There are working communes around in North America. The ones I know of are small (1000 or so), and religiously conservative, high trust groups. Transparency is high, leadership is a calling (and more work than non-leadership, with few/no perks).
Personally, I think the size is a key issue, because the small size (and transparency) enable trust. Lack of trust is the big fail in communism. If your going to all share alike, you have to have some confidence that everyone else is contributing their best efforts, or your going to slack off yourself. Someone sees you slacking, and slacks (a little more?) themselves - its a downward spiral. The only way to combat the race to the bottom is to reform or boot the slackers. The key piece here is that slackers can't hide.
Generally, the way a voucher plan works is: 1) Companies offer insurance plans that have some set of defined benifits. This plan is required to have some minimun elements. It might use a different deductable/co-pay schedule. It might have different copays for different services. It might even have some restrictions on services (must see a plan doctor, must get approval of non-emergency services, doesn't cover brand names drugs for which there is a generic equivelent, etc). Medicare itself does these things to some basic degree (not all dr accept Medicare, not all services are covered, pays 80% on most services). This would include your NHS comparable level of benifit. It may have additional elements (plastic surgery, health clubs, international coverage, etc). But, you could not have exclusions for pre-existing conditions or not cover dialysis, for example. 2) Price of the plan set by the insurance company. 3) Value of the voucher set by the government. 4) Consumer chooses a plan, pays the difference (if any).
With the elderly, everyone has a pre-existing condition. Modern medicine can find something wrong with everyone, if they look. Only people without pre-existing conditions are those avoiding doctors.
The idea is that a privately run plan can be more efficient. As a Medicare recipient, I think this is highly likely. For example, Medicare requires a "diagnosis code" every time I get a service, including drugs. As it happens, I am a transplant recipient, and am on immunosuppressives. I will be on them for the rest of my life (barring some miracle medical advance), and the diagnosis code for those drugs will be the same for as long as I am taking them. But, Medicare continues to insist on this piece of bureacracy. Anthem/Blue Cross does not - they just pay the bill without question, so far.
There are a variety of things that contribute to higher health care costs, but getting more services (particularly imaging) is expensive, and not driven by evil insurance companies. They quietly pay the bill. Insurance companies went through the hate of HMOs (when services were limited, price negotiations with providers were tough, etc). They don't do that anymore, they just pay whatever bill they are handed.
If you are going to extend the same standard of treatment the "haves" get right now in the US to the "have nots", you will have to dramatically increase the number of doctors, specialists, hospitals and equipment. That will cost more money, not less. The only way to provide the same service to everyone is to increase cost, limit service, or somehow force providers to work for little or nothing. 60% of health care costs are labor costs. If your going to make a big difference in cost, your going to have to touch labor somehow.
Overall, there are a number of contributers to higher prices: Defensive medicine (extra tests/imaging, "just to be sure", and because when you are legally liable, you can't trust another doctor's tests/diagnosis without risk of a massive suit) Extravagant use of medical care (ER for sniffles, etc - talk to an ER nurse, they are a cynical lot; hip replacements for extreme elderly - recall Obama's discussion of his grandmothers hip replacement (which he partially paid for, and quietly wondered whether it was worth it), etc, etc.) Poor acceptance of responsiblity for one's own health amongst the American population (poor diet, poor exercise, poor compliance with dr. instructions - personal recollection of a 400lb-ish diabetic heart patient on dialysis "doc, just fix me") Legislation restricting price negotiation by insurers, reimportation of drugs, training of doctors, etc. Profit by providers Profit by insurers Lottery style lawsuit system (cost rolled back into the system via malpractice insurance, resulting in dr charging higher fees)
In other words, its not just greedy insurers. Pretty much everyone involved in heath care, including (especially) the recipients, is playing a part in making health care more expensive.
I work for a Large Corporation. I am completely unconcerned about data loss. The company is leasing these computers, and is also paranoid about losing "confidential datat" (they are most worried about access mechanisms for dbs that contain personal information of employees or customers, its massive lawsuit fodder). Consequently, my laptop (the only computer i have anything that qualifies as personal on) has an encrypted hard drive. Policy is that it gets wiped at the end of my use, and encrypted for another user if it is recycled, wiped if not. The IT guys take it pretty seriously - again, not because of my personal data, but because of fears of company-held data that could create a liability if they leaked.
I am not in possession of any such data, but, LargeCorp's paranoia doesn't care, and sees the wiping of all data on all computers as their own "Nuke it from orbit" protection from lawsuits. I and my data are trivial in comparison. They already know everything they care to about me.
"The People are irresponsible" is not really a full picture. Most voter have a pretty clear idea that they want small government/few services, or large government/lots of services. Say, 40% and 40%. It's the minority that swings things to irrationality. If we're voting on spending, we get the 40% large goverment folks, plus the 20% irrational idiots voting for (so it passes). If it's taxes/tax cuts, we get the 40% small government plus the 20% irrationals voting for it (so it passes). We have yet to find a way to tie spending to taxes in a concrete enough way to force the 20% to face reality. They just keep blaming foriegn aid, illegal immigrants, welfare cheats, corporations, whatever, for deficits.
Ultimately, the purpose of a smart meter is to enable charging different rates for different times of the day. No, we're not doing it yet, but that is the eventual reason for smart meters. Getting away from meter readers is a side benefit. The goal is "peak shaving", by enforcing higher rates during peaks. We'll encourage you not to run your A/C in the afternoon by charging triple the rate during that time. So, yeah, the power company will need to know _when_ you used the electricity to bill you correctly.
Reminds me less of cars, more of 1995, when everyone was bagging on Microsoft for being behind the curve on browsers. The world was going to be Netscape soon!
MS has a pretty good track record of catching up to markets that didn't see coming. They have a backbone of other products and services, so it's not Home Run or Die! for them. Based on their track record, they get something second-tier out, then steadily adapt features and functions from their competitors over the next 5-10 years. Meanwhile, Linux geeks will foam at the mouth and celebrate the imminent death of MS.
MS could go broke on this, but I really doubt it. I like the idea of MS, Amazon, Apple, and a dozen others competing for tablet dollars. Hopefully they all decide to sell at a loss trying ineffectively to capture the market, till something completely new and better arrives or MS turns it into a commoditiy market. I can live with unhappy Linux geeks - they don't live in _my_ basement.
Stuxnet was distibuted by USB sticks, or so the theory goes - that's how you get over the sneakernet link. It is unlikely that the control net is directly (with wires) connected to the internet. But, in a facility that employees idiots (and any large facility inevitably will) there will be some guy that brings pr0n, or games, or whatever in to work to entertain themselves, show off, etc. You want your virus to hitch a ride.
Stuxnet was initially spread via USB memory sticks - the rom on the stick was effectively corrrupted and utilized a zero-day exploit in Windows auto-read to get itself silently launched. That's how it got onto non-internet networks. Apparently any number of corrupted sticks were distributed in the area, hoping one would get used in a sensitive location. That's the theory anyhow (as i recall it).
Aesop: take your IT guys seriously when they ban unsecured/non-approved USB sticks.
Talk of causing a "meltdown" is idiotic. Enrichment plants produce fuel, failure means no fuel. Power plants consume fuel (by creating a nuclear reaction), and failure could mean an uncontrolled reaction. What happens at that point depends on reactor design - there are an number of failsafes in modern designs. Presumably the Iranians could build a power plant and ignore the basics of safety, but that seems unlikely too.
Its hard for some computer geeks to imagine, but you can build failsafes in devices that do not have or require an electronics at all. Mechanic components that fail at designed temperatures, changes in mass, etc, and mechanically trip a reactor by moving components, dumping in inhibitors, etc. Computers don't control everything.
Air France was 1 in a million, and if the computer had kept flying (straight and level) everything would have been fine. 99% of pilots who read abou this react to what the co-pilot did with: "he did WHAT?!?" Knowing (and having just had a conversation with your pilot/supervisor) about the plane being close to the limit of it's performance envelope at that altitude and putting the plane into a climb because you stop getting a speed indication is... well, bizzare. Holding it in a climb attitude while the stall warning is going off is incomprehensible. It will always be the great mystery of flight 447, why didn't the pilots just level out? Well they did, but way, way to late.
Clearly flight 447 was short a dog - to bite the pilots if they touched anything.
I had a Medicalert braclet till it was cut off of me - I need to get a new one but haven't gotten around to it. I like the QR code idea, basically because the bracelet doesn't have enough space to contain complete and accurate information. Additionally, the info changes periodically, so using a pointer to an actual data store makes a certain amount of sense.
You want only the most critical info, most likely to be important info on the bracelet in text - e.g. hemophiliac, HIV positive, severe alergies, reactive drugs, transplants, etc.
Privacy be damned, it's your life at stake, and frankly, no one else cares about your allergies. Dying because the medics couldn't find out you were allergic in a timely fashion because they were getting through secuity mechanisms would be really stupid.
A tax scheme is the first step toward control - you can easily see the tax code changing for different classes of "churches" depending on how close they toe the governement line. Won't accept gay clergy? higher taxes for you!
The problem with taxing anything is "how" - do you tax reciepts? that is, going to church is subject to a "sales tax" - 6% of your donation goes to the government? or by "profit" ((revenue - expenses)*.06)? what counts as expense in that case? or just a fixed fee? or fee-per-sq.ft.? or fee per member?
Generally, I would prefer all "non-profits" to disappear and become conventional corporations, subject to the (revenue-expense)*x tax rate, plus property taxes. However, I come from a background that sees a church as a group of people, rather than a building...
I had thieves cut my convertible top in 3 places - it took three tries for them to get a hole they could reach the lock from, they were that stupid. So it is perhaps unsuprising that they only made off with a couple of very old used cassette tapes (with Christian rock on them, so maybe they needed them more than me). Since that time, I do not routinely lock the doors, and with the convertible, I have gone so far as to leave the top down when parking in San Franciso tourist areas. Nothing ever got molested. The seagulls worried me more.
Not sure what this says about the "Highway Patrol Officer"'s abilities as a driver. If he couldn't manage either of those then this new system won't save him.
I have read elsewhere that the retired CHP officer's car (a Lexus) was actually determined to have an improperly installed floormat. It still begs the question of why he didn't put the car in neutral (an option even with automatic transmission). Overall, the situation suggests he may not have been thinking clearly.
The media's periodic focus on unintended accelleration always focuses on the cars, when rational observers almost always conclude the failing part of the system was the driver. Car magazines have done these articles debunking, explaining, etc a number of times with these cycles. The general public doesn't care, doesn't want to learn, and wants it to be some else's fault, preferably someone with deep pockets. Media serves up exactly that.:-(
You are posting on a case where the lawyers got $660K to the plantiff's $2K. Been a while since I took math, but that is more than 80%. The "but they worked on it for 5 years!" defense strikes me as unlikely, in that it didn't take 5 full years out of their lives - they were running other cases in the meantime. Every case will have substantial downtime waiting for investigators to complete investigations, legal response timeframes to expire, deliberate delays by one side or the other for some tactical reason, etc.
I was personally dragooned into a class action in which the settlement was: all the lawyers get money (pool of 1.5Mil or so), plantiffs get justice in the form of a company that no longer existed (sold out to competitor) fixing some of it's now meaningless paperwork. WooHoo!!!
In the US, this is difficult to measure, because many "hispanics" consider themselves white, and answer censuses accordingly. Additionally, many mixed race folks will tick off multiple boxes, so totals don't come out to a nice neat 100%. So, skin color is really not the best answer, and ethnicity starts getting smeared in only one generation, so even though Mr Gomez may be proud of being Latino, he may not speak Spanish, cook/eat traditional Hispanic foods, and is married to Mrs Koloski, who's father was Polish and mother was half German-half English. It gets complicated. By Eurpean standards, the US is a vast mixing pot, the number 1 "ethnicity" is German, at 17%. Everything else trails down from there. And pretty much everything in the world is represented.
Basically: US is about 70-75% "white", 25-30% "non-white" UK is about 92% white, 8% non-white Canada is about 83-84% white, 16-17% non-white
US has a broader mix of European heritage as well, and the white/non-white has a very grey edge to it. As far as immigration, the US has an estimated 10 million undocumented workers from Mexico alone. By definition, they are all immigrants (born in the US == automatic citizenship). Per captia, that would be like the UK having 1.5-2 million Polish plumbers, rather than the 500K that actually were in country at one time (if the Polish plumbers were in the country illegally - if you count legal immigrants, it would be more like 6 million, and you'd drop to 85% white or so).
Black seems to work in every situation except American politics. Black is used colloquially here, "African-American" tends to denote a formal situation that is possibly racially charged (so someone being careful or playing a race card).
Not sure why Hulu restrictions are a problem. Your a geek, you like computers, why do you have a "TV"? I have 2 computers, my computer, and my computer/DVR/Bluray, that happens to have a 48" monitor and a harmon kardon reciever for sound. Seriously, the OTR antena is plugged into the TV card, not the back of the, um, TV. The computer mediates everything. How does Hulu know the difference between a TV and a computer? In my case, my computer IS the TV, sort of. Make it complicated for them.:-)
Came in handy last night, a friend thought he was stranded in Death Valley with a broken water pump, and my "real" computer was blue screened (long story) and out of service. Still found him a water pump, which would have been hard with just a TV.
I am not familiar with many drugs, but the few I know make it clear that your insurer doesn't care about getting you a good price for drugs. The copay of drugs can be 2 to 3 times more than the list price or quoted price of the same drug in France (whereas food, clothing, gas and many other commodities are rather cheaper in the US). This is a clear indication that the insurance company acts like a broker that helps you buy services but it actually doesn't care if you get ripped off. The only meaningful difference is that in France, the insurance company negotiates the list price down. So everybody, even those who don't have insurance benefit from the negotiation.
I live in the US, and have been taking prescription drugs for most of my life, and this does not match my experience. When I get prescriptions, the price is the co-pay for that class of drug, or the actual price, which ever is less. I have a higher co-pay for "specialty" and brand name drugs for which there are generic equivilents. I have drugs that fall into each category, specialty, brand name, generic, and less-than-copay.
It is a practice in the US to make accusations of racism whenever a policy might have a disproportionate imact on the poor. The implied theory in GP is that because the people most likely to not have insurance are likly to be poor, and poor people are likely to be black, the law is therefore racist. There is also the seniment of any minority that any thing that impacts them at all is racist, sexist, anti-them, regardless of the impact on the rest of the population.
The classic example is the apocraphal NY Times headline "World ends tomorrow; women and minorities to be hardest hit".
Just yesterday I was quoted between £4,000 and £12,000 for car insurance for a 7 year old Honda S2000, despite having over 5 years NCB, never having had a speeding ticket, never having had any motoring convictions AND agreeing to have a tracker box fitted to the car.
I'm paying ~$700/yr for full coverage on a 2001 WRX (includes uninsured motorist, comprehensive, etc, the works, ~$150 deductible, i have one speeding violation, no accidents) -- roughly 1/20 what you're being quoted. Makes me think i'm missing some context - do you buy once for the life of the car or what? I was paying about $950/yr when the car was new.
And, btw, my insurance company was successfully sued for charging too much recently - i wound up getting a one-time $90 payment.
Located in Carson City, NV, FWIW, thinking "they really are trying to get rid of cars in Ingerland now, aren't they"
This issue is not whether you have a prescription or not, but whether you need them. You can know you need drugs without having a prescription.
In my own case, I am on some pricey immuno-suppressive drugs. One is Prograf, which is a brand name for Tacrolimus. I know I will need this in some quantity for the rest of my life. I am currently well insured, so it's not an issue. However, I would still need Tac if I was unemployed, and I would certainly consider getting it from a reputable non-US pharmacy. The prescription I have for this is issued annually - 90 days + 3 refills, or 30 days +11 refills, typically. Now, if i wanted to get really cheap, i'd stop seeing the doctor, get the lab work done on my own dime (i'd have to pay for it anyhow) and do my own analysis of the results (not rocket science, desired tac-levels for post-transplant are well established, and printed on the lab report. Then I'd buy drugs to fill the need at the lowest cost available internationally.
Really, once you know your getting accurate dosing and purity, the government doesn't have much additional to offer.
The idea that pharmacies should be forced to provide drugs cheaply outside the US, and Americans can fund R&D and profit margins is unfair. Those costs should be spread equally amongst all the developed nations of the world, not just the US. So, I am in favor of opening the borders, or imposing some stiff taxes on cost differentials between the US and other countries.
Slashdot Mirror
There are working communes around in North America. The ones I know of are small (1000 or so), and religiously conservative, high trust groups. Transparency is high, leadership is a calling (and more work than non-leadership, with few/no perks).
Personally, I think the size is a key issue, because the small size (and transparency) enable trust. Lack of trust is the big fail in communism. If your going to all share alike, you have to have some confidence that everyone else is contributing their best efforts, or your going to slack off yourself. Someone sees you slacking, and slacks (a little more?) themselves - its a downward spiral. The only way to combat the race to the bottom is to reform or boot the slackers. The key piece here is that slackers can't hide.
Generally, the way a voucher plan works is:
1) Companies offer insurance plans that have some set of defined benifits. This plan is required to have some minimun elements. It might use a different deductable/co-pay schedule. It might have different copays for different services. It might even have some restrictions on services (must see a plan doctor, must get approval of non-emergency services, doesn't cover brand names drugs for which there is a generic equivelent, etc). Medicare itself does these things to some basic degree (not all dr accept Medicare, not all services are covered, pays 80% on most services). This would include your NHS comparable level of benifit. It may have additional elements (plastic surgery, health clubs, international coverage, etc). But, you could not have exclusions for pre-existing conditions or not cover dialysis, for example.
2) Price of the plan set by the insurance company.
3) Value of the voucher set by the government.
4) Consumer chooses a plan, pays the difference (if any).
With the elderly, everyone has a pre-existing condition. Modern medicine can find something wrong with everyone, if they look. Only people without pre-existing conditions are those avoiding doctors.
The idea is that a privately run plan can be more efficient. As a Medicare recipient, I think this is highly likely. For example, Medicare requires a "diagnosis code" every time I get a service, including drugs. As it happens, I am a transplant recipient, and am on immunosuppressives. I will be on them for the rest of my life (barring some miracle medical advance), and the diagnosis code for those drugs will be the same for as long as I am taking them. But, Medicare continues to insist on this piece of bureacracy. Anthem/Blue Cross does not - they just pay the bill without question, so far.
There are a variety of things that contribute to higher health care costs, but getting more services (particularly imaging) is expensive, and not driven by evil insurance companies. They quietly pay the bill. Insurance companies went through the hate of HMOs (when services were limited, price negotiations with providers were tough, etc). They don't do that anymore, they just pay whatever bill they are handed.
If you are going to extend the same standard of treatment the "haves" get right now in the US to the "have nots", you will have to dramatically increase the number of doctors, specialists, hospitals and equipment. That will cost more money, not less. The only way to provide the same service to everyone is to increase cost, limit service, or somehow force providers to work for little or nothing. 60% of health care costs are labor costs. If your going to make a big difference in cost, your going to have to touch labor somehow.
Overall, there are a number of contributers to higher prices:
Defensive medicine (extra tests/imaging, "just to be sure", and because when you are legally liable, you can't trust another doctor's tests/diagnosis without risk of a massive suit)
Extravagant use of medical care (ER for sniffles, etc - talk to an ER nurse, they are a cynical lot; hip replacements for extreme elderly - recall Obama's discussion of his grandmothers hip replacement (which he partially paid for, and quietly wondered whether it was worth it), etc, etc.)
Poor acceptance of responsiblity for one's own health amongst the American population (poor diet, poor exercise, poor compliance with dr. instructions - personal recollection of a 400lb-ish diabetic heart patient on dialysis "doc, just fix me")
Legislation restricting price negotiation by insurers, reimportation of drugs, training of doctors, etc.
Profit by providers
Profit by insurers
Lottery style lawsuit system (cost rolled back into the system via malpractice insurance, resulting in dr charging higher fees)
In other words, its not just greedy insurers. Pretty much everyone involved in heath care, including (especially) the recipients, is playing a part in making health care more expensive.
For geeks:
female voice == acceptably attractive
I work for a Large Corporation. I am completely unconcerned about data loss. The company is leasing these computers, and is also paranoid about losing "confidential datat" (they are most worried about access mechanisms for dbs that contain personal information of employees or customers, its massive lawsuit fodder). Consequently, my laptop (the only computer i have anything that qualifies as personal on) has an encrypted hard drive. Policy is that it gets wiped at the end of my use, and encrypted for another user if it is recycled, wiped if not. The IT guys take it pretty seriously - again, not because of my personal data, but because of fears of company-held data that could create a liability if they leaked.
I am not in possession of any such data, but, LargeCorp's paranoia doesn't care, and sees the wiping of all data on all computers as their own "Nuke it from orbit" protection from lawsuits. I and my data are trivial in comparison. They already know everything they care to about me.
"The People are irresponsible" is not really a full picture. Most voter have a pretty clear idea that they want small government/few services, or large government/lots of services. Say, 40% and 40%. It's the minority that swings things to irrationality. If we're voting on spending, we get the 40% large goverment folks, plus the 20% irrational idiots voting for (so it passes). If it's taxes/tax cuts, we get the 40% small government plus the 20% irrationals voting for it (so it passes). We have yet to find a way to tie spending to taxes in a concrete enough way to force the 20% to face reality. They just keep blaming foriegn aid, illegal immigrants, welfare cheats, corporations, whatever, for deficits.
Ultimately, the purpose of a smart meter is to enable charging different rates for different times of the day. No, we're not doing it yet, but that is the eventual reason for smart meters. Getting away from meter readers is a side benefit. The goal is "peak shaving", by enforcing higher rates during peaks. We'll encourage you not to run your A/C in the afternoon by charging triple the rate during that time. So, yeah, the power company will need to know _when_ you used the electricity to bill you correctly.
a baby's cry can be ignored... but the baby will just try again, and louder (MUCH louder).
Clearly we need to have the government regulate baby noise emissions, for the sanity of adults everywhere.
Reminds me less of cars, more of 1995, when everyone was bagging on Microsoft for being behind the curve on browsers. The world was going to be Netscape soon!
MS has a pretty good track record of catching up to markets that didn't see coming. They have a backbone of other products and services, so it's not Home Run or Die! for them. Based on their track record, they get something second-tier out, then steadily adapt features and functions from their competitors over the next 5-10 years. Meanwhile, Linux geeks will foam at the mouth and celebrate the imminent death of MS.
MS could go broke on this, but I really doubt it. I like the idea of MS, Amazon, Apple, and a dozen others competing for tablet dollars. Hopefully they all decide to sell at a loss trying ineffectively to capture the market, till something completely new and better arrives or MS turns it into a commoditiy market. I can live with unhappy Linux geeks - they don't live in _my_ basement.
Stuxnet was distibuted by USB sticks, or so the theory goes - that's how you get over the sneakernet link. It is unlikely that the control net is directly (with wires) connected to the internet. But, in a facility that employees idiots (and any large facility inevitably will) there will be some guy that brings pr0n, or games, or whatever in to work to entertain themselves, show off, etc. You want your virus to hitch a ride.
Stuxnet was initially spread via USB memory sticks - the rom on the stick was effectively corrrupted and utilized a zero-day exploit in Windows auto-read to get itself silently launched. That's how it got onto non-internet networks. Apparently any number of corrupted sticks were distributed in the area, hoping one would get used in a sensitive location. That's the theory anyhow (as i recall it).
Aesop: take your IT guys seriously when they ban unsecured/non-approved USB sticks.
Talk of causing a "meltdown" is idiotic. Enrichment plants produce fuel, failure means no fuel. Power plants consume fuel (by creating a nuclear reaction), and failure could mean an uncontrolled reaction. What happens at that point depends on reactor design - there are an number of failsafes in modern designs. Presumably the Iranians could build a power plant and ignore the basics of safety, but that seems unlikely too.
Its hard for some computer geeks to imagine, but you can build failsafes in devices that do not have or require an electronics at all. Mechanic components that fail at designed temperatures, changes in mass, etc, and mechanically trip a reactor by moving components, dumping in inhibitors, etc. Computers don't control everything.
Air France was 1 in a million, and if the computer had kept flying (straight and level) everything would have been fine. 99% of pilots who read abou this react to what the co-pilot did with: "he did WHAT?!?" Knowing (and having just had a conversation with your pilot/supervisor) about the plane being close to the limit of it's performance envelope at that altitude and putting the plane into a climb because you stop getting a speed indication is... well, bizzare. Holding it in a climb attitude while the stall warning is going off is incomprehensible. It will always be the great mystery of flight 447, why didn't the pilots just level out? Well they did, but way, way to late.
Clearly flight 447 was short a dog - to bite the pilots if they touched anything.
I had a Medicalert braclet till it was cut off of me - I need to get a new one but haven't gotten around to it. I like the QR code idea, basically because the bracelet doesn't have enough space to contain complete and accurate information. Additionally, the info changes periodically, so using a pointer to an actual data store makes a certain amount of sense.
You want only the most critical info, most likely to be important info on the bracelet in text - e.g. hemophiliac, HIV positive, severe alergies, reactive drugs, transplants, etc.
Privacy be damned, it's your life at stake, and frankly, no one else cares about your allergies. Dying because the medics couldn't find out you were allergic in a timely fashion because they were getting through secuity mechanisms would be really stupid.
She's lived in the US - which, on any other day than today, is a police state in Slashdot's collective mind.
A tax scheme is the first step toward control - you can easily see the tax code changing for different classes of "churches" depending on how close they toe the governement line. Won't accept gay clergy? higher taxes for you!
The problem with taxing anything is "how" - do you tax reciepts? that is, going to church is subject to a "sales tax" - 6% of your donation goes to the government? or by "profit" ((revenue - expenses)*.06)? what counts as expense in that case? or just a fixed fee? or fee-per-sq.ft.? or fee per member?
Generally, I would prefer all "non-profits" to disappear and become conventional corporations, subject to the (revenue-expense)*x tax rate, plus property taxes. However, I come from a background that sees a church as a group of people, rather than a building...
I had thieves cut my convertible top in 3 places - it took three tries for them to get a hole they could reach the lock from, they were that stupid. So it is perhaps unsuprising that they only made off with a couple of very old used cassette tapes (with Christian rock on them, so maybe they needed them more than me). Since that time, I do not routinely lock the doors, and with the convertible, I have gone so far as to leave the top down when parking in San Franciso tourist areas. Nothing ever got molested. The seagulls worried me more.
I've only ever lost stuff from locked cars.
Not sure what this says about the "Highway Patrol Officer"'s abilities as a driver. If he couldn't manage either of those then this new system won't save him.
I have read elsewhere that the retired CHP officer's car (a Lexus) was actually determined to have an improperly installed floormat. It still begs the question of why he didn't put the car in neutral (an option even with automatic transmission). Overall, the situation suggests he may not have been thinking clearly.
The media's periodic focus on unintended accelleration always focuses on the cars, when rational observers almost always conclude the failing part of the system was the driver. Car magazines have done these articles debunking, explaining, etc a number of times with these cycles. The general public doesn't care, doesn't want to learn, and wants it to be some else's fault, preferably someone with deep pockets. Media serves up exactly that. :-(
You are posting on a case where the lawyers got $660K to the plantiff's $2K. Been a while since I took math, but that is more than 80%. The "but they worked on it for 5 years!" defense strikes me as unlikely, in that it didn't take 5 full years out of their lives - they were running other cases in the meantime. Every case will have substantial downtime waiting for investigators to complete investigations, legal response timeframes to expire, deliberate delays by one side or the other for some tactical reason, etc.
I was personally dragooned into a class action in which the settlement was: all the lawyers get money (pool of 1.5Mil or so), plantiffs get justice in the form of a company that no longer existed (sold out to competitor) fixing some of it's now meaningless paperwork. WooHoo!!!
Ethnically, compared to the US, you're still homogenous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_the_United_Kingdom
vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States
vs Canada (because its a bragging point for Canadians) http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/hlt/97-562/pages/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo=PR&Code=01&Table=1&Data=Count&StartRec=1&Sort=2&Display=Page
In the US, this is difficult to measure, because many "hispanics" consider themselves white, and answer censuses accordingly. Additionally, many mixed race folks will tick off multiple boxes, so totals don't come out to a nice neat 100%. So, skin color is really not the best answer, and ethnicity starts getting smeared in only one generation, so even though Mr Gomez may be proud of being Latino, he may not speak Spanish, cook/eat traditional Hispanic foods, and is married to Mrs Koloski, who's father was Polish and mother was half German-half English. It gets complicated. By Eurpean standards, the US is a vast mixing pot, the number 1 "ethnicity" is German, at 17%. Everything else trails down from there. And pretty much everything in the world is represented.
Basically:
US is about 70-75% "white", 25-30% "non-white"
UK is about 92% white, 8% non-white
Canada is about 83-84% white, 16-17% non-white
US has a broader mix of European heritage as well, and the white/non-white has a very grey edge to it. As far as immigration, the US has an estimated 10 million undocumented workers from Mexico alone. By definition, they are all immigrants (born in the US == automatic citizenship). Per captia, that would be like the UK having 1.5-2 million Polish plumbers, rather than the 500K that actually were in country at one time (if the Polish plumbers were in the country illegally - if you count legal immigrants, it would be more like 6 million, and you'd drop to 85% white or so).
Black seems to work in every situation except American politics. Black is used colloquially here, "African-American" tends to denote a formal situation that is possibly racially charged (so someone being careful or playing a race card).
Not sure why Hulu restrictions are a problem. Your a geek, you like computers, why do you have a "TV"? I have 2 computers, my computer, and my computer/DVR/Bluray, that happens to have a 48" monitor and a harmon kardon reciever for sound. Seriously, the OTR antena is plugged into the TV card, not the back of the, um, TV. The computer mediates everything. How does Hulu know the difference between a TV and a computer? In my case, my computer IS the TV, sort of. Make it complicated for them. :-)
Came in handy last night, a friend thought he was stranded in Death Valley with a broken water pump, and my "real" computer was blue screened (long story) and out of service. Still found him a water pump, which would have been hard with just a TV.
I am not familiar with many drugs, but the few I know make it clear that your insurer doesn't care about getting you a good price for drugs. The copay of drugs can be 2 to 3 times more than the list price or quoted price of the same drug in France (whereas food, clothing, gas and many other commodities are rather cheaper in the US). This is a clear indication that the insurance company acts like a broker that helps you buy services but it actually doesn't care if you get ripped off. The only meaningful difference is that in France, the insurance company negotiates the list price down. So everybody, even those who don't have insurance benefit from the negotiation.
I live in the US, and have been taking prescription drugs for most of my life, and this does not match my experience. When I get prescriptions, the price is the co-pay for that class of drug, or the actual price, which ever is less. I have a higher co-pay for "specialty" and brand name drugs for which there are generic equivilents. I have drugs that fall into each category, specialty, brand name, generic, and less-than-copay.
It is a practice in the US to make accusations of racism whenever a policy might have a disproportionate imact on the poor. The implied theory in GP is that because the people most likely to not have insurance are likly to be poor, and poor people are likely to be black, the law is therefore racist. There is also the seniment of any minority that any thing that impacts them at all is racist, sexist, anti-them, regardless of the impact on the rest of the population.
The classic example is the apocraphal NY Times headline "World ends tomorrow; women and minorities to be hardest hit".
Just yesterday I was quoted between £4,000 and £12,000 for car insurance for a 7 year old Honda S2000, despite having over 5 years NCB, never having had a speeding ticket, never having had any motoring convictions AND agreeing to have a tracker box fitted to the car.
I'm paying ~$700/yr for full coverage on a 2001 WRX (includes uninsured motorist, comprehensive, etc, the works, ~$150 deductible, i have one speeding violation, no accidents) -- roughly 1/20 what you're being quoted. Makes me think i'm missing some context - do you buy once for the life of the car or what? I was paying about $950/yr when the car was new.
And, btw, my insurance company was successfully sued for charging too much recently - i wound up getting a one-time $90 payment.
Located in Carson City, NV, FWIW, thinking "they really are trying to get rid of cars in Ingerland now, aren't they"
This issue is not whether you have a prescription or not, but whether you need them. You can know you need drugs without having a prescription.
In my own case, I am on some pricey immuno-suppressive drugs. One is Prograf, which is a brand name for Tacrolimus. I know I will need this in some quantity for the rest of my life. I am currently well insured, so it's not an issue. However, I would still need Tac if I was unemployed, and I would certainly consider getting it from a reputable non-US pharmacy. The prescription I have for this is issued annually - 90 days + 3 refills, or 30 days +11 refills, typically. Now, if i wanted to get really cheap, i'd stop seeing the doctor, get the lab work done on my own dime (i'd have to pay for it anyhow) and do my own analysis of the results (not rocket science, desired tac-levels for post-transplant are well established, and printed on the lab report. Then I'd buy drugs to fill the need at the lowest cost available internationally.
Really, once you know your getting accurate dosing and purity, the government doesn't have much additional to offer.
The idea that pharmacies should be forced to provide drugs cheaply outside the US, and Americans can fund R&D and profit margins is unfair. Those costs should be spread equally amongst all the developed nations of the world, not just the US. So, I am in favor of opening the borders, or imposing some stiff taxes on cost differentials between the US and other countries.