The argument isn't that spending less on health care gets you better health care and thus longer life expectancy. It's that there's a pretty strong correlation and causal relationship between spending more on health care and longer life expectancy, yet the U.S. is a huge outlier when plotting the two against each other. The U.S. way overspends for what is objectively worse health care overall.
The specific point about UHC countries spending less and getting longer life expectancy is to counter the uniquely American argument that UHC can't possibly be affordable, that it'll bankrupt any country. That's demonstrably untrue. In fact, there are specific cost efficiencies in a single payer system--starting with administrative costs: From a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003:
administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada. Canada's national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent; the overhead among Canada's private insurers was higher than that in the United States (13.2 percent vs. 11.7 percent). Providers' administrative costs were far lower in Canada.
Nehe's tutorials tie the OpenGL stuff into a game application framework that's totally Windows based--win32 event handlers, windowing code, etc. After following them all through, you've got something that's basically impossible to port to Linux, and learning OpenGL this way, you need that application scaffolding to do any useful work with the library.
Sure it does. You live in a Republic, where you delegate government to representatives. The alternative is government by plebiscite, and what do you get when you hold a popular vote on every issue that comes along? California.
And honestly, how many people do you think had a reasonably accurate idea of what was in a 2,800 page bill? Enough that their opinion could be considered informed? Doesn't the fact that "death panels" actually had some currency in the popular consciousness tell you all you need to know about public awareness of the gritty details of the bill?
As for the government denying treatment, what do people who can't afford medical tourism do when their HMO denies a particular treatment? It's not like American health insurers are endless wells of treatment.
You conspicuously leave out the fact that the UHC countries have longer life expectancy at around 60% of the per capita cost, and that in 2009, more Americans went abroad for treatment than came to the U.S. for treatment.
Even if we wanted to, there is no way we can provide care for everyone
How is it that Canada, England, Switzerland, Germany, France, Sweden, and Norway all manage to provide universal health care to all their citizens, and achieve longer average lifespans and lower infant mortality rates than the U.S., at about 60% the cost?
Seriously, the rest of the first world pays less to get better health care. Why can't the U.S. do the same?
Here's another option: Look at any of the other first world countries who've had UHC for decades, who now have longer life expectancies than the U.S. at half the overall cost.
I agree that it's a weak bill. Thank you, Republicans who decided that 100%, balls-to-the-wall obstructionism was the best option. At the time, trying to repeat 1994 probably seemed like the sane choice. The Dems removed some of the best parts of the bill, like the public option, to get Republicans on board, and they still voted no to a man, on a bill that was pretty much identical to what the Republicans were pushing in 1994. Weird how times change.
Sometimes half-measures are worse than whole measures. For all the huffing and puffing by all sides, we really don't know what it'll be like in ten years. But I'd have to say that you've made progress by moving towards a system in which everyone pays into a system that covers everyone. As lots of other countries demonstrate in a myriad of ways (Canada: socialized insurance; England: socialized medicine; Switzerland: mandates and subsidies; etc.), it really is better.
You think U.S. pharmaceutical companies are the only ones researching new meds?
Well, you did invent Viagra. And Cialis. And a whole host of other erectile dysfunction pharmaceuticals. Critical contribution to the well-being of the American people, those.
You're conspicuously failing to address the large discrepancies in the ratio between spending and life expectancy. I don't think a 3-4% jump in survival rates justifies a 50% jump in spending.
Canada: 80.7 years U.S.: 78.2 years (just below Cuba's)
A Canadian lives, on average, 2.5 years longer than an American.
Per capita spending (2007):
Canada: $3,895 U.S.: $7,290
Per capita spending on health care in Canada is 53.4% of what it is in the U.S.
While the incidence of colorectal cancer is slightly higher in Canada, there's no overall difference in cancer incidence/morbidity rates between the two countries. Variations between the two countries in specific diseases are statistically expected.
Medical tourism flows both ways, you know. Toronto and Vancouver doctors see a lot of American patients, and as of 2009, the flow was in our direction.
Overall, we get more, better health care, for less.
Every country that has universal health care pays less per capita for health care (an average of 40% less), and gets better health care as measured by aggregate outcomes like life expectancy and infant mortality. Got that? We pay less and get more.
You pay more and get worse health care than every other first world country. Quit raging about the talking points of the people making money off your backs and start pushing for real UHC.
You're delusional. Every other first world country with full-blooded UHC pays less overall for their health care, and beats the U.S. by almost any aggregate measure like life expectancy or infant mortality. Everyone else in a first world country gets more, better health care, and pays less.
The only way this reform bill fails is the way that half-measures often do: as a bad compromise. You want real health reform? Pick one from this list, and copy what they've done: France, England, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden...
You should be so lucky as to have Canadian health care. We spend around 60% of what is spent in the U.S., proportionally (either per capita or as a portion of GDP), and have better outcomes by almost any measure: life expectancy, infant mortality...
Personally, I feel lucky to have it because I'm an independent businessman. I'd never have been able to take the risks I took up here, down in the U.S., because I'd never have been able to afford insurance. Ask yourself how much entrepeneurialism your (now previous) fucked up situation squashed.
It's continually shocking to me how delusional Americans are about health care: You think you've got the best system in the world, when it's actually the worst in the first world; you think you get better service when you get worse (ask my brother, living in Ohio and with an executive health plan); and you think you pay less when you pay far, far more. It's like fucking bizarro-world down there.
Jury nullification can't be explained to them. A defense attorney who tries to argue it gets an immediate mistrial.
FYI, if you're ever on an (American) jury, you can't argue for nullification there, either. A juror who argues to nullify gives grounds to the judge to set aside the verdict. If you're going to nullify, you just keep saying "I'm not convinced by the prosecution's case." Jury nullification exists only insofar as, if the jury says "not guilty" (and holds that the prosecution didn't prove its case), the prosecution can't try the accused again. As an explicit jury right, it doesn't exist, notwithstanding the arguments of libertarians. It's an implicit tactic only.
Within reason, pretty much. If they'd pulled out their guns and shot Watts, they'd be in big trouble. But there's no law that says police have to be polite or even understanding.
Jurors watched complete video of the entire incident. In interviews afterwards, they said the border guards acted like assholes, but Watts was guilty of the law as explained to them.
Jurors watched complete video of the entire incident. In interviews afterwards, they said the border guards acted like assholes, but Watts was guilty of the law as explained to them.
A lot of commentators on this ruling are sure it'll be overturned on appeal. While SawStop is really fantastic technology, everything else you said is true, and the fact that lots of people don't lose their fingers over decades of use is proof of that.
When courts mandate the use of patented or copyrighted or licencable technology, they also set a reasonable licencing fee. The court's ultimate goal in its ruling is to protect the consumer, so creating a de facto monopoly for a patent holder and allowing him to charge $1,000,000 per use doesn't meet that goal. If the SawStop technology becomes legally mandated by this ruling, the court will also set a reasonable fee for SawStop to charge.
It sounds like a really good church, one that I would support, if not attend for lack of Christian beliefs. And I do understand that the examples I cited aren't strictly true of all Christians and churches.
I could have saved you a lot of typing by mentioning that I know that the objectionable behaviour I cite is not what Jesus taught, and that many Christians I know personally aren't guilty of the behaviour I mention above. It seems to have more to do with certain communities and the way that a group of people will work themselves up into a self-righteous frenzy. And I agree that if the same people were atheist, they'd be the same jerks.
It's not hypocritical to hold a certain standard of behaviour, and then fail to meet that standard on occasion. Humans are fallible, but that doesn't mean that you stop trying. What's hypocritical is holding a higher standard and loudly proclaiming that you do, and then doing worse at following it than everyone else. It's like a gambler decrying the evils of gambling while on his way to the casino. At a certain point you start to think that loud lip service to the ideal is an excuse for failing that ideal--it's moral tokenism. Trying to live up to a standard means actually trying to live up to it, not pointing out the motes in others eyes to distract from the beam in yours. It's like holding the ideal is sufficient to make them good people, so they don't have to bother with actually living it.
Not coincidentally, I think, the Christians I've known whose faith impressed me as a source of strength and guidance for them, were the quietest Christians, the ones who understood that walking the walk is more important than talking the talk. They were the least judgmental of others and the least willing to condemn.
if you are saying that by believing homosexual behavior is immoral and voting based on that belief then you do not respect the democratic right for someone to disagree with you.
In the particular case of voting to block gay marriage, Christians did much more than just vote against it. They campaigned against it with outright, demonstrable lies. They told people that children would be taught to be homosexual in schools. They told people that churches would be closed if they refused to perform gay weddings. They told people that society would collapse. They said they were okay with granting the various protections of marriage to gay couples, and then when they won the vote, they voted against bills introduced to grant those specific protections (Utah), and started rolling them back where they could (Virginia). They talked about the sanctity of the institution of marriage while getting divorced in record numbers, and while the leaders of the communities were having affairs and pursuing secret gay lives.
That's not being fallible and human. That's the biblical definition of hypocrisy.
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The argument isn't that spending less on health care gets you better health care and thus longer life expectancy. It's that there's a pretty strong correlation and causal relationship between spending more on health care and longer life expectancy, yet the U.S. is a huge outlier when plotting the two against each other. The U.S. way overspends for what is objectively worse health care overall.
The specific point about UHC countries spending less and getting longer life expectancy is to counter the uniquely American argument that UHC can't possibly be affordable, that it'll bankrupt any country. That's demonstrably untrue. In fact, there are specific cost efficiencies in a single payer system--starting with administrative costs: From a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003:
Nehe's tutorials tie the OpenGL stuff into a game application framework that's totally Windows based--win32 event handlers, windowing code, etc. After following them all through, you've got something that's basically impossible to port to Linux, and learning OpenGL this way, you need that application scaffolding to do any useful work with the library.
Here's the life expectancy figures from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy. They're from the CIA world Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2102.html) and the UN ().
The figures on per capita spending on health care by country come from the OECD. Here's a handy chart: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=HEALTH
Sure it does. You live in a Republic, where you delegate government to representatives. The alternative is government by plebiscite, and what do you get when you hold a popular vote on every issue that comes along? California.
And honestly, how many people do you think had a reasonably accurate idea of what was in a 2,800 page bill? Enough that their opinion could be considered informed? Doesn't the fact that "death panels" actually had some currency in the popular consciousness tell you all you need to know about public awareness of the gritty details of the bill?
As for the government denying treatment, what do people who can't afford medical tourism do when their HMO denies a particular treatment? It's not like American health insurers are endless wells of treatment.
How is it that other countries manage to get longer life expectancies at 60% the per capita cost? Is the U.S. government uniquely incompetent?
You conspicuously leave out the fact that the UHC countries have longer life expectancy at around 60% of the per capita cost, and that in 2009, more Americans went abroad for treatment than came to the U.S. for treatment.
About a quarter of that 56% were against the bill because they didn't think it went far enough. They wanted a public option, if not full single-payer.
Even if we wanted to, there is no way we can provide care for everyone
How is it that Canada, England, Switzerland, Germany, France, Sweden, and Norway all manage to provide universal health care to all their citizens, and achieve longer average lifespans and lower infant mortality rates than the U.S., at about 60% the cost?
Seriously, the rest of the first world pays less to get better health care. Why can't the U.S. do the same?
What a hell on Earth that would be.
Here's another option: Look at any of the other first world countries who've had UHC for decades, who now have longer life expectancies than the U.S. at half the overall cost.
I agree that it's a weak bill. Thank you, Republicans who decided that 100%, balls-to-the-wall obstructionism was the best option. At the time, trying to repeat 1994 probably seemed like the sane choice. The Dems removed some of the best parts of the bill, like the public option, to get Republicans on board, and they still voted no to a man, on a bill that was pretty much identical to what the Republicans were pushing in 1994. Weird how times change.
Sometimes half-measures are worse than whole measures. For all the huffing and puffing by all sides, we really don't know what it'll be like in ten years. But I'd have to say that you've made progress by moving towards a system in which everyone pays into a system that covers everyone. As lots of other countries demonstrate in a myriad of ways (Canada: socialized insurance; England: socialized medicine; Switzerland: mandates and subsidies; etc.), it really is better.
You think U.S. pharmaceutical companies are the only ones researching new meds?
Well, you did invent Viagra. And Cialis. And a whole host of other erectile dysfunction pharmaceuticals. Critical contribution to the well-being of the American people, those.
You're conspicuously failing to address the large discrepancies in the ratio between spending and life expectancy. I don't think a 3-4% jump in survival rates justifies a 50% jump in spending.
Life expectancy by country:
Canada: 80.7 years
U.S.: 78.2 years (just below Cuba's)
A Canadian lives, on average, 2.5 years longer than an American.
Per capita spending (2007):
Canada: $3,895
U.S.: $7,290
Per capita spending on health care in Canada is 53.4% of what it is in the U.S.
While the incidence of colorectal cancer is slightly higher in Canada, there's no overall difference in cancer incidence/morbidity rates between the two countries. Variations between the two countries in specific diseases are statistically expected.
Medical tourism flows both ways, you know. Toronto and Vancouver doctors see a lot of American patients, and as of 2009, the flow was in our direction.
Overall, we get more, better health care, for less.
Every country that has universal health care pays less per capita for health care (an average of 40% less), and gets better health care as measured by aggregate outcomes like life expectancy and infant mortality. Got that? We pay less and get more.
You pay more and get worse health care than every other first world country. Quit raging about the talking points of the people making money off your backs and start pushing for real UHC.
You're delusional. Every other first world country with full-blooded UHC pays less overall for their health care, and beats the U.S. by almost any aggregate measure like life expectancy or infant mortality. Everyone else in a first world country gets more, better health care, and pays less.
The only way this reform bill fails is the way that half-measures often do: as a bad compromise. You want real health reform? Pick one from this list, and copy what they've done: France, England, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden...
You should be so lucky as to have Canadian health care. We spend around 60% of what is spent in the U.S., proportionally (either per capita or as a portion of GDP), and have better outcomes by almost any measure: life expectancy, infant mortality...
Personally, I feel lucky to have it because I'm an independent businessman. I'd never have been able to take the risks I took up here, down in the U.S., because I'd never have been able to afford insurance. Ask yourself how much entrepeneurialism your (now previous) fucked up situation squashed.
It's continually shocking to me how delusional Americans are about health care: You think you've got the best system in the world, when it's actually the worst in the first world; you think you get better service when you get worse (ask my brother, living in Ohio and with an executive health plan); and you think you pay less when you pay far, far more. It's like fucking bizarro-world down there.
Jury nullification can't be explained to them. A defense attorney who tries to argue it gets an immediate mistrial.
FYI, if you're ever on an (American) jury, you can't argue for nullification there, either. A juror who argues to nullify gives grounds to the judge to set aside the verdict. If you're going to nullify, you just keep saying "I'm not convinced by the prosecution's case." Jury nullification exists only insofar as, if the jury says "not guilty" (and holds that the prosecution didn't prove its case), the prosecution can't try the accused again. As an explicit jury right, it doesn't exist, notwithstanding the arguments of libertarians. It's an implicit tactic only.
Within reason, pretty much. If they'd pulled out their guns and shot Watts, they'd be in big trouble. But there's no law that says police have to be polite or even understanding.
Jurors watched complete video of the entire incident. In interviews afterwards, they said the border guards acted like assholes, but Watts was guilty of the law as explained to them.
Jurors watched complete video of the entire incident. In interviews afterwards, they said the border guards acted like assholes, but Watts was guilty of the law as explained to them.
The jurors watched complete video of the entire encounter, and then found Watts guilty.
They also said that the border guards acted like assholes, but given the law and Watts's actions, they had to find him guilty.
A lot of commentators on this ruling are sure it'll be overturned on appeal. While SawStop is really fantastic technology, everything else you said is true, and the fact that lots of people don't lose their fingers over decades of use is proof of that.
When courts mandate the use of patented or copyrighted or licencable technology, they also set a reasonable licencing fee. The court's ultimate goal in its ruling is to protect the consumer, so creating a de facto monopoly for a patent holder and allowing him to charge $1,000,000 per use doesn't meet that goal. If the SawStop technology becomes legally mandated by this ruling, the court will also set a reasonable fee for SawStop to charge.
It sounds like a really good church, one that I would support, if not attend for lack of Christian beliefs. And I do understand that the examples I cited aren't strictly true of all Christians and churches.
I could have saved you a lot of typing by mentioning that I know that the objectionable behaviour I cite is not what Jesus taught, and that many Christians I know personally aren't guilty of the behaviour I mention above. It seems to have more to do with certain communities and the way that a group of people will work themselves up into a self-righteous frenzy. And I agree that if the same people were atheist, they'd be the same jerks.
It's not hypocritical to hold a certain standard of behaviour, and then fail to meet that standard on occasion. Humans are fallible, but that doesn't mean that you stop trying. What's hypocritical is holding a higher standard and loudly proclaiming that you do, and then doing worse at following it than everyone else. It's like a gambler decrying the evils of gambling while on his way to the casino. At a certain point you start to think that loud lip service to the ideal is an excuse for failing that ideal--it's moral tokenism. Trying to live up to a standard means actually trying to live up to it, not pointing out the motes in others eyes to distract from the beam in yours. It's like holding the ideal is sufficient to make them good people, so they don't have to bother with actually living it.
Not coincidentally, I think, the Christians I've known whose faith impressed me as a source of strength and guidance for them, were the quietest Christians, the ones who understood that walking the walk is more important than talking the talk. They were the least judgmental of others and the least willing to condemn.
In the particular case of voting to block gay marriage, Christians did much more than just vote against it. They campaigned against it with outright, demonstrable lies. They told people that children would be taught to be homosexual in schools. They told people that churches would be closed if they refused to perform gay weddings. They told people that society would collapse. They said they were okay with granting the various protections of marriage to gay couples, and then when they won the vote, they voted against bills introduced to grant those specific protections (Utah), and started rolling them back where they could (Virginia). They talked about the sanctity of the institution of marriage while getting divorced in record numbers, and while the leaders of the communities were having affairs and pursuing secret gay lives.
That's not being fallible and human. That's the biblical definition of hypocrisy.