They were sending out this letter years ago. If I got a letter like that, I would send them the following reply:
Dear Mr./Ms. xxxxxxxx:
I am in receipt of your letter dated yyyymmdd. I have reviewed our software and it is all in compliance with the licensing. I would like to invite you to our office but we are too busy to accommodate visitors. Thank you for your concern.
Sincerely,
nbauman
I'm not sure how they would respond. I expect they would either forget about it, send a threatening but bluffing letter, or send a real threatening letter. I wouldn't let them into my premises unless I thought they could back it up with a court order.
The defense would be, "The only person who installed illegal software was the ratxxx disgruntled employee who rattedxxxxxx informed on us to you."
Of course if I really did have a lot of expensive illegal software, I'd check with my lawyer to figure out the most prudent response.
I wonder how they could legally force you to let them investigate.
They might bring a civil suit and force disclosure. Lawyers are extremely reluctant to commit perjury for their clients in discovery.
During WWII, when Alexander Flemming was developing penicillin, they couldn't get equipment, so one scientist brought his old Mechano set from the attic and used it to construct a shaker to agitate the flasks that they used to grow the mold.
Mechano has had its ups and downs since then (mostly downs), and when I tried to buy a set a few years ago for a friend's son (actually I wanted to use it myself), the current sets were a shadow of their former self. I hope they will or have come back.
Since the teachers in most of the countries whose students are doing better than the U.S. are heavily unionized, such as Finland, Germany and Canada, the problem must be something other than unions.
In fact, within the U.S., students in union states are doing better than students in non-union states.
You owe everything to the society that provided you with a starting point.
As Warren Buffet said, if he had been born in Somalia he wouldn't have accomplished any more than the average Somalian.
The people who study the history of science have seen that there are few if any great individual accomplishments. Science is created by cooperative teams. Most of the scientists who have accomplished great things, such as the Nobel laureates, agree.
You are part of a hive. You can look up Samuel Bowles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Bowles_(economist) in Science magazine, among others. America's success started with government enterprises that were essentially socialistic, like public education, the Erie Canal, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the interstate highway system, the aerospace industry, and the start of the Internet.
Where did you hear of a woman in Afghanistan who taught herself to read? How could an illiterate person teach herself to read? From books? From Sesame Street? It's absurd. Actually, the Soviets established a good education system, including women, in Afghanistan. When they left, it was rare for women to go to school again.
Because, as Warren Buffet said, you grew up in a society which was the creation of others before you, and if you didn't have that society you and your parents wouldn't have had your own food, shelter and clothing.
You would be chasing rabbits with sharp sticks, sleeping in trees, and wearing rags, if you survived at all.
In exchange for the benefits of society that you grew up with, you have an obligation to give back to society. If you don't, society will punish you for not following its laws.
As biologists and anthropologists have now proven with pretty good scientific rigor, communities that survive are the ones in which people are cooperative and altruistic. The ones that aren't cooperative and altruistic don't survive.
Individuals in those societies can sometimes get an advantage by being overly selfish, rather than altruistic, but in all societies that have survived, selfish people are punished.
There seems to be a genetically inherited predisposition to altruism and punishing greed.
(There also seems to be a genetically inherited predisposition to killing outsiders, minorities, and other scapegoats, which leaders exploit sometimes. Those aren't nice places to live, and they don't always survive.)
Yes, you're selfish. You've received the benefits of society and don't want to pay the bill. There was an implied contract and you don't want to carry out your obligation. You don't want to give others the same benefits that you enjoyed.
I just went through this argument again with a self-described conservative. He said, why should I pay for the health care of other people who can't afford it? I asked him, if you were no longer able to pay for health care, and you needed it, would you expect the government to pay for it? He said he did. He didn't see any disconnect between his wanting the government to pay for him, but not for others. (There was also an article in the New York Times that interviewed conservatives who were getting government benefits but didn't want to give them to others.) That's cognitive dissonance for you.
It sounds like the British have moved from mere conservatism to killing off the weak and powerless.
There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the general level of wealth ours has, the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom; that is: some minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health. Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision. -- The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich von Hayek
I feel for them. I used to build rockets when I was in high school.
One of the favorite fuels was zinc dust and sulfur, because it was self-extinguishing. As the pressure went up, the reaction slowed down, or so they told me. I mixed up pounds of Zn + S fuel.
There were a few other fuels that were a bit more unstable, particularly those based on potassium chlorate and perchlorate.
It was a lot easier in the post-Sputnik days. Do you want the Russians to beat us into space? We were America's hope.
Not to claim that I'm aware of exactly what was said or tone of voice used, but it seems a police officer, in the normal course of duty, saw something suspicious, investigated, verified the presented story, and found nothing wrong. Isn't that their job?
That's why they're so dangerous.
There are many cases, some of them on Slashdot, of the cops or firemen coming into somebody's apartment, seeing some chemistry equipment, leading to a whole criminal proceeding.
One retired chemist in Massachusetts had a home laboratory, and the local town confiscated it (probably at greater risk than if they had left it alone). He knew the risks better than they did. The striking thing was the stupidity and ignorance of the local town people, who didn't understand anything about chemistry. Meth labs use chemistry equipment. This is chemistry equipment. So this is a meth lab, right?
The fact that they're doing their job is no consolation to the innocent victims who wind up defending themselves sometimes from criminal charges sometimes at great financial cost. To add insult to injury, a lot of DAs don't even want to dismiss charges when they turn out to be wrong, but want the victim to take a plea bargain and conviction.
I once met a guy who had just gotten out of prison after a 20-year sentence.
He was a student at one of the State University of New York campuses who sold some cocaine (as I recall), and wouldn't make a deal.
He spent his time in prison studying law, and when he got out he got a job with a law firm as a legal assistant. He could become a lawyer, if the bar association would waive his conviction.
The New Scientist had an article about meteor strikes, and they said that the most likely solution is to just get out of the way. We'll have plenty of time to evacuate a city.
Here's what's going on in alternative medicine in Australia. Unfortunately this article is behind a paywall, so I'll give you an excerpt. (It helps to understand that when you give a lung x-ray, you have a good chance of finding spots that nobody can really interpret, that usually turn out to be harmless.)
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1110812 What's the Alternative? The Worldwide Web of Integrative Medicine Ranjana Srivastava, F.R.A.C.P. Department of Medical Oncology, Monash Medical Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia. N Engl J Med 2012; 366:783-785 March 1, 2012
Out of curiosity, an impressionable woman in her 30s attends an integrative medicine exhibition; having recently had a child, she's been sleep-deprived and wants to investigate natural remedies. At the seminar, she wins a door prize — a blood test that promises to diagnose cancer. She was considering getting a blood test anyway and seizes this opportunity for a more comprehensive workup. After all, you can't be too careful about avoiding cancer.
Weeks later, she receives a call from an apologetic but alarmed stranger telling her she has advanced cancer.
“How do you know?” she gasps.
“Your blood test is positive for circulating tumor cells.”
“What does that mean?” she cries.
He sends her a three-page report and tells her to seek immediate help. She spends a nail-biting week awaiting an appointment with the recommended integrative health expert.
Glancing at the report, the expert declares, “You have advanced non–small-cell lung cancer. You need treatment now.” The woman is petrified: Has her teenage smoking habit come back to haunt her?
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Absolutely. There are circulating tumor cells in your blood.”
Tears streaming down her face, the woman asks, “What now?”
The practitioner prescribes a 12-week course of intravenous vitamin C, at a cost of $6,000, paid up front. Without further discussion, an appointment is made.
[Gets a CT scan, which shows 2 2mm nodules. They could be lung cancer.]
The hunt for a rapid cure brings the woman to my office. Relating her story, she shifts between self-assurance and sheepishness. “I know you find this incredible, but I need your help. I am dying of cancer.”
“There's no evidence of cancer,” I reply, seeking to reassure her.
Instead, her tone sharpens: “But I have circulating tumor cells! How can you say that?”
Incredulous, I try to explain too many things. The blood test is a long way from being validated for clinical use. It was unscrupulous even to offer it. Does it make sense to her that it was sent to an unheard-of overseas laboratory for processing? Why did no one recommend that she see an oncologist?
[Demands a PET scan. PET scan clear, the 2 nodules on the CT have disappeared. Probably transient foci of inflammation. Srivastava tells her, "There is no cancer." Woman still insists she has lung cancer. Demands to see a surgeon. Surgeon refuses to see her.]
Their conclusion is, "The main cause of the United States’ high infant mortality rate when compared with Europe is the very high percentage of preterm births in the United States."
It's possible that there is bias in reporting infant mortality in different countries. If I see a bunch of articles coming to that conclusion in reliable publications like AJPH, I'll believe it.
As for Cuba specifically, why should we believe their health statistics any more than their election results?
Because their results are published by outside observers in peer-reviewed journals like Science, their critics are given full opportunity to rebut them, and they still hold up.
I noticed that link to overpopulation.com doesn't cite any sources, and just seems to be an anonymous web site. It wouldn't meet reliable source standards for Wikipedia.
I've gone through these statistics extensively. I've already quoted a couple of studies http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1 here, and I can explain why you're wrong.
Cost per capita -- well, we've got more money than other people do (ha ha, except for being in debt up to our eyeballs), so this is not by itself compelling. And of course, note that socializing medicine is likely to increase our debt even higher than our eyeballs.
As that Guyer paper said, we pay a higher percentage of our GDP on health care than anyone else in the world. When you examine why, you find out that 30-50% of every dollar a customer pays to a private insurance company goes for administrative costs and profits. (Actually the administrative costs cost us more than the profits.) In addition, when government delivers medicine directly, as it does in the Veterans Affairs system, the cost is much lower, and the outcomes are just as good (sometimes better).
You can pay $4,000 a year in taxes as the Canadians do, or $8,000 a year in insurance premiums, as we do.
Of course, if you spend money, and cut taxes until you don't have enough to cover your spending, as the Republicans do, you will increase your debt.
Infant mortality rate -- I read that most comparisons of the USA's infant mortality rate to that of other countries are unfair and misleading, because we have higher standards and report it differently. For example, when many preemie infants are lost, the USA classifies as an infant death where other countries would classify it as an abortion. That kind of thing.
You read wrong. Doctors are pretty smart. They want to compare how well they're doing so they can identify areas of improvement and excellence. The infant mortality rates of all developed countries are based on the same definitions. Even if you did include premature infant deaths, the numbers are so low it wouldn't change the rankings.
When doctors study American infant mortality rates, the most striking statistical pattern is race. Blacks, hispanics and native Americans have much higher infant mortality than whites. The south Bronx has higher infant mortality than many third-world countries.
Race is probably a proxy for income. The U.S. has one of the most unequal societies in the developed world. Our Gini index is about that of Brazil.
Life expectancy -- I grant the statistics, but I question whether socialized medicine is necessarily the causative factor.
All studies find that life expectancy is correlated with income (and race). But in unequal countries, even the wealthy have lower life expectancies than people in more equal countries.
It seems that socialized medicine is part of the whole package of greater equality and better social services for all that leads to longer life expectancy, but it's hard to separate it.
That's the real trick, isn't it? If the "more government" turns out to be bad, you typically don't have opportunity to "give it back".:p
In the U.S., "more privatization" turned out to be bad, and we don't have an opportunity to give it back either.
We have the Republican and Democratic parties getting $1 billion apiece from corporations just for the presidential race, by serving the interests of their multi-millionaire campaign contributors, and ignoring the interests of the rest of us.
The wealthy 1% own the country, and we can't get it back.
Americans on private health plans go outside the plan and pay cash when they have a problem that isn't treated by any of the doctors on their insurance company's plan.
For example, I heard about a child with cancer. The parents wanted to take their child to a pediatric oncologist, but the plan didn't have a pediatric oncologist, and would only pay for a general oncologist.
Or on the flip side of the equation, as a brilliant young surgeon, would you stay in Canada with its government-capped doctor's salaries... Or "defect" to your neighbor to the South where you can make 10x as much without the hassle of having to treat the masses of unwashed poor as a form of government-imposed forced charity?
I know a bit about that. I've talked to a lot of Canadian doctors, some of whom were good surgeons (the word "brilliant" is overused hype). Many of them went for training in the U.S. (just as many American doctors go for training in Canada).
Most of the best surgeons do want to stay in Canada. They like the idea of being able to treat their patients according to need, not according to whether they can pay for it. They feel that they got a free education, and they like the idea of giving something back to their country. They feel like they're part of their community. They like being Canadians, because, as Canadians say, "we care about each other." They like the idea of practicing scientifically-based medicine, which is very strong in Canada. They like the idea of contributing to medical research, publishing in American and international journals, and reporting their results at international conferences, which they do a lot.
When you talk about the "unwashed poor", you show that you really don't know what's going on. Canadian doctors (and most American doctors, for that matter) don't regard their patients as "unwashed poor." They regard them as people in need of care that they can help. Doctors often say that it is a "privilege" to practice medicine and help others.
Your fundamental problem is your ideological belief in the free market. It doesn't work in health care. Doctors get a comfortable salary, and for most of them it's enough. Greedy doctors give bad medical care. Financial incentives give bad medical care.
You also fling communism around... communism isn't the answer, a socialist democracy on the other hand is fan-fucking-tastic. Ask us, or the Norwegians, or the Swedes... or any one of another dozen countries that are thriving in what are for america very troubled times, all thanks to our socialist systems.
Or the Germans. An American making less than $100,000 a year (in a secure job) would usually be better off in Germany or Scandinavia.
Yes, in the same way that communism is the most efficient and beneficial of political systems: "in theory", and as long as you ignore how things actually work out every time it's tried in real life.
You ought to examine your own naive theories. There is no country in the world that has a functioning free-market health care system. The U.S. delivers about half of its health care through Medicare and Medicaid.
When free-market theorists are desperate for an example, they sometimes come up with the Swiss health care system, which has the world's second highest free-market component after us, and the world's second-highest costs after us. There was a good article in the Journal of the American Medical Association where some American free-market theorists had it out with some reality-based Swiss doctors. One article, "Holes in the Swiss Health Care System," gives you an idea of how well it's going.
You are basing your conclusions on a strongly-held belief that the free market is always better than government. I prefer basing my conclusion on the facts.
Slashdot Mirror
They were sending out this letter years ago. If I got a letter like that, I would send them the following reply:
Dear Mr./Ms. xxxxxxxx:
I am in receipt of your letter dated yyyymmdd. I have reviewed our software and it is all in compliance with the licensing. I would like to invite you to our office but we are too busy to accommodate visitors. Thank you for your concern.
Sincerely,
nbauman
I'm not sure how they would respond. I expect they would either forget about it, send a threatening but bluffing letter, or send a real threatening letter. I wouldn't let them into my premises unless I thought they could back it up with a court order.
The defense would be, "The only person who installed illegal software was the ratxxx disgruntled employee who rattedxxxxxx informed on us to you."
Of course if I really did have a lot of expensive illegal software, I'd check with my lawyer to figure out the most prudent response.
I wonder how they could legally force you to let them investigate.
They might bring a civil suit and force disclosure. Lawyers are extremely reluctant to commit perjury for their clients in discovery.
Not with this Supreme Court.
No, instead of reciting 69 side effects in ten seconds at the end of the commercial they'll recite 359 side effects in ten seconds.
During WWII, when Alexander Flemming was developing penicillin, they couldn't get equipment, so one scientist brought his old Mechano set from the attic and used it to construct a shaker to agitate the flasks that they used to grow the mold.
Mechano has had its ups and downs since then (mostly downs), and when I tried to buy a set a few years ago for a friend's son (actually I wanted to use it myself), the current sets were a shadow of their former self. I hope they will or have come back.
That's a reasonable explanation.
But unions certainly don't cause bad education, and they are often associated with good education.
It's not too late to change.
http://xkcd.com/567/
Since the teachers in most of the countries whose students are doing better than the U.S. are heavily unionized, such as Finland, Germany and Canada, the problem must be something other than unions.
In fact, within the U.S., students in union states are doing better than students in non-union states.
Talk to Rabbi Rosenbaum. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534838,00.html
You owe everything to the society that provided you with a starting point.
As Warren Buffet said, if he had been born in Somalia he wouldn't have accomplished any more than the average Somalian.
The people who study the history of science have seen that there are few if any great individual accomplishments. Science is created by cooperative teams. Most of the scientists who have accomplished great things, such as the Nobel laureates, agree.
You are part of a hive. You can look up Samuel Bowles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Bowles_(economist) in Science magazine, among others. America's success started with government enterprises that were essentially socialistic, like public education, the Erie Canal, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the interstate highway system, the aerospace industry, and the start of the Internet.
Where did you hear of a woman in Afghanistan who taught herself to read? How could an illiterate person teach herself to read? From books? From Sesame Street? It's absurd. Actually, the Soviets established a good education system, including women, in Afghanistan. When they left, it was rare for women to go to school again.
Because, as Warren Buffet said, you grew up in a society which was the creation of others before you, and if you didn't have that society you and your parents wouldn't have had your own food, shelter and clothing.
You would be chasing rabbits with sharp sticks, sleeping in trees, and wearing rags, if you survived at all.
In exchange for the benefits of society that you grew up with, you have an obligation to give back to society. If you don't, society will punish you for not following its laws.
As biologists and anthropologists have now proven with pretty good scientific rigor, communities that survive are the ones in which people are cooperative and altruistic. The ones that aren't cooperative and altruistic don't survive.
Individuals in those societies can sometimes get an advantage by being overly selfish, rather than altruistic, but in all societies that have survived, selfish people are punished.
There seems to be a genetically inherited predisposition to altruism and punishing greed.
(There also seems to be a genetically inherited predisposition to killing outsiders, minorities, and other scapegoats, which leaders exploit sometimes. Those aren't nice places to live, and they don't always survive.)
Yes, you're selfish. You've received the benefits of society and don't want to pay the bill. There was an implied contract and you don't want to carry out your obligation. You don't want to give others the same benefits that you enjoyed.
I just went through this argument again with a self-described conservative. He said, why should I pay for the health care of other people who can't afford it? I asked him, if you were no longer able to pay for health care, and you needed it, would you expect the government to pay for it? He said he did. He didn't see any disconnect between his wanting the government to pay for him, but not for others. (There was also an article in the New York Times that interviewed conservatives who were getting government benefits but didn't want to give them to others.) That's cognitive dissonance for you.
It sounds like the British have moved from mere conservatism to killing off the weak and powerless.
There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the general level of wealth ours has, the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom; that is: some minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health. Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision. -- The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich von Hayek
Only if you define the Heritage Foundation as "socialist."
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/apr/01/barack-obama/obama-says-heritage-foundation-source-health-excha/
Or if you define "socialist" to mean "any government program that I don't like."
I feel for them. I used to build rockets when I was in high school.
One of the favorite fuels was zinc dust and sulfur, because it was self-extinguishing. As the pressure went up, the reaction slowed down, or so they told me. I mixed up pounds of Zn + S fuel.
There were a few other fuels that were a bit more unstable, particularly those based on potassium chlorate and perchlorate.
It was a lot easier in the post-Sputnik days. Do you want the Russians to beat us into space? We were America's hope.
Not to claim that I'm aware of exactly what was said or tone of voice used, but it seems a police officer, in the normal course of duty, saw something suspicious, investigated, verified the presented story, and found nothing wrong. Isn't that their job?
That's why they're so dangerous.
There are many cases, some of them on Slashdot, of the cops or firemen coming into somebody's apartment, seeing some chemistry equipment, leading to a whole criminal proceeding.
One retired chemist in Massachusetts had a home laboratory, and the local town confiscated it (probably at greater risk than if they had left it alone). He knew the risks better than they did. The striking thing was the stupidity and ignorance of the local town people, who didn't understand anything about chemistry. Meth labs use chemistry equipment. This is chemistry equipment. So this is a meth lab, right?
The fact that they're doing their job is no consolation to the innocent victims who wind up defending themselves sometimes from criminal charges sometimes at great financial cost. To add insult to injury, a lot of DAs don't even want to dismiss charges when they turn out to be wrong, but want the victim to take a plea bargain and conviction.
I once met a guy who had just gotten out of prison after a 20-year sentence.
He was a student at one of the State University of New York campuses who sold some cocaine (as I recall), and wouldn't make a deal.
He spent his time in prison studying law, and when he got out he got a job with a law firm as a legal assistant. He could become a lawyer, if the bar association would waive his conviction.
He had a lot of people supporting him.
I hope he does well.
The New Scientist had an article about meteor strikes, and they said that the most likely solution is to just get out of the way. We'll have plenty of time to evacuate a city.
Here's what's going on in alternative medicine in Australia. Unfortunately this article is behind a paywall, so I'll give you an excerpt. (It helps to understand that when you give a lung x-ray, you have a good chance of finding spots that nobody can really interpret, that usually turn out to be harmless.)
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1110812
What's the Alternative? The Worldwide Web of Integrative Medicine
Ranjana Srivastava, F.R.A.C.P.
Department of Medical Oncology, Monash Medical Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
N Engl J Med 2012; 366:783-785 March 1, 2012
Out of curiosity, an impressionable woman in her 30s attends an integrative medicine exhibition; having recently had a child, she's been sleep-deprived and wants to investigate natural remedies. At the seminar, she wins a door prize — a blood test that promises to diagnose cancer. She was considering getting a blood test anyway and seizes this opportunity for a more comprehensive workup. After all, you can't be too careful about avoiding cancer.
Weeks later, she receives a call from an apologetic but alarmed stranger telling her she has advanced cancer.
“How do you know?” she gasps.
“Your blood test is positive for circulating tumor cells.”
“What does that mean?” she cries.
He sends her a three-page report and tells her to seek immediate help. She spends a nail-biting week awaiting an appointment with the recommended integrative health expert.
Glancing at the report, the expert declares, “You have advanced non–small-cell lung cancer. You need treatment now.” The woman is petrified: Has her teenage smoking habit come back to haunt her?
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Absolutely. There are circulating tumor cells in your blood.”
Tears streaming down her face, the woman asks, “What now?”
The practitioner prescribes a 12-week course of intravenous vitamin C, at a cost of $6,000, paid up front. Without further discussion, an appointment is made.
[Gets a CT scan, which shows 2 2mm nodules. They could be lung cancer.]
The hunt for a rapid cure brings the woman to my office. Relating her story, she shifts between self-assurance and sheepishness. “I know you find this incredible, but I need your help. I am dying of cancer.”
“There's no evidence of cancer,” I reply, seeking to reassure her.
Instead, her tone sharpens: “But I have circulating tumor cells! How can you say that?”
Incredulous, I try to explain too many things. The blood test is a long way from being validated for clinical use. It was unscrupulous even to offer it. Does it make sense to her that it was sent to an unheard-of overseas laboratory for processing? Why did no one recommend that she see an oncologist?
[Demands a PET scan. PET scan clear, the 2 nodules on the CT have disappeared. Probably transient foci of inflammation. Srivastava tells her, "There is no cancer." Woman still insists she has lung cancer. Demands to see a surgeon. Surgeon refuses to see her.]
OK, how's this?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1615029/
They're saying that outcomes are recorded as fetal deaths in the U.S. which would be recorded as infant deaths in the U.S. Maybe.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA547ComparativeHealth.html
This isn't peer reviewed. In fact it's an advocacy organization.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db23.pdf
Their conclusion is, "The main cause of the United States’ high infant mortality rate when compared with Europe is the very high percentage of preterm births in the United States."
That makes sense. Of course, preterm births are associated with poor access to health care. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449857/?report=abstract
It's possible that there is bias in reporting infant mortality in different countries. If I see a bunch of articles coming to that conclusion in reliable publications like AJPH, I'll believe it.
As for Cuba specifically, why should we believe their health statistics any more than their election results?
Because their results are published by outside observers in peer-reviewed journals like Science, their critics are given full opportunity to rebut them, and they still hold up.
I noticed that link to overpopulation.com doesn't cite any sources, and just seems to be an anonymous web site. It wouldn't meet reliable source standards for Wikipedia.
I've gone through these statistics extensively. I've already quoted a couple of studies http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1 here, and I can explain why you're wrong.
Cost per capita -- well, we've got more money than other people do (ha ha, except for being in debt up to our eyeballs), so this is not by itself compelling. And of course, note that socializing medicine is likely to increase our debt even higher than our eyeballs.
As that Guyer paper said, we pay a higher percentage of our GDP on health care than anyone else in the world. When you examine why, you find out that 30-50% of every dollar a customer pays to a private insurance company goes for administrative costs and profits. (Actually the administrative costs cost us more than the profits.) In addition, when government delivers medicine directly, as it does in the Veterans Affairs system, the cost is much lower, and the outcomes are just as good (sometimes better).
You can pay $4,000 a year in taxes as the Canadians do, or $8,000 a year in insurance premiums, as we do.
Of course, if you spend money, and cut taxes until you don't have enough to cover your spending, as the Republicans do, you will increase your debt.
Infant mortality rate -- I read that most comparisons of the USA's infant mortality rate to that of other countries are unfair and misleading, because we have higher standards and report it differently. For example, when many preemie infants are lost, the USA classifies as an infant death where other countries would classify it as an abortion. That kind of thing.
You read wrong. Doctors are pretty smart. They want to compare how well they're doing so they can identify areas of improvement and excellence. The infant mortality rates of all developed countries are based on the same definitions. Even if you did include premature infant deaths, the numbers are so low it wouldn't change the rankings.
When doctors study American infant mortality rates, the most striking statistical pattern is race. Blacks, hispanics and native Americans have much higher infant mortality than whites. The south Bronx has higher infant mortality than many third-world countries.
Race is probably a proxy for income. The U.S. has one of the most unequal societies in the developed world. Our Gini index is about that of Brazil.
Life expectancy -- I grant the statistics, but I question whether socialized medicine is necessarily the causative factor.
All studies find that life expectancy is correlated with income (and race). But in unequal countries, even the wealthy have lower life expectancies than people in more equal countries.
It seems that socialized medicine is part of the whole package of greater equality and better social services for all that leads to longer life expectancy, but it's hard to separate it.
That's the real trick, isn't it? If the "more government" turns out to be bad, you typically don't have opportunity to "give it back". :p
In the U.S., "more privatization" turned out to be bad, and we don't have an opportunity to give it back either.
We have the Republican and Democratic parties getting $1 billion apiece from corporations just for the presidential race, by serving the interests of their multi-millionaire campaign contributors, and ignoring the interests of the rest of us.
The wealthy 1% own the country, and we can't get it back.
Americans on private health plans go outside the plan and pay cash when they have a problem that isn't treated by any of the doctors on their insurance company's plan.
For example, I heard about a child with cancer. The parents wanted to take their child to a pediatric oncologist, but the plan didn't have a pediatric oncologist, and would only pay for a general oncologist.
Or on the flip side of the equation, as a brilliant young surgeon, would you stay in Canada with its government-capped doctor's salaries... Or "defect" to your neighbor to the South where you can make 10x as much without the hassle of having to treat the masses of unwashed poor as a form of government-imposed forced charity?
I know a bit about that. I've talked to a lot of Canadian doctors, some of whom were good surgeons (the word "brilliant" is overused hype). Many of them went for training in the U.S. (just as many American doctors go for training in Canada).
Most of the best surgeons do want to stay in Canada. They like the idea of being able to treat their patients according to need, not according to whether they can pay for it. They feel that they got a free education, and they like the idea of giving something back to their country. They feel like they're part of their community. They like being Canadians, because, as Canadians say, "we care about each other." They like the idea of practicing scientifically-based medicine, which is very strong in Canada. They like the idea of contributing to medical research, publishing in American and international journals, and reporting their results at international conferences, which they do a lot.
When you talk about the "unwashed poor", you show that you really don't know what's going on. Canadian doctors (and most American doctors, for that matter) don't regard their patients as "unwashed poor." They regard them as people in need of care that they can help. Doctors often say that it is a "privilege" to practice medicine and help others.
Your fundamental problem is your ideological belief in the free market. It doesn't work in health care. Doctors get a comfortable salary, and for most of them it's enough. Greedy doctors give bad medical care. Financial incentives give bad medical care.
You also fling communism around... communism isn't the answer, a socialist democracy on the other hand is fan-fucking-tastic. Ask us, or the Norwegians, or the Swedes... or any one of another dozen countries that are thriving in what are for america very troubled times, all thanks to our socialist systems.
Or the Germans. An American making less than $100,000 a year (in a secure job) would usually be better off in Germany or Scandinavia.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/
Frederick E. Allen
12/21/2011 @ 5:42PM |60,178 views
How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much
I should thank the Canadians for sending down Adbusters to organize Occupy Wall Street, and show us how these things are done.
Yes, in the same way that communism is the most efficient and beneficial of political systems: "in theory", and as long as you ignore how things actually work out every time it's tried in real life.
You ought to examine your own naive theories. There is no country in the world that has a functioning free-market health care system. The U.S. delivers about half of its health care through Medicare and Medicaid.
When free-market theorists are desperate for an example, they sometimes come up with the Swiss health care system, which has the world's second highest free-market component after us, and the world's second-highest costs after us. There was a good article in the Journal of the American Medical Association where some American free-market theorists had it out with some reality-based Swiss doctors. One article, "Holes in the Swiss Health Care System," gives you an idea of how well it's going.
You are basing your conclusions on a strongly-held belief that the free market is always better than government. I prefer basing my conclusion on the facts.