Unfortunately, the explanations given by the Federal Constitutional Court can be read as an instruction manual on how to create a data retention law 2.0 that will pass the courts muster. Shouldn't take those politicians too long to come up with the new version.:/
1. It is bad at actual copy protection. It can be circumvented without the crackers ever having to mess with the actual program - all they need to do is to simulate the server.
2. It is bad for the customer. Come on, losing game progress because your internet connection decided to fall into a coma? WTF are these people thinking?
It's not within a certain range of available funds. You can get either one or the other. Money doesn't magically appear out of nothing.
It's possible to put yourself through college and get health insurance. I've done it.
And that's a fallacy if I've ever seen one. "I can do it, so anyone can." If that were true, we'd all be Olympic gold medalists and Nobel prize winners, and a few other things.
Exclusive monopoly contracts are no different than government programs. Unless there is competition, there is no incentive to do a better job.
Exclusive monopolies are _worse_ than government programs. Both don't have a big incentive to do a better job (the government program has some, at least in democratic systems), but the exclusive monopoly has a large incentive to screw the customer harder to increase profits.
It's a damn fire!! It could burn down the entire neighborhood!
So what if there's no neighborhood? Just let it burn? What about some of the other things fire departments do (at least where I live), like cutting people out of their cars after accidents?
I'm sympathetic to those who have conditions, lose their insurance, and cannot purchase new insurance.
What about those who were born with their conditions and cannot purchase insurance in the first place?
If she can afford a gym membership at LA Fitness, put herself through college, and have enough assets that a medical bankruptsy would cause extreme hardship, then why could she not buy health insurance to cover this?
Gym memberships are downright cheap compared to health insurance. And, well, if your choices are "go to college" or "get health insurance for a while, then lose it because you only get a crappy job since you didn't go to college", which one would you pick?
Also, wasn't bankruptcy because of medical bills made harder or impossible lately? I haven't been following the developments too closely, but I think I heard something along those lines.
I say the opposite, she didn't put medical insurance as a priority in her life.
Well, yeah. "Get a college degree" _or_ "get health insurance for a few years". Once again, how would you chose?
Most of the time when I try to convince people that they'd be better off under a catastrophic/HSA plan they just can't grok it.
Yes? Catastrophic plans are a scam. They work by gambling on the "customer" to neglect regular checkups and health maintenance(since he'd have to pay for them himself), and then pulling the rug out from under him once he need this "catastrophic" coverage. Conveniently enough, when you really need that catastrophic coverage, you're usually in no shape to fight an extended lawsuit.
And HSAs, well, the whole concept is just ridiculous. You can save for retirement (since you usually know quite well when that's going to happen and how much money you want), but you can't save for costs that can hit you at any time and any amount. It's just a way to lure suckers into putting their money into low-interest savings accounts.
It seems that you don't really grok how the game works.
That depends on the time frame. If the time frame is a week, then yes, it's fairly impossible to work for more than one customers in a week. If the time frame is a year, things are quite different.
Then the reader sends a formatted packet containing the PIN (if entered), the options (credit vs debit etc) and the amount of the purchase.
If the crooks have compromised the reader, they can have your card encrypt a couple of packets they plan to use before going through with the actual legitimate transaction.
Right now I would just like to understand how, at a human physiology level, a person's vision could be getting dimmer, yet their visual acuity is unchanged.
This might not be what you want to hear, but it's one possibility.
There's a much greater chance that it would not be covered, in the fine print,
From the standpoint of the insurance, it would be stupid not to cover something that's not going to happen. It gives the customer a nice warm fuzzy feeling and he'll definitely prefer your policy to the similarly-prices one offered by a competitor that leaves out coverage for volcano damage.
Given two otherwise identical policies, would you pick the one that doesn't cover volcano damage? I wouldn't.
You'd expect someone to pay market rates for insurance due to a 'nonzero' chance, and you label anyone who disagrees with you so you can have a convenient handle on the discussion.
You could have looked up all this stuff yourself, but I'll do it for you.
There are about 40000 new cases of leukemia diagnosed in the US every year. Given a population of about 300M, that's about 0.013%. Treatment costs for leukemia are about $150k, $250k and up if you need a bone marrow transplant. So, every year you run a risk of 0.013% of a >$150k hospital bill, just from leukemia.
Do you have volcano insurance?
Volcano damage should be covered by property/fire insurance. Especially in areas that aren't known for their volcanic activity.
I'll continue living without insurance until about age 60, when my health starts to decline, and then buy it. No sense buying ~$5000 worth of insurance when I'm perfectly healthy and only spend $2-300 per year. That's just money foolish.
It's not foolish. Gambling is foolish, and that's what you intend to do. If you want to gamble, go to Vegas. Going broke there is more fun and less painful than gambling on your health.
I always thought this to be a bit odd, from a country that fought a bloody war of independence over taxation and representation.
Why, you still get to vote if you're a US citizen living abroad. The IRS way of approaching this might be a bit odd considered that the US is one of the few countries doing it this way, but they'll probably reason that if you get representation, then you'll also have to pay your bloody taxes.
They actually have the [struggles for words] honesty to call it that?
Why shouldn't they? Most people completely fail to see the implications of this statement anyway. They don't realize (or don't want to realize) that it simply means that profit takes precedence over the health of the insured.
As an American, while my residence is in the UK even one days work in the US is supposed to be taxed as money earned in the US even if my uk employer pays me.
Um... the IRS doesn't care where your income comes from - if you're a US citizen, it's going to get taxed. There's some sort of exemption for income earned abroad (I believe something around $80k), but after that, the IRS wants its share.
She negotiated costs with the hospital (after the emergency room visit),
How do you "negotiate" after the goods and services have already been provided? What would you use as leverage in such negotiation? Such "negotiation" is similar to extortion - "I'm not going to pay that. Either take 50% off or you'll have to go through all the trouble of sending the bill to collections and/or risk not seeing any money, ever". Yes, sounds like something that a responsible person would do.
The hospital took what it could get, and is going to make up for the loss by trying to charge the next unlucky patient more. Passing the buck, kind of.
If I were forced into a corner and told at gunpoint to design a regulatory framework, I would probably tell insurers they could sell any policy they pleased at a price the market could bear, but force them to offer a basic policy on nondiscriminatory terms, covering a formulary controlled by the government, for premiums which strictly cover costs, plus some for inflation tracking.
Sorry, but that's going to so backfire on you. Let me explain:
The insurance companies are going to offer cheap plans for their preferred customers (young & healthy) in addition to your mandatory plan. This means that only those who can't get one of the cheap plans are going to end up in the mandatory plan - and those are the customers that are expensive for the insurance company. Since they're allowed to "cover costs", they're going to raise the premium of this plan accordingly, so no one can actually afford it. Hence, your nondiscriminatory idea becomes discriminatory pretty much automatically, to everyone who doesn't fall in the preferred customer category.
The indigent who pass some fairly generous means test get their premiums paid from taxes (social benefit, social cost).
Err... so now the taypayer pays the insurance company to insure those without the means? Why have the insurance company in the loop in the first place, then? All it does is add cost.
And the govt. WILL have to figure out ways to save money.
I thought making profit was a corporations job, not the governments?
The government has no incentive to save money. There are no fat bonuses waiting for government employees who excel at saving money.
Now, if you were talking about a for-profit corporation, I'd see your point. They'd happily deny you coverage if they see the slightest chance of weaseling out of it just to improve their bottom line.
Slashdot Mirror
They'd get counter-sued by the MPAA and James Cameron for stealing his ideas. Better stay at least a light year from Earth.
Now. Part of it wasn't, until about twenty years ago. None of it was, about seventy years ago.
Then again, Romania, of all countries, had a very interesting decision upholding the peoples right to privacy lately. Who'd have thunk?
Scary how good that sounds even after being translated, isn't it?
Unfortunately, the explanations given by the Federal Constitutional Court can be read as an instruction manual on how to create a data retention law 2.0 that will pass the courts muster. Shouldn't take those politicians too long to come up with the new version. :/
1. It is bad at actual copy protection. It can be circumvented without the crackers ever having to mess with the actual program - all they need to do is to simulate the server.
2. It is bad for the customer. Come on, losing game progress because your internet connection decided to fall into a coma? WTF are these people thinking?
It's not within a certain range of available funds. You can get either one or the other. Money doesn't magically appear out of nothing.
It's possible to put yourself through college and get health insurance. I've done it.
And that's a fallacy if I've ever seen one. "I can do it, so anyone can." If that were true, we'd all be Olympic gold medalists and Nobel prize winners, and a few other things.
Exclusive monopolies are _worse_ than government programs. Both don't have a big incentive to do a better job (the government program has some, at least in democratic systems), but the exclusive monopoly has a large incentive to screw the customer harder to increase profits.
It's a damn fire!! It could burn down the entire neighborhood!
So what if there's no neighborhood? Just let it burn? What about some of the other things fire departments do (at least where I live), like cutting people out of their cars after accidents?
I'm sympathetic to those who have conditions, lose their insurance, and cannot purchase new insurance.
What about those who were born with their conditions and cannot purchase insurance in the first place?
If she can afford a gym membership at LA Fitness, put herself through college, and have enough assets that a medical bankruptsy would cause extreme hardship, then why could she not buy health insurance to cover this?
Gym memberships are downright cheap compared to health insurance. And, well, if your choices are "go to college" or "get health insurance for a while, then lose it because you only get a crappy job since you didn't go to college", which one would you pick?
Also, wasn't bankruptcy because of medical bills made harder or impossible lately? I haven't been following the developments too closely, but I think I heard something along those lines.
I say the opposite, she didn't put medical insurance as a priority in her life.
Well, yeah. "Get a college degree" _or_ "get health insurance for a few years". Once again, how would you chose?
Yes? Catastrophic plans are a scam. They work by gambling on the "customer" to neglect regular checkups and health maintenance(since he'd have to pay for them himself), and then pulling the rug out from under him once he need this "catastrophic" coverage. Conveniently enough, when you really need that catastrophic coverage, you're usually in no shape to fight an extended lawsuit.
And HSAs, well, the whole concept is just ridiculous. You can save for retirement (since you usually know quite well when that's going to happen and how much money you want), but you can't save for costs that can hit you at any time and any amount. It's just a way to lure suckers into putting their money into low-interest savings accounts.
It seems that you don't really grok how the game works.
It's Finland, ferchrissakes! If you claim that Finland is hell, then hell freezes over every winter! Do you know how much havok this would wreak?
That depends on the time frame. If the time frame is a week, then yes, it's fairly impossible to work for more than one customers in a week. If the time frame is a year, things are quite different.
Well, but the ones without teleprompters were more fun. Especially the one about outlawing Russia. ;)
If the crooks have compromised the reader, they can have your card encrypt a couple of packets they plan to use before going through with the actual legitimate transaction.
This might not be what you want to hear, but it's one possibility.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinitis_pigmentosa
Also, look at all the other things that could cause night blindness:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyctalopia
From the standpoint of the insurance, it would be stupid not to cover something that's not going to happen. It gives the customer a nice warm fuzzy feeling and he'll definitely prefer your policy to the similarly-prices one offered by a competitor that leaves out coverage for volcano damage.
Given two otherwise identical policies, would you pick the one that doesn't cover volcano damage? I wouldn't.
You could have looked up all this stuff yourself, but I'll do it for you.
There are about 40000 new cases of leukemia diagnosed in the US every year. Given a population of about 300M, that's about 0.013%. Treatment costs for leukemia are about $150k, $250k and up if you need a bone marrow transplant. So, every year you run a risk of 0.013% of a >$150k hospital bill, just from leukemia.
Do you have volcano insurance?
Volcano damage should be covered by property/fire insurance. Especially in areas that aren't known for their volcanic activity.
It's not foolish. Gambling is foolish, and that's what you intend to do. If you want to gamble, go to Vegas. Going broke there is more fun and less painful than gambling on your health.
Why, you still get to vote if you're a US citizen living abroad. The IRS way of approaching this might be a bit odd considered that the US is one of the few countries doing it this way, but they'll probably reason that if you get representation, then you'll also have to pay your bloody taxes.
Why shouldn't they? Most people completely fail to see the implications of this statement anyway. They don't realize (or don't want to realize) that it simply means that profit takes precedence over the health of the insured.
Um ... the IRS doesn't care where your income comes from - if you're a US citizen, it's going to get taxed. There's some sort of exemption for income earned abroad (I believe something around $80k), but after that, the IRS wants its share.
How do you "negotiate" after the goods and services have already been provided? What would you use as leverage in such negotiation? Such "negotiation" is similar to extortion - "I'm not going to pay that. Either take 50% off or you'll have to go through all the trouble of sending the bill to collections and/or risk not seeing any money, ever". Yes, sounds like something that a responsible person would do.
The hospital took what it could get, and is going to make up for the loss by trying to charge the next unlucky patient more. Passing the buck, kind of.
Sorry, but that's going to so backfire on you. Let me explain:
The insurance companies are going to offer cheap plans for their preferred customers (young & healthy) in addition to your mandatory plan. This means that only those who can't get one of the cheap plans are going to end up in the mandatory plan - and those are the customers that are expensive for the insurance company. Since they're allowed to "cover costs", they're going to raise the premium of this plan accordingly, so no one can actually afford it. Hence, your nondiscriminatory idea becomes discriminatory pretty much automatically, to everyone who doesn't fall in the preferred customer category.
The indigent who pass some fairly generous means test get their premiums paid from taxes (social benefit, social cost).
Err ... so now the taypayer pays the insurance company to insure those without the means? Why have the insurance company in the loop in the first place, then? All it does is add cost.
So hospitals can run their own death panels? That's something to look forward to.
If my son get leukemia, we will deal with it like responsible people do. I'll ask for help from my friends and family,
You must have rich friends and family. Or no qualms whatsoever of dragging them into poverty with you.
, and maybe run a car wash or two.
You can make six figures by running a car wash? Where do I sign up/invest in that business model?
I might even cash in my retirement.
So what are you going to retire on then? Or are you going to be responsible and put a bullet through your skull once you run out of funds?
I thought making profit was a corporations job, not the governments?
The government has no incentive to save money. There are no fat bonuses waiting for government employees who excel at saving money.
Now, if you were talking about a for-profit corporation, I'd see your point. They'd happily deny you coverage if they see the slightest chance of weaseling out of it just to improve their bottom line.
Have fun dying of MRSA later on after the antibiotic sword gone dull from being used on every sneeze and sniffle.
People willing and able to pay can receive the best healthcare in the world no matter where they are.