It's probably an issue of cost. I'm shooting from the hip here, but I think you'd still need a heat exchanger inland so that in case of a radioactive leak, your last line of defense isn't the heat exchanger out in the salt water. So now you have two heat exchangers instead of one. And the big one in the salt water is going to be murderous to service unless you had some way to raise it up out of the water, which would of course add a lot of cost. Salt water is incredibly rough on anything - you try not to touch it unless you really have to.
I do think it is voluntary, but on the societal level. If a corporation gives money away it is still charity, even if not all of the stockholders agree with the decision of the board or management. But I don't want to get too hung up on semantics.
they're forced to choose between food and insulin shots
I agree, which is why I support "whatever you want to call it when you give people money out of compassion". I call foodstamps and welfare charity as well.
it's morally wrong for society to be asking if Cigna's profit margin outweighs John Doe's broken leg
Again, I disagree. There has to be some kind of rationing of healthcare, because demand exceeds supply. It is currently rationed in several different ways, and there is nothing immoral about making sure that your insurers are solvent - even though that means some people won't get all the care that they want. Healthcare at the VA is rationed British-style, where the government is the provider and the payer. They decide how much to spend on veterans and you wait in line if it isn't enough. Medicaid/Medicare is French-style, where the government decides how much it will pay for each procedure (with help from the AMA), and providers ration care based on how many Medicare patients they want to take. Private insurance rations care by setting rules about what they will and will not cover, and by negotiating prices with providers (and until yesterday by imposing lifetime caps). Finally, until today you had the uninsured, who were rationed based no straight money, except in the ER where it was illegal to ration based on cost so you had long waits and extraordinary expense for governments and those who did pay. Starting today there will still be uninsured, but they can pick up a health care plan when they get sick... it will be interesting to see how that works out.
Why do we need to make everything into a competition? These are all just computers in various form factors - shades of gray. Adding a touchscreen to a laptop makes it more like a tablet in exactly the same way as adding a keyboard makes a tablet more like a laptop. Excepting Chromebooks (or if you can still find a netbook), most devices branded "laptop" in the price range of the iPad are big, heavy, and have comparatively poor battery life. If we use my friend as an example, she is a doctor and just needs to make patient notes. She wants a battery that will make it through the day and a keyboard that isn't too painful to type on. Most laptops would not be the optimal fit.
Ha! I was watching that at a friends house on her iPad sitting in a case at a 15-ish degree angle in an aftermarket case that had a keyboard. It was pretty high up on the unintentional irony scale. Good for a chuckle. There really is no USB port, though. No floppy drive, either.
Who cares? There are thousands of years of history behind the people doing the taxing. It's a lost cause, right or wrong. I don't worry myself much about it.
not allow them to shift the cost of their health care onto the rest of the public by getting it for free from emergency room services
Prior to the 80s, we had that little conundrum settled by simply not providing the care at all. Can't pay? Go somewhere else. No more freeloading. It was cold and heartless, and so justifiably abandoned - but abandoned in the most expensive possible way. It might have been Ronald Reagan, champion of the free market, but he f'd that one up. I'm not sure why we are still arguing over socialized health care... we've had it for 30 years.
Healthcare is not and never should be seen as 'charity'
I'd like to know why. When you give something to someone that they are otherwise too poor to have, that is charity. Mind you, I'm perfectly happy to provide charity - I'm even on board with taking money forcefully from people through taxes to provide the charity. But call a spade a spade.
Seriously guys, the US "helping people in dire need is Socalist filth"
Apparently it isn't me you are responding to anymore.
Like any other form of tax, Obamacare's net results will be negative in employment, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something - likely, statism.
If Obamacare ends up costing money, then I agree. However, I believe it is entirely possible that it will be a net savings. There are some major inefficiencies in the health care system. A glaring one is the use of the ER as primary care for millions of uninsured. This is probably the most expensive way to treat people, and yet we've been doing it for 30 years thanks to a government regulation put into place under Reagan prohibiting ERs from turning away emergencies for reasons of payment.
In other words, it is entirely possible that the ER mandate was such a horribly thought-out goverment regulation that the mess that is Obamacare could actually be more efficient. It may very well be a better set of regulations than what we had before.
And that's without factoring in the perverse set of "incentives" that we had been giving employers to insulate us from real health care costs. It's so set in our mind that "healthcare" is part of employment that we don't even include it in our salaries!
I am seriously wondering why this perfectly legal strategy is not being publicized. Probably because such abuse of the pre-existing requirement in NY State caused individual insurance to be totally unaffordable, and it would be a shame to see the ACA meet the same fate.
IMHO, the biggest way it will lower cost is by getting uninsured people out of the ER. The ER is the most expensive way to treat people, but they show up there because it is illegal to turn someone away in an emergency. If they do get turned away, they come back when it becomes an emergency - making it even more expensive. One doctor I know might have been exaggerating for effect, but he said it would be cheaper to drive him house-to-house in a limo than to have people come in to the ER for routine health care.
Instead you'll be forcing them to do what insurance is supposed to do- mitigate risk of a population by spreading it between all of them, whereas before you only got that benefit if you qualified for a group plan.
I agree that things have gotten better under Obamacare, but the plans on the government exchange are not really insurance - they are more like a blend of healthcare payment plans and insurance. I don't know if I'm totally sold, but I recognize the merit in the arguments for mandating a payment plan, and I'm willing to give it a shot.
I don't agree that bankrupting people was morally wrong. If someone is looking for charity, it seems reasonable to make sure that they are actually needy.
That said, the universal mandate is a pretty pragmatic way to avoid the need for the charity in the first place. It shifts the moral argument over to: is it right to force people to buy something? But we've been taxing people against their will since the dawn of human civilization, so I think I know the answer to that: it doesn't matter:)
While I don't actually agree with this, that battle was lost in the 80s under Reagan. Obamacare is much better than what we have had since then - uninsured people showing up at the ER. You couldn't devise a more expensive way to do it if you assigned a congressional blue-ribbon panel to come up with one.
That you will be paying into the system instead of using the ER for your inevitable health problem (we all get them) means we are all better off than we were before.
The purchase price of a new electric is pretty much in line of other new cars. So either a new car is afordable or it isn't.
No it isn't. There aren't very many electrics available, but they are all pretty pricey compared to their gasoline competition. A Leaf is about $21,000 (subsidized!). A Versa is about $7000 less than that... $9000 if you don't need the hatchback. If you think the Leaf is nicer than a Versa, then use the Sentra, which is still $5000 less than a Leaf. The electric Focus is a somewhat astonishing $27,500 (subsidized!). This is a car that starts at $16,000. You have to get up into the Tesla price range before the battery pack becomes less of an issue, and at that point why are you even looking at the gas mileage?
Guinness definitely is lighter tasting than any stout I've ever had. It's the only one that I could drink a pitcher of, I think:) Of course, that much stout reminds you what you did the next day. I never tried Extra Stout.
I should have mentioned that Coors Light is only the most flavorless beer I've ever had on _tap_. There is something of a race to the bottom on flavor in cans, with both Miller64 and Michelob Ultra ("blackout beer") currently able exceed my taste buds' ability to discern from seltzer water.
That said, I'd rather have a cooler full of Ultra than a cooler full of seltzer water...
It doesn't taste "bad" to me. Sure, there are some that taste better to me - Guinness is pretty light for a stout, but it certainly still tastes like good fresh beer. If you mean that subjectively you don't have a taste for it, well, that's different. I can't really tell you what to like. But from a quality standpoint, I've never had a problem with Guinness... it's always popular enough to seem fresh. I'd rather have ANYTHING fresh on tap then the "best" beer that's either skunked or is coming from a dirty tap. And even fresh Coors Light (my benchmark for flavorless beer) is better than most bottled light lagers, no matter the brand.
Guinness is definitely different in various countries. There is a bar downtown that imports the kegs from Ireland, and maybe it's all in my head but I think I can taste a difference.
Even with today's technology, cost is the only thing keeping your average Joe from driving an electric car. A 400 mile range and quick recharges would be great, but there are a whole lot of us in families with 2 cars where one is used primarily to commute. My wife only needs to go 10 miles every day. A 100 mile range would give here a ridiculous margin of safety.
There are bad stouts? I mean, I'm sure there are, but by the time a beer gets to a tap at a bar I find that most of the time it is "good", being beer and all.
That's akin to saying you should ignore people with colour blindness when designing your UI.
Even the advocate sites seem to indicate about 8 million Americans with any kind of chronic vestibular disorder (not just those affected by swooshy effects) - and that's heavily weighted toward the elderly. Think "Lucile 2" from Arrested Development. The number of people who are not only dizzy, but also affected by swooshy UIs is probably a fraction of that. TFA says that 5% of all people are affected at all by any kind of visual stimuli, and it speculates that maybe this number might be higher among people with vestibular disorders. It's hard to try to figure out a hard number, but maybe we are talking about 1 million people in the US, a significant portion of them too old for smartphones? Color blindness affects about 10 million Americans, and is equally distributed throughout the male population.
I'm not saying that it wouldn't be nice for Apple to have a "turn off effects mode", just to be considerate - but I seriously doubt there is a business case to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
It's probably an issue of cost. I'm shooting from the hip here, but I think you'd still need a heat exchanger inland so that in case of a radioactive leak, your last line of defense isn't the heat exchanger out in the salt water. So now you have two heat exchangers instead of one. And the big one in the salt water is going to be murderous to service unless you had some way to raise it up out of the water, which would of course add a lot of cost. Salt water is incredibly rough on anything - you try not to touch it unless you really have to.
Well.....by definition
I do think it is voluntary, but on the societal level. If a corporation gives money away it is still charity, even if not all of the stockholders agree with the decision of the board or management. But I don't want to get too hung up on semantics.
they're forced to choose between food and insulin shots
I agree, which is why I support "whatever you want to call it when you give people money out of compassion". I call foodstamps and welfare charity as well.
it's morally wrong for society to be asking if Cigna's profit margin outweighs John Doe's broken leg
Again, I disagree. There has to be some kind of rationing of healthcare, because demand exceeds supply. It is currently rationed in several different ways, and there is nothing immoral about making sure that your insurers are solvent - even though that means some people won't get all the care that they want. Healthcare at the VA is rationed British-style, where the government is the provider and the payer. They decide how much to spend on veterans and you wait in line if it isn't enough. Medicaid/Medicare is French-style, where the government decides how much it will pay for each procedure (with help from the AMA), and providers ration care based on how many Medicare patients they want to take. Private insurance rations care by setting rules about what they will and will not cover, and by negotiating prices with providers (and until yesterday by imposing lifetime caps). Finally, until today you had the uninsured, who were rationed based no straight money, except in the ER where it was illegal to ration based on cost so you had long waits and extraordinary expense for governments and those who did pay. Starting today there will still be uninsured, but they can pick up a health care plan when they get sick... it will be interesting to see how that works out.
"Like"
Tablet touch only mode for viewing, but a nice keyboard/stand when you decide you want to write a comment or email.
Isn't that just an Asus Transformer running a less popular OS? Why will it set fire to the world when the Transformer hasn't?
Why do we need to make everything into a competition? These are all just computers in various form factors - shades of gray. Adding a touchscreen to a laptop makes it more like a tablet in exactly the same way as adding a keyboard makes a tablet more like a laptop. Excepting Chromebooks (or if you can still find a netbook), most devices branded "laptop" in the price range of the iPad are big, heavy, and have comparatively poor battery life. If we use my friend as an example, she is a doctor and just needs to make patient notes. She wants a battery that will make it through the day and a keyboard that isn't too painful to type on. Most laptops would not be the optimal fit.
the friggin air force has bombers in active service that were built in the 1950s.
But much like some famous women of the same era, they've had a lot of work done up front to keep them serviceable.
Ha! I was watching that at a friends house on her iPad sitting in a case at a 15-ish degree angle in an aftermarket case that had a keyboard. It was pretty high up on the unintentional irony scale. Good for a chuckle. There really is no USB port, though. No floppy drive, either.
Is it right to ...
Who cares? There are thousands of years of history behind the people doing the taxing. It's a lost cause, right or wrong. I don't worry myself much about it.
not allow them to shift the cost of their health care onto the rest of the public by getting it for free from emergency room services
Prior to the 80s, we had that little conundrum settled by simply not providing the care at all. Can't pay? Go somewhere else. No more freeloading. It was cold and heartless, and so justifiably abandoned - but abandoned in the most expensive possible way. It might have been Ronald Reagan, champion of the free market, but he f'd that one up. I'm not sure why we are still arguing over socialized health care... we've had it for 30 years.
Healthcare is not and never should be seen as 'charity'
I'd like to know why. When you give something to someone that they are otherwise too poor to have, that is charity. Mind you, I'm perfectly happy to provide charity - I'm even on board with taking money forcefully from people through taxes to provide the charity. But call a spade a spade.
Seriously guys, the US "helping people in dire need is Socalist filth"
Apparently it isn't me you are responding to anymore.
Like any other form of tax, Obamacare's net results will be negative in employment, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something - likely, statism.
If Obamacare ends up costing money, then I agree. However, I believe it is entirely possible that it will be a net savings. There are some major inefficiencies in the health care system. A glaring one is the use of the ER as primary care for millions of uninsured. This is probably the most expensive way to treat people, and yet we've been doing it for 30 years thanks to a government regulation put into place under Reagan prohibiting ERs from turning away emergencies for reasons of payment.
In other words, it is entirely possible that the ER mandate was such a horribly thought-out goverment regulation that the mess that is Obamacare could actually be more efficient. It may very well be a better set of regulations than what we had before.
And that's without factoring in the perverse set of "incentives" that we had been giving employers to insulate us from real health care costs. It's so set in our mind that "healthcare" is part of employment that we don't even include it in our salaries!
I am seriously wondering why this perfectly legal strategy is not being publicized. Probably because such abuse of the pre-existing requirement in NY State caused individual insurance to be totally unaffordable, and it would be a shame to see the ACA meet the same fate.
IMHO, the biggest way it will lower cost is by getting uninsured people out of the ER. The ER is the most expensive way to treat people, but they show up there because it is illegal to turn someone away in an emergency. If they do get turned away, they come back when it becomes an emergency - making it even more expensive. One doctor I know might have been exaggerating for effect, but he said it would be cheaper to drive him house-to-house in a limo than to have people come in to the ER for routine health care.
Instead you'll be forcing them to do what insurance is supposed to do- mitigate risk of a population by spreading it between all of them, whereas before you only got that benefit if you qualified for a group plan.
I agree that things have gotten better under Obamacare, but the plans on the government exchange are not really insurance - they are more like a blend of healthcare payment plans and insurance. I don't know if I'm totally sold, but I recognize the merit in the arguments for mandating a payment plan, and I'm willing to give it a shot.
I don't agree that bankrupting people was morally wrong. If someone is looking for charity, it seems reasonable to make sure that they are actually needy.
That said, the universal mandate is a pretty pragmatic way to avoid the need for the charity in the first place. It shifts the moral argument over to: is it right to force people to buy something? But we've been taxing people against their will since the dawn of human civilization, so I think I know the answer to that: it doesn't matter :)
Every person has a right to medical care.
While I don't actually agree with this, that battle was lost in the 80s under Reagan. Obamacare is much better than what we have had since then - uninsured people showing up at the ER. You couldn't devise a more expensive way to do it if you assigned a congressional blue-ribbon panel to come up with one.
That you will be paying into the system instead of using the ER for your inevitable health problem (we all get them) means we are all better off than we were before.
Nah, cats are only good for brain-controlling parasites, not evil viruses.
Takes all kinds, I s'pose :)
The purchase price of a new electric is pretty much in line of other new cars. So either a new car is afordable or it isn't.
No it isn't. There aren't very many electrics available, but they are all pretty pricey compared to their gasoline competition. A Leaf is about $21,000 (subsidized!). A Versa is about $7000 less than that... $9000 if you don't need the hatchback. If you think the Leaf is nicer than a Versa, then use the Sentra, which is still $5000 less than a Leaf. The electric Focus is a somewhat astonishing $27,500 (subsidized!). This is a car that starts at $16,000. You have to get up into the Tesla price range before the battery pack becomes less of an issue, and at that point why are you even looking at the gas mileage?
Guinness definitely is lighter tasting than any stout I've ever had. It's the only one that I could drink a pitcher of, I think :) Of course, that much stout reminds you what you did the next day. I never tried Extra Stout.
I should have mentioned that Coors Light is only the most flavorless beer I've ever had on _tap_. There is something of a race to the bottom on flavor in cans, with both Miller64 and Michelob Ultra ("blackout beer") currently able exceed my taste buds' ability to discern from seltzer water.
That said, I'd rather have a cooler full of Ultra than a cooler full of seltzer water...
Funny you should say that... I had a porter night last night and my system is a wreck.
It doesn't taste "bad" to me. Sure, there are some that taste better to me - Guinness is pretty light for a stout, but it certainly still tastes like good fresh beer. If you mean that subjectively you don't have a taste for it, well, that's different. I can't really tell you what to like. But from a quality standpoint, I've never had a problem with Guinness... it's always popular enough to seem fresh. I'd rather have ANYTHING fresh on tap then the "best" beer that's either skunked or is coming from a dirty tap. And even fresh Coors Light (my benchmark for flavorless beer) is better than most bottled light lagers, no matter the brand.
Guinness is definitely different in various countries. There is a bar downtown that imports the kegs from Ireland, and maybe it's all in my head but I think I can taste a difference.
Presumably, one would not put things like sulfur and other underground nasties in engineered gasoline.
Even with today's technology, cost is the only thing keeping your average Joe from driving an electric car. A 400 mile range and quick recharges would be great, but there are a whole lot of us in families with 2 cars where one is used primarily to commute. My wife only needs to go 10 miles every day. A 100 mile range would give here a ridiculous margin of safety.
There are bad stouts? I mean, I'm sure there are, but by the time a beer gets to a tap at a bar I find that most of the time it is "good", being beer and all.
That's akin to saying you should ignore people with colour blindness when designing your UI.
Even the advocate sites seem to indicate about 8 million Americans with any kind of chronic vestibular disorder (not just those affected by swooshy effects) - and that's heavily weighted toward the elderly. Think "Lucile 2" from Arrested Development. The number of people who are not only dizzy, but also affected by swooshy UIs is probably a fraction of that. TFA says that 5% of all people are affected at all by any kind of visual stimuli, and it speculates that maybe this number might be higher among people with vestibular disorders. It's hard to try to figure out a hard number, but maybe we are talking about 1 million people in the US, a significant portion of them too old for smartphones? Color blindness affects about 10 million Americans, and is equally distributed throughout the male population.
I'm not saying that it wouldn't be nice for Apple to have a "turn off effects mode", just to be considerate - but I seriously doubt there is a business case to do so.