
That's not entirely accurate, and you're moving the goal posts at either end of the field.
Either:
1) They will be on welfare, because they gave up as you're predicting
or
2) They won't qualify for subsidies anyway
Either way, the system screws over a lot more people than it helps, and we the people pay for their healthcare AND for their insurance.
What, by the way, do you think the fact that everyone has insurance will do to prices? Look back at the housing bubble with everyone's easy access to credit. Replace credit with insurance and home prices with billed charges. The have-nots are an integral part of any capitalist system. If you want to design a system with equity for every single person no matter what, do so. But take care to not blend such a system with capitalism, because it will be rife with corruption and abuse.
‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome."
— Robert A. Heinlein
So long as the bread and circus tickets must still be purchased with money earned, rather than money willed into existence, there's hope that the system can work. In a world where it is a crime to not buy such things - where the able face prison for what the welfare crowd receives for free - you may or may not get the desired result. But either way, the hospital laughs all the way to the bank, and our tax rolls foot the bill.
That's an excellent point. Which party would be more likely to block outsourcing? It seems to me that the Blue team would call such measures 'racist'.
That's where you're wrong. Prices soared due to too much easy credit, which was a direct result of legislation passed in Washington.
So there can never be an alternative party until they spontaneously, and not gradually, build support for their ideas.
This is also unrealistic. It is as if you're stacking the criteria in favor of your position, isn't it?
The insurance company's contracts with the hospitals keep them somewhat under control. They already pay less than half what the government does - could you imagine how bad it would be without any fiduciary interest involved in the pricing whatsoever?
They represent fundamentally different goals for the size and scope of government. Besides if 'has no leadership' is your criteria, and it must be because everything is just a 'puppet' when you take such a cynical view, then you'll simply never be satisfied.
Incidentally, that's not really so different from what we have now -- except that those who don't have health insurance still have a safety net (the ER), where they can go when they have waited long enough for poor medical conditions to become severe and get them treated, at ER-prices, instead of dealing with them in a doctor's office when they were minor (and relatively cheap to address). Worst of both worlds.
Then it seems the simplest solution is to completely subsidize ER care with tax dollars. Or, at least for those that cannot pay on their own. Viola, problem solved and no need to destroy the remainder of the healthcare system in the process.