doG

Why do you think the discussion is ONLY about private insurer versus coverage being offered through a public single payer system? The OP didn't raise that issue at all. From the OP it looks like this thread is about health care cost and quality in the U.S.? Did I miss something there?

All references? but Yes, costs that can be directly pegged to defensive medicine are low but that is not all inclusive of the actual liability costs passed on to patients. From the article it appears patients at the Miami School of Medicine are spending 14% of their bill on just medical malpractice insurance premiums passed on to them. How much more of their bill is passed on costs associated with general liability insurance premiums on equipment and supplies? I wonder additionally how much of the high pharmaceutical prices in the U.S. is passed on liability insurance premiums? It is not uncommon to see T.V. advertisements now soliciting members for class action lawsuits against the pharmaceutical industry. To what extent does this affect U.S. drug prices compared to other countries and what percentage of total health care cost is directly related to prescription costs? When my wife was living a trip to her heart doctor cost me about $200. There she would get a 3 month prescription for Plavix that my pharmacy quoted me $270 a month for, a whole lot more than any 1-2% of my health care costs for her. I bought a 90 day supply from Canada for $140. Now I wonder, how much of the difference between $810 and $140 is driven by additional product liability insurance needed in the U.S. market? Is it only 1-2% or is it a more significant factor is U.S. drug costs?

It sounds like you're missing the point. I'm not talking about the risk of litigation but the cost of insurance to cover that risk. Are you really trying to say that a OB/GYN's average malpractice premium of $50,000-$200,000 a year is only 1-2% of their overall cost as a provider?

You link says the same thing I said above, i.e. "the cost of medical malpractice claims and litigation is so small a part of national health care expenditures..." and says nothing of the malpractice insurance or indirect liability insurance that was the point of my post. Medical malpractice insurance rates and rates for liabilities insurance on goods used for health care have risen significantly through the years. It is not the actual payouts that become a significant part of health care costs, it is the quantity of insurance required to protect providers. According to a report from the GAO, "For example, the largest writer of medical malpractice insurance in Florida increased premium rates for general surgeons in Dade County by approximately 75 percent from 1999 to 2002, while the largest insurer in Minnesota increased premium rates for the same specialty by about 2 percent over the same period. The resulting 2002 premium rate quoted by the insurer in Florida was $174,300 a year, more than 17 times the $10,140 premium rate quoted by the insurer in Minnesota." This does not reflect any actual payouts to litigants, simply the costs that a physician, like any other business, must pass on to the customer. I personally lived through doctors quitting their emergency room practice because the cost of malpractice insurance put them out of business. I remember surgeons in West Virginia walking out on their jobs for the same reason. These doctors simply could not charge enough to pay for the insurance rate increases they faced at the time. Yes, many of these instances have happened in the near past or the distant past but the lingering rise in health cares costs effects us today. The closest analogy I can think of is the gasoline ratchet. Gasoline goes up and so do groceries because of the increased fuel charge. Gasoline goes down but the groceries don't. Gasoline goes up again and so do groceries. Gasoline goes back down but not the groceries. As the cycle replays over and over groceries ratchet higher and higher. The same thing happens every time the insurance industry gouges health care providers. Their services go up, never down. As a result the cost passed on to the end consumers spirals up forever. These then raises the cost of individual health care insurance. Consider the total value in profits of the U.S. health insurance industry as a whole. That is doctor's and patient's premiums combined minus payouts. This is all money ultimately paid by the patient for health care since they must pay their own premiums plus those passed on by the doctors. Every single dollar of it is part of the bottom line of U.S. health care costs. If it wasn't then none of those insurance companies would be making any profits, they'd be losing money.

"You sound like a broken record!" "That was a "b" side tune."

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a fairly new religion with quite effective results

There seems to be one thing missing in all of the comparisons of U.S. healthcare compared with other nations, medical litigation and the associated insurance cost it causes. Malpractice litigation is probably higher in the U.S. than any other nation because the U.S. court system is viewed as a lottery by many as a source of free money Some research will show that actual malpractice awards as a percentage of total medical costs are actually quite low but that doesn't show the whole picture. In reality a U.S. hospital has to carry some type of liability or malpractice insurance on nearly everything they use in the course of patient care in order to limit their exposure to malpractice litigation. This cost must obviously be passed on as it is with any profitable business. They can't have facial tissues on hand for patients without liability insurance to protect them from the one lawsuit that might occur because some patient alleges they were allergic to the Kleenex.. The exorbitant insurance that must be carried by practitioners and their facilities directly drives the cost of U.S. healthcare artificially high compared with other countries that have limits on tort cases. It is not uncommon in the U.S. to see certain geographic areas facing shortages or emergency room physicians because the malpractice insurance is high enough that doctors in the area are not willing to work for the difference between what they can charge and what they must pay for malpractice insurance. I was personally affected for about 3 weeks in South Florida one year when an increase in malpractice insurance rates left all the ERs in South Florida without any doctors at all. Some anomaly had caused rates to temporarily jump higher that many physicians annual income until the state insurance commissioner stepped in. Doctors literally could not afford to practice there in the meantime unless they did so without insurance. This is also part of a largely overlooked relationship that affects practitioners and their patients alike. Practitioners end up having to charge patients more and more to cover the cost of increasing malpractice insurance that they pass on to the patient and patients end up having to pay higher and higher health insurance premiums to their insurers to cover the higher cost of health care that was inflated from increased malpractice insurance on the doctors side of the equation. Insurance companies are collecting at both ends but it's not their fault, it's the fault of the U.S. judicial system which carries the threat of exorbitant awards in liability cases. Until this is fixed I don't think the U.S. will ever have a system comparable with other nations.

Yes, it's a built in feature of vBulletin, the software previously used for the forum.

Maybe those that dole out positive rep could earn more negative rep to dole out?

As a reference book I keep a copy of the Handbook of Mathematics by Bronshtein-Semendyayev. It has no instructional material or exercises but it covers everything you've listed above.

I know you have your own set of rules as moderators that keep you all from being dicks but they're rules that you all made as a team here, not rules enforced on you by someone else. FWIW, his/her whole free speech claim is what bit me so I needed to make a point

Moderation is an essential function of internet forums. Many usenet groups of yesteryear became unusable for the trolls destroying members conversations. I will add something extra for you though esbo. This is a private forum with its own rules that you agree to when you join. There is NO right of free speech here. That posts are moderated here does not mean any rights are violated. It's a private forum, you have no rights. They can ban you just because they don't like your moniker if they want to. If you want a forum that doesn't have these features then start your own. There are plenty of free forum sites on the web and you can make your own rules.

No. You fail to understand. See ring species to see how a chain of species variations leads to to an eventual variation where the descendants cannot interbreed. Neighboring generations that result from natural selection can but distant generations cannot. It shows how evolution does indeed lead to speciation.

but not evolution!! I will go through the rest of the stuff later. Natural selection is a basic process of evolution.

Then you have you head in the sand. There is plenty of evidence of influenza evolution.

Ok. Let's make sure we understand what you are saying. Please clarify. Are you claiming the flu does not evolve and that you can support that claim or are you admitting the flu is in fact evidence of evolution?

Theories don't become laws in science the way they do in math. In science, hypotheses become theories once they are verified. BTW, if you doubt evolution please opt for last years vaccine when you get your flu shot and leave the current supply for someone else that might encounter a more evolved strain than last years. I'm sure all strains are the same to you so last years shot should be good enough for you .

Your point? Realize also that it is a scientific theory.

Do you mean characters like this?

Even worse, we do not focus on teaching skepticism. People should learn early on to question everything, not to just simply believe something because some seemingly authoritative figure said it. Well taught children would question the existence of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy very early on.

I don't know how pertinent this is but I'll mention it. I'm an atheist but I love the feeling I get on Christmas when family and friends open the gifts I have given them. It warms my heart. I particularly like helping single moms with their needs to the extent that I can because it gives me that same feeling throughout the year. I have one that lives with me, and her son, and providing for them and giving her the opportunity to be a full time mom really warms me through and through. It makes me wish I could take in a dozen and provide for all of them. To that extent more is better for me. OTOH, one is plenty to satisfy my libido.

Is it a sentence though? There's no closing punctuation on that line or the one above, or the first one for that matter. Don't give him any ideas zap...

You could spend that much on equipment if you don't have it already. Here's an example apparatus that was used to process a similar quantity as yours and it looks like there's at least $500 worth of hot plate, glass and a vacuum source. Then again, you would have some of the equipment suitable for use on future projects.

You could call and get a quote from someone like Bethlehem Apparatus Co. to process it for you. They advertise that they have the capacity to process mercury from a few ounces to truckloads of 55-gallon drums efficiently and cost effectively. They might be able to do it for the same price you could do it yourself in an EPA approved facility. Getting a price couldn't hurt and it might actually save you some money and exposure to injury.

I tend to believe that thinking positive has some quantitative effect that yields more positive results over time, i.e. I frequently tell people that I don't believe in getting sick. Consequently I have missed fewer than 5 days of work in 20 years because of illness. I don't know if this really works but I cannot say the same of any of the people that have shared my household in the last 20 years whom have had more than their share of illness.