Saryctos

They'll do it the way it's been done for years, College.

There's a name that starts with 'P' that is far more relevant to this thread

wow, the ABP crowd sure is getting feisty these days =P

blah replying to a post on page 1 forgetting there's 2 pages >_<

But were they loaded with baby killing bullets?

I really think it's all relative to how we store and recall memories. The recollection of the stored perception of the past generates the feeling of 'now' by placing it on the end of a line that's been running for as long as you've been alive. The continuous presence of this activity I feel creates the sense of consciousness. Not merely the ability to make decisions, but recursively remembering how you came to the conclusions just seconds before. I can tell you from experience that during a blackout(alcohol induced) your body is still capable of performing actions and your brain makes decisions, but since there is no memory of these events, it's as though it never happened. Consciously it is as if that period of time never existed(similar to a dreamless sleep). I would relate this experience very much to your point #2, which led me to my feelings on the experience of memories bringing about the feeling of consciousness. I have in the past likened this to be similar to what would constitute a possible experience of death. An existence without conscious perception of time or recollection of the past. I wonder how different the world will feel once we can remove or implant memories as we please, as I believe they have a direct impact on our sense of time and at least for me, my sense of consciousness.

Do you feel this lawyer violated the law? It is allowed under law, thus you should direct your frustrations towards that which is the true problem, not merely the messenger. I'm really happy to see this getting in the spotlight again, because I'm very upset that this has been going on for so long. Doesn't matter how I feel about their crimes, these people have been screwed by unintended consequences and it is horseshit plain and simple that it has gone on for so long.

Isn't the article really about the perception of negative impacts? Citing no examples of documented stifling, simply observing the beliefs of the scientific community.

They didn't seek treatment because it sounds like as far as they were concerned they were already administering treatment(prayer). There was no negligent behavior, they were very aware of the problem and attempted to do what they felt was best. Is it negligent to do something yourself instead of letting an expert do it? Only when related to medicine? Please understand that I'm only playing the devil's advocate here. In no way would I endorse this misguided attempt at healing through prayer alone. I just want to attempt to break down exactly what thought process they are guilty of.

Why does it matter what they believed? If they thought 4 aspirin and a good night's rest would have saved her would you still hold them negligent? Or is it more because it's a religious belief? I think actions alone is a poor way of judging any scenario. The intent was to help, they certainly were idiots when it came to medical treatment but they weren't sitting on their asses doing nothing about it. I take exception in that there is an expectation for people to know things that they were never assumed to have learned (diabetes education is required where?). Regardless of what they believed, if they didn't know, then anything they did would be negligent of the facts.

I think federally allocated funds for state run UHC systems would provide better results than federally funded & managed UHC. States have an easier time changing legislation, since it affects less people and smaller dollar amounts. If you create a multitude of systems you get to see what works and what doesn't. In a sense the states' separation represent their own form of insurance against failure by spreading the risk over the federal budget and maximizing possible success through variations of implementation. I'm starting to sway towards the UHC side of this thing. Simply because if the gov't is paying directly for services instead of "insurance"(even though it's in the name) then you can remove the primary bloat in the cost of medical care. The purchasing power of the federal gov't also greatly out weighs all the separate insurance companies, which can again reduce costs for the consumer.

I think it's important to reflect on on how it would affect unemployment. I know the system ain't ready for that.

I don't think that's possible anymore. The populace as a whole needs to start filtering their own bias from all the sources they have available. Know what bias you're getting and retroactively spin it the other direction in your head =P

I find my problem is that healthcare is very much like other wealth redistribution programs we have, in that it's just money changing hands with minimal (if any) gain for those who paid it. Additionally I feel that the current payment structure for the healthcare industry is terribly broken. Any government involvement would almost set in stone the failing system as is, with a lot of bureaucratic obstacles to change it. Absolutely. I feel that money spent on healthcare is far more justifiable than many other programs we currently finance.

For what reason should I be legally bound to pay for someone else's problem? Simply because it affects their health in a more explainable way? All sorts of economic problems relate to stress induced conditions, psychological problems, etc.., all having adverse affects on people's health. How is someone's problem specifically my obligation on the premise that it is related to their health? On that note however, I would much rather pay for medical care for the less fortunate than any of the current redistribution schemes we finance. I don't however like the idea of doing both, which is an unfortunate problem in that there will be no trade off, there will be no compromise. Ontop of that, I certainly wouldn't want to start paying for it before fixing the broken financial structure of health "insurance", or the dependence we have upon this silliness. Insurance keeps people tied to employers. Businesses get a benefit for paying healthcare, making their dollar stronger than yours, simply because it's paying medical costs. Why can't the gov't make your medical dollar stronger on it's own? Let the employer pay you that much more, and allow you to find your own coverage that fits your needs better than the only option you have available through your workplace? Insurance beats down freedom of service provider through "in-service" providers. Just more limitation on choice, another assault on competition. Sure you could shop around and find a less expensive doctor, but unless they're in your network you're already starting 'down' the difference in copay. So if you wanted to find a better doc it has to be more than just a better deal, it has to be a better deal plus a little extra. Insurance draws in more money than is required for service. I wish I could find some numbers on how much is paid annually to health insurance plans and cross reference it against how much money is further paid to the healthcare industry. When more money is pumped into a market than is being spent there's bound to be inflation. Technology drives the cost of care UP through new techniques. Not necessarily because they want to, but when it's an ethics question of allowing older cheaper techniques to be used simply for the cost benefit people cry foul! Shouldn't it be up to the patient to determine if they want to pay $2,000 dollars for that extra 3% effectiveness? They're the one paying for it (there's the whole argument about informed consent or what have you, but still, what other industry do we restrict choices so much on 'ethical' grounds?). Would we force people to pay for the new "healthier hamburger", now with 0 fat, 0 calories and only $25! what a bargain for being healthy! Massive regulation structure. What would be wrong with running a simple MRI shop out of a small business complex? Just nab one off Ebay for a couple hundred grand. Probably only take a few hundred customers at today's prices to break even on that investment. Oh wait, you're gonna have to deal with an assload of red tape, and not to mention insurance coverage restrictions depriving you of customers that would love to pay less for a procedure if they were actually paying for it. Prescription drugs. Costs are pretty hefty to the consumer considering the actual cost of development and manufacture. If anything, I'd say this is a perfect place for gov't spending. By up the rights to produce commonly prescribed medications(through offering the developers an amount equal to what they might lose from not selling it themselves for those X years where they have exclusive rights. Hell maybe just throw in some deal where they still make residuals so they can still throw the billions of advertising dollars that they do. I'm not a contract negotiator, but I know that some form of reimbursement would be required to allow this to happen), contract out the manufacturing and then offer it to the citizenry at a significantly reduced cost. It don't cost much to manufacture the stuff once the patent runs out. We just have to list out the problems in the system and attack them head on (apply directly to the forehead). Think of a problem in healthcare and follow it to the logical end of what causes this problem. NOT what these problems cause, but what allows them to continue. Don't worry about if the problem is solvable, just find out what is the core "problem" with any situation. What feeds these problems? Are they getting worse? Staying the same?

I think the first step towards any plan, in either a more central, or wider market option, would be to ween all health insurance agencies over to non-profit. Insurance IS the problem. If you can't replace it immediately at least start to take the bite off the cost. Can anyone speculate what would happen to the insurance structure in the short term if they were required to be non-profit? Would coverage shrink, would premiums increase?

Most of what makes these items expensive is information, and liscensing(the 2nd biggest problem with the current healthcare system), the production costs are negligible. With further use of new Information Technology you can bring down one side of the cost over time. However, with the insurance structure firmly in place, where is the intensive to reduce cost? I do think that these costs can be greatly reduced with a reworking of the healthcare system, although not eliminated. I also would like to say that I do understand that even with perfect health, strange chronic debilitating conditions can show up form no fault of the patient. I do think that the gov't does have some responsibility to help ease the cost on those who do get surprised by these diseases. Just like FEMA would help anyone who's home was damaged by a large natural disaster we should consider these illnesses like a catastrophe that strikes many people spread out over the whole country. Well, it's not really a bet. You will get sick at some point before you die from illness/old age otherwise you'd be dealing with life-insurance instead (I don't suppose your health insurance matters if you die from something other than illness, so I'll just leave it out). Anyone who stops paying insurance without receiving the benefits are really the only 'losers' in this equation.(dying abruptly, dropping coverage, leaving the country, etc...) Everyone else will eventually win out (in terms of payment vs. benefit) if they live to recoup costs that the new generation of youngsters are forking out. It's exactly the same setup as Social Security just with different payment methods and motivations.

What prevents the cost from going so low? What are you physically paying for with medical care?

I believe that the current health insurance structure is one of the greatest contributors to both the cost, and displeasure within our system. I do think that people should just pay for their medical costs without the insurance system. Everything out of pocket, as though it were any other expense. However, this cannot change overnight as it would cause all sorts of troubles. But I think that a system based on paying for what you need instead of everyone paying, and only a few needing is the best option in the long run. It's important to note that businesses that do pay for healthcare could instead be paying this as extra income, except that there are tax benefits for paying healthcare. Why not sidestep this and allow these tax breaks, and pre-tax incentives to be passed directly to the employee? This way, if you're healthy and don't have medical bills, you have extra income(as you aren't spending anything). But if you do have medical bills you can claim these costs at the reduced tax rate and/or pre-tax to some degree. I think the problem is that the insurance scam has been running for so long that there's so many gov't based incentives to keep things the way they are. We prop up a bad system with good incentives so if you wanted to change to a better system we're going to have to find a way to artificially increase it's appeal just as we have with the current structure.

Bus as we've seen with Iraq, you can't just topple a gov't with military force and expect the populace, even if they were in disagreement, to sit idle while they are invaded or bombed.

However, if you have a ruling gov't that is ideologically separated from their populace how would you justify a response against them?

Perhaps the problem is with insurance existing at all?

Don't forget that when you quote all of these statistics that America itself is as varying as the many nations it is compared to. It's hard to take any of them to heart when I know there's large amounts of outliers dragging the total average down. Taking anything as a % of the population is just not a good idea when looking at the whole country. This is the problem with federal spending most of the time aswell. They'll see that shit is bad for 80% of the population and allocate funds for everyone, thing is the funding need only go to areas where life sucks for 100% instead of the areas of 10-20%, but then that's being <insert discriminatory reason here>, but then this only widens the gap and makes the numbers an even worse display of reality. summary, don't trust nationwide statistics without a caveat.

Well, I ended up taking the time to watch the Frontline link in the OP(sorry for not really addressing your point directly in my first post). I liked the video, and I definitely think it's worth the time, if for nothing else than to get a single perspective on multiple systems. Thanks for sharing. I took the time after each segment (witch was broken down by country visited) to pause for a bit an jot down some notes on what I thought was a usable mechanic, and other things that I believed could work in the US, or the we could even improve upon. I'll start off by saying that I agree with many of the people interviewed in the program that said that healthcare is a right of the people. Every person on the planet deserves a fair shot at the available technology to help them extend their lives, or in some cases make them worth living. Doesn't matter if you're a small child with no ills to your name, or a habitual smoker breathing in your Camel's through your trachea port. The line for me gets drawn however, in that I don't think anyone should be forced[i/i] to pay more than is necessary for their own care. I shouldn't need to be insured to be healthy. If I want an MRI on my foot because I'm paranoid about fictitious gremlins in my bones, and the only thing that'll calm me down is an MRI, I should be able to pay for that out of pocket the same as if my life really did depend on it, it's the exact same test regardless of motivation. The time, energy, equipment, and staff capable of humoring this request costs far more than it's actual value. One of the reasons that this fictitious example would never work out well, is that you simply can't just go and get an MRI from some MRI depot. It's regulated to all hell, on top of probably not being able to get what you want(an MRI by request) even if you did, good luck pulling in just a scan without an analysis, which is where the money starts to add up quite a bit. A few years ago I got an ekg for some troubling chest pain. Turned out there was nothing to worry about and only cost about $75. However, the cost of the facility and the "analysis of the EKG" brought the total closer to $300. (I'm not insured, simply because I won't buy into this insurance sham) Now don't expect me to go into price breakdowns or rages about the cost of things, because this is completely anecdotal and doesn't matter so much as an example to work with. If I wanted to just "get an EKG" and take it home with me and have my roommate(a senior medic) look at it for me, it would've cost only the visit to the doctor's room and the small cost of a nurse placing 12 little pieces of sticky tape on me (Heck, I've read enough medical stuff off the shelf to know where to put the stickies myself, could've just said "hey can I pay to use some of your EKG paper?"). Would've been in and out, minimal cost to me, minimal time for the medical staff, which would allow them to get in more patients who perhaps actually needed their expert opinion instead of having one laying around the house. **** You can't do that at all in the current system. The doctor would be liable for lawsuit if he didn't look at the EKG himself first to ensure I wasn't going to die in the next day or so. Making medical staff liable for things they weren't asked to do is a little crazy in my book. And there's plenty of similar regulations that force doctors and nurses to perform duties they don't necessarily have to do, all for the sake of covering their asses. Now this I believe is a unique American problem. Not that other countries can't have malpractice cases(can they?) but more so the amount of legislation that forces additional costs to the consumer and thrusts work onto the healthcare system. This is the kind of bloat that we have to face in the US system as it stands, even if the cost side of things gets worked out better with some new plan. **** Before I lapse into a ramble(hopefully I haven't yet =) I'd like to look at the Frontline episode a little more. The other countries' plans have plenty of opportunities that we could benefit from. The one that struck me the hardest, and oddly enough first! Was the increase in pay to the British GPs for healthy patients. It seems like a great premise, rewarding doctors for keeping people healthy instead of profiteering of those stuck perpetually hacking and sneezing. It's a good use of market forces to reduce the margins for being a greedy disease monger.(although admittedly those not making tons of incentive money aren't evil, they might have just caught a bad draw on the clientele) The Japanese system sounded great, and the downsides they have seem like they would work themselves out if it were in the US. The idea of fixed costs got me thinking quite a bit. The premise of equal pay for equal services sounds like a good idea, but the immutable costs that applied to EVERY hospital is just a bad way of doing it. The cost of operations between multiple states and cities is just far too great for some master list to dictate the terms. A procedure or test in LA is going to cost many times that of a hospital or clinic in Detroit. There's just no way they could charge the same without losing customers(the D), or going bankrupt(LA). Plus if you stock your staff with top of their class physicians but you still have to charge the same as the guy who wrangled the fresh out of med school barely passed their licensing exams there's going to be problems. I could see a light system of price control working though. Some ingenious way for allow the price on things to be controlled to a degree, but allow the prices to fluctuate by some measure. What that is, I couldn't say, I'm not THAT guy. What I do know is that there would be plenty of people capable of finding a variety of methods to make it work without penalizing the health industry as would a completely fixed system. The no-profit restriction on healthcare insurers, which was a strong undertone in all these plans, is indeed needed if you want to make an insurance based system work. If you take out the profit, you minimize the inflation caused by the basic principles of insurance bringing in more money than it gives out. Prescription medications. Too much advertising. Too much cost associated with what is produced with so little. I feel the same sentiment against drug companies as I do any digital rights management advocates. On one hand you do have the fact that development costs money. Then we see that the cost to do it yourself once the information becomes available makes the cost almost negligible. How do we balance freedom of information with profitability? It's not just a drug question, it's the next greatest market dilemma. With the ability to disseminate ideas, recipes, digital copies so quickly and easily, how to we proceed forward in this kind of market where it costs the developers of these ideas a great deal of time in contrast to the materials needed to recreate their efforts?

How can we rip the insurance element out of health care? It's clearly the cancerous tumor in our medical system. If you're uninsured you're screwed! There's no reason to keep the costs low to appeal to those who only want to pay when they actually need something(strange idea right?) It's not just health insurance either, the massive amount of malpractice lawsuits increase the cost of insurances that hospitals and doctor's have to pay, which is then passed on to the consumer...who only notices a small increase on their individual cost because it's spread on to everyone through the great equalizer!(insurance) The health insurance racket is worked out in almost the same way of Social Security. You pay upfront(20-30s) in an effort to pay less when you've reached old age(I know the number of insurances that do this is not uncommon, but I can't remember the proper number). Add to that the "ethics" debates about offering sub-standard service at reduced cost(which some people would prefer), but this is labeled as lacking ethics, because then you're essentially offering a service for "the poor". Medications themselves are a whole other issue which unfortunately I don't have time to spout off about because my break was over 3 minutes ago =/