It's amusing though how there's always at least one pedant "correcting" the article or summary in each and every article with that short-form term in it.
So you're proposing to pay for the increases in health insurance I've had to pay for over the last 10 years? By my approximation you owe me an additional $50,000 plus interest. So were you going to pay with cash, gold, silver, cashier's check, or money order?
You were paying twice as much as the Canadians did because we don't have a government-run health care system like the Canadians do.
Send your bill to the insurance companies who overcharged you.
Send your bill to the politicians who got campaign contributions from the insurance companies.
Oh stop it. You can go off into the wilds and stay away from the IRS, UPS, AT&T and likely the NSA. Very, very few people stay completely off the grid. If you want to have the benefits of civilization, then you have to pay for it.
Or as Adam Smith said, those who benefit from society have an obligation to pay for the costs of running society.
The main reason the premiums of those health insurance policies cost less is that they were bad policies. They didn't cover you for some of the problems you would be most likely to have, and when they did cover you, you wind up with enormous deductibles, co-payments and exclusions.
In the insurance industry, they used to call them "herd of buffaloes" policy. They only cover you if you get run over by a herd of buffaloes, and then only if it's on Main Street, and only if it's at noon.
If you lose all your money, or get an expensive disease that you can't pay for, you're going to fall back on the public welfare system that you've derided all your life and begrudged paying into.
Or suppose you have so much money that you will never be in want. Then you should share it. As Adam Smith said, those who have gotten greater benefit from society have an obligation to pay a proportionately greater share of the cost of running society.
If you don't accept the moral argument, I'm afraid you'll have to go along anyway. If you want to do everything legally, you have to contribute anyway.
Military and veteran's hospitals are good examples of how the government does things well. I think the key factors in their success are that:
(1) They have a strong lobby behind them, and Congress and the White House support them, with an adequate budget.
(2) Congress and the White House give them substantial independence to follow their professional judgment.
(3) They have a committed work force. Some may be lazy or incompetent, but most are committed to serving their patients, which they see as a service to their country.
(4) They treat their employees well, in ways that count. They pay a modest salary, with good job security and pension. They have unions. I think that if you expect your employees to do a good job for you, you should give them a good job in return.
One of the striking things about the VA hospital system is that they do a lot of research. If you go to a cardiology conference, a vascular surgery conference, a urology conference, etc., you will hear them talking about the "VA study," which is the definitive study on treatment in many of those fields.
If we could expand the VA system to care for the rest of America, that would be one of the best health care systems in the world, but it seems to be politically impossible, which is a shame. The current veterans are afraid that it might make their services worse. I can't imagine how we could create a system like that again, especially with the Tea Party Republicans out to stop anything.
I see no reason why I should be forced to pay for the retirement of Boomers. Boomers who have raided Social Security at every turn, stuck us with generations of war debt, fucked the economy through a combination of stupid regulations and private greed, and generally been dicks. Cat food, cool aid and nothing more then preventative care is more then fair.
The original deal was that you would get a free college education, and you would start paying for Social Security and Medicare after you started working, when you could more easily afford it. Disability and unemployment insurance was included.
It was a good deal -- better than you could ever get in the free market. Too bad it didn't work out for you.
I don't know if you can get the paper free but here it is. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2012.08.005 Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modied maize
The study wasn't just unconvincing. It was riddled with serious flaws. The first and clearest complaint: they didn't do any statistical analysis. At all.
I looked up that paper too. The first thing I looked for was the P values and the confidence intervals. I couldn't find any. Was I missing something?
What they should have said was, "We only guarantee that it's not due to chance 95% of the time. This is one of the 5%. Sometimes a well-designed study turns out to be wrong. Sorry."
That's true. People who insist on ignoring facts, and make their decisions based on right-wing ideology, will reject these arguments as "complete liberal bullshit."
Not throwing money, focussing on the health and wellbeing of the people. In Haiti, that has been a success, due to the hard work of Haitians and international volunteers in providing health care, food, shelter and supplies.
The problem you are alluding to, that money for Haiti has been used by intermediary groups and governments as an in-and-out scheme to launder money and prop-up domestic business failures is quite different. The responsibility for first world corruption should remain in the first world.
You are correct, and there are actually a lot of published articles to back you up.
Paul Farmer, the doctor from Harvard who helped design Haiti's health care system, said that the big problem was that the Clinton Administration was trying to undermine Aristide, so Clinton made sure that American aid, and international aid, didn't go to the Aristide government's health care system, but instead went to independent groups, most of them hostile to Aristide.
That was the most inefficient way to do it, with uncoordinated aid groups running around at cross purposes. One group may be delivering eyeglasses when what they really needed was infectious control, one group may be delivering wheelchairs that can't be repaired, etc.
Sounds great, but how do you convince some other country to be your benefactor? Usually, when countries get loans, there's all kinds of horrible strings attached which only serve to keep that country crippled in perpetuity.
If you don't give us aid, we'll go to the Communists -- oops, can't do that any more. Oh well, it worked well for a while.
Private evil this private evil that.. look, insurance companies are manipulative and profit seeking, but having the state manage it is no better.
It should be obvious that a well-managed state will run a well-managed health care system, and a poorly-managed state will run a poorly-managed health care system. In fact, a poorly-managed state will have a poorly-managed private health care system.
Our government, run by the Republicans and their Democratic neocon equivalents, will manage it badly.
The problem is that in our political system, whoever has the most money for TV attack ads wins (most of the time), and corporate billionaires are the ones who can donate the most money to the two parties as a quid pro quo for advancing their interests. (In other countries that would be considered illegal bribery.) That's the main problem with the health care system. The health care industry poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the political campaigns.
Other countries -- every other country in the world -- pay far less per capita for their health care system. Some of them, like Canada, are pretty much like ours except they cost half as much and don't have a health insurance industry. The Australian and British health care systems are about as good as ours except that they cost roughly half as much as ours.
The Supreme Court case of Citizens United vs. FEC was designed to make it impossible to have electoral reform, and to insure that the 1% of billionaires will keep running this country for the indefinite future. I don't see any way out.
Unless you're making at least $100,000 a year, or have a million dollars invested cautiously, you'd probably be better off moving to another country.
Wall Street Journal tracked down Phil Katz, as in PKZIP. Sad guy. He became an alcoholic (and died soon after). He used to hang out with bar girls, and they didn't know who he was.
OTOH, Richard Feynman said that when the atomic scientists went to Las Vegas, all the showgirls knew who they were. They read Time magazine.
No doctor would make a decision on the basis of this test.
The main benefit of BRCA testing is that some women have breast cancer in their family. BRCA has such a high likelihood of developing into breast and ovarian cancer at a relatively young age that many women decide that they'd rather have a bilateral mastectomy and ovarectomy first and (probably) escape that risk. But if they don't have the relative's gene, then they don't have that risk of breast or ovarian cancer, so they don't have to worry about it.
The current recommendations for BRCA testing is that it's only indicated for people who already have breast cancer in the family. The person with breast cancer has to be tested (as they usually have been for treatment purposes).
If the person with breast cancer has the BRCA gene, then other people in the family can get tested.
If a relative has the gene, she's at risk and can consider a prophylactic mastectomy/ovarectomy.
If a relative doesn't have the gene, she's not at risk. The gene passed her over. A prophylactic mastectomy/ovarectomy would be pointless.
But a relative who is really at risk of breast cancer, and under treatment by a doctor, would use an FDA-approved test kit, not 23andme.
There may be a situation in which the relative can't afford an FDA-approved test kit, but can afford $99 for 23andme. You could say, 23andme is better than nothing. But if the relative can't afford the FDA-approved test kit, she couldn't afford a prophylactic mastectomy/ovarectomy either.
BTW, BRCA (or rather, BRCA1 and BRCA2) is just the most common gene. There are others. If the person with breast cancer tests negative for BRCA, she still has other genes she could test for. There are new genes being discovered regularly, so if she couldn't find the gene, she should keep testing.
I'm glad the FDA is looking out for me. I don't think they've made the case yet that DIY testing can be harmful, but I don't understand why 23andme didn't take care of the paperwork.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_1 Prior to launch, Soyuz 1 engineers are said to have reported 203 design faults to party leaders, but their concerns "were overruled by political pressures for a series of space feats to mark the anniversary of Lenin's birthday."
Slashdot Mirror
It's amusing though how there's always at least one pedant "correcting" the article or summary in each and every article with that short-form term in it.
I literally want to kill those people.
So you're proposing to pay for the increases in health insurance I've had to pay for over the last 10 years? By my approximation you owe me an additional $50,000 plus interest. So were you going to pay with cash, gold, silver, cashier's check, or money order?
You were paying twice as much as the Canadians did because we don't have a government-run health care system like the Canadians do.
Send your bill to the insurance companies who overcharged you.
Send your bill to the politicians who got campaign contributions from the insurance companies.
Are you completely sure that health care is slavery?
War is peace.
Ignorance is strength.
Oh stop it. You can go off into the wilds and stay away from the IRS, UPS, AT&T and likely the NSA. Very, very few people stay completely off the grid. If you want to have the benefits of civilization, then you have to pay for it.
Or as Adam Smith said, those who benefit from society have an obligation to pay for the costs of running society.
The main reason the premiums of those health insurance policies cost less is that they were bad policies. They didn't cover you for some of the problems you would be most likely to have, and when they did cover you, you wind up with enormous deductibles, co-payments and exclusions.
In the insurance industry, they used to call them "herd of buffaloes" policy. They only cover you if you get run over by a herd of buffaloes, and then only if it's on Main Street, and only if it's at noon.
But actually, most people will pay lower premiums for equal or better insurance, and most of the Obamacare horror stories aren't true. http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/
If you want a moral argument, here's one:
If you lose all your money, or get an expensive disease that you can't pay for, you're going to fall back on the public welfare system that you've derided all your life and begrudged paying into.
Or suppose you have so much money that you will never be in want. Then you should share it. As Adam Smith said, those who have gotten greater benefit from society have an obligation to pay a proportionately greater share of the cost of running society.
If you don't accept the moral argument, I'm afraid you'll have to go along anyway. If you want to do everything legally, you have to contribute anyway.
I would love to ask their reviewers how they could approve a paper that didn't give the P value of its numbers.
Military and veteran's hospitals are good examples of how the government does things well. I think the key factors in their success are that:
(1) They have a strong lobby behind them, and Congress and the White House support them, with an adequate budget.
(2) Congress and the White House give them substantial independence to follow their professional judgment.
(3) They have a committed work force. Some may be lazy or incompetent, but most are committed to serving their patients, which they see as a service to their country.
(4) They treat their employees well, in ways that count. They pay a modest salary, with good job security and pension. They have unions. I think that if you expect your employees to do a good job for you, you should give them a good job in return.
One of the striking things about the VA hospital system is that they do a lot of research. If you go to a cardiology conference, a vascular surgery conference, a urology conference, etc., you will hear them talking about the "VA study," which is the definitive study on treatment in many of those fields.
If we could expand the VA system to care for the rest of America, that would be one of the best health care systems in the world, but it seems to be politically impossible, which is a shame. The current veterans are afraid that it might make their services worse. I can't imagine how we could create a system like that again, especially with the Tea Party Republicans out to stop anything.
Oh, now I see. Sorry to spoil the joke. :)
I see no reason why I should be forced to pay for the retirement of Boomers. Boomers who have raided Social Security at every turn, stuck us with generations of war debt, fucked the economy through a combination of stupid regulations and private greed, and generally been dicks. Cat food, cool aid and nothing more then preventative care is more then fair.
The original deal was that you would get a free college education, and you would start paying for Social Security and Medicare after you started working, when you could more easily afford it. Disability and unemployment insurance was included.
It was a good deal -- better than you could ever get in the free market. Too bad it didn't work out for you.
OK, but what was the p value?
They didn't give a p value.
I don't know if you can get the paper free but here it is.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2012.08.005
Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modied maize
They didn't calculate the p values and confidence intervals.
So I don't understand how they can say anything.
Can you answer this question easily and intuitively: If p=.03, what is the probability the result will be replicated?
You're speaking for purposes of illustration, right? The paper itself didn't have any p values.
The study wasn't just unconvincing. It was riddled with serious flaws. The first and clearest complaint: they didn't do any statistical analysis. At all.
I looked up that paper too. The first thing I looked for was the P values and the confidence intervals. I couldn't find any. Was I missing something?
You're right. I didn't understand that.
What they should have said was, "We only guarantee that it's not due to chance 95% of the time. This is one of the 5%. Sometimes a well-designed study turns out to be wrong. Sorry."
That's true. People who insist on ignoring facts, and make their decisions based on right-wing ideology, will reject these arguments as "complete liberal bullshit."
Not throwing money, focussing on the health and wellbeing of the people. In Haiti, that has been a success, due to the hard work of Haitians and international volunteers in providing health care, food, shelter and supplies.
The problem you are alluding to, that money for Haiti has been used by intermediary groups and governments as an in-and-out scheme to launder money and prop-up domestic business failures is quite different. The responsibility for first world corruption should remain in the first world.
You are correct, and there are actually a lot of published articles to back you up.
Paul Farmer, the doctor from Harvard who helped design Haiti's health care system, said that the big problem was that the Clinton Administration was trying to undermine Aristide, so Clinton made sure that American aid, and international aid, didn't go to the Aristide government's health care system, but instead went to independent groups, most of them hostile to Aristide.
That was the most inefficient way to do it, with uncoordinated aid groups running around at cross purposes. One group may be delivering eyeglasses when what they really needed was infectious control, one group may be delivering wheelchairs that can't be repaired, etc.
Sounds great, but how do you convince some other country to be your benefactor? Usually, when countries get loans, there's all kinds of horrible strings attached which only serve to keep that country crippled in perpetuity.
If you don't give us aid, we'll go to the Communists -- oops, can't do that any more. Oh well, it worked well for a while.
Private evil this private evil that.. look, insurance companies are manipulative and profit seeking, but having the state manage it is no better.
It should be obvious that a well-managed state will run a well-managed health care system, and a poorly-managed state will run a poorly-managed health care system. In fact, a poorly-managed state will have a poorly-managed private health care system.
Our government, run by the Republicans and their Democratic neocon equivalents, will manage it badly.
The problem is that in our political system, whoever has the most money for TV attack ads wins (most of the time), and corporate billionaires are the ones who can donate the most money to the two parties as a quid pro quo for advancing their interests. (In other countries that would be considered illegal bribery.) That's the main problem with the health care system. The health care industry poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the political campaigns.
Other countries -- every other country in the world -- pay far less per capita for their health care system. Some of them, like Canada, are pretty much like ours except they cost half as much and don't have a health insurance industry. The Australian and British health care systems are about as good as ours except that they cost roughly half as much as ours.
The Supreme Court case of Citizens United vs. FEC was designed to make it impossible to have electoral reform, and to insure that the 1% of billionaires will keep running this country for the indefinite future. I don't see any way out.
Unless you're making at least $100,000 a year, or have a million dollars invested cautiously, you'd probably be better off moving to another country.
Or you could stay here and fight.
many of us have a serious issue with the portion of this country that consumes far more from the fed then it pays in taxes.
You mean the southern red states + Alaska?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_reckoning/2012/10/25/blue_state_red_face_guess_who_benefits_more_from_your_taxes.html
Winfield who?
Wall Street Journal tracked down Phil Katz, as in PKZIP. Sad guy. He became an alcoholic (and died soon after). He used to hang out with bar girls, and they didn't know who he was.
OTOH, Richard Feynman said that when the atomic scientists went to Las Vegas, all the showgirls knew who they were. They read Time magazine.
Maybe we could move geeks to Tyler, Texas. Open a dude ranch, have a Burning Man party, free FO, maker shops. Register, vote, serve on juries.
No doctor would make a decision on the basis of this test.
The main benefit of BRCA testing is that some women have breast cancer in their family. BRCA has such a high likelihood of developing into breast and ovarian cancer at a relatively young age that many women decide that they'd rather have a bilateral mastectomy and ovarectomy first and (probably) escape that risk. But if they don't have the relative's gene, then they don't have that risk of breast or ovarian cancer, so they don't have to worry about it.
The current recommendations for BRCA testing is that it's only indicated for people who already have breast cancer in the family. The person with breast cancer has to be tested (as they usually have been for treatment purposes).
If the person with breast cancer has the BRCA gene, then other people in the family can get tested.
If a relative has the gene, she's at risk and can consider a prophylactic mastectomy/ovarectomy.
If a relative doesn't have the gene, she's not at risk. The gene passed her over. A prophylactic mastectomy/ovarectomy would be pointless.
But a relative who is really at risk of breast cancer, and under treatment by a doctor, would use an FDA-approved test kit, not 23andme.
There may be a situation in which the relative can't afford an FDA-approved test kit, but can afford $99 for 23andme. You could say, 23andme is better than nothing. But if the relative can't afford the FDA-approved test kit, she couldn't afford a prophylactic mastectomy/ovarectomy either.
BTW, BRCA (or rather, BRCA1 and BRCA2) is just the most common gene. There are others. If the person with breast cancer tests negative for BRCA, she still has other genes she could test for. There are new genes being discovered regularly, so if she couldn't find the gene, she should keep testing.
I'm glad the FDA is looking out for me. I don't think they've made the case yet that DIY testing can be harmful, but I don't understand why 23andme didn't take care of the paperwork.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_1
Prior to launch, Soyuz 1 engineers are said to have reported 203 design faults to party leaders, but their concerns "were overruled by political pressures for a series of space feats to mark the anniversary of Lenin's birthday."
The system was doomed from the start.