But, if you are talking to people who actually exist, that you know, or even a celebrity and you make death threats or hateful comments, then I believe you should still be able to be prosecuted and fined at the least.
Hateful comments? Call somebody a Nazi, go to jail.
Slashdot follows Sturgeon's law, which is, "90% of everything is crap." But there are some insightful comments.
One guy said that asking whether Rand Paul leaned more towards libertarianism on the left or the right is like asking whether the square root of -1 is closer to -1 or +1.
When did you ever have the chance to buy Health Insurance in a free market in the United States? Or should I really be asking how old you are?
Depends on how you define a free market. New York State is fairly regulated. I bought health insurance through a professional organization, from HIP. Now I'm on Medicare.
The "free market" for health care is a rather imperfect market. Some economists said that it's impossible to have a free market in health care, because consumers will never have enough information to make informed decisions.
I dunno. I used to read the CMAJ, and they're a respected publication. I'm surprised that 1 in 9 doctors from Canadian medical schools emigrated to the US (1 in 12 if you just count Canadian-born doctors and not doctors who came to Canada for the education.) Lots of Canadian doctors do come to the US for temporary residencies.
There are other articles on the subject. I'll have to look it up. I'll file it away. Maybe I'll ask Aaron Carroll about it.
The Manhattan Institute used to claim that Canadians were flocking to the US for treatment, and the Wall Street Journal had some columns about that on the editorial page (not the news section). It was a favorite target for debunkers. One Canadian woman claimed she had a brain cancer which the Canadians wouldn't treat, so she had to go to the US. Actually it turned out she didn't have brain cancer after all.
Um... not only is the health care industry the heaviest regulated, but we are actually REQUIRED to buy insurance. Only a progressive would use this as an example of how government control is better.
We have been required to contribute to Medicare through payroll taxes, but it's only recently that we've been required to buy private insurance through Obamacare. While people tell me that Obamacare is better than what we had before, it's still a terrible system. It's very expensive, and the burden falls most heavily on the middle class.
But Obamacare isn't a progressive system. The idea came from the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing corporate-funded pro-free market think tank. All payments go through private insurance companies, which are even more inefficient than the government. (They proved that with Medicare Advantage plans.)
Obamacare isn't socialized government-run health care like the UK, and it isn't a single payer system like Canada. The health industry lobbyists, specifically the Health Insurance Association of America, demanded that Obama exclude any government option (free choice, competition) or they would blow up the whole thing with Harry and Louise ads.
Bottom line: Americans pay about $6,000 a year for health insurance through private insurance companies, Canadians pay about $3,000 a year for health insurance through taxes. http://www.openmedicine.ca/art...
People in Canada pay taxes to the government for their health care, just as Americans pay premiums to insurance companies. In Canada, the government pays doctors on a fee-for-service basis, just as in America, the insurance companies pay doctors on a fee-for-service basis. The Canadian government plays a role that is almost identical to the role played by private insurance companies in the US. The main difference is that in Canada, people pay health insurance with progressive taxes (which Adam Smith advocated), so they pay according to their ability.
"in Canada pay an average of about half as much in taxes (scaled to their income)"
I don't know what that's supposed to mean,
Overall, Canadians pay half as much per capita for health care through their tax system. On average, each Canadian pays half as much. But low-income people pay less taxes than high-income people.
but if you want a broad-based measure, consider the annual "tax freedom day": mid-june for Ontario, mid-april for New York. Doesn't look good for Canadian "half as much in taxes".
According to one of the best-cited studies www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1 Americans spent an estimated US$5,635 per capita on health care, while Canadians spent US$3,003 in 2003.
Canadians (like west Europeans) pay more taxes, but get more for their taxes.
New Yorkers would spend about one month's salary per year on (bad Obamacare) health insurance. So after "tax freedom day," New Yorkers work another month to reach "insurance premium freedom day."
Canadians also get free college tuition for their taxes. So after "insurance premium freedom day" you should add another month for New Yorkers to reach "college loan freedom day."
If you include all the other European-style infrastructure and social services the Canadian government provides to taxpayers, they're getting a pretty good deal.
Aaron Carroll, who now writes a column for the New York Times, has written about this.
http://www.aarp.org/politics-s... 5 Myths About Canada’s Health Care System The truth may surprise you about international health care by: Aaron E. Carroll, M.D., M.S. AARP April 16, 2012 Myth #1: Canadians are flocking to the United States to get medical care. Study in Health Affairs, Phantoms In The Snow: Canadians’ Use Of Health Care Services In The United States. Ambulatory care facilities near the border saw 65yo, and 1,500 were >85. In the U.S., most hip replacements are paid by Medicare, a single-payer system. Myth #4: Canada has long wait times because it has a single-payer system. Longer wait times are the result of a decision to save money and be fiscally conservative. Myth #5: Canada rations health care; the United States doesn’t. The U.S. rations by ability to pay. Adults in the U.S. are more likely to go without care because of costs. 42% were not confident they could afford care if they were seriously ill.
http://content.healthaffairs.o... Phantoms In The Snow: Canadians’ Use Of Health Care Services In The United States Steven J. Katz, et al. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.21.3.19 Health Aff May 2002 vol. 21 no. 3 19-31 Abstract. To examine the extent to which Canadian residents seek medical care across the border, we collected data about Canadians’ use of services from ambulatory care facilities and hospitals located in Michigan, New York State, and Washington State during 1994–1998. We also collected information from several Canadian sources, including the 1996 National Population Health Survey, the provincial Ministries of Health, and the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association. Results from these sources do not support the widespread perception that Canadian residents seek care extensively in the United States. Indeed, the numbers found are so small as to be barely detectible relative to the use of care by Canadians at home.
Canada pay an average of about half as much in taxes (scaled to their income), for the same quality and the same service.
From what I've heard about medicine in Canada from locals, this is laughably untrue. Only someone who has never had more than a minor boo-boo could claim the service is the same.
You are completely wrong.
I've talked to doctors and patients who have experienced both the Canadian and US systems, and I've read the literature comparing outcomes for different procedures in the two systems. http://www.openmedicine.ca/art... I read Canadian medical studies every week or two.
If I had a heart attack in front of the University of Toronto medical school, I would be confident that my survival and other outcomes would be just as good as they would be in front of the New York University medical center in New York. At one time, the breast cancer outcomes were slightly better in the US than in Canada, because the US was aggressively diagnosing and treating (sometimes overdiagnosing and overtreating) breast cancer, but by now the Canadians have adopted everything useful that the US was doing. OTOH, the Canadian outcomes for childhood leukemia were slightly better. The Canadian outcomes for diabetes were much better, with better control, fewer amputations, etc.
Gordon Guyatt, a professor at McMaster University, basically invented evidence-based medicine, which is the practice of making medical decisions based on the statistically valid scientific evidence, rather than prescribing drugs because the drug companies are giving you a free trip to Hawaii if you meet their quota.
It is true that American doctors are more aggressive about treatment, and will give you a quick appointment if they have slots available and you have good insurance. OTOH American doctors are more likely to treat patients unnecessarily. An American pulmonologist is more likely to see a spot on your x-ray and give you a lung biopsy. Lung biopsies have a fatality rate of about 1/1,000, and most of them are unnecessary. But in Canada, when you have a life-threatening condition and need a CAT scan immediately, they put you on top of the list and give you a CAT scan the same day.
OTOH if you don't have health insurance in the US, your access to health care in many states is nonexistent, and hospitals in Texas for example will kick cancer patients out in the street if they can't pay. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB... There were several studies published in American medical journals in which researchers called doctors' offices, described the symptoms of a life-threatening condition, told them that they were on Medicare or Medicaid, and asked for an appointment. Depending on the studies, about half the doctors refused Medicare and three-quarters refused Medicaid.
The evidence is overwhelming that Canadian health care equals the US system in quality and service, and costs about half as much. Of course if you decide things on the basis of ideology http://www.newyorker.com/news/... rather than evidence you may not be convinced.
These theoretical economic arguments are very interesting.
However, they don't predict the actual empirical facts. There are European countries with minimum and average wages much higher than ours, and they don't have those problems. If a business is profitable and efficient, it can afford to pay $15 or even $30 an hour. If it's not profitable and efficient, we don't need them. Let them go out of business and be replaced by a more efficient operator who can make better use of that capital.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/fr... How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much Frederick E. Allen 12/21/2011 In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable.
http://www.remappingdebate.org... A tale of two systems By Kevin C. Brown Remapping Debate Dec. 21, 2011 American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory — both in the public and private sectors — have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive.... But the case of German automakers — BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen — tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in “transplant” factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called “right-to-work” (anti-union) states.
Likewise, a third option is you could reduce your net revenue.
That's assuming you CAN reduce your net revenue. Most small business owners I know pay their employees almost as much as they themself make and many actually make less than what they could make working for someone else. They own a small business because they enjoy it but they will close their doors if their payroll increases by 20k because the money just isn't there.
If your business isn't profitable enough that it can deal with an unexpected increase of $20K, then it won't last through all the other unexpected expenses that businesses have to ride through. What if you sell coffee and a fungus drives the price of coffee up? What if your town shuts down for a week because of a tornado? What if your truck gets wrecked?
Your argument is... what, exactly? That skilled jobs in engineering, accountancy, nursing, medicine, architecture, law, and even trades like plumbing, carpentry, HVAC, mechanics, etc are somehow being automated away and are less secure than minimum wage jobs at McDonald's?
As an example, take printing. Printing used to be a skilled job. In New York City, we had a High School of Printing, and everyone who graduated could get a well-paid job with lots of opportunities for anyone who was skilled, resourceful and willing to work hard. Then in the 1970s and 1980s there were changes to the economic structure of the industry. Big, high-volume presses on the west coast had huge efficiencies of scale. Small print shops disappeared. Computer printers replaced smaller jobs. The newspaper and magazine business collapsed. Direct mail collapsed. Printers couldn't get work any more. They retired early. New York City closed the High School of Printing. Yes, the jobs were automated away.
New York had lots of industries like that. (And that's the entire New York region, including New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, etc.)
Medicine is not a great source of employment on the lower level. Medical assistants are low-paid clerks (often minimum wage). Medical billing is low-paid work. Home care attendants, the fastest-growing segment, is a minimum wage job.
Medical secretaries are disappearing. Legal secretaries are disappearing. Those used to be well-paid skilled jobs.
There are structural changes in the economy since the 1980s. A big part of that is international competition. American workers can't compete with Chinese workers making $20 a day. US unemployment is higher, it's harder to get work, and the work pays less. Middle-class Americans are making about as much now as they were making in 1980. All of the increases in productivity and wealth have gone to the upper-income levels. Vocational school used to guarantee you a good job. It doesn't any more.
Work is fungible. Perhaps you had said worker hammering roofing nails manually and after the wage increase you decide to buy a nail gun to increase their productivity.
Quite true. And once a business invests in that productivity-increasing device, they lay off most of their minimum wage workers because they don't need them anymore.
In fact historically union shops have lead the way in increases in productivity for exactly this reason. This is well documented.
Historically, unions have lead the way on minimum wages because white unionized workers wanted to keep cheaper minority workers from competing with them. This is well documented.
Cherry-picking quotations over the last 100 years of labor relations by black conservative Thomas Sowell in the New York Post is not "well documented".
One of the main reasons for the black middle class is union wages. Unions reflect American society, and there are a few racist, exclusionary unions, but the big unions, like the UAW, SEIU, teachers' unions, garment workers, etc., were some of the institutions with the greatest racial equality in America. They argued that they didn't want their white workers to compete with low-paid black workers; they wanted to bring low-paid black workers into the unions and bring their wages up.
You can walk into the housing projects in New York City built by unions and see people of all races living side by side.
(While you're at it, also explain why businesses would pay $15/h for a worker who doesn't increase revenue by significantly more than $15 for each hour he works.)
They wouldn't, but a well-managed business should be profitable enough to pay its workers $15/h. If American businesses can't afford to pay their workers at least $15/h, then the American economic system is a failure. If we had a free international market in employment, workers would be leaving for higher-wage European countries.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/fr... Frederick E. Allen 12/21/2011 How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much
In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable.
How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that “the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race.”
There are “two overlapping sets of institutions” in Germany that guarantee high wages and good working conditions for autoworkers. The first is IG Metall, the country’s equivalent of the United Automobile Workers. Virtually all Germany’s car workers are members, and though they have the right to strike, they “hardly use it, because there is an elaborate system of conflict resolution that regularly is used to come to some sort of compromise that is acceptable to all parties,” according to Horst Mund, an IG Metall executive. The second institution is the German constitution, which allows for “works councils” in every factory, where management and employees work together on matters like shop floor conditions and work life. Mund says this guarantees cooperation, “where you don’t always wear your management pin or your union pin.”
Mund points out that this goes against all mainstream wisdom of the neo-liberals. We have strong unions, we have strong social security systems, we have high wages. So, if I believed what the neo-liberals are arguing, we would have to be bankrupt, but apparently this is not the case. Despite high wages . . . despite our possibility to influence companies, the economy is working well in Germany. At Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant, the nonunionized new employees get $14.50 an hour, which rises to $19.50 after three years.
American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory — both in the public and private sectors — have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive....
But the case of German automakers — BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen — tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in “transplant” factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called “right-to-work” (anti-union) states.... the UAW has made significant concessions on wages, especially through the creation of a permanent “Tier
Even if the editors had endless queue of high quality submissions about bits, bytes, and physical and biological sciences, they would throw some political stories in the mix. The reason is because only a relative few readers are qualified to discuss the latest in astrophysics, let's say, but anyone can jump in and talk about politics.
I think the typical Slashdot reader can discuss politics better than the typical pundit I see on TV news. I can usually find comments that are more insightful and focused on the issues than I get from, say, Hillary Clinton. Or GWB.
As Socrates said, the artisans and tradesmen were the only ones who actually knew anything.
I always find it interesting that the government demands money at the point of a gun and with little to no choice, while a corporation asks for money by providing goods or services that you desire. Yet the corporations are the evil ones???
Well I find it interesting that for health care I had to pay private insurance companies $6,000 a year in premiums, while people getting government insurance in Canada pay an average of about half as much in taxes (scaled to their income), for the same quality and the same service.
I compared the private health insurance in the free market to get the best deal, and guess what? They're all the same. I have no choice. The Canadians have more of a choice than I do.
There are some things that the government can provide far more efficiently than the free market, if the free market can provide it at all. Health care is one of them. Education is another. Transportation is another. Low-income housing is another. Even Social Security is more secure than private retirement pensions.
“The reason we don’t have beautiful new airports and efficient bullet trains is not that we have inadvertently stumbled upon stumbling blocks; it’s that there are considerable numbers of Americans for whom these things are simply symbols of a feared central government, and who would, when they travel, rather sweat in squalor than surrender the money to build a better terminal.” The ideological rigor of this idea, as absolute in its way as the ancient Soviet conviction that any entering wedge of free enterprise would lead to the destruction of the Soviet state, is as instructive as it is astonishing. And it is part of the folly of American “centrism” not to recognize that the failure to run trains where we need them is made from conviction, not from ignorance.
What we have, uniquely in America, is a political class, and an entire political party, devoted to the idea that any money spent on public goods is money misplaced, not because the state goods might not be good but because they would distract us from the larger principle that no ultimate good can be found in the state.
I would much prefer that a few long-discarded courses come back from the dead. Logic and Rhetoric stand out primarily among them; the former to help create better devs and sysadmins, the latter to help them better communicate needs and ideas to the PHB crowd. A little bit of philosophy couldn't hurt either, since anything to force kids to develop and use their own sense of creativity is rather vital IMHO.
I knew this would happen. Now that all the great books of the Western world are free on the Internet, nobody reads them.
How do you answer Krugman's question: "Why didn't you see the obvious back then?"
That's Judith Miller's version. This is one of those situations where credibility and accuracy counts, and don't trust her to get the story straight. She didn't before.
I read Miller's stories in the NYT during the debate over WMDs. She gave one source who verified the WMDs, but she didn't speak to him -- her handlers pointed to a guy some distance away, and told her what he said, but they wouldn't let her talk to him. She was quoting a claim second-hand.
Yes, they fed her cherry-picked information. The information from the UN inspection team, whose members I heard interviewed on NPR, was that the US gave them the location of WMD facilities, they conducted surprise inspections, and the WMDs weren't there. The Pentagon didn't tell Miller about that.
It's not the job of a reporter to uncritically repeat the claims of high-placed sources. The job of a reporter is to check their claims with people who disagree, and get both sides. I learned that in Freshman English.
Bottom line: I knew that there were no WMDs. Krugman knew. Lots of people knew. You didn't need any fancy intelligence sources to figure that out. All you had to do was listen to both sides and see whose arguments held up. Reporters were talking to independent military experts, and the experts overwhelmingly told them that the claims weren't true. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists had military experts who said they weren't true. The aluminum tubes story was provably false. The yellowcake story was provably false. How many times do you have to see their stories proven false before you realize that they're not reliable?
No, the CIA gave him faulty information. New York Times journalist has been researching how she got the WMD story wrong in her reporting back in the day and she writes in http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...
Here's how Paul Krugman described it (more convincingly, to me). GWB wasn't mislead by the CIA. Cheney had convinced him to drive Saddam Hussein out of office before he heard any of the CIA assessments.
"The invasion wasn’t a mistake, it was a crime. We were lied into war."
(First, war in Iraq was not a good faith mistake. Bush and Cheney decided to use 9/11 as an excuse to go after a secular regime that had nothing to do with 9/11. They deliberately mislead the public, making a fake case about WMD.
Second, it was obvious at the time that the case for war was fake, and that post-war Iraq would be a failure.
The question for war supporters is, "Why didn't you see the obvious back then?"
Third, people who knew it was fake supported the war to establish their centrist credentials.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04... Disabilities Act Prompts Flood of Suits Some Cite as Unfair By MOSI SECRET New York Times APRIL 16, 2012
The lawyers are generally not acting on existing complaints from people with disabilities. Instead, they identify local businesses, like bagel shops and delis, that are not in compliance with the law, and then aggressively recruit plaintiffs from advocacy groups for people with disabilities.
The plaintiffs typically collect $500 for each suit, and each plaintiff can be used several times over. The lawyers, meanwhile, make several thousands of dollars, because the civil rights law entitles them to legal fees from the noncompliant businesses....
All of those suits were filed by Ben-Zion Bradley Weitz, a lawyer based in Florida, who has a regular group of people with disabilities from whom he selects plaintiffs. One of them, Todd Kreisler, a man in a wheelchair who lives on the East Side of Manhattan, sued 19 businesses over 16 months — a Chinese restaurant, a liquor store and a sandwich shop among them....
Mr. Weitz is leading the charge into New York’s courtrooms. Since October 2009, he has sued almost 200 businesses in the state, mostly in Federal District Court in Manhattan. He has eight years of experience filing these suits in Florida, where his practice does not seem to be lagging. Two weeks ago, he brought claims against four Tampa businesses — a strip mall, a convenience store, a bar and a print shop.
Now a Brooklyn federal court judge has ruled squarely against two lawyers who bring most of such lawsuits in New York, writing in a cutting opinion on Thursday that their tactics lacked expertise, possibly violated the rules of professional conduct and were “disingenuous at best.” The judge, Sterling Johnson Jr., denied them legal fees and took the rare step of ordering them to stop filing such cases....
Though such arrangements have typically been shielded by confidentiality agreements, Judge Johnson revealed how much money the lawyers — Adam Shore and B. Bradley Weitz — claimed in fees, typically $425 per hour for a total of $15,000 per case even though the cases were so similar that he described them as boilerplate. The two lawyers had filed as many as 10 cases in a single day.
That statement is vague and potentially backwards. The victim or potential victim having a gun is proven to be a very good deterrent of murder.
I don't think that's been proven anywhere, unless you define "proof" as "It seems true to me."
We don't have much proof of anything about guns. The NRA lobbied Congress to eliminate all research on gun violence from the federal budget. The NRA also lobbied states and the federal government to prohibit releasing or even collecting most data about gun ownership. So we haven't had any scientifically solid gun research in about 15 years.
What ticked the NRA off was a study based on gun purchase records which found that people who bought guns were more likely to use them for suicide than self-defense.
Doctors have told me (and there are published studies to back them up) that people who are assaulted with guns are much more likely to die than people assaulted by any other means.
So eliminating guns from the scene is a very good deterrent of murder.
Justice based upon the idea of punishing someone, as a part of retributive justice or deterrence, has a long history, and while continentals may disagree, it's what we in the US choose to do. We believe, or at least our court system does, that some people DESERVE to die for their actions.
Slashdot Mirror
But, if you are talking to people who actually exist, that you know, or even a celebrity and you make death threats or hateful comments, then I believe you should still be able to be prosecuted and fined at the least.
Hateful comments? Call somebody a Nazi, go to jail.
Slashdot follows Sturgeon's law, which is, "90% of everything is crap." But there are some insightful comments.
One guy said that asking whether Rand Paul leaned more towards libertarianism on the left or the right is like asking whether the square root of -1 is closer to -1 or +1.
When did you ever have the chance to buy Health Insurance in a free market in the United States? Or should I really be asking how old you are?
Depends on how you define a free market. New York State is fairly regulated. I bought health insurance through a professional organization, from HIP. Now I'm on Medicare.
The "free market" for health care is a rather imperfect market. Some economists said that it's impossible to have a free market in health care, because consumers will never have enough information to make informed decisions.
I dunno. I used to read the CMAJ, and they're a respected publication. I'm surprised that 1 in 9 doctors from Canadian medical schools emigrated to the US (1 in 12 if you just count Canadian-born doctors and not doctors who came to Canada for the education.) Lots of Canadian doctors do come to the US for temporary residencies.
There are other articles on the subject. I'll have to look it up. I'll file it away. Maybe I'll ask Aaron Carroll about it.
The Manhattan Institute used to claim that Canadians were flocking to the US for treatment, and the Wall Street Journal had some columns about that on the editorial page (not the news section). It was a favorite target for debunkers. One Canadian woman claimed she had a brain cancer which the Canadians wouldn't treat, so she had to go to the US. Actually it turned out she didn't have brain cancer after all.
Um... not only is the health care industry the heaviest regulated, but we are actually REQUIRED to buy insurance. Only a progressive would use this as an example of how government control is better.
We have been required to contribute to Medicare through payroll taxes, but it's only recently that we've been required to buy private insurance through Obamacare. While people tell me that Obamacare is better than what we had before, it's still a terrible system. It's very expensive, and the burden falls most heavily on the middle class.
But Obamacare isn't a progressive system. The idea came from the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing corporate-funded pro-free market think tank. All payments go through private insurance companies, which are even more inefficient than the government. (They proved that with Medicare Advantage plans.)
Obamacare isn't socialized government-run health care like the UK, and it isn't a single payer system like Canada. The health industry lobbyists, specifically the Health Insurance Association of America, demanded that Obama exclude any government option (free choice, competition) or they would blow up the whole thing with Harry and Louise ads.
Bottom line: Americans pay about $6,000 a year for health insurance through private insurance companies, Canadians pay about $3,000 a year for health insurance through taxes. http://www.openmedicine.ca/art...
"while people getting government insurance"
Government "insurance" is no such thing.
People in Canada pay taxes to the government for their health care, just as Americans pay premiums to insurance companies. In Canada, the government pays doctors on a fee-for-service basis, just as in America, the insurance companies pay doctors on a fee-for-service basis. The Canadian government plays a role that is almost identical to the role played by private insurance companies in the US. The main difference is that in Canada, people pay health insurance with progressive taxes (which Adam Smith advocated), so they pay according to their ability.
"in Canada pay an average of about half as much in taxes (scaled to their income)"
I don't know what that's supposed to mean,
Overall, Canadians pay half as much per capita for health care through their tax system. On average, each Canadian pays half as much. But low-income people pay less taxes than high-income people.
but if you want a broad-based measure, consider the annual "tax freedom day": mid-june for Ontario, mid-april for New York. Doesn't look good for Canadian "half as much in taxes".
According to one of the best-cited studies www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1 Americans spent an estimated US$5,635 per capita on health care, while Canadians spent US$3,003 in 2003.
Canadians (like west Europeans) pay more taxes, but get more for their taxes.
New Yorkers would spend about one month's salary per year on (bad Obamacare) health insurance. So after "tax freedom day," New Yorkers work another month to reach "insurance premium freedom day."
Canadians also get free college tuition for their taxes. So after "insurance premium freedom day" you should add another month for New Yorkers to reach "college loan freedom day."
If you include all the other European-style infrastructure and social services the Canadian government provides to taxpayers, they're getting a pretty good deal.
Aaron Carroll, who now writes a column for the New York Times, has written about this.
http://www.aarp.org/politics-s...
5 Myths About Canada’s Health Care System
The truth may surprise you about international health care
by: Aaron E. Carroll, M.D., M.S.
AARP
April 16, 2012
Myth #1: Canadians are flocking to the United States to get medical care.
Study in Health Affairs, Phantoms In The Snow: Canadians’ Use Of Health Care Services In The United States. Ambulatory care facilities near the border saw 65yo, and 1,500 were >85. In the U.S., most hip replacements are paid by Medicare, a single-payer system.
Myth #4: Canada has long wait times because it has a single-payer system.
Longer wait times are the result of a decision to save money and be fiscally conservative.
Myth #5: Canada rations health care; the United States doesn’t.
The U.S. rations by ability to pay. Adults in the U.S. are more likely to go without care because of costs. 42% were not confident they could afford care if they were seriously ill.
http://content.healthaffairs.o...
Phantoms In The Snow: Canadians’ Use Of Health Care Services In The United States
Steven J. Katz, et al.
doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.21.3.19 Health Aff May 2002 vol. 21 no. 3 19-31
Abstract. To examine the extent to which Canadian residents seek medical care across the border, we collected data about Canadians’ use of services from ambulatory care facilities and hospitals located in Michigan, New York State, and Washington State during 1994–1998. We also collected information from several Canadian sources, including the 1996 National Population Health Survey, the provincial Ministries of Health, and the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association. Results from these sources do not support the widespread perception that Canadian residents seek care extensively in the United States. Indeed, the numbers found are so small as to be barely detectible relative to the use of care by Canadians at home.
Canada pay an average of about half as much in taxes (scaled to their income), for the same quality and the same service.
From what I've heard about medicine in Canada from locals, this is laughably untrue. Only someone who has never had more than a minor boo-boo could claim the service is the same.
You are completely wrong.
I've talked to doctors and patients who have experienced both the Canadian and US systems, and I've read the literature comparing outcomes for different procedures in the two systems. http://www.openmedicine.ca/art... I read Canadian medical studies every week or two.
If I had a heart attack in front of the University of Toronto medical school, I would be confident that my survival and other outcomes would be just as good as they would be in front of the New York University medical center in New York. At one time, the breast cancer outcomes were slightly better in the US than in Canada, because the US was aggressively diagnosing and treating (sometimes overdiagnosing and overtreating) breast cancer, but by now the Canadians have adopted everything useful that the US was doing. OTOH, the Canadian outcomes for childhood leukemia were slightly better. The Canadian outcomes for diabetes were much better, with better control, fewer amputations, etc.
Gordon Guyatt, a professor at McMaster University, basically invented evidence-based medicine, which is the practice of making medical decisions based on the statistically valid scientific evidence, rather than prescribing drugs because the drug companies are giving you a free trip to Hawaii if you meet their quota.
It is true that American doctors are more aggressive about treatment, and will give you a quick appointment if they have slots available and you have good insurance. OTOH American doctors are more likely to treat patients unnecessarily. An American pulmonologist is more likely to see a spot on your x-ray and give you a lung biopsy. Lung biopsies have a fatality rate of about 1/1,000, and most of them are unnecessary. But in Canada, when you have a life-threatening condition and need a CAT scan immediately, they put you on top of the list and give you a CAT scan the same day.
OTOH if you don't have health insurance in the US, your access to health care in many states is nonexistent, and hospitals in Texas for example will kick cancer patients out in the street if they can't pay. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB... There were several studies published in American medical journals in which researchers called doctors' offices, described the symptoms of a life-threatening condition, told them that they were on Medicare or Medicaid, and asked for an appointment. Depending on the studies, about half the doctors refused Medicare and three-quarters refused Medicaid.
The evidence is overwhelming that Canadian health care equals the US system in quality and service, and costs about half as much. Of course if you decide things on the basis of ideology http://www.newyorker.com/news/... rather than evidence you may not be convinced.
You might consider a third option. Reducing executive compensation.
That's the thing that needs to happen throughout the economy.
Then executives would be unmotivated. Instead of making things, they would just sit around the house watching TV and sniffing cocaine.
These theoretical economic arguments are very interesting.
However, they don't predict the actual empirical facts. There are European countries with minimum and average wages much higher than ours, and they don't have those problems. If a business is profitable and efficient, it can afford to pay $15 or even $30 an hour. If it's not profitable and efficient, we don't need them. Let them go out of business and be replaced by a more efficient operator who can make better use of that capital.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/fr...
How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much
Frederick E. Allen
12/21/2011
In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable.
http://www.remappingdebate.org...
A tale of two systems
By Kevin C. Brown
Remapping Debate
Dec. 21, 2011
American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory — both in the public and private sectors — have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive....
But the case of German automakers — BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen — tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in “transplant” factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called “right-to-work” (anti-union) states.
Likewise, a third option is you could reduce your net revenue.
That's assuming you CAN reduce your net revenue. Most small business owners I know pay their
employees almost as much as they themself make and many actually make less than what they
could make working for someone else. They own a small business because they enjoy it but they
will close their doors if their payroll increases by 20k because the money just isn't there.
If your business isn't profitable enough that it can deal with an unexpected increase of $20K, then it won't last through all the other unexpected expenses that businesses have to ride through. What if you sell coffee and a fungus drives the price of coffee up? What if your town shuts down for a week because of a tornado? What if your truck gets wrecked?
Your argument is... what, exactly? That skilled jobs in engineering, accountancy, nursing, medicine, architecture, law, and even trades like plumbing, carpentry, HVAC, mechanics, etc are somehow being automated away and are less secure than minimum wage jobs at McDonald's?
As an example, take printing. Printing used to be a skilled job. In New York City, we had a High School of Printing, and everyone who graduated could get a well-paid job with lots of opportunities for anyone who was skilled, resourceful and willing to work hard. Then in the 1970s and 1980s there were changes to the economic structure of the industry. Big, high-volume presses on the west coast had huge efficiencies of scale. Small print shops disappeared. Computer printers replaced smaller jobs. The newspaper and magazine business collapsed. Direct mail collapsed. Printers couldn't get work any more. They retired early. New York City closed the High School of Printing. Yes, the jobs were automated away.
New York had lots of industries like that. (And that's the entire New York region, including New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, etc.)
Medicine is not a great source of employment on the lower level. Medical assistants are low-paid clerks (often minimum wage). Medical billing is low-paid work. Home care attendants, the fastest-growing segment, is a minimum wage job.
Medical secretaries are disappearing. Legal secretaries are disappearing. Those used to be well-paid skilled jobs.
There are structural changes in the economy since the 1980s. A big part of that is international competition. American workers can't compete with Chinese workers making $20 a day. US unemployment is higher, it's harder to get work, and the work pays less. Middle-class Americans are making about as much now as they were making in 1980. All of the increases in productivity and wealth have gone to the upper-income levels. Vocational school used to guarantee you a good job. It doesn't any more.
Quite true. And once a business invests in that productivity-increasing device, they lay off most of their minimum wage workers because they don't need them anymore.
Historically, unions have lead the way on minimum wages because white unionized workers wanted to keep cheaper minority workers from competing with them. This is well documented.
http://nypost.com/2013/09/17/w...
Cherry-picking quotations over the last 100 years of labor relations by black conservative Thomas Sowell in the New York Post is not "well documented".
One of the main reasons for the black middle class is union wages. Unions reflect American society, and there are a few racist, exclusionary unions, but the big unions, like the UAW, SEIU, teachers' unions, garment workers, etc., were some of the institutions with the greatest racial equality in America. They argued that they didn't want their white workers to compete with low-paid black workers; they wanted to bring low-paid black workers into the unions and bring their wages up.
You can walk into the housing projects in New York City built by unions and see people of all races living side by side.
(While you're at it, also explain why businesses would pay $15/h for a worker who doesn't increase revenue by significantly more than $15 for each hour he works.)
They wouldn't, but a well-managed business should be profitable enough to pay its workers $15/h. If American businesses can't afford to pay their workers at least $15/h, then the American economic system is a failure. If we had a free international market in employment, workers would be leaving for higher-wage European countries.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/fr...
Frederick E. Allen
12/21/2011
How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much
In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable.
How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that “the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race.”
There are “two overlapping sets of institutions” in Germany that guarantee high wages and good working conditions for autoworkers. The first is IG Metall, the country’s equivalent of the United Automobile Workers. Virtually all Germany’s car workers are members, and though they have the right to strike, they “hardly use it, because there is an elaborate system of conflict resolution that regularly is used to come to some sort of compromise that is acceptable to all parties,” according to Horst Mund, an IG Metall executive. The second institution is the German constitution, which allows for “works councils” in every factory, where management and employees work together on matters like shop floor conditions and work life. Mund says this guarantees cooperation, “where you don’t always wear your management pin or your union pin.”
Mund points out that this goes against all mainstream wisdom of the neo-liberals. We have strong unions, we have strong social security systems, we have high wages. So, if I believed what the neo-liberals are arguing, we would have to be bankrupt, but apparently this is not the case. Despite high wages . . . despite our possibility to influence companies, the economy is working well in Germany.
At Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant, the nonunionized new employees get $14.50 an hour, which rises to $19.50 after three years.
http://www.remappingdebate.org...
A tale of two systems
By Kevin C. Brown
Remapping Debate
Dec. 21, 2011
American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory — both in the public and private sectors — have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive....
But the case of German automakers — BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen — tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in “transplant” factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called “right-to-work” (anti-union) states. ... the UAW has made significant concessions on wages, especially through the creation of a permanent “Tier
If you really believe that a minimum wage can increase the welfare of poor people, why not raise it to $500/hour? Then we can all be rich!
That's how corporate executives became rich.
Even if the editors had endless queue of high quality submissions about bits, bytes, and physical and biological sciences, they would throw some political stories in the mix. The reason is because only a relative few readers are qualified to discuss the latest in astrophysics, let's say, but anyone can jump in and talk about politics.
I think the typical Slashdot reader can discuss politics better than the typical pundit I see on TV news. I can usually find comments that are more insightful and focused on the issues than I get from, say, Hillary Clinton. Or GWB.
As Socrates said, the artisans and tradesmen were the only ones who actually knew anything.
I always find it interesting that the government demands money at the point of a gun and with little to no choice, while a corporation asks for money by providing goods or services that you desire. Yet the corporations are the evil ones???
Well I find it interesting that for health care I had to pay private insurance companies $6,000 a year in premiums, while people getting government insurance in Canada pay an average of about half as much in taxes (scaled to their income), for the same quality and the same service.
I compared the private health insurance in the free market to get the best deal, and guess what? They're all the same. I have no choice. The Canadians have more of a choice than I do.
There are some things that the government can provide far more efficiently than the free market, if the free market can provide it at all. Health care is one of them. Education is another. Transportation is another. Low-income housing is another. Even Social Security is more secure than private retirement pensions.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/...
The Plot Against Trains
By Adam Gopnik
May 15, 2015
“The reason we don’t have beautiful new airports and efficient bullet trains is not that we have inadvertently stumbled upon stumbling blocks; it’s that there are considerable numbers of Americans for whom these things are simply symbols of a feared central government, and who would, when they travel, rather sweat in squalor than surrender the money to build a better terminal.” The ideological rigor of this idea, as absolute in its way as the ancient Soviet conviction that any entering wedge of free enterprise would lead to the destruction of the Soviet state, is as instructive as it is astonishing. And it is part of the folly of American “centrism” not to recognize that the failure to run trains where we need them is made from conviction, not from ignorance.
What we have, uniquely in America, is a political class, and an entire political party, devoted to the idea that any money spent on public goods is money misplaced, not because the state goods might not be good but because they would distract us from the larger principle that no ultimate good can be found in the state.
Kids certainly won't read them, and most wouldn't know what to do with them... c'mon, we're talking teenagers here.
They would if they realized how much pornography there is in the great books of the Western world.
I would much prefer that a few long-discarded courses come back from the dead. Logic and Rhetoric stand out primarily among them; the former to help create better devs and sysadmins, the latter to help them better communicate needs and ideas to the PHB crowd. A little bit of philosophy couldn't hurt either, since anything to force kids to develop and use their own sense of creativity is rather vital IMHO.
I knew this would happen. Now that all the great books of the Western world are free on the Internet, nobody reads them.
I was right. You were wrong.
How do you answer Krugman's question: "Why didn't you see the obvious back then?"
That's Judith Miller's version. This is one of those situations where credibility and accuracy counts, and don't trust her to get the story straight. She didn't before.
I read Miller's stories in the NYT during the debate over WMDs. She gave one source who verified the WMDs, but she didn't speak to him -- her handlers pointed to a guy some distance away, and told her what he said, but they wouldn't let her talk to him. She was quoting a claim second-hand.
Yes, they fed her cherry-picked information. The information from the UN inspection team, whose members I heard interviewed on NPR, was that the US gave them the location of WMD facilities, they conducted surprise inspections, and the WMDs weren't there. The Pentagon didn't tell Miller about that.
It's not the job of a reporter to uncritically repeat the claims of high-placed sources. The job of a reporter is to check their claims with people who disagree, and get both sides. I learned that in Freshman English.
Bottom line: I knew that there were no WMDs. Krugman knew. Lots of people knew. You didn't need any fancy intelligence sources to figure that out. All you had to do was listen to both sides and see whose arguments held up. Reporters were talking to independent military experts, and the experts overwhelmingly told them that the claims weren't true. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists had military experts who said they weren't true. The aluminum tubes story was provably false. The yellowcake story was provably false. How many times do you have to see their stories proven false before you realize that they're not reliable?
Bush made up some evidence
No, the CIA gave him faulty information. New York Times journalist has been researching how she got the WMD story wrong in her reporting back in the day and she writes in http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...
Here's how Paul Krugman described it (more convincingly, to me). GWB wasn't mislead by the CIA. Cheney had convinced him to drive Saddam Hussein out of office before he heard any of the CIA assessments.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...
Blinkers and Lies
Paul Krugman
May 16, 2015
"The invasion wasn’t a mistake, it was a crime. We were lied into war."
(First, war in Iraq was not a good faith mistake. Bush and Cheney decided to use 9/11 as an excuse to go after a secular regime that had nothing to do with 9/11. They deliberately mislead the public, making a fake case about WMD.
Second, it was obvious at the time that the case for war was fake, and that post-war Iraq would be a failure.
The question for war supporters is, "Why didn't you see the obvious back then?"
Third, people who knew it was fake supported the war to establish their centrist credentials.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04...
Disabilities Act Prompts Flood of Suits Some Cite as Unfair
By MOSI SECRET
New York Times
APRIL 16, 2012
The lawyers are generally not acting on existing complaints from people with disabilities. Instead, they identify local businesses, like bagel shops and delis, that are not in compliance with the law, and then aggressively recruit plaintiffs from advocacy groups for people with disabilities.
The plaintiffs typically collect $500 for each suit, and each plaintiff can be used several times over. The lawyers, meanwhile, make several thousands of dollars, because the civil rights law entitles them to legal fees from the noncompliant businesses. ...
All of those suits were filed by Ben-Zion Bradley Weitz, a lawyer based in Florida, who has a regular group of people with disabilities from whom he selects plaintiffs. One of them, Todd Kreisler, a man in a wheelchair who lives on the East Side of Manhattan, sued 19 businesses over 16 months — a Chinese restaurant, a liquor store and a sandwich shop among them. ...
Mr. Weitz is leading the charge into New York’s courtrooms. Since October 2009, he has sued almost 200 businesses in the state, mostly in Federal District Court in Manhattan. He has eight years of experience filing these suits in Florida, where his practice does not seem to be lagging. Two weeks ago, he brought claims against four Tampa businesses — a strip mall, a convenience store, a bar and a print shop.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03...
Judge Rebukes 2 Lawyers Profiting From U.S. Disability Law
By MOSI SECRET
MARCH 29, 2013
Now a Brooklyn federal court judge has ruled squarely against two lawyers who bring most of such lawsuits in New York, writing in a cutting opinion on Thursday that their tactics lacked expertise, possibly violated the rules of professional conduct and were “disingenuous at best.” The judge, Sterling Johnson Jr., denied them legal fees and took the rare step of ordering them to stop filing such cases. ...
Though such arrangements have typically been shielded by confidentiality agreements, Judge Johnson revealed how much money the lawyers — Adam Shore and B. Bradley Weitz — claimed in fees, typically $425 per hour for a total of $15,000 per case even though the cases were so similar that he described them as boilerplate. The two lawyers had filed as many as 10 cases in a single day.
That statement is vague and potentially backwards. The victim or potential victim having a gun is proven to be a very good deterrent of murder.
I don't think that's been proven anywhere, unless you define "proof" as "It seems true to me."
We don't have much proof of anything about guns. The NRA lobbied Congress to eliminate all research on gun violence from the federal budget. The NRA also lobbied states and the federal government to prohibit releasing or even collecting most data about gun ownership. So we haven't had any scientifically solid gun research in about 15 years.
What ticked the NRA off was a study based on gun purchase records which found that people who bought guns were more likely to use them for suicide than self-defense.
Doctors have told me (and there are published studies to back them up) that people who are assaulted with guns are much more likely to die than people assaulted by any other means.
So eliminating guns from the scene is a very good deterrent of murder.
Justice based upon the idea of punishing someone, as a part of retributive justice or deterrence, has a long history, and while continentals may disagree, it's what we in the US choose to do. We believe, or at least our court system does, that some people DESERVE to die for their actions.
But not cops who kill black people.
Europeans never seem to understand that.
The death penalty is not an effective deterrent against murder.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-...
What deters murderers is not the penalty, but the likelihood of being caught.
Actually, what deters murders most is not having a gun.