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Coming from an IT background, we view work as something which we can personally accomplish. It's what we know and how we apply it which is important.
And frankly, that view of work as something which "we can personally accomplish" is outdated and does not scale in any company larger than a hundred or so people, maybe even less. There is virtually NO job description in IT at any company above a certain size which will not require you to be able to work with other people.
Let's please dispense with the ridiculous illusion that IT people don't have to have social skills to do their job effectively. That's a comforting conceit for those in IT who are socially inept, but it is not the reality. You do not have to be best friends with everybody you work with. You DO have to be able to communicate and interact with others in a professional manner.Maybe you're the only email server admin or domain admin guy, but then you've got dozens or hundreds or thousands of customers you've got to work with. Maybe you're a developer; chances are you have to work with dba's and technical writers and other developers and business folks.
Having a network on LinkedIn does not necessarily mean you are socially adept, but it is a bit of circumstantial evidence that at least a few people could handle working with your ass and didn't despise the experience enough to want nothing to do with you.
It's not going to be worse then the medical industry and your insurance providers.
If we're spending billions of dollars on a program, it better be a damn sight better than "no worse than what we already have." If it's not a measurable improvement that has real long-term benefits, then we shouldn't be spending the money on it. Or rather, borrowing the money to spend on it.
Tell me, you or a loved on is in pain, are you going to hunt around and hope another Dr office doesn't ahve that requirement, or are you going to sign the waiver?
Way to miss the point.
The problem does not lie with divulging medical information to a medical practitioner when you seek medical care. The point is that there are very legitimate privacy concerns related to having a government bureaucracy that knows every shred of your personal medical history.
Think disgruntled government employee who has privileged access to medical records of every person who ever pissed them off. Think shoddy security controls resulting in a massive data breach. Think increased medical fraud. Think starting point for more government paternalism funded by more deficit spending.
All legitimate concerns, none of which have received any discussion so far as I can tell.
Converting the paper records to electronic form would indeed be an economic stimulus. It creates jobs for the nerds who design and build the systems. It makes the doctors more productive.
Citation, please? How much productivity will it get us? How many jobs will it create? How much stimulus is actually contained in this provision?
Who BUT the government would have the power to force this?
Nobody. That doesn't answer the question of whether or not it should be done, or how it should be done.
Why would anyone WANT to opt out?
Why would anyone WANT to be forced into it? Maybe they like their current health plan and doctor just fine, and aren't happy entrusting their personal medical records to a government bureaucracy. Maybe they wear a tin-foil hat and are convinced that the government will spy on their medical records. Maybe they simply want more control of personal records relating to their medical care. The point is, none of these questions are being asked, or answered. Congress is just saying, "Oh hush you, we know what's best. We don't need any debate or discussion about this."
See HIPPA.
It's HIPAA, fwiw. And yes, I'm well aware there are regulations in place that say "You can't discriminate against someone based on medical information." And it still happens that people are let go (or not hired) due to physical & mental illness, the regulation just means that they have to be told, "Sorry, we found a better candidate, but best of luck to you in your search!"
Because they're not "taking control of your medical records," they're mandating that medical records be in electronic form.
Apparently you didn't read any of the relevant sections of the bill. Not only are they mandating that records be in electronic form, they are mandating that the records allow for electronic interchange, and the provision explicitly states that this department is tasked with planning & developing an infrastructure for enabling that interchange. In other words, the government most certainly will have some control over and responsibility for your medical records, even if they are not dictating the terms of your care to physicians.
I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing. I'm saying that it's something which opens up a host of privacy & ethical concerns, and none of those concerns seem to be getting an answer, or even a frank discussion. Instead, people who raise the concern are getting a quizzical look followed by, "Why would anyone WANT to opt out?"
My GP retired about ten years ago, and the next time I tried to visit I discovered thet I no longer had any medical records.
I've had a physician retire as well, and I also received a notice that he was retiring, with instructions on how to go about getting my medical records, or having them forwarded to my new physician. If the best reason you can think of to spend millions (or billions) of dollars is "It'll save me from the responsibility of making a phone call or writing a letter when my doctor retires," I'm sorry, that's a hard sell. I understand that it would be frustrating to lose your records, and I can think of a host of other reasons (cost, accuracy, speed, etc.) why electronic interchange might be preferred, but this program still needs a good deal more discussion and thought than a handful of pages in an economic stimulus bill.
Well, they can't really control it. They can just act as a universal depository. You and your doctors determine what goes in your medical records.
Medical records *should* be a comprehensive, non-judgemental record of medical conditions and procedures. It *should* include everything, because it's your health, and a doctor cannot give you good advice without understanding your health. Your statement seems to imply that doctors and patients should be editing their records to make sure "nothing that's potentially embarrassing" shows up in them. If that's the direction our medical system is going in, we've failed before we've started.
That said, I understand that there might be compelling reasons why the government is the only agency with the clout to make this sort of thing happen, and that making this happen may very well be a positive change for our medical system, if it's handled well. It still does not belong buried in an economic stimulus bill, and should not be rushed through without serious consideration of the ethical, privacy, and technical concerns around it, and it seems like that's exactly what's happening with this provision.
More perspectives on the issue are certainly useful. Which was kind of my whole point - this issue deserves a robust public discussion. Mandating a change of this magnitude does not belong folded into some sort of emergency economic stimulus plan.
I'm not sure what else you're saying beyond "In addition to Betsy McCaughey's op-ed piece, here's another op-ed and a different way to read the bill for yourself."
The point of providing that link the McCaughey's article was that it was the article discussed in BOTH of the wnd.com links provided by a previous poster.
I then went on to post a link to the current text of the bill; your link doesn't work.
I was working with the premise that if the poster I replied to wanted to offer an informed opinion about the debate, he might want to actually, you know, understand what the debate is about, rather than raving like a loon that we're comparing open standards to socialism.
as long as the standard is open to those in the medical profession, regardless of their practice's size or influence, that would be open enough.
I never offered any opinion about whether or not the standards should be open or not, or what degree of openness should be required. I merely pointed out that the poster I responded to was attacking a straw man by ridiculing someone's perceived criticism of "open standards". No mention was made of open vs. closed anywhere, so his rant about open standards & Linux devolving to socialism was off-topic and rather pointless.
For what it's worth, I agree that "open to people who need it" is "open enough". But again, there is no mention of that in the bill - it simply says "infrastructure for the exchange of medical records." This could mean "Everybody needs to use the Microsoft Medical Office proprietary format," or it could mean "Every piece of software in the stack must be completely open source & GPL-compatible."
the IRS already has records on every tax payer, so how is this different? You pay taxes == You get health care.
The IRS does NOT have your medical records, and does not have access to them. Fail.
The point here is simply this: cramming a massive change to the medical system into a stimulus bill that's passed as an "urgent necessity" runs counter to the notions of democracy and government transparency that helped sweep President Obama into office. I'm not willing to say that there are "no good reasons" for the government set this direction for the medical community. I AM willing to say that it should not be simply tucked in as part of a larger stimulus bill, and deserves a public airing for debate and criticism on a host of issues. Some of the questions that should be debated & answered, off the top of my head:
How open should the standard be?
What are the privacy controls, and how are they enforced?
Is there any way for patients to opt out of this system? If yes, what? If no, why aren't there any?
If it's mandatory, who owns the records and is responsible for keeping them accurate & secure, as well as accessible when needed?
What controls are placed on access to them? Can any doctor anywhere access anybody's records? Is some sort of authorization required? If so, whose authorization?
There's a host of privacy & technical issues that need to be hammered out around this policy change. It has no business being slotted into an emergency stimulus bill when the President and Congress are both crying "catastrophe, we need to pass this emergency plan today because people are hurting!" at the top of their lungs.
If they insist on passing this with an emergency stimulus bill, then it is a prime example of an administration that believes that over-reaching and stifling legitimate debate in the face of some crisis is a justifiable means to an end. In other words: "Meet the new boss... same as the old boss."
That's fine for you; but it's a bit presumptuous to assume that your concerns are the same as everybody else's, isn't it?
What are the disadvantages to me of the whole world knowing that?
Aside from the fact that it could prevent you from getting a job, or getting a mortgage, or ruin a relationship or friendship? Oh sure, there's laws saying they can't discriminate based on a medical condition, but you're a fool if you believe that they couldn't find someone who was a "better fit for the job" after they found out you have some chronic disease that would affect your ability to be at work, or pay your mortgage... and did you really make sure you told your husband or wife about that little romantic indiscretion when you were 23 and caught Gonorrhea? Or how about that time when you were 19 and had an abortion?
There can be very real and very serious consequences to a person for this sort of private information becoming "public knowledge." YOU may not be concerned as an individual. But others probably are, and have every right to express their concern over privacy issues related to medical records-keeping.
Your sources are diverse and correct! Everyone knows Open standards for medical documents is a one way road to Socialism. Just ask anyone on slashdot what open standards does to a buisiness! It's evil, don't touch it! You don't have to read deep into Torvaldis' Das Penguinal to see that communism follows.
Sarcasm isn't really a rebuttal. But then you knew that, right?
You could try reading Betsy McCaughey's op-ed about the piece, or better yet, go read the actual bill in question yourself. And note that that web site is GPO (Government Printing Office), not GOP - I'm sure some dyslexic will misread it and accuse me of being a shill for the Republicans.
Point of fact: nowhere in the bill is an "open" standard for medical records referenced or called for.
Point of fact: In this bill, the government is appointing itself as the entity to ensure that everybody (yes, everybody - there don't appear to be any provisions for people who wish to opt out) has electronic medical records by 2014. The government has also tasked this bureaucracy with developing infrastructure to facilitate the exchange of those medical records.
When any agency (government or private) nominates itself as the caretaker of extensive private information about you, it's wise to have privacy concerns. I don't mean tin-foil hat conspiracy theories, I mean, there should be full & accurate disclosure as to what privacy controls are in place, so that the public can understand & offer feedback on the proposal.
The GP's last 2 sentences are actually spot-on. An economic stimulus bill is NOT the place for a tacked-on afterthought which creates a sweeping change to the country's medical landscape. There are legitimate privacy questions & concerns in the creation of electronic medical records, and to just stuff them into this bill stifles open & constructive debate on exactly what safeguards should be put in place.
Slashdot readers fumed over the PATRIOT act's potential for violating their privacy; this provision could have equally far-reaching impact on your private, personal medical records. So bottom line, I'm asking you to answer this one question:
WHY is the fact that the government wants to take full or partial control of your medical records NOT a cause for concern for you?
Please answer in a complete sentence that doesn't begin with either of these two phrases:
1) "Because President Obama says..."
2) "Well it's not like it's President Bush..."
The Oregon State Police beg to differ. The entire text of their "minimum qualifications" to serve as an Oregon State Trooper:
United States Citizen.
Possess a high school diploma or equivalent.
Twenty-one years of age or older upon appointment.
Possess and maintain a valid license to operate a motor vehicle.
Applicants must be in good health and good moral character.
Meet all applicable medical and physical requirements.
Can you point to the bullet that requires a BS, Criminal Science from Western Oregon University?
Maybe you'd like to amend your statement to indicate - as the Oregon State Police do - that becoming an OSP trooper requires 4 weeks (186 hours) of OSP-specific training prior to the 16-week Basic Police course?
But yes, I can see where you'd confuse 20 weeks of police academy with a 4-year Bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice, or a 4-year Bachelor's degree followed by 3 or more years of legal training required to earn a JD and LLM. It's pretty much the same.
As an example: assume you enjoy smoking cigarettes. Tomorrow, a law is passed stating that smoking is illegal. You comply with the law, and cease smoking cigarettes. The police arrest you anyway because you smoked yesterday, before the law was passed and took effect - this is unconstitutional, because you are being arrested & prosecuted for a "crime" you committed before the particular action was criminalized.
Of course there's exceptions (gun control, sex offender registries, etc.) to this where retroactive application of a law has been found constitutional; However, the general principle is that you cannot be prosecuted for doing something which is later criminalized after you do it.
To clarify on this further (as so many people, especially Americans, seem to misunderstand this) - the definitions above imply that neither high taxes by themselves, nor large amounts of government spending funded by those taxes, are by themselves "socialist";
First, the definitions I provided above were very brief, because it's Slashdot. There's a raft of nuance to those definitions, and indeed many competing viewpoints within socialist philosophy itself. Please do not use my brief & overly general definition as the basis for drawing conclusions about socialism - I provided a link to the wikipedia article which provides quite a bit more background than space here allows.
Second, unless you define the wages you earn as something that is not your property (i.e., your pay does not belong to you), high taxes & the government using those taxes to pay for entitlement programs is certainly a redistribution of wealth by a central "planning committee" of sorts, and as such, certainly does fit at least a few of the hallmarks of socialist economic philosophy. To claim otherwise is foolish & disingenuous. I don't use the term socialist as a slur, the word has a meaning, and these programs fit the meaning of that word. Entitlement programs funded by taxes *are* socialist programs - whether they are a net benefit or net ill for society is beyond the scope of the term 'socialism'.
The point I was making was that Bill Gates, as a private philanthropist, approaching other individuals with the goal of motivating them to do some sort of charity is well outside the definition of socialism. If Bill Gates came in with the government at his back and announced the creation of a new "Malaria Eradication Tax," that would be a socialist program. Again - it's not a slur, it's the proper definition of the word. Taking money from one group of people to use it on programs to benefit other people who can't fund that program themselves is absolutely part and parcel of socialist theory.
indeed, welfare state is not socialist. When they let you run your business, and only ask for a cut, it's still capitalism.
Actually, I would call that extortion, wouldn't you? "If you give us 40% of your profits, we'll let you keep your business." The programs that earn "welfare states" that name are most certainly socialist, even if the given welfare state has not fully implemented socialist policy in all areas of its economy. The moment the government takes from wealthy & middle class citizens, and uses that money to pay for programs that overwhelmingly benefit the poor citizens, that is a socialist program - the government is appropriating part of some peoples' property to benefit the poorer members of society. Sometimes this is a net good, sometimes it's a net bad. But it is always a socialist policy.
It only becomes socialism when they come and take your business away entirely.
No, that is communism - an extreme of socialism which endorses the abolition of all private ownership of property.
Socialism is not that bad. You help those less fortunate with the expectation that you will be helped if you become less fortunate.
I'll answer your question. You'll no doubt disagree, but hey, at least I have the balls to burn karma with my response, Mr. AC.
The problem with socialism is that it's a great concept, and a shitty practice when taken to extremes, as it often is. The idea of safety nets & universal healthcare are wonderful, they give me that warm fuzzy feeling I get when I see a puppy and a kitten in a basket made of flowers, all riding around under a rainbow on the back of a pony. I mean, we're talking really hardcore warm & fuzzy.
The *practice* of these safety nets is trickier. For the government to fund these programs, they have two choices: taxing citizens, or deficit spending. Coupled with the simple fact that these programs tend to expand their scope over time, that means an ever-increasing tax load on the wealthy & middle class (concepts which seem to be constantly redefined downwards), or a gradual bankrupting of future generations through massive deficit spending. As our population ages & lives longer, the programs are simply not sustainable without significant reform. More people living longer = more money spent on more healthcare while plummeting birth rates in developed countries assures that there are fewer younger people working to support those people.
Many of these entitlement programs also don't come with any accountability on the part of the recipient. Pres. Obama made a big splash yesterday by announcing that companies receiving federal money as part of the bailout plan would be expected to limit executive compensation in certain ways. If there are similar sorts of conditions applied to entitlement programs such as healthcare (We'll pay if you stop smoking, maintain a healthy weight, exercise regularly, etc.), I'd be a lot more amenable to them. If other people are paying for your health care, shouldn't they be allowed to set some terms & conditions?
Being nice, spending money to help people aside from yourself IS socialism.
No, that is NOT socialism. Socialism refers to the collective or state ownership of the means of production & distribution of goods, and generally condemns private ownership of property & privately-owned industry. What you are referring to is known as Charity, or Philanthropy, as you rightly identified at the start of your post.
That being said - Gates' comment had absolutely no element of "socialism" to it - if he had said "The government should take your companies & your money and use those resources to give everybody malaria medication," *that* would be endorsing socialism.
An honest discussion of class inequities is not tantamount to socialism. In the same way, noting that black women are more likely to get a deadlier form of breast cancer is not a racist statement. Branding something one of your least-liked -isms because it makes you uncomfortable does not make the label stick.
The whole point Bill was trying to make -- and which is being clouded by the usual Slashdot air of cynicism and hatred towards anything Bill Gates does or says -- is this: Malaria is, statistically speaking, a disease of the poor. A disease which is treatable and preventable at a fairly low cost, and a disease which the "rich and powerful" could do a lot to reduce or eliminate - and should do a lot to reduce or eliminate, because it's "the right thing" to do.
Private organizations asking individual citizens for charitable donations has nothing to do with socialism.
The report is obviously not a techy. Its "IP Address"!
Actually, the article in the DC Examiner follows generally accepted style guidelines for using initialisms and acronyms. You spell it out the first time the term is used, and follow the full term with the acronym or initialism in parentheses, e.g. "Internet Protocol (IP) address." If the initialism is used only once in a story (as it is here), it's also generally acceptable to omit the parenthetical after the full spelling.
The reporter is obviously not a techie. It's "IP Address"!
Given that your 10-word criticism of the reporter's story contained no less than 3 grammar & spelling mistakes, perhaps you should fix up your own glass house before you throw stones at someone else's?
And you might have noted that I didn't suggest we should all sit down and have tea and biscuits with Microsoft, did I? I won't say they don't have a lot of mistrust to overcome, but you have to be willing to let them try.
There comes a point where you have to concede that a step is a positive development. A single step doesn't mean they're making a pattern of it, but it's a starting point. Maybe tomorrow they abuse the Apache license and get dragged into 15 different courts because of it. Or maybe tomorrow they say, "Wow, that project was so well received, maybe there's something to this open source stuff, and maybe we should look at doing this with other projects."
Microsoft is a company with thousands of employees, which means there are many competing agendas. Some people may be gung-ho for open source licensing of everything, some may want to fight it with every breath they have left. As a user, why not vocally encourage the good stuff they do in addition to roundly criticizing the bad?
Then the open source windows apps could run on a free OS.
If they're open source, then just port them to run on the free OS. Why do you need to make your free OS look like & behave like a non-free OS? Think about it for a second. The point you're making about allowing WINE to work fully makes NO sense - either you want to run closed source applications on Linux under WINE (which would only be enabled by the WINE project having full specs to make WINE 100% interoperable, as you demand), or you have the source to an open-source windows application and can simply port it to your free OS, in which case WINE is irrelevant.
Interoperability should be available, while I might prefer FLOSS mail servers others may not and we should be able to work together.
So then use POP3 or IMAP. Why do you need Exchange or Sharepoint to interoperate? Why make a shitty knock-off of a non-free Microsoft product? Why not make a better product, based on open standards, that conforms to your notions of free software?
For all the bitching about Microsoft and other non-free software companies that happens here, you'd think somebody would put their money where their mouth is and do something about it by writing free software that compares favorably on the basis of robustness, stability, features, and usability to the non-free / non-open offerings.
let them release all the docs the Wine project would need to be 100% interoperable.
Why not just run Windows then? You're bitching about wanting free software all over the comments here, and then you're going to claim that you want to run closed-source windows software on your Free OS? What's the point?
Then release real interoperability docs for exchange, sharepoint, etc.
If freedom is of paramount concern, why would you care to run software that will interoperate with non-free systems at all? Why not pressure them to accept a better (standard) way of doing things? You know, by using the robust & stable FLOSS software that does the same job as Exchange, Sharepoint, etc., but does so while conforming to GPL & open standards? And then when you've achieved a market leadership position with your superior products, you can simply freeze out Microsoft products if they don't conform to your standards.
Or is all this really about forcing Microsoft to commit some bizarre form of hara-kiri ritual to atone for the grievous sins they've committed against you?
And "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." Shit changes, man. At some point, you have to either allow them the chance to regain some level of trust, or you have to admit that you just have a weird personal issue with MSFT that so totally dominates your view of them that you can't behave or think rationally about anything they do.
They would first need to get rid of their bad reputation for people to treat them fairly.
How does one get rid of a bad reputation except by making positive moves that would show an effort to move in the right direction? If every step they make is greeted with derision, will it be all that surprising when they say "Hey you know what? We tried playing by your rules and caught nothing but shit for it. GFY."
Repairing a bad reputation and restoring trust takes 2 sides: one side to make a genuine effort to make amends for past damages, and the other side to be genuinely willing to forgive and move forward. Nobody's suggesting you swear an oath of allegiance to MSFT based on a single project adopting the Apache license. You cannot, however, say that this is not an encouraging move by MSFT, and perhaps an indicator that they're trying.
excuse me, its a stupid question in its relevance.
It's you who made it a relevant question by citing Pres. Obama's use of a Blackberry as somehow indicative of his understanding of technical issues.
Now that you've stated that Blackberry usage is an irrelevant metric for determining someone's technical savvy, I think we're in agreement. Thanks for your consideration.
You miss the point. The reason the Blackberry is so popular is because you do not have to be some incredibly smart & sophisticated technology user in order to make good use of it. That's what makes it a good piece of technology. But owning & using & even loving a Blackberry does NOT imply anything about a user's technical savvy.
By your standards, Obama's use of a refrigerator or a microwave oven would also indicate his degree of competence in mechanical engineering & physics. Use of a piece of technology != technological know-how. I'm sure Pres. Obama is a very smart guy. I just think you're stretching by saying his love of a blackberry is evidence of his deep technical capabilities.
I hate my blackberry. All it means to me is it's one more tether to work. I'd be happy to throw it in the rubbish. Frankly, the people who are most enthusiastic about their Blackberries at my company are the people with the smallest amount of a clue about how the technology works.
Blackberry use does not mean "super smart technology user", any more than my mom's ability to send an email to me makes her capable of setting up and administering a Solaris server; or, to use the omnipresent Slashdot Car Analogy: any more than your (presumed) ability to drive a car makes you capable of designing a new engine for Volkswagen.
In defense of unity100, he did specify, "This is news on this site." He's right. Unfortunately, it also implies that people on slashdot get entirely too excited about trivial fluff.
@Unity100: The point being made here is that the technology Obama's administration uses to get the job done has no bearing on whether or not they're doing a good job. The important stuff is: what are they doing? The not-so-important stuff is: what are the tools they're using to get that stuff done?
It's far more important that they're doing the "right things" than that they're using the "right technology," whatever that may be. To the extent the technology supports them doing the right things and makes doing those things easier, Hooray for them. To the extent that Obama's love for his Blackberry ("He's just like ME!") becomes Slashdot wank material, get some perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
And frankly, that view of work as something which "we can personally accomplish" is outdated and does not scale in any company larger than a hundred or so people, maybe even less. There is virtually NO job description in IT at any company above a certain size which will not require you to be able to work with other people.
Let's please dispense with the ridiculous illusion that IT people don't have to have social skills to do their job effectively. That's a comforting conceit for those in IT who are socially inept, but it is not the reality. You do not have to be best friends with everybody you work with. You DO have to be able to communicate and interact with others in a professional manner.Maybe you're the only email server admin or domain admin guy, but then you've got dozens or hundreds or thousands of customers you've got to work with. Maybe you're a developer; chances are you have to work with dba's and technical writers and other developers and business folks.
Having a network on LinkedIn does not necessarily mean you are socially adept, but it is a bit of circumstantial evidence that at least a few people could handle working with your ass and didn't despise the experience enough to want nothing to do with you.
If we're spending billions of dollars on a program, it better be a damn sight better than "no worse than what we already have." If it's not a measurable improvement that has real long-term benefits, then we shouldn't be spending the money on it. Or rather, borrowing the money to spend on it.
Way to miss the point.
The problem does not lie with divulging medical information to a medical practitioner when you seek medical care. The point is that there are very legitimate privacy concerns related to having a government bureaucracy that knows every shred of your personal medical history.
Think disgruntled government employee who has privileged access to medical records of every person who ever pissed them off. Think shoddy security controls resulting in a massive data breach. Think increased medical fraud. Think starting point for more government paternalism funded by more deficit spending.
All legitimate concerns, none of which have received any discussion so far as I can tell.
Citation, please? How much productivity will it get us? How many jobs will it create? How much stimulus is actually contained in this provision?
Nobody. That doesn't answer the question of whether or not it should be done, or how it should be done.
Why would anyone WANT to be forced into it? Maybe they like their current health plan and doctor just fine, and aren't happy entrusting their personal medical records to a government bureaucracy. Maybe they wear a tin-foil hat and are convinced that the government will spy on their medical records. Maybe they simply want more control of personal records relating to their medical care. The point is, none of these questions are being asked, or answered. Congress is just saying, "Oh hush you, we know what's best. We don't need any debate or discussion about this."
It's HIPAA, fwiw. And yes, I'm well aware there are regulations in place that say "You can't discriminate against someone based on medical information." And it still happens that people are let go (or not hired) due to physical & mental illness, the regulation just means that they have to be told, "Sorry, we found a better candidate, but best of luck to you in your search!"
Apparently you didn't read any of the relevant sections of the bill. Not only are they mandating that records be in electronic form, they are mandating that the records allow for electronic interchange, and the provision explicitly states that this department is tasked with planning & developing an infrastructure for enabling that interchange. In other words, the government most certainly will have some control over and responsibility for your medical records, even if they are not dictating the terms of your care to physicians.
I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing. I'm saying that it's something which opens up a host of privacy & ethical concerns, and none of those concerns seem to be getting an answer, or even a frank discussion. Instead, people who raise the concern are getting a quizzical look followed by, "Why would anyone WANT to opt out?"
I've had a physician retire as well, and I also received a notice that he was retiring, with instructions on how to go about getting my medical records, or having them forwarded to my new physician. If the best reason you can think of to spend millions (or billions) of dollars is "It'll save me from the responsibility of making a phone call or writing a letter when my doctor retires," I'm sorry, that's a hard sell. I understand that it would be frustrating to lose your records, and I can think of a host of other reasons (cost, accuracy, speed, etc.) why electronic interchange might be preferred, but this program still needs a good deal more discussion and thought than a handful of pages in an economic stimulus bill.
Medical records *should* be a comprehensive, non-judgemental record of medical conditions and procedures. It *should* include everything, because it's your health, and a doctor cannot give you good advice without understanding your health. Your statement seems to imply that doctors and patients should be editing their records to make sure "nothing that's potentially embarrassing" shows up in them. If that's the direction our medical system is going in, we've failed before we've started.
That said, I understand that there might be compelling reasons why the government is the only agency with the clout to make this sort of thing happen, and that making this happen may very well be a positive change for our medical system, if it's handled well. It still does not belong buried in an economic stimulus bill, and should not be rushed through without serious consideration of the ethical, privacy, and technical concerns around it, and it seems like that's exactly what's happening with this provision.
More perspectives on the issue are certainly useful. Which was kind of my whole point - this issue deserves a robust public discussion. Mandating a change of this magnitude does not belong folded into some sort of emergency economic stimulus plan.
I'm not sure what else you're saying beyond "In addition to Betsy McCaughey's op-ed piece, here's another op-ed and a different way to read the bill for yourself."
The point of providing that link the McCaughey's article was that it was the article discussed in BOTH of the wnd.com links provided by a previous poster.
I then went on to post a link to the current text of the bill; your link doesn't work.
I was working with the premise that if the poster I replied to wanted to offer an informed opinion about the debate, he might want to actually, you know, understand what the debate is about, rather than raving like a loon that we're comparing open standards to socialism.
I never offered any opinion about whether or not the standards should be open or not, or what degree of openness should be required. I merely pointed out that the poster I responded to was attacking a straw man by ridiculing someone's perceived criticism of "open standards". No mention was made of open vs. closed anywhere, so his rant about open standards & Linux devolving to socialism was off-topic and rather pointless.
For what it's worth, I agree that "open to people who need it" is "open enough". But again, there is no mention of that in the bill - it simply says "infrastructure for the exchange of medical records." This could mean "Everybody needs to use the Microsoft Medical Office proprietary format," or it could mean "Every piece of software in the stack must be completely open source & GPL-compatible."
The IRS does NOT have your medical records, and does not have access to them. Fail.
The point here is simply this: cramming a massive change to the medical system into a stimulus bill that's passed as an "urgent necessity" runs counter to the notions of democracy and government transparency that helped sweep President Obama into office. I'm not willing to say that there are "no good reasons" for the government set this direction for the medical community. I AM willing to say that it should not be simply tucked in as part of a larger stimulus bill, and deserves a public airing for debate and criticism on a host of issues. Some of the questions that should be debated & answered, off the top of my head:
There's a host of privacy & technical issues that need to be hammered out around this policy change. It has no business being slotted into an emergency stimulus bill when the President and Congress are both crying "catastrophe, we need to pass this emergency plan today because people are hurting!" at the top of their lungs.
If they insist on passing this with an emergency stimulus bill, then it is a prime example of an administration that believes that over-reaching and stifling legitimate debate in the face of some crisis is a justifiable means to an end. In other words: "Meet the new boss... same as the old boss."
That's fine for you; but it's a bit presumptuous to assume that your concerns are the same as everybody else's, isn't it?
Aside from the fact that it could prevent you from getting a job, or getting a mortgage, or ruin a relationship or friendship? Oh sure, there's laws saying they can't discriminate based on a medical condition, but you're a fool if you believe that they couldn't find someone who was a "better fit for the job" after they found out you have some chronic disease that would affect your ability to be at work, or pay your mortgage... and did you really make sure you told your husband or wife about that little romantic indiscretion when you were 23 and caught Gonorrhea? Or how about that time when you were 19 and had an abortion?
There can be very real and very serious consequences to a person for this sort of private information becoming "public knowledge." YOU may not be concerned as an individual. But others probably are, and have every right to express their concern over privacy issues related to medical records-keeping.
Oh! I know! The Gettysburg Address!
Wait... that wasn't an amendment?
It's not even IN the constitution?
Great. Now I need to get 2/3 of the house & senate to propose it, and 3/4 of the state legislatures to ratify it... thanks.
Sarcasm isn't really a rebuttal. But then you knew that, right?
You could try reading Betsy McCaughey's op-ed about the piece, or better yet, go read the actual bill in question yourself. And note that that web site is GPO (Government Printing Office), not GOP - I'm sure some dyslexic will misread it and accuse me of being a shill for the Republicans.
Point of fact: nowhere in the bill is an "open" standard for medical records referenced or called for.
Point of fact: In this bill, the government is appointing itself as the entity to ensure that everybody (yes, everybody - there don't appear to be any provisions for people who wish to opt out) has electronic medical records by 2014. The government has also tasked this bureaucracy with developing infrastructure to facilitate the exchange of those medical records.
When any agency (government or private) nominates itself as the caretaker of extensive private information about you, it's wise to have privacy concerns. I don't mean tin-foil hat conspiracy theories, I mean, there should be full & accurate disclosure as to what privacy controls are in place, so that the public can understand & offer feedback on the proposal.
The GP's last 2 sentences are actually spot-on. An economic stimulus bill is NOT the place for a tacked-on afterthought which creates a sweeping change to the country's medical landscape. There are legitimate privacy questions & concerns in the creation of electronic medical records, and to just stuff them into this bill stifles open & constructive debate on exactly what safeguards should be put in place.
Slashdot readers fumed over the PATRIOT act's potential for violating their privacy; this provision could have equally far-reaching impact on your private, personal medical records. So bottom line, I'm asking you to answer this one question:
WHY is the fact that the government wants to take full or partial control of your medical records NOT a cause for concern for you?
Please answer in a complete sentence that doesn't begin with either of these two phrases:
1) "Because President Obama says..."
2) "Well it's not like it's President Bush..."
Can you point to the bullet that requires a BS, Criminal Science from Western Oregon University?
Maybe you'd like to amend your statement to indicate - as the Oregon State Police do - that becoming an OSP trooper requires 4 weeks (186 hours) of OSP-specific training prior to the 16-week Basic Police course?
But yes, I can see where you'd confuse 20 weeks of police academy with a 4-year Bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice, or a 4-year Bachelor's degree followed by 3 or more years of legal training required to earn a JD and LLM. It's pretty much the same.
Not in the United States, in the vast majority of cases. It's called an ex-post-facto law, and it is expressly forbidden by the Constitution of the United States.
As an example: assume you enjoy smoking cigarettes. Tomorrow, a law is passed stating that smoking is illegal. You comply with the law, and cease smoking cigarettes. The police arrest you anyway because you smoked yesterday, before the law was passed and took effect - this is unconstitutional, because you are being arrested & prosecuted for a "crime" you committed before the particular action was criminalized.
Of course there's exceptions (gun control, sex offender registries, etc.) to this where retroactive application of a law has been found constitutional; However, the general principle is that you cannot be prosecuted for doing something which is later criminalized after you do it.
First, the definitions I provided above were very brief, because it's Slashdot. There's a raft of nuance to those definitions, and indeed many competing viewpoints within socialist philosophy itself. Please do not use my brief & overly general definition as the basis for drawing conclusions about socialism - I provided a link to the wikipedia article which provides quite a bit more background than space here allows.
Second, unless you define the wages you earn as something that is not your property (i.e., your pay does not belong to you), high taxes & the government using those taxes to pay for entitlement programs is certainly a redistribution of wealth by a central "planning committee" of sorts, and as such, certainly does fit at least a few of the hallmarks of socialist economic philosophy. To claim otherwise is foolish & disingenuous. I don't use the term socialist as a slur, the word has a meaning, and these programs fit the meaning of that word. Entitlement programs funded by taxes *are* socialist programs - whether they are a net benefit or net ill for society is beyond the scope of the term 'socialism'.
The point I was making was that Bill Gates, as a private philanthropist, approaching other individuals with the goal of motivating them to do some sort of charity is well outside the definition of socialism. If Bill Gates came in with the government at his back and announced the creation of a new "Malaria Eradication Tax," that would be a socialist program. Again - it's not a slur, it's the proper definition of the word. Taking money from one group of people to use it on programs to benefit other people who can't fund that program themselves is absolutely part and parcel of socialist theory.
Actually, I would call that extortion, wouldn't you? "If you give us 40% of your profits, we'll let you keep your business." The programs that earn "welfare states" that name are most certainly socialist, even if the given welfare state has not fully implemented socialist policy in all areas of its economy. The moment the government takes from wealthy & middle class citizens, and uses that money to pay for programs that overwhelmingly benefit the poor citizens, that is a socialist program - the government is appropriating part of some peoples' property to benefit the poorer members of society. Sometimes this is a net good, sometimes it's a net bad. But it is always a socialist policy.
No, that is communism - an extreme of socialism which endorses the abolition of all private ownership of property.
I'll answer your question. You'll no doubt disagree, but hey, at least I have the balls to burn karma with my response, Mr. AC.
The problem with socialism is that it's a great concept, and a shitty practice when taken to extremes, as it often is. The idea of safety nets & universal healthcare are wonderful, they give me that warm fuzzy feeling I get when I see a puppy and a kitten in a basket made of flowers, all riding around under a rainbow on the back of a pony. I mean, we're talking really hardcore warm & fuzzy.
The *practice* of these safety nets is trickier. For the government to fund these programs, they have two choices: taxing citizens, or deficit spending. Coupled with the simple fact that these programs tend to expand their scope over time, that means an ever-increasing tax load on the wealthy & middle class (concepts which seem to be constantly redefined downwards), or a gradual bankrupting of future generations through massive deficit spending. As our population ages & lives longer, the programs are simply not sustainable without significant reform. More people living longer = more money spent on more healthcare while plummeting birth rates in developed countries assures that there are fewer younger people working to support those people.
Many of these entitlement programs also don't come with any accountability on the part of the recipient. Pres. Obama made a big splash yesterday by announcing that companies receiving federal money as part of the bailout plan would be expected to limit executive compensation in certain ways. If there are similar sorts of conditions applied to entitlement programs such as healthcare (We'll pay if you stop smoking, maintain a healthy weight, exercise regularly, etc.), I'd be a lot more amenable to them. If other people are paying for your health care, shouldn't they be allowed to set some terms & conditions?
No, that is NOT socialism. Socialism refers to the collective or state ownership of the means of production & distribution of goods, and generally condemns private ownership of property & privately-owned industry. What you are referring to is known as Charity, or Philanthropy, as you rightly identified at the start of your post.
That being said - Gates' comment had absolutely no element of "socialism" to it - if he had said "The government should take your companies & your money and use those resources to give everybody malaria medication," *that* would be endorsing socialism.
An honest discussion of class inequities is not tantamount to socialism. In the same way, noting that black women are more likely to get a deadlier form of breast cancer is not a racist statement. Branding something one of your least-liked -isms because it makes you uncomfortable does not make the label stick.
The whole point Bill was trying to make -- and which is being clouded by the usual Slashdot air of cynicism and hatred towards anything Bill Gates does or says -- is this: Malaria is, statistically speaking, a disease of the poor. A disease which is treatable and preventable at a fairly low cost, and a disease which the "rich and powerful" could do a lot to reduce or eliminate - and should do a lot to reduce or eliminate, because it's "the right thing" to do.
Private organizations asking individual citizens for charitable donations has nothing to do with socialism.
Actually, the article in the DC Examiner follows generally accepted style guidelines for using initialisms and acronyms. You spell it out the first time the term is used, and follow the full term with the acronym or initialism in parentheses, e.g. "Internet Protocol (IP) address." If the initialism is used only once in a story (as it is here), it's also generally acceptable to omit the parenthetical after the full spelling.
Given that your 10-word criticism of the reporter's story contained no less than 3 grammar & spelling mistakes, perhaps you should fix up your own glass house before you throw stones at someone else's?
And you might have noted that I didn't suggest we should all sit down and have tea and biscuits with Microsoft, did I? I won't say they don't have a lot of mistrust to overcome, but you have to be willing to let them try.
There comes a point where you have to concede that a step is a positive development. A single step doesn't mean they're making a pattern of it, but it's a starting point. Maybe tomorrow they abuse the Apache license and get dragged into 15 different courts because of it. Or maybe tomorrow they say, "Wow, that project was so well received, maybe there's something to this open source stuff, and maybe we should look at doing this with other projects."
Microsoft is a company with thousands of employees, which means there are many competing agendas. Some people may be gung-ho for open source licensing of everything, some may want to fight it with every breath they have left. As a user, why not vocally encourage the good stuff they do in addition to roundly criticizing the bad?
If they're open source, then just port them to run on the free OS. Why do you need to make your free OS look like & behave like a non-free OS? Think about it for a second. The point you're making about allowing WINE to work fully makes NO sense - either you want to run closed source applications on Linux under WINE (which would only be enabled by the WINE project having full specs to make WINE 100% interoperable, as you demand), or you have the source to an open-source windows application and can simply port it to your free OS, in which case WINE is irrelevant.
So then use POP3 or IMAP. Why do you need Exchange or Sharepoint to interoperate? Why make a shitty knock-off of a non-free Microsoft product? Why not make a better product, based on open standards, that conforms to your notions of free software?
For all the bitching about Microsoft and other non-free software companies that happens here, you'd think somebody would put their money where their mouth is and do something about it by writing free software that compares favorably on the basis of robustness, stability, features, and usability to the non-free / non-open offerings.
Why not just run Windows then? You're bitching about wanting free software all over the comments here, and then you're going to claim that you want to run closed-source windows software on your Free OS? What's the point?
If freedom is of paramount concern, why would you care to run software that will interoperate with non-free systems at all? Why not pressure them to accept a better (standard) way of doing things? You know, by using the robust & stable FLOSS software that does the same job as Exchange, Sharepoint, etc., but does so while conforming to GPL & open standards? And then when you've achieved a market leadership position with your superior products, you can simply freeze out Microsoft products if they don't conform to your standards.
Or is all this really about forcing Microsoft to commit some bizarre form of hara-kiri ritual to atone for the grievous sins they've committed against you?
And "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." Shit changes, man. At some point, you have to either allow them the chance to regain some level of trust, or you have to admit that you just have a weird personal issue with MSFT that so totally dominates your view of them that you can't behave or think rationally about anything they do.
How does one get rid of a bad reputation except by making positive moves that would show an effort to move in the right direction? If every step they make is greeted with derision, will it be all that surprising when they say "Hey you know what? We tried playing by your rules and caught nothing but shit for it. GFY."
Repairing a bad reputation and restoring trust takes 2 sides: one side to make a genuine effort to make amends for past damages, and the other side to be genuinely willing to forgive and move forward. Nobody's suggesting you swear an oath of allegiance to MSFT based on a single project adopting the Apache license. You cannot, however, say that this is not an encouraging move by MSFT, and perhaps an indicator that they're trying.
It's you who made it a relevant question by citing Pres. Obama's use of a Blackberry as somehow indicative of his understanding of technical issues.
Now that you've stated that Blackberry usage is an irrelevant metric for determining someone's technical savvy, I think we're in agreement. Thanks for your consideration.
Answer this question, yes or no:
Does it require deep technical knowledge for a person to use, and even love using, a blackberry?
If yes, then please list what specific technical areas one must be competent in in order to use it. If no, you've just demonstrated my point.
You miss the point. The reason the Blackberry is so popular is because you do not have to be some incredibly smart & sophisticated technology user in order to make good use of it. That's what makes it a good piece of technology. But owning & using & even loving a Blackberry does NOT imply anything about a user's technical savvy.
By your standards, Obama's use of a refrigerator or a microwave oven would also indicate his degree of competence in mechanical engineering & physics. Use of a piece of technology != technological know-how. I'm sure Pres. Obama is a very smart guy. I just think you're stretching by saying his love of a blackberry is evidence of his deep technical capabilities.
I hate my blackberry. All it means to me is it's one more tether to work. I'd be happy to throw it in the rubbish. Frankly, the people who are most enthusiastic about their Blackberries at my company are the people with the smallest amount of a clue about how the technology works.
Blackberry use does not mean "super smart technology user", any more than my mom's ability to send an email to me makes her capable of setting up and administering a Solaris server; or, to use the omnipresent Slashdot Car Analogy: any more than your (presumed) ability to drive a car makes you capable of designing a new engine for Volkswagen.
In defense of unity100, he did specify, "This is news on this site." He's right. Unfortunately, it also implies that people on slashdot get entirely too excited about trivial fluff.
@Unity100: The point being made here is that the technology Obama's administration uses to get the job done has no bearing on whether or not they're doing a good job. The important stuff is: what are they doing? The not-so-important stuff is: what are the tools they're using to get that stuff done?
It's far more important that they're doing the "right things" than that they're using the "right technology," whatever that may be. To the extent the technology supports them doing the right things and makes doing those things easier, Hooray for them. To the extent that Obama's love for his Blackberry ("He's just like ME!") becomes Slashdot wank material, get some perspective.