Managing cows isn't something that is necessary. Cows get all their nutrients from plants, all of their methane is Co2 stored in those plants, the green house value coming out of the cows in the form of methane will match the amount of GHGs in the plants they eat.
If cows didn't eat the plants, they would just die off, shed leaves and whatever, and release all of their stored GHGs naturally when they decompose.
The only reason cows aren't considered part of the natural carbon cycle is because there is money to be gained from labeling them otherwise. In the last two cap and trade bill that has come out of commties, livestock has been attacked with a tax.
But here is the problem. Cow don't make methane or any greenhouse gas. They emit sequestered GHG's usually in the form of methane as part of their process to extract nutrients from the feed. Now we don't dig live stock feed from 2 miles under the ground, we don't drill the bottom of the ocean to get livestock feed, we grow the food either in a field as pasture land, hay, or corn with some other products going in too. If the cows did not exist, the only difference would be how much GHG's are pulled from the air by the planting of these feeds and how long it would take to go back into the air.
So without cows or other livestock, the only thing that would change is that instead of a cow eating the food and turning it back into GHG's, it woulod fall and decay in the fields and be released as Co2 or Ch4 or whatever. And no, there won't be any difference in the greenhouse potential because of methane is converted to Co2, the volume of Co2 increases and contains the same thermal effects. In other words, 1 bale of hay eaten by a cow will produce the same effective amounts of GHGs as it would sitting there rotting and decaying naturally. If your not planting hay, it would be field grass or whatever.
Trees are the same, Canada did a study to see if their forested lands could offset their Kyoto obligations and it was found that all stored GHG's in trees will be released into the air again when the trees die and rot. If they aren't cut down and taken out of the ecosystem and used for something useful, they release everything they soaked up in their lifetime creating a zero sum gain over their lifetime. Cows are just a middle man in the process.
Where can I find information on this? Do you have a link? Who is Francis?
I read about it in one of the IAEA reports on the state of soviet reactors. No, I don't have a specific link, I would have had one a week ago when everything we were discussing was still in my browser history. Anyways, the report was circa 1999 or so and was talking about the progress of the upgrades, it included the amount used by donation and the amount invested by the former soviet governments.
Francis was a talking mule in old movies who was enlisted in the army (WWII - Korea days). "Slow down there Francis" was just a catch phrase from it.
You cannot implement significant changes to a reactor facility once it is operational. Since they are designed for a forty year life span you can consider those 25 year old design recommendations state of the art for a Nuclear reactor. Besides any technology development is an iterative process. The design changes I mentioned are the simplest and most straight forward ones I thought to list, yet they have not been implemented in new designs. I mean it's pretty basic, underground reactor.
They did though. The problems which caused Chernobyl, outside of having a reaction that stayed lit, was because the supports for the boron tubes wouldn't move the control rods reliably. They ended up coating the control in graphite which when introduced into the reaction, caused the first explosion which shattered the control rods making them ineffective. To fix that, they strengthened the support tubes so as they wouldn't flex, added a cooling passage around part of it, and now use pure boron which will kill the reaction without needing the graphite which caused explosions when introduced to the reaction.
The shift change happened, someone noticed the reactor was out of limits (because of the testing) and the auto-shutdown wasn't engaged so he manually engaged it. When the control rods hit the reaction, the graphite exploded and shattered the control tubes making them in effective and halting any further attempts to shut it down.
To save money on construction costs the AP-1000 cuts back on concrete and steel - significantly. The result is a ratio of containment volume to thermal power below that of today's PWRs, thereby increasing the risk of containment over-pressurization and failure in event of a severe accident. That is the making of a core excursion style accident, like Chernobyl.
Most of the concrete and steel being saved is from unneeded buildings due to the simplified designs. As for the ratio of, I think your conflating the design issues here. First, American and most new reactors operate on a negative coefficient. This means that instead of adding a substance to stop the reaction, they add one to maintain it. If something happens, the feed stops and the reaction goes out on it's own. All the is necessary from there on is to cool the fuel to stop it from igniting and to maintain the vessel integrity. The AP-1000 is designed to use convection to cool and keep the reactor safe for three days without any additional pumping or water being added. This design is safer then traditional reactors and yes, it doesn't require as much concrete an steel because it isn't the same reactor.
If you were to tell me that they are just trimming the materials on the old design, I would be just as or more concerned then you are. But the very real fact is that we are talking about two different designs here and they have two different requirements which had been engineered and approved by all of the major regulatory agencies.
If the facility is performing the function it was designed for (to process, use and contain) radioactive isotopes then it is not obsolete, it is operating within it's designed lifetime.
Your ignoring efficiencies, improvements in processes and so on. Fist of all, the concrete
Quit being a moron. The person I replied to was replying to someone indicating that without public access like before with this system, a meteor could hit the US and North Korea could be blamed for it. There will be enough tracking information to rule that out. After all, that's what was discontinued right? -the releasing of information on objects in space?
Or am I somehow misreading his statement "With outside access to this kind of information being limited, we would have to trust our government and a few other nations with such capability that the North Koreans did, in fact, attack us."? Cause the only outside access we had was space objects right?
I'll live with your numbers and for the purpose of argument lets make them worse. Say 99% waste, some girls don't do it even when they miss their period, say it goes bad after 2 years..... So I get girls who miss their period to take folic acid a week earlier on average (its those first 6-8 weeks which are critical) for $200. That a huge savings to the health system. So heck yeah I would totally support that.
It's still a matter of leading a horse to water. If you educate them enough to do it, they will buy it on their own, it's only two dollars. However, something I'm not sure if you are aware of is that the FDA started requiring the addition of folic acid to enriched breads, cereals, flours, corn meals, pastas, rice, and other grain products and these requirements took effect in 1998. This is in addition to the natural foods in which it is normally found in which a teen having sex would likely be eating.
As for the missing a period, this is also a problem, quite a few girls don't have regular cycles in their teen years. It can be 4 or 8 weeks already before they finally realize it isn't going to happen- especially if they are active with sports or similar and not getting enough caloric intake to support their energy expense.
What I'm proposing is a single payer system for low end care. Administered at places of work and schools. Provide universal preventative and low end care without concern for billing in the most cost effective ways possible with high participation. So yeah, go right to the work place: hearing exam, eye exam, breast exam for women, testicle exam for men, take some blood, take some urine, ask about any unusual symptoms, look for legions.
The school nurse, at least when I was in school already did hearing and eye tests. As for the rest, just require a physical as a condition of employment. Here is the thing though, finding the problem usually isn't the expensive part, it's the treatment afterward. I used to take a DOT physical once per year and it did everything but blood tests (had to fill a cup up though) and it only cost $55 though the company doctor and roughly $80 independently.
But there are some problems with you numbers below. Fist, it only detects the discovery of the illness. Simply going to the doctor won't keep you healthy, him finding something wrong and treating you does. And again, leading a horse to water doesn't mean he is going to drink. Only the people who would normally get physicals and possible a few who are too inconvenienced by going somewhere waiting until your turn to get fondled by the doc just to find out if your secretly ill, who will not find it inconveniencing to show up to work or stay late in order to do the same at the office, will be the ones taking advantage of this.
Second, those costs aren't the total costs. You will need to cover malpractice insurance, cleaning and sanitation of the site, the possibility of over saturation and not meeting the quotas that bring the costs per person down, plus you are looking at either a couple times a year and the ability for the doctors and nursed to be mobile. Otherwise, that would be $50 (plus insurance and support serviced like billing and accounting) per day times 260 working days a year which brings the $15 billion to more like 3.9 trillion, everyone is covered, but it's only the detection of problems, it doesn't begin to address treatment.
In the schools, don't just give out free condoms give out free norplant injections , birth control pills and book a bus for girls who want a fitting for a diaphragm or an IUD.
There is a fine line here. Parents have a say in how their children are raised and what medical procedures they can have. The school shouldn't be taking these rights away from the parents and they shouldn't be assuming the liability of administering medications
I had a girl tell me something similar once. I proved to her that it doesn't matter near as much as she thought.
Here is what you do, get a bunch of old Maxim mags, actually read the articles, get some playboys, hustler, and barely 18 mags- don't concentrate too much on the articles. Attempt to skip online porn because it will have the opposite effect and either make you impotent or premature.
Now, after a while of this, think of some corny plan to where she is the center of attention, use the force with what you have learned, and remember, each woman is unique and often changes to this uniqueness happen during the course of a relationship. The goal is to start off treating a whore like a queen then a queen like a whore. By the time your done, she will be telling her friends that it isn't the size of the pen, it's all in how you write your name.
BTW, if you meet her friends, sister, or in some close families her mother and they blush slightly when you first speak to them, you will know she was bragging about you. Sometimes they will roll over and start calling these people right after sex to talk about it, if this happens act embarrassed as if it's something that just clicked between the two of you. When you ready to move on to another girl, just grab her sister or friend that she talks to all the time and get caught.
Don't forget that researchers have been tracking these orbits for quite a while and would already know of potential close calls that could hit the earth with a relatively accurate time line.
It's more likely that the satellites have been re purposed for a short period of time to monitor the situation with North Korea or to allow other sats to do that. Sure, we got other birds in the air but with more of them looking in specific spots, more can be seen earlier.
Folic acid is for when they might be pregnant. And it is a good example. They could pay the $2, but they don't pay the $2. So what happens if something on the order of another 20-40k birth defects per year.
You can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Education and information concerning the effectiveness of the substance is the best you can hope for. For instance, we give condoms to teens for free or very low costs (the planned parenthood in my area will give you a bad of 30 or 40 condoms for $5.00 or you can get 5-10 free) and they don't get used. While over 40% of teens claim to have had sex before leaving high school, only around 7.2% (72.2 per 1000) of teen women between the ages of 15 and 19 get pregnant. Of those 7 percent, roughly 30% are aborted or terminated through natural miscarriages. That leaves us with an effective usage of 4.19 percent of teen women who would become pregnant between the ages of 15-19 who would benefit from a government supply of folic acid. I can't find recent stats, the previous ones mentioned were accumulated from http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/ a site under Teenpregnancy.org) but last I heard which was around 2000, half of the teen pregnancies occurred in women between 18 and 19 so they wouldn't even get the pills unless 5 year old folic acid is still good.
So anyways, you want to spend 2 dollars per teen woman per year that would be effective to between 2 and 4 percent of the teen population? Education is the key, not some social free for all that will end up with 90 percent waste.
Same thing with the physicals. The problem is not that they aren't covered but that they don't happen. As for vaccinations they cost a fortune under the current system as contrasted with mass vaccination programs we could administer. The problem with the current system it is horribly inefficient.
your right, it is the same thing, leading a horse to water doesn't mean he will drink. I haven't had one physical that wasn't required by some activity I was participating in and mine are completely covered.
The current system may be inefficient but no other system seems to be more effective or efficient at the same time. Certainly not this one circulating congress which is estimated to cost between 1 and 1.6 trillion dollars while only bringing coverage to 16 million of the 54 million people reported to not have any coverage. And even with the mandated coverage, there is no guarantee that people will get physicals because they aren't getting them right now when they can.
Or are you suggesting we should be taking people's freedom away and grant them no control over their own bodies in order to force them to get physicals? I'm not sure that will fly constitutionally seeing how outlawing abortions didn't over the same reason- the government does not possess that kind of power over the US population.
It's a monopoly or more like an oligopoly because of government utility treatment.
Barriers for entry on the levels needs to start your own cell company complete with towers are completely impossible if you are not already connected with a Utility. You will either have to use portions of other people's equipment or simply not participate.
Monopoly is a term to describe an economic position, it's agnostic to capitalist or capitalism even thoughts it's common to be used within it.
It has its flaws, as any large institution does, but these are flaws that are siezed upon by opponents and used as propaganda (check out the raft of TV commercials on US TV during Clinton's attempt to get a national system running in the US - "you can't choose your own doctor! you won't have access to cutting edge treatments! the doctors don't get paid a decent wage! you'll have to wait years for lifesaving surgeries!)
And what part of that is not true in different health care systems around the world? More importantly, what part of that was not true with Hillary care that was being pushed in 1993?
Now, in a system like the UK NHS you do have long wait times for certain things if the system is busy, and if there's one major criticism to be levelled at it, it's that it is a behemoth organisation with a lot of bloat in it, soaking up money like a sponge, yet still requiring huge investment with a lot of faults. It is still recovering from 15 years of neglect from a Tory government in the 80s, but it is coming around gradually.
If by coming around you mean providing substandard treatments, denying treatment to anyone they can justify, and killing treatment for anyone who wants to pay the difference for better treatment, then I guess your right.
Even with the horror stories that the newspapers and private healthcare shills love to jump on (I waited 4 hours in the ER when I broke my leg!), these are totally atypical of the experience, and even with these issues that arise (which do need to be addressed), it is still vastly superior to the US system which exists solely to make drug companies, senators, congressmen and other select individuals very rich and has nothing to do with actual health care, other than as a side effect.
Read some of the links I provided above. This isn't a 4 hour wait for a broken leg. It's a refusal to provide effective treatment, long wait times for things like MRI scans and medically necessary procedures and so on in the various different health care systems.
And yes, it's so bad in Canada that it's economically viable for insurance companies to offer wait list insurance that will take you to another country is necessary to get treatment. Try taking a look at medical tourism where a lot of brits seem to be going to India and parts Asia if not just others parts of Europe for cheap medical coverage that they already have in the UK.
Thanks for clarifying that. Turns out I understood a few concepts wrong. When I heard about it, it was over a cancer patient who after paying out of pocket for a drug that was supposedly 3 times as effective, was booted from the system and had to find a way to pay 11000 ero for two or three months treatment before he died.
The worse part about this is that the people paid into the system all of their lives thinking they were getting proper coverage just to find out that someone is making penny pinching decisions concerning their lives and if the patient attempts to make up the difference, they are booted from the system and in one case charged for treatment to date. Cancer survival rates in Europe itself is dismal but it seems that with universal government health care, you a die more often from cancer then a country without it.
Back in the 1970's after President Carter screwed up the US economy with his failed foreign and domestic policies, inflation was rampant and seniors who were living from Social security and pensions were running out of money. It took the US government almost 6 years and Reagan's deficit spending in order to start compensating for the amount of inflation we saw. To the date, the purchasing power of SS retirement payments aren't what they were in 1972 or 1975. Now you have the UK NHS threatening to withhold treatment from people who are over weight, who smoke, or do anything else they don't like in order to pinch more pennies. I just don't see how this is good.
At least with private coverage, I can attempt to find another provider and sue the current one if they pull that crap at the last minute.
Lol.. Most insurance policies allow one physical a year for all covered members. If your thinking 2 physicals in a row when someone things they are about to be fired or laid off, I have no sympathy. As for vaccinations, your reimbursed for the majority of it with insurance as long as it's one of the required vaccinations. If there is no insurance, the county health department usually has discounted shots at little to no costs based on your ability to pay.
I'm not really concerned if it's an inconvenience but most of the problems you mentioned can be easily remedied with changing a law to the current system instead of incorporating some all intrusive and equally flaws system that the federal government has no constitutional authority to get into. Christ, this current plan is expected to cost between 1 to 1.6 trillion dollars and only cover 16 million people in addition to those already with health care coverage and it's going to lower the standard of policies coverage for many of the people with existing health care coverage.
As for the folic acid. If it's just $2 a bottle, then why can't the high school student or her parents buy it? I mean seriously, that's the amount of money you can usually find in the cushions of the couch. They already get the feminine hygiene products so what is the big deal to where the federal government needs to provide this? Obviously they can inform the kid when they do the sex ed classes and explain about the monthly visitor.
Lol.. I suppose you already know it's been done on more then two patients. But that doesn't really matter.
Here is what does matter, when the alternative is death because the condition is too far gone for existing treatments to be reasonably effective, experimental should mean nothing but here is another person to try it on. But if you think that only carefully selected people hand picked by researchers should be able to get these treatments until science has had their way, then please explain to me what the harm is giving someone who is already going to die a little hope for a cure?
I mean this treatment is off label usage of existing drugs to form another procedure application. It isn't using experimental drugs with unknown side effects, it isn't using cut up and feel around approaches, it isn't near as risky as you are making it to be. But under this new government plan, the default insurance is not allowed to participate in this, something else it isn't able to do is use Viagra in combination with heart medications as a supplement to the heart medications for sexually active patients with heart conditions. Here is something else you can't do which was recently the topic of an Ohio supreme court case in which the Planned parenthood of Cincinnati was cited for it's off label use of the u238 or whatever the day after pill was. When Planned parenthood was using the pill something like up to 2 weeks after the FDA approval terms and extended it's dosage from 20 some to 40 or 60 some days. Under ohio law, you have to follow the FDA approval guidelines for this drug, off label use was restricted, under this policy, it is too. Not that I'm for abortions or anything but crap like that is what this plan limits people to.
Your attitude, common as it is, is about 1/2 of what is drastically wrong with American healthcare. There is no substitute for good science.
Perhaps you should read the health car plan and get an idea of what I was talking about. There is no substitute for good science but there is also no reason to tell a person he or she is going to have to die because the common procedure won't work at your stage and the new procedures showing promise are restricted to certain privileged people because the science is superior to your life. Fuck, when death is your only options, even praying to God is a worthy experimental treatment. But when 2 or 10 people got better from X experimental treatment, then there is no reason why it can't be tried too.
However, can't you see the irony there, you have government health and if you want prompt health care, buy insurance?
I'm having a hard time seeing how that is different from the concept currently in America. Those who can afford it and who doesn't spend the money on other things, will get the insurance and those who can't are still stuck with procedures being denied and long waits for medically necessary care. I know they will treat emergencies right away, same with America, and it's illegal for a hospital that takes federal funds (medicare/medicaid/VA reimbursements) to refuse emergency treatment for anyone based on their ability to pay- even if they already own them money. So to me, it's just the same to some extent.
No, I was encouraging the government to stay out of the health care system and just mandate a minimum set of coverage with some costs restrictions for the people who would have the hardest time paying for it and the ability to retroactively join a plan with a long term commitment.
There would be a minimum set of coverage, most likely a miller test or similar which most state workers comp or medicaid programs use to determine treatment allowances.
But travel wouldn't be a medical cost just like it isn't a work expense when you are going to and from work on your regular shift.
Under the British system, if they decide not to cover a treatment and you do it privately, you are out of the system for the rest of your life. Under the System circulating congress, you can't have more, that has to be a separate and additional policy charged separately.
Now what makes the difference between the consumer not being able to pay for the treatment or make their own decisions regarding their health care verses the British or American government doing it. At best, the government should make a minimum acceptable coverage that an insurance company can offer, have it follow the same medicaid/medicare guidelines for treatment, allow policies to go over and above this, and make a stipulation of no disqualifications and no max coverage. If someone needs treatment, can't pay for it and doesn't have insurance, make it a retroactive coverage if the person commits to a 5 year policy. Problem solved, it still a personal choice and you have no problems getting private care outside the government mandates system.
As for the WHO study, I'm a little cautious about those. They seem to get reported a little different then they actually are and they keep disappearing. I wouldn't be to surprised to find that some of them are more or less propaganda tools and disappear when people start questioning the facts. I don't need to tinfoil hat to know it wouldn't be the first time an international organization was corrupted for personal gain or to achieve some goal counter to reality. The UN is one big example of this.
The nation can't afford to fund every experimental or crazy expensive treatment for everyone - we'd go broke. It's a noble goal but just not possible.
Your right but when the disease is too far gone and the medically accepted treatment is death, then what makes the difference if the person doesn't get the treatment because he can't afford the insurance or because the government can't afford the treatment? I mean isn't that what the entire problem is in the first place, people not getting treatments because it costs too much for the treatment and the insurance denies it or because the insurance costs too much and the person cannot afford it?
Sounds to me like this is nothing but a lateral move and the only difference is going to be the government being involved. Why the fuck do we need that when it won't change anything?
Instead, I see this as an opportunity for private insurance to thrive. I welcome government insurance as it will allow me to disconnect my health care from my employer. But I see an opportunity for a private company to offer supplemental insurance. With no preexisting conditions and, say, $20 a month, you could be covered up to $500,000 for experimental surgeries, out-of-country treatment, or other options for things not covered by your government plan. It lets the rich folks spend their extra money on something.
What world are you living in? Do you think if that was possible for $20 it wouldn't be an option right now? I'm seriously doubting you have thought that through much.
And the government can continue to fund research studies, like they probably did this one, so that those too poor or without supplemental insurance have a chance to participate. It's a win-win situation.
Wow. Are you saying that right now, the poor and people without insurance get treatment through government studies? Then why do we need government health care if they are already getting the treatment? I don't know, you have just completely confused me. You have went against the entire grain of why people think we need the government health care, talked about a $20 coverage option as if it would magically be possible after government health care when it isn't being offered right now, and then claimed that the poor and under insured would participate in government studies like they already do now.
Under the health care plan currently circulating Washington and mentioned on slashdot earlier, a treatment like this still wouldn't be availible to people under the proposed coverage. It only allows standardized accepted treatments. This means that off label applications wouldn't be covered and you couldn't participate in a program like this until such time it becomes a standard treatment.
It sounds like this treatment, if it remains competent, has the potential to be a cheaper treatment then surgery as well as being effective in earlier detections and perhaps other cancers as well.
Regardless of what I like or dislike about the health care plan, exceptions or provisions in any plan need to be in place so normal people can get treatments like this when they become availible- even if they are still experimental and turn out to be a hail marry pass with the hopes of doing something other then the alternative of death.
No current US proposal covers travel expenses unless a commonly accepted treatment isn't availible in your area and to that much of an unlikely event, it's only a percentage of costs. With what I suggested, I don't remember implying that your vacation to some other country for the same accepted medical treatments that are availible in the US was a goal. Your treatment while in another country as long as it meets US standards could be, but I'm not sure how you got the trip to the other country or your stay in several cities.
You can already deduct medical expenses from your taxes under some conditions. Also, your confused to the type of tax deductions I suggested for the costs. If you made $100k a year and had an effective tax rate of 25 percent, all you would be doing is exempting yourself from paying taxes on the $4000 income used to go to china. You cost would still be $4500, you just wouldn't be paying income taxes on it. You savings at an effective rate of 25 percent would be around $1125 that you would have paid in taxes otherwise.
Now granted, the insurance company portion can deduct losses from taxes owed up to the amount of taxes owed under my suggestion but those losses would only be for the coverage of the mandated minimum policies and availability over the price controls. If they offer another policy that allows you to go to China, then it wouldn't count against the costs of the minimum policy.
Currently Blue cross/blue shield can offer small employers the ability to cover employees for about 150 per month per employee. They can do this because the pool of risks are large enough to offset the costs of treatments. If the reason people aren't carrying insurance is because of the costs or because an existing condition disqualifies them, then a policy like I suggested will create a very large pool to offset actual costs by providing affordable insurance for these people.
I'm not sure which system your talking about. Could you please clarify? Are you thinking of the systems introduced by congress or other country's systems?
I'm willing to argue that there are still flaws which are unacceptable in both with the Australian system being about the best of the bunch.
I don't recall ever seen anyone doing that. I usually see people holding those other countries up as models better than your existing one - which is absolutely factually correct.
I don't think your paying attention then. This thread is riddled with people pointing out the _known_problems in other systems and people claiming they aren't problems or that the citizens in other countries are perfectly satisfied with those problems in place.
And no, it's not absolutely factually correct that some of these other countries are better systems. What is factually correct is that is that they are different and provide different coverages for different people. Better or worse is nothing more then an opinion.
Is it really "most"? My impression was that health care reform was one of the talking points that earned Obama his office...
Health care reform does not mean incorporating the failures of other countries into our own reforms. It means making our system better. How you got that to mean we were begging for long wait times, situations where the government decides your life isn't worth the cost of the procedure and makes you suffer the condition or pulls your government health care access when you find a way to have the procedure privately, or whatever else is wrong with the system that makes more people jump to medical tourism for necessary operations (non elective like plastic surgery) and treatments then what currently happens in the US as a percentage of the population, is way beyond me. Take Germany for instance, they recently ramped up their health care system in order to match the quality of care in the US and actually treat foreigner seeking health care better then their own citizens.
It's a valid reason, though only so long as one is only against federal healthcare programs (presumably state ones would be fine, no matter how "socialist") - but from what I see, most Americans who oppose public healthcare system oppose the very idea, and not any particular implementation.
Yes, state run systems would be perfectly fine as the state possesses the authority to do so depending on the state constitution. It's also easier to change the state constitutions then it generally is for the federal constitution. The people who are still against government health care in that situation, are also against it because more US and state government run systems are wastes filled with bureaucracy and bloat.
Take the prevailing wage laws and unions for instance. These were originally intended to keep minority firms from undercutting the lush public contract going to whites. In my township we had contracted with a company to resurface a couple of roads at a discounted price. He/the company was going to treat is like a private job and give up a mile of road at costs for every 5 paved at the profit costs. This was a real contractor who has worked with the state and county governments in the past who lived within the township and knew about the financial issues it was facing. One of the employees found out they would be getting private normal pay ($16 per hour) (for things like shopping mall parking lots or driveways or whatever) instead of the prevailing wage ($28 per hour) for the job because it was a public job and made a complain to the state labor board. Now the contract will cost 2.5 times as much and there is chance that some cities will bar his ability to contract work with them because of a standing complaint over the prevailing wage laws even though no work has been done or money transferred.
In any case, in present-day U.S., where state rights are a joke, and have been for the last 50 years (and that's being very optimistic!), the point is moot. Given the de facto state of affairs, national federal health care system wouldn't really be much different from a lot of other stuff that Feds already do.
And I mean that with all due respect. The problem is that people are holding these other countries up as models as if they are flawless. The very real fact is that they all have their own unique problems that most of us find them just as unacceptable as our own current problems. Some of the problems are inherent in a government running health care instead of regulating it. Most people who are against government health car are so because the US federal government has no constitutional authority to provide medical coverage, it's stretching some authority to regulate it as it is. You can blow that off as a ideological reason but it's a pretty important reason.
This bill here is riddled with problems too. First, it sets a standard lower then current policies provide and mandates that anything extra must be billed and charged separate from it's mandate levels of coverage. Second, it kills any preventative treatments that cost over 5k a year for an individual and 10k a year for family coverage. You can be stuck paying for anything over that. It limits treatments to accepted treatments which mean that drug trials and experimental procedures and off label uses are forbidden and will have to be paid for out of your own pocket. Suppose you have cancer and there is a treatment already in use for genital warts that seems to work well on your cancer in fact, so far it had cured 9 out of 10 patients, you will have to pay out of your pocket for this less expensive treatment or suffer the kemo and so on until the treatment kills you or works. Those are just the few problems I saw before my eyes started hurting from reading the mess. The bill offers less of a quality of care/coverage then current medicaid and medicare program offers and it intends to replace that coverage. This part alone should be enough to raise some fucking flags but you want to tilt at windmills shouting idiolect injustice.
The bottom line is that the bill doesn't need to be complicated nor does it need to reduce the quality of coverage or care for people already with insurance. All they need to do is create a law that very plainly says, If you offer insurance across a state line then you need to offer a plan that has X coverage for with no lifetime max or disqualifications that can't have more then a 20% copay for procedures under $5000 or 10% copay for procedures over $5000 but less then $10,000 and not more then %5 copay for anything over that. Then make the premiums 10% or less of anyone's monthly income (household income for family coverage) for anyone making more less then the median area income and allow citizens to deduct the expenses from their income for tax purposes. You could even allow the insurance company to track any losses over this extra coverage and deduct them from their taxes owed to the government. As for mandating coverage, wait until someone needs medical treatment who is not insured and make them take this minimum coverage out for a minimum of five years from their last use of the insurance for retroactive coverage.
There you have emergency medial coverage for anyone who wants it, those who truly can't afford it will be covered by an existing medicare or medicaid program, and someone who decides to take the risk isn't left hanging but will have to commit when they become a burden. Policies that offer more coverage are covered, and a minimum standard is set.
Ever poor person can walk into any emergency room and receive emergency medical treatment. It's illegal for them to refuse treatment based on their ability to pay -even if they already owe the hospital money.
Something else that is popular in Canada is wait insurance. People are signing up by the truck load and most Canadian insurance providers offer wait coverage. In case you don't know what that is, it's where they guarantee the wait for procedures will be under a certain time or they take you to another country if necessary and have the procedure done there.
And yes, this was brought before Canada's high court because Quebec attempted to enforce it's no private insurance laws and the court said it was a fundamental human right to have the coverage because the lack of it would endanger the lives of the people it serves.
Don't sit there and sugar coat government health car as if nothing is ever wrong with it and everyone is satisfied with it's results. Obviously enough people aren't otherwise there wouldn't be a need for wait insurance and there wouldn't be a market so profitable in it that they took it all the way to the highest court in Canada or that every other insurance provider has a plan that covers wait times.
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Managing cows isn't something that is necessary. Cows get all their nutrients from plants, all of their methane is Co2 stored in those plants, the green house value coming out of the cows in the form of methane will match the amount of GHGs in the plants they eat.
If cows didn't eat the plants, they would just die off, shed leaves and whatever, and release all of their stored GHGs naturally when they decompose.
The only reason cows aren't considered part of the natural carbon cycle is because there is money to be gained from labeling them otherwise. In the last two cap and trade bill that has come out of commties, livestock has been attacked with a tax.
But here is the problem. Cow don't make methane or any greenhouse gas. They emit sequestered GHG's usually in the form of methane as part of their process to extract nutrients from the feed. Now we don't dig live stock feed from 2 miles under the ground, we don't drill the bottom of the ocean to get livestock feed, we grow the food either in a field as pasture land, hay, or corn with some other products going in too. If the cows did not exist, the only difference would be how much GHG's are pulled from the air by the planting of these feeds and how long it would take to go back into the air.
So without cows or other livestock, the only thing that would change is that instead of a cow eating the food and turning it back into GHG's, it woulod fall and decay in the fields and be released as Co2 or Ch4 or whatever. And no, there won't be any difference in the greenhouse potential because of methane is converted to Co2, the volume of Co2 increases and contains the same thermal effects. In other words, 1 bale of hay eaten by a cow will produce the same effective amounts of GHGs as it would sitting there rotting and decaying naturally. If your not planting hay, it would be field grass or whatever.
Trees are the same, Canada did a study to see if their forested lands could offset their Kyoto obligations and it was found that all stored GHG's in trees will be released into the air again when the trees die and rot. If they aren't cut down and taken out of the ecosystem and used for something useful, they release everything they soaked up in their lifetime creating a zero sum gain over their lifetime. Cows are just a middle man in the process.
I read about it in one of the IAEA reports on the state of soviet reactors. No, I don't have a specific link, I would have had one a week ago when everything we were discussing was still in my browser history. Anyways, the report was circa 1999 or so and was talking about the progress of the upgrades, it included the amount used by donation and the amount invested by the former soviet governments.
Francis was a talking mule in old movies who was enlisted in the army (WWII - Korea days). "Slow down there Francis" was just a catch phrase from it.
They did though. The problems which caused Chernobyl, outside of having a reaction that stayed lit, was because the supports for the boron tubes wouldn't move the control rods reliably. They ended up coating the control in graphite which when introduced into the reaction, caused the first explosion which shattered the control rods making them ineffective. To fix that, they strengthened the support tubes so as they wouldn't flex, added a cooling passage around part of it, and now use pure boron which will kill the reaction without needing the graphite which caused explosions when introduced to the reaction.
The shift change happened, someone noticed the reactor was out of limits (because of the testing) and the auto-shutdown wasn't engaged so he manually engaged it. When the control rods hit the reaction, the graphite exploded and shattered the control tubes making them in effective and halting any further attempts to shut it down.
Most of the concrete and steel being saved is from unneeded buildings due to the simplified designs. As for the ratio of, I think your conflating the design issues here. First, American and most new reactors operate on a negative coefficient. This means that instead of adding a substance to stop the reaction, they add one to maintain it. If something happens, the feed stops and the reaction goes out on it's own. All the is necessary from there on is to cool the fuel to stop it from igniting and to maintain the vessel integrity. The AP-1000 is designed to use convection to cool and keep the reactor safe for three days without any additional pumping or water being added. This design is safer then traditional reactors and yes, it doesn't require as much concrete an steel because it isn't the same reactor.
If you were to tell me that they are just trimming the materials on the old design, I would be just as or more concerned then you are. But the very real fact is that we are talking about two different designs here and they have two different requirements which had been engineered and approved by all of the major regulatory agencies.
Your ignoring efficiencies, improvements in processes and so on. Fist of all, the concrete
Quit being a moron.
The person I replied to was replying to someone indicating that without public access like before with this system, a meteor could hit the US and North Korea could be blamed for it. There will be enough tracking information to rule that out. After all, that's what was discontinued right? -the releasing of information on objects in space?
Or am I somehow misreading his statement "With outside access to this kind of information being limited, we would have to trust our government and a few other nations with such capability that the North Koreans did, in fact, attack us."? Cause the only outside access we had was space objects right?
It's still a matter of leading a horse to water. If you educate them enough to do it, they will buy it on their own, it's only two dollars. However, something I'm not sure if you are aware of is that the FDA started requiring the addition of folic acid to enriched breads, cereals, flours, corn meals, pastas, rice, and other grain products and these requirements took effect in 1998. This is in addition to the natural foods in which it is normally found in which a teen having sex would likely be eating.
As for the missing a period, this is also a problem, quite a few girls don't have regular cycles in their teen years. It can be 4 or 8 weeks already before they finally realize it isn't going to happen- especially if they are active with sports or similar and not getting enough caloric intake to support their energy expense.
The school nurse, at least when I was in school already did hearing and eye tests. As for the rest, just require a physical as a condition of employment. Here is the thing though, finding the problem usually isn't the expensive part, it's the treatment afterward. I used to take a DOT physical once per year and it did everything but blood tests (had to fill a cup up though) and it only cost $55 though the company doctor and roughly $80 independently.
But there are some problems with you numbers below. Fist, it only detects the discovery of the illness. Simply going to the doctor won't keep you healthy, him finding something wrong and treating you does. And again, leading a horse to water doesn't mean he is going to drink. Only the people who would normally get physicals and possible a few who are too inconvenienced by going somewhere waiting until your turn to get fondled by the doc just to find out if your secretly ill, who will not find it inconveniencing to show up to work or stay late in order to do the same at the office, will be the ones taking advantage of this.
Second, those costs aren't the total costs. You will need to cover malpractice insurance, cleaning and sanitation of the site, the possibility of over saturation and not meeting the quotas that bring the costs per person down, plus you are looking at either a couple times a year and the ability for the doctors and nursed to be mobile. Otherwise, that would be $50 (plus insurance and support serviced like billing and accounting) per day times 260 working days a year which brings the $15 billion to more like 3.9 trillion, everyone is covered, but it's only the detection of problems, it doesn't begin to address treatment.
There is a fine line here. Parents have a say in how their children are raised and what medical procedures they can have. The school shouldn't be taking these rights away from the parents and they shouldn't be assuming the liability of administering medications
I had a girl tell me something similar once. I proved to her that it doesn't matter near as much as she thought.
Here is what you do, get a bunch of old Maxim mags, actually read the articles, get some playboys, hustler, and barely 18 mags- don't concentrate too much on the articles. Attempt to skip online porn because it will have the opposite effect and either make you impotent or premature.
Now, after a while of this, think of some corny plan to where she is the center of attention, use the force with what you have learned, and remember, each woman is unique and often changes to this uniqueness happen during the course of a relationship. The goal is to start off treating a whore like a queen then a queen like a whore. By the time your done, she will be telling her friends that it isn't the size of the pen, it's all in how you write your name.
BTW, if you meet her friends, sister, or in some close families her mother and they blush slightly when you first speak to them, you will know she was bragging about you. Sometimes they will roll over and start calling these people right after sex to talk about it, if this happens act embarrassed as if it's something that just clicked between the two of you. When you ready to move on to another girl, just grab her sister or friend that she talks to all the time and get caught.
Don't forget that researchers have been tracking these orbits for quite a while and would already know of potential close calls that could hit the earth with a relatively accurate time line.
It's more likely that the satellites have been re purposed for a short period of time to monitor the situation with North Korea or to allow other sats to do that. Sure, we got other birds in the air but with more of them looking in specific spots, more can be seen earlier.
You can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Education and information concerning the effectiveness of the substance is the best you can hope for. For instance, we give condoms to teens for free or very low costs (the planned parenthood in my area will give you a bad of 30 or 40 condoms for $5.00 or you can get 5-10 free) and they don't get used. While over 40% of teens claim to have had sex before leaving high school, only around 7.2% (72.2 per 1000) of teen women between the ages of 15 and 19 get pregnant. Of those 7 percent, roughly 30% are aborted or terminated through natural miscarriages. That leaves us with an effective usage of 4.19 percent of teen women who would become pregnant between the ages of 15-19 who would benefit from a government supply of folic acid. I can't find recent stats, the previous ones mentioned were accumulated from http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/ a site under Teenpregnancy.org) but last I heard which was around 2000, half of the teen pregnancies occurred in women between 18 and 19 so they wouldn't even get the pills unless 5 year old folic acid is still good.
So anyways, you want to spend 2 dollars per teen woman per year that would be effective to between 2 and 4 percent of the teen population? Education is the key, not some social free for all that will end up with 90 percent waste.
your right, it is the same thing, leading a horse to water doesn't mean he will drink. I haven't had one physical that wasn't required by some activity I was participating in and mine are completely covered.
The current system may be inefficient but no other system seems to be more effective or efficient at the same time. Certainly not this one circulating congress which is estimated to cost between 1 and 1.6 trillion dollars while only bringing coverage to 16 million of the 54 million people reported to not have any coverage. And even with the mandated coverage, there is no guarantee that people will get physicals because they aren't getting them right now when they can.
Or are you suggesting we should be taking people's freedom away and grant them no control over their own bodies in order to force them to get physicals? I'm not sure that will fly constitutionally seeing how outlawing abortions didn't over the same reason- the government does not possess that kind of power over the US population.
It's a monopoly or more like an oligopoly because of government utility treatment.
Barriers for entry on the levels needs to start your own cell company complete with towers are completely impossible if you are not already connected with a Utility. You will either have to use portions of other people's equipment or simply not participate.
Monopoly is a term to describe an economic position, it's agnostic to capitalist or capitalism even thoughts it's common to be used within it.
And what part of that is not true in different health care systems around the world? More importantly, what part of that was not true with Hillary care that was being pushed in 1993?
If by coming around you mean providing substandard treatments, denying treatment to anyone they can justify, and killing treatment for anyone who wants to pay the difference for better treatment, then I guess your right.
Read some of the links I provided above. This isn't a 4 hour wait for a broken leg. It's a refusal to provide effective treatment, long wait times for things like MRI scans and medically necessary procedures and so on in the various different health care systems.
And yes, it's so bad in Canada that it's economically viable for insurance companies to offer wait list insurance that will take you to another country is necessary to get treatment. Try taking a look at medical tourism where a lot of brits seem to be going to India and parts Asia if not just others parts of Europe for cheap medical coverage that they already have in the UK.
Thanks for clarifying that. Turns out I understood a few concepts wrong. When I heard about it, it was over a cancer patient who after paying out of pocket for a drug that was supposedly 3 times as effective, was booted from the system and had to find a way to pay 11000 ero for two or three months treatment before he died.
The worse part about this is that the people paid into the system all of their lives thinking they were getting proper coverage just to find out that someone is making penny pinching decisions concerning their lives and if the patient attempts to make up the difference, they are booted from the system and in one case charged for treatment to date. Cancer survival rates in Europe itself is dismal but it seems that with universal government health care, you a die more often from cancer then a country without it.
Back in the 1970's after President Carter screwed up the US economy with his failed foreign and domestic policies, inflation was rampant and seniors who were living from Social security and pensions were running out of money. It took the US government almost 6 years and Reagan's deficit spending in order to start compensating for the amount of inflation we saw. To the date, the purchasing power of SS retirement payments aren't what they were in 1972 or 1975. Now you have the UK NHS threatening to withhold treatment from people who are over weight, who smoke, or do anything else they don't like in order to pinch more pennies. I just don't see how this is good.
At least with private coverage, I can attempt to find another provider and sue the current one if they pull that crap at the last minute.
Lol.. Most insurance policies allow one physical a year for all covered members. If your thinking 2 physicals in a row when someone things they are about to be fired or laid off, I have no sympathy. As for vaccinations, your reimbursed for the majority of it with insurance as long as it's one of the required vaccinations. If there is no insurance, the county health department usually has discounted shots at little to no costs based on your ability to pay.
I'm not really concerned if it's an inconvenience but most of the problems you mentioned can be easily remedied with changing a law to the current system instead of incorporating some all intrusive and equally flaws system that the federal government has no constitutional authority to get into. Christ, this current plan is expected to cost between 1 to 1.6 trillion dollars and only cover 16 million people in addition to those already with health care coverage and it's going to lower the standard of policies coverage for many of the people with existing health care coverage.
As for the folic acid. If it's just $2 a bottle, then why can't the high school student or her parents buy it? I mean seriously, that's the amount of money you can usually find in the cushions of the couch. They already get the feminine hygiene products so what is the big deal to where the federal government needs to provide this? Obviously they can inform the kid when they do the sex ed classes and explain about the monthly visitor.
Lol.. I suppose you already know it's been done on more then two patients. But that doesn't really matter.
Here is what does matter, when the alternative is death because the condition is too far gone for existing treatments to be reasonably effective, experimental should mean nothing but here is another person to try it on. But if you think that only carefully selected people hand picked by researchers should be able to get these treatments until science has had their way, then please explain to me what the harm is giving someone who is already going to die a little hope for a cure?
I mean this treatment is off label usage of existing drugs to form another procedure application. It isn't using experimental drugs with unknown side effects, it isn't using cut up and feel around approaches, it isn't near as risky as you are making it to be. But under this new government plan, the default insurance is not allowed to participate in this, something else it isn't able to do is use Viagra in combination with heart medications as a supplement to the heart medications for sexually active patients with heart conditions. Here is something else you can't do which was recently the topic of an Ohio supreme court case in which the Planned parenthood of Cincinnati was cited for it's off label use of the u238 or whatever the day after pill was. When Planned parenthood was using the pill something like up to 2 weeks after the FDA approval terms and extended it's dosage from 20 some to 40 or 60 some days. Under ohio law, you have to follow the FDA approval guidelines for this drug, off label use was restricted, under this policy, it is too. Not that I'm for abortions or anything but crap like that is what this plan limits people to.
Perhaps you should read the health car plan and get an idea of what I was talking about. There is no substitute for good science but there is also no reason to tell a person he or she is going to have to die because the common procedure won't work at your stage and the new procedures showing promise are restricted to certain privileged people because the science is superior to your life. Fuck, when death is your only options, even praying to God is a worthy experimental treatment. But when 2 or 10 people got better from X experimental treatment, then there is no reason why it can't be tried too.
Ok, I see what your saying now.
However, can't you see the irony there, you have government health and if you want prompt health care, buy insurance?
I'm having a hard time seeing how that is different from the concept currently in America. Those who can afford it and who doesn't spend the money on other things, will get the insurance and those who can't are still stuck with procedures being denied and long waits for medically necessary care. I know they will treat emergencies right away, same with America, and it's illegal for a hospital that takes federal funds (medicare/medicaid/VA reimbursements) to refuse emergency treatment for anyone based on their ability to pay- even if they already own them money. So to me, it's just the same to some extent.
No, I was encouraging the government to stay out of the health care system and just mandate a minimum set of coverage with some costs restrictions for the people who would have the hardest time paying for it and the ability to retroactively join a plan with a long term commitment.
There would be a minimum set of coverage, most likely a miller test or similar which most state workers comp or medicaid programs use to determine treatment allowances.
But travel wouldn't be a medical cost just like it isn't a work expense when you are going to and from work on your regular shift.
Here is what I don't get.
Under the British system, if they decide not to cover a treatment and you do it privately, you are out of the system for the rest of your life. Under the System circulating congress, you can't have more, that has to be a separate and additional policy charged separately.
Now what makes the difference between the consumer not being able to pay for the treatment or make their own decisions regarding their health care verses the British or American government doing it. At best, the government should make a minimum acceptable coverage that an insurance company can offer, have it follow the same medicaid/medicare guidelines for treatment, allow policies to go over and above this, and make a stipulation of no disqualifications and no max coverage. If someone needs treatment, can't pay for it and doesn't have insurance, make it a retroactive coverage if the person commits to a 5 year policy. Problem solved, it still a personal choice and you have no problems getting private care outside the government mandates system.
As for the WHO study, I'm a little cautious about those. They seem to get reported a little different then they actually are and they keep disappearing. I wouldn't be to surprised to find that some of them are more or less propaganda tools and disappear when people start questioning the facts. I don't need to tinfoil hat to know it wouldn't be the first time an international organization was corrupted for personal gain or to achieve some goal counter to reality. The UN is one big example of this.
Your right but when the disease is too far gone and the medically accepted treatment is death, then what makes the difference if the person doesn't get the treatment because he can't afford the insurance or because the government can't afford the treatment? I mean isn't that what the entire problem is in the first place, people not getting treatments because it costs too much for the treatment and the insurance denies it or because the insurance costs too much and the person cannot afford it?
Sounds to me like this is nothing but a lateral move and the only difference is going to be the government being involved. Why the fuck do we need that when it won't change anything?
What world are you living in? Do you think if that was possible for $20 it wouldn't be an option right now? I'm seriously doubting you have thought that through much.
Wow. Are you saying that right now, the poor and people without insurance get treatment through government studies? Then why do we need government health care if they are already getting the treatment? I don't know, you have just completely confused me. You have went against the entire grain of why people think we need the government health care, talked about a $20 coverage option as if it would magically be possible after government health care when it isn't being offered right now, and then claimed that the poor and under insured would participate in government studies like they already do now.
It seems like too much smoke and mirrors for me.
Under the health care plan currently circulating Washington and mentioned on slashdot earlier, a treatment like this still wouldn't be availible to people under the proposed coverage. It only allows standardized accepted treatments. This means that off label applications wouldn't be covered and you couldn't participate in a program like this until such time it becomes a standard treatment.
It sounds like this treatment, if it remains competent, has the potential to be a cheaper treatment then surgery as well as being effective in earlier detections and perhaps other cancers as well.
Regardless of what I like or dislike about the health care plan, exceptions or provisions in any plan need to be in place so normal people can get treatments like this when they become availible- even if they are still experimental and turn out to be a hail marry pass with the hopes of doing something other then the alternative of death.
Lol.. Why is that a troll, it's true and the law not only on a federal level but for almost all states too.
Why would your travel expenses be covered?
No current US proposal covers travel expenses unless a commonly accepted treatment isn't availible in your area and to that much of an unlikely event, it's only a percentage of costs. With what I suggested, I don't remember implying that your vacation to some other country for the same accepted medical treatments that are availible in the US was a goal. Your treatment while in another country as long as it meets US standards could be, but I'm not sure how you got the trip to the other country or your stay in several cities.
You can already deduct medical expenses from your taxes under some conditions. Also, your confused to the type of tax deductions I suggested for the costs. If you made $100k a year and had an effective tax rate of 25 percent, all you would be doing is exempting yourself from paying taxes on the $4000 income used to go to china. You cost would still be $4500, you just wouldn't be paying income taxes on it. You savings at an effective rate of 25 percent would be around $1125 that you would have paid in taxes otherwise.
Now granted, the insurance company portion can deduct losses from taxes owed up to the amount of taxes owed under my suggestion but those losses would only be for the coverage of the mandated minimum policies and availability over the price controls. If they offer another policy that allows you to go to China, then it wouldn't count against the costs of the minimum policy.
Currently Blue cross/blue shield can offer small employers the ability to cover employees for about 150 per month per employee. They can do this because the pool of risks are large enough to offset the costs of treatments. If the reason people aren't carrying insurance is because of the costs or because an existing condition disqualifies them, then a policy like I suggested will create a very large pool to offset actual costs by providing affordable insurance for these people.
I'm not sure which system your talking about. Could you please clarify? Are you thinking of the systems introduced by congress or other country's systems?
I'm willing to argue that there are still flaws which are unacceptable in both with the Australian system being about the best of the bunch.
I don't think your paying attention then. This thread is riddled with people pointing out the _known_problems in other systems and people claiming they aren't problems or that the citizens in other countries are perfectly satisfied with those problems in place.
And no, it's not absolutely factually correct that some of these other countries are better systems. What is factually correct is that is that they are different and provide different coverages for different people. Better or worse is nothing more then an opinion.
Health care reform does not mean incorporating the failures of other countries into our own reforms. It means making our system better. How you got that to mean we were begging for long wait times, situations where the government decides your life isn't worth the cost of the procedure and makes you suffer the condition or pulls your government health care access when you find a way to have the procedure privately, or whatever else is wrong with the system that makes more people jump to medical tourism for necessary operations (non elective like plastic surgery) and treatments then what currently happens in the US as a percentage of the population, is way beyond me. Take Germany for instance, they recently ramped up their health care system in order to match the quality of care in the US and actually treat foreigner seeking health care better then their own citizens.
Yes, state run systems would be perfectly fine as the state possesses the authority to do so depending on the state constitution. It's also easier to change the state constitutions then it generally is for the federal constitution. The people who are still against government health care in that situation, are also against it because more US and state government run systems are wastes filled with bureaucracy and bloat.
Take the prevailing wage laws and unions for instance. These were originally intended to keep minority firms from undercutting the lush public contract going to whites. In my township we had contracted with a company to resurface a couple of roads at a discounted price. He/the company was going to treat is like a private job and give up a mile of road at costs for every 5 paved at the profit costs. This was a real contractor who has worked with the state and county governments in the past who lived within the township and knew about the financial issues it was facing. One of the employees found out they would be getting private normal pay ($16 per hour) (for things like shopping mall parking lots or driveways or whatever) instead of the prevailing wage ($28 per hour) for the job because it was a public job and made a complain to the state labor board. Now the contract will cost 2.5 times as much and there is chance that some cities will bar his ability to contract work with them because of a standing complaint over the prevailing wage laws even though no work has been done or money transferred.
When you
Well, no!
And I mean that with all due respect. The problem is that people are holding these other countries up as models as if they are flawless. The very real fact is that they all have their own unique problems that most of us find them just as unacceptable as our own current problems. Some of the problems are inherent in a government running health care instead of regulating it. Most people who are against government health car are so because the US federal government has no constitutional authority to provide medical coverage, it's stretching some authority to regulate it as it is. You can blow that off as a ideological reason but it's a pretty important reason.
This bill here is riddled with problems too. First, it sets a standard lower then current policies provide and mandates that anything extra must be billed and charged separate from it's mandate levels of coverage. Second, it kills any preventative treatments that cost over 5k a year for an individual and 10k a year for family coverage. You can be stuck paying for anything over that. It limits treatments to accepted treatments which mean that drug trials and experimental procedures and off label uses are forbidden and will have to be paid for out of your own pocket. Suppose you have cancer and there is a treatment already in use for genital warts that seems to work well on your cancer in fact, so far it had cured 9 out of 10 patients, you will have to pay out of your pocket for this less expensive treatment or suffer the kemo and so on until the treatment kills you or works. Those are just the few problems I saw before my eyes started hurting from reading the mess. The bill offers less of a quality of care/coverage then current medicaid and medicare program offers and it intends to replace that coverage. This part alone should be enough to raise some fucking flags but you want to tilt at windmills shouting idiolect injustice.
The bottom line is that the bill doesn't need to be complicated nor does it need to reduce the quality of coverage or care for people already with insurance. All they need to do is create a law that very plainly says, If you offer insurance across a state line then you need to offer a plan that has X coverage for with no lifetime max or disqualifications that can't have more then a 20% copay for procedures under $5000 or 10% copay for procedures over $5000 but less then $10,000 and not more then %5 copay for anything over that. Then make the premiums 10% or less of anyone's monthly income (household income for family coverage) for anyone making more less then the median area income and allow citizens to deduct the expenses from their income for tax purposes. You could even allow the insurance company to track any losses over this extra coverage and deduct them from their taxes owed to the government. As for mandating coverage, wait until someone needs medical treatment who is not insured and make them take this minimum coverage out for a minimum of five years from their last use of the insurance for retroactive coverage.
There you have emergency medial coverage for anyone who wants it, those who truly can't afford it will be covered by an existing medicare or medicaid program, and someone who decides to take the risk isn't left hanging but will have to commit when they become a burden. Policies that offer more coverage are covered, and a minimum standard is set.
Ever poor person can walk into any emergency room and receive emergency medical treatment. It's illegal for them to refuse treatment based on their ability to pay -even if they already owe the hospital money.
Something else that is popular in Canada is wait insurance. People are signing up by the truck load and most Canadian insurance providers offer wait coverage. In case you don't know what that is, it's where they guarantee the wait for procedures will be under a certain time or they take you to another country if necessary and have the procedure done there.
And yes, this was brought before Canada's high court because Quebec attempted to enforce it's no private insurance laws and the court said it was a fundamental human right to have the coverage because the lack of it would endanger the lives of the people it serves.
Don't sit there and sugar coat government health car as if nothing is ever wrong with it and everyone is satisfied with it's results. Obviously enough people aren't otherwise there wouldn't be a need for wait insurance and there wouldn't be a market so profitable in it that they took it all the way to the highest court in Canada or that every other insurance provider has a plan that covers wait times.