ParanoiA

So let me get this straight... ^ That's not "cutting people down"? That's helpful to a discussion? abskebabs was defending himself from a goddamn insult. And you all wonder how conservatives can argue about Global warming - a science they don't understand nearly as deeply as a freakin' scientist - and disparage your results as if they were experts? You've just done the same, damn thing. Don't wonder how right wingers can doubt you...you do understand the phenomenon, first hand. On a science forum? You just ran off an obviously studied participant in the field of economics? Someone, unlike you and iNow, can actually knowledgably negotiate the philosophical structure of economy, the varying models and modes of banking systems, the nature of money? I wanted to scan through here and see how abskebabs fielded your substative arguments today - I thought I was going to see the scientists show the rest of the political forums how it's done. I thought it would be an excellent learning opportunity to see his Austrian philosophy get tested with logical, clinical discussion. But hell no. This place is a left wing as it gets. You've insulted and run off everyone that hasn't gulped the liberal cool-aid and failed at proving any of them wrong. I'm sorry I even stopped in. The reasons I left have only inflated.

Ok, so my wife and I were talking last night and somehow we got to talking about "thoughts" and what they are. Curious. We were debating, from absolute ignorance mind you, what dimensions they occupy. When you have a mental image, or whatnot, how does it exist? In what dimension does it exist in, if at all? I could see time as one. But I can't imagine they would exist in any spatial plane. She was saying something about memories and proteins, and that thoughts are essentially chemicals interacting with the brain or something like that, and so exist in all 4 dimensions. I thought this sounded more like the background structure that supports "thought". Kind of like the theories that propose more dimensions beyond the 4 we realize - the support structure. So, can anyone share anything scientific about this? What are thoughts and do they exist dimensionally or is that notion just silly?

Oh we're definitely mediocre at accessibility, and I believe most of our poor downstream measurements come from that disparity. You're more than welcome my friend.

Well I thought about that, but then his opening statement was (emphasis mine): I'm not sure who he's saying "made the same argument" except me, since he's replying to me. I can always misunderstand, but I don't see it here. It wouldn't really matter, except it goes with the point he's trying to make.

There's another thing to take away from this thread...it's that any attempts at sincere, honest debate are subverted when arguments are taken entirely out of context by knee-jerk assumptions. Your biases are so primed you couldn't even be bothered to notice iNow's quote in my post to know I was responding to him, and further, why he asked the question to begin with. This is the problem with both sides. I came here with an honest intention, and up until this point received an honest reception. But as soon as an emotionally invested supporter "scans" a post and sees the buzz words "elderly", "denied", "healthcare" their assumptions are as misguided as the "deathers". If one side can't be bothered with the facts, then I hardly see how they can blame the other... You are evidence to your own accusation. And you're right, it's a real problem for honest debate. Understanding each other means listening, or reading in this case.

Even an intelligently challenged market base causes changes in the market. When someone deals in a business of technical detail, they must provide education within their sales method. How many people knew what kBPs meant before MODEM manufacturers had to compete for speed? Our marketing department has to explain what a T1 is in order to convince a customer that they should upgrade to one. This is the culture I'm talking about. When the consumer is the one that has to economize as well as receive the service, then we're back to tried and true market dynamics - the consumer gets courted however necessary to get his dollar. Giving this a mere 30 seconds...I found this on a google search. In reality, most of us would spend a bit more time than that. So, here, I have just learned something. Based on the cost of the two methods, and my resources, I can decide which one sounds better to me. Based on personal experience, word of mouth, any advertisements I may have seen, I may decide that St. Mary's hospital is a little more reasonable on price than St. John's downtown. Now...how accurate is that? It may not be that accurate at all. Maybe St. John's is actually better on quality AND price, but my subjective experience subverts this fact. St John's will need to react to this and attempt to correct the public's impression of their hospital. They may roll out some advertising campaign, or offer some kind of specials, something to remedy the public's ignorance on their level of service and affordability. I don't believe it's accurate to ignore the technically complex products and services we see in the free market and how that complexity is successfully dealt with everyday, and has been for years and years. Further, I think much of your low expectation on the public is based on your particlar expertise in the subject in general. This is exactly how I feel about homeowners and electricity. Idiots. They turn off their light switch, and then feel safe to change out the light fixture - much of the time, the hot wire is right there at the light fixture. They need to kill this back at the box. To this day, I still get vendors - people who do this for a living, *charging* their customer big money - that ask me if their ISDN T1 circuit is wink start, or how many digits it's "outpulsing" - morons. The public has no earthly idea how complex the telephone network really is and in my mind they are in *no* position to make an informed decision about their service. It's amazing they can afford to be so ignorant. But yet, they manage. I understand these things just on a deeper level than the average person, and thus they all appear tragically ignorant to me. In reality, they're not that stupid. Most of us are entirely ignorant about most everything. Think about it. Consumer level pandering for economy and service has worked in every other market, no matter the mountain of technological ignorance. I find it difficult to accept that medical knowledge is the exception. It may be true, but I don't see any evidence to suggest that. Ignorance is quite an expensive commodity, certainly, but is just not impacting enough to keep market forces from working, in my opinion. But that's all I got in the tank. You make good points on the matter, and both of us have made our case. You can have the last word. It was good talking with you guys again.

While medicare could be argued as a power play, I don't think it has to be. I do believe their attempts at cost control with lower percentages of pay out compared to private insurance companies cause price increases in the market as a whole. No different than non-payers in the ER that drive up prices for the market as a whole. It's no secret that hospitals try to recover that lost revenue with an increase in prices - and insurance companies don't enjoy the leverage of Federal power at the negotiating table. And while I also don't like the idea of redistributing the property rightly earned by the citizenry, I have already conceded that I am willing to rob my neighbor to save someone who can't afford medical attention. My definition of "save" is probably different than yours however. So, that said, obviously no, I don't support yanking medicare away from the elderly or denying treatment for chronic conditions because someone can't afford healthcare, and I don't think it has to be an expansion of federal power to do so, other than the implied power gained from the taxation to support it. One does not have to lead to the other. Incidentally, a public remedy for coverage doesn't have to lead to the other either. The house bill unfortunately does. My goal though, in this discussion was just to remind folks that there's a legitimate difference of political philosophy at play here. It's not always about "those damn republicans" that want to starve children, kill polar bears, steal grandma's money and help Wal-mart subjugate the poor. There is, underneath the tactic and strategy at play in the political rhetoric, a genuine interest in opposing this bill. It is incredibly impacting and the outrage is not manufactured as much as it is amplified. The two "townhall meetings" in my area - Lees Summit and Blue Springs Missouri - were almost entirely fired up locals, sprinkled with professional looking activists. Some were even Union members. Anecdotal, to be sure, but it reconciles with what I've read across the country. That's all I've got. Later.

But the supporters of this effort are *not* acknowledging it, so it gives the opposition the wiggle room to discount your claims. It would seem more effective to explain to the masses that yes, we do have great healthcare but not everyone has access to it and that's part of the measurement. Otherwise, they get the impression that you're trying to pretend as if our hospitals and doctors don't even compare to Jordan or Bosnia. It's that kind of misunderstanding that's makes it easy for the opposition to refute your claims. But enough on that point, I'll leave it lay. We're still divided on the same old points really. Some of us remain consistently wary of expansion of federal power (since most of its offices pander to the whims of the highly biased and subjective majority) and will yield to virtually no excuse or intent, noble or otherwise while others are comfortable investing in measured doses of centralized control and justice for the welfare of the citizenry. More or less, anyway.

Sounds correct to me. A logical conclusion to your statement being: The fewer transactions they are involved in, the lower the costs.

It matters because the hearts and minds you are trying to change don't believe you are arguing honestly since you won't acknowledge the point. Likewise, I imagine you don't feel the conservatives are being genuine when they discount the WHO's studies and infant mortality rates, or any other measure that synthesizes the two concepts. You're talking past each other and it isn't working for either of you. It would serve the opposition better to concede that the WHO studies suggest a rotten equal accessibility to healthcare for the citizenry. It would serve the supporters better to concede that technology, talent, scientific excellence is great without reservation - however is not the only measure of a healthcare system. Conflating the two keeps either side from reaching any agreement - it keeps the arguments disingenuous and divisive. There may still be disagreement even after reconciling that detail, but at least then it becomes honest disagreement. Right now, it's too politically toxic and appears to serve the interests of partisans.

Oh believe me, I'm under no illusions that medical care could ever be cheap. You're right, however, let's not lose track of how artificially inflated they've gotten. Just because it's expensive by its very nature does not suggest there's sanity in charging $10,000 for a procedure that the insurance company pays $4,000 for, per adjusted billing. It's a billing game to maximize how much the servicing agent can get out of the third party payer - be it insurance, medicaid, what have you. On the one hand the insurance carrier and medicare are controlling costs by not agreeing to this high price, while on the other hand they trigger the costs to go up in hopes that the 'adjusted billing' agreement will go up. On the consumer level, we don't run into much of that. The bill is the bill and we pay it and if we don't like it and there's a better deal somewhere else, we may go there instead. Any "sale price" is used as an incentive to get us in the door and is the price used on the bill. Cancer, I believe, falls under the concept of catastrophic care, in my opinion. That will always be expensive, and understandably so. It will also probably always require a third-party payer concept, thus heavily used insurance coverage and the billing game. But when insurance coverage is purchased under the market principle of "measured risk", then its costs should be far more reasonable. Today there is no "measured risk". Everyone will use their insurance, for every little thing. But in a catastrophic scenario, only a portion will end up using such coverage, so "measured risk" once again creates a market consequence of price competition. Getting a handle on out-of-control costs should be our concern as consumers. But we always talk about coverage. Fascinating. I don't think that would be the center of our attention if we were accustomed to managing our healthcare costs. If we want to raise the standard of living for ourselves, then we must incorporate healthcare investment in our lifestyle. High deductible HSA's, to me, are a terrific consumer level cost control technique with the complimentary psychological methodology of taking responsibility for yourself. At that point, we're only subsidizing the poor, which is more reasonable and ethical.

Yes. It makes it far easier to control the method of insurance for every citizen. The government could force high deductible insurance citing mounting costs, while premiums stay the same - making insurance companies a ton of money at our expense. Or the government could force non-deductible insurance citing the impoverished, triggering mass overuse and abuse, again at our expense. Or anything in between. Yes, we can still purchase supplementary, but an arrangement like this could cause a de facto mandatory market - again make insurance companies a ton of more money. This level of reliance by the citizenry serves the insurance market with an unfair advantage and maintains the high cost status quo we deal with today. It leaves the third party payer psychology firmly in place. Well sure, but it's always possible. We don't, until recently, draft laws carelessly leaving holes of exploitation. I'm always very concerned about consolidation of power because it's never malevolent out of the gate. My argument does lose ground since private supplementary insurance is freely available, but I'm strongly wary of how that may evolve. Certainly. But of course, that doesn't mean guys like me should compromise. I want to solve the problem, the actual problem. To me, that's cost. And cost problems in a capitalist economy are solved by competition. That competition depends on consumer level scrutiny and economizing and cannot be watered down with third-party payers and regulations that force consumers to do business in a narrowed market. My argument is that those two things are 2/3rds of the cost issue. People need to pay directly, so they scrutinize their bills like any other bill and the international drug market needs to be accessible for all americans. The other 1/3 I believe is the lack of payment for services by the poor. Understandable, but more manageable if costs weren't inflated.

Charts like that don't reflect the power grab and the lobbyist's porno fantasy consolidation buried in those 1018 pages of the house bill. Yes, it's easy to understand the goal and intent of the bill, and just as easy to ignore the foundation it's built on. We could have built our republic with one branch over the others, with the same noble intention, and an equally eye appealing simplified chart, but it would also ignore the danger of such an arrangement. There are other ways to role out the intent of the bill without providing a central hub for lobbyists and politicians to exploit.

And surprise...guess where those countries rank on that life expectancy chart you and JohnB referenced by the CIA: We're actually performing very well for a bunch of fat asses... Those same countries also score lower than us on the WHO ranking system, as well, by the way. Not sure about their individual healthcare systems, but I'd bet it's yet more equal accessibility disparity. And how does the CIA gather their infant mortality rates? Navigator gave some very reasonable exceptions to consider, which could be easily remedied by verifying how they mined the data. There's nothing anti-scientific about that question. I still find it troubling, whatever the case. I'm not including accessibility/distribution with quality, because they are two different things. Not everyone gets access to our healthcare system equally, and I think it's worth measuring the performance and talent of our medical staff and technological advancement separately from how many people have access to it, and how it's paid for. That's the part I claim is second to none. And, again...the bill suggests the same thing. Its aim is coverage; accessibility. It attempts to do so in a dangerous power grab methodology that leaves insurance lobbyists and third-party buffer zones of ignorance firmly entrenched. But, that is its focus nonetheless. Thanks man, sincerely. The healthcare thing has gotten huge as of late. Intended to be a temporary stay, kind of like a room at the Holiday Inn. I'm hoping to say, 'No, I'm not a healthcare expert, but I did post on a science forum last night'.

Well, of course, I like Mackey's suggestions because they deal with the problem of cost, which I believe is central to our Healthcare accessibility problem. They carry a theme of consumer level scrutiny and economizing, particularly high-deductible insurance plans which my man Dr. Paul puts in great perspective: And this can be seen on your medical bill. The medical insurance billing game. Look at how much your insurance is being charged and how much they actually pay. Imagine being the poor sap that pays the bill out of pocket, without the same discounts. I've seen ads by MRI clinics that offer 40% off if you're paying with cash, in full. Why can they practically halve the cost for cash customers? Why would they? There is a buffer zone of blissful fiscal ignorance with our precious co-pays, low-deductible insurance coverages, medicare and medicaid - the third party payout. I'm curious how socialized medicine handles these concepts: 1) Overuse of medical resources by patients (causing underuse by those who really need it) 2) Administrative paper work created by the third party payer patchwork and cost control behavioral monitoring of doctors and patients. 3) Defensive medical testing for fear of malpractice suits. I would imagine 1 would still be a problem, perhaps lending to the infamous attribute of "excessive wait times", but I'm betting 2 and 3 are far less of an issue. Mackey doesn't mention anything about prescription drug freedom. I still don't understand why my freedom to purchase internationally or to import drugs from other countries should be restricted. There has always been an argument to drive down the prices of prescription drugs in the US by allowing this competition. Regardless, Mackey is on the right track, IMO. Cost control first, since it is laughably way off track and at the very heart of healthcare accessibility.

The WHO's study merely points out what we already know. Quality of care availabile in America is second to none, but the other 4 points of measure are more about distribution of that quality, one of them flat out all about the location of financial burden. From iNow's post: It's not that the WHO's study isn't scientific, it most certainly is. It's the ideologically based conclusions that don't match the measured parameters. Financial burden alone is a subjective ideologists dream. If the rich paid for everyone, they may or may not call that "fair", I really don't know. That doesn't suggest "fair cost distribution" since the definition of "fair" is about as objective as the definition of "good". Rather it's cost would be consolidated onto a minority class. Although accessiblity would be good for all. If the costs were distributed per need, regardless of financial class, that could satisfy someone else's idea of "fair". I doubt the WHO would agree, but again, I really don't know. Accessibility would be a fat negative rating, I'm sure. The WHO's rating system sythesizes quality and distribution of the service. The dynamics of the distribution is measured by a subjective standard we don't all agree with, while others are more objective. I think that's the essential point that navigator is trying to make. There's an ideological bias codified in the distribution side of the study. CATO makes good arguments about it. It's a libertarian think-tank organization, but the arguments presented in that excerpt that navigator provided are valid. And the other sources and excerpts he provided were informative as well. They don't invalidate the study, they frame it for what it is. There is no doubt that distribution is the problem with our healthcare system. So overall, the WHO's study doesn't really reveal anything we didn't already know. Quality great, accessibility/distribution is poor. Not exactly earth shattering. And that's why the current house bill is all about that. We don't agree how it's trying to achieve it, but it's all about covering everyone - giving everyone access. The opposition is pissed. It's pissed because these are huge changes. Most legislation isn't really "felt" to this kind of degree. Most of us greet new legislation with a watered down effect - by the time the ripples hit us it's fairly non-impacting, overall. But this legislation will be felt by all of us, bigtime. And it's scary. It's a huge change and supporters seem to be more focused on hasty decision making - too much political opportunist thinking for our comfort level. These changes represent a restriction of trading rights. It's expensive as hell, and the more marginalized the opposition gets by the supporters (like Specter), the more pissed they get. I can tell you from second hand experience, the two townhall meetings in my area had organized support in the front of the room, hastily organized opposition in the back. The supporters protected their representative/senator with professional signs and side-door access while the opposition consisted of far more home-grown folks, homemade signs, restricted access no matter how early they showed up. Consequently, their arguments were about as homemade as well. The supporters had their verbiage canned and ready to use, while the opposition remained vague and unimpressive. The whole thing was a disapointment really. Further, Mccaskell subverted the whole thing by disavowing the house bill altogether and instead pointed to her laptop and stated the senate bill (1 of 4) contained none of the stuff that angered everyone - something no one there had access to read. Waste of freaking time.

Sorry for the long post...but it takes a lot of verbiage to anticipate and empathize with the crowd on this forum. Rhetoric aside, look at the bill for exactly what it does. It establishes a national exchange, which all citizens are required to participate in. Whatever minimum requirements the government decides, every insurance carrier that wants to be that required minimum insurance provider must meet them. The only insurance arrangement that gets out of this mandate is individual private insurance as a “grandfathered” plan. It must not change or renew or it loses grandfathered status and is subject to meeting the requirements of the exchange in order to qualify as a minimum requirement insurance plan. The citizen is now obligated to purchase a plan from an Exchange participating provider the moment a change is made. You must be very careful with the wording, because the bill is not making this insurance illegal, it's marginalized by keeping this insurance from qualifying as a required minimum insurance plan (it all gets labeled as “supplemental”) . I use that terminology because of the direct requirement for citizens to purchase insurance from the Health Exchange, which will determine the minimum requirements for a health insurance provider to be considered “exchange-participating”. It’s easy to see how the arguments then are made. No, private insurance is not outlawed. Rather, private insurance is not good enough by itself, to qualify a citizen as ‘compliant’ unless that private insurance plan meets the requirements by the Exchange. Thus, by extension, it is not a plan solely dictated by the customer. It always has to be a joint agreement by the citizen and the government, otherwise, it’s just supplemental, and the citizen still has to secure an Exchange qualifying plan. So a citizen is refused the right to get the kind of coverage they alone prefer. That’s a removal of choice. A trampled right. No spin necessary. This is entirely opposite of the direction of consumer level control. Company provided insurance and benefits have always been out of our hands. Companies are pandered to by the insurance providers, not the employees themselves, because we’ve grown accustomed to our job providing directly for this service (though for some reason we don’t have them directly provide our groceries or furniture). So instead of correcting this odd and unnatural arrangement, we expanded the entire concept into a “Health Exchange”. Granted there’s choice, but it’s filtered by a standard we don’t control. Now everyone’s insurance will be a group decision. We are now required to meet the expectations of bureaucrats for the base level of insurance coverage. Again…insurance companies will pander to bureaucrats, not to us. Except for supplemental coverage of course, which may well evolve into a stapled service depending on how the qualifications of the exchange are manipulated by lobbyists and politicians. The details of “exchange qualifications” say nothing about deductibles. So high-deductible based health savings accounts are up in the air. If they do qualify, the acceptable premiums are equally up in the air. If the government wishes, they can effectively kill them, or, force everyone to use them. The government has complete control over what kind of insurance method the entire public will choose, free to manipulate, just like our Tax laws. Complicate the system to obfuscate the machinations. The Health Exchange is a consolidation of power. Its magic is in the “qualification” parameter and required participation by the citizenry. That’s the giant bureaucratic hole for lobbyists and politicians to flex and stretch – and potentially save or screw the entire public. These new laws don’t leave with Obama, they stay with the office of the president; they stick to the land. The president appoints the commissioner of the Health Exchange, per the bill, and congress can change the qualifications of this Exchange however they want. What’s to stop another GWB and republican neo-con majority from citing “war on terror” costs or other propaganda, and requiring ALL participating-exchange health insurers to require, say, $4,000 cumulative deductibles? Devastating, since presumably, the public option must meet the same qualifications per the Exchange. Any insurance lobby is doubly dangerous because the power is consolidated to the “exchange”. Just imagine how minor changes to the Exchange Qualifications could provide profit opportunity, such as a sudden imposed deductible. Such a thing could easily make supplemental insurance a necessity. This kind of power in the hands of regularly elected ethically challenged politicians should scare the shit out of any citizen. This isn't a slippery slope, fear mongering argument any more than the arguments for a check and balance philosophical design of our very government. It's power structure 101. This is dangerous. And, of course, this is exactly what the politicians want – focus the solution on insurance coverage instead of the cost of healthcare. Yeah, I know, coverage alone helps with the cost of healthcare. And band-aids do help stop the bleeding for a gun shot wound. I wonder how much money is in healthcare cost solutions verses legislating insurance coverage…I can’t imagine lobbyists choosing one over the other, and who on earth would possibly benefit…?

So I was watching another Universe installment by the History Channel and they briefly touched on the subject of The Big Crunch theory - something about it simply being the opposite of the Big Bang in that the universe will eventually stop expanding and then contract back to that single point. Is there any reason to believe the physical laws could change, even subtley, as a result of this contraction? For that matter, is it at all plausible that the physical laws have even subtley changed over the course of our universe's 13 billion year history? In terms of fiction, that would seem interesting, but I'm betting it's short on scientific reasoning.

Thanks Swansont. I know I've asked a similar question before, but this did help clear up my confusion.

So, I was watching "Cosmic Holes" last night, and while discussing the nature of time and gravity, they talked about how clocks on earth run slower than clocks higher in the atmosphere - explaining how a gravitational field effects time. One scientist referred to the occupants in a rocket blasting through the atmosphere into space as "going into the future, faster" than those of us on the ground. So, my question is, if this was more exaggerated, to the point we could actually notice with the unaided eye...wouldn't they appear to be moving at a faster rate? Would those of us on the ground perceive them as moving even faster? Or slower? Or nothing at all? I could see it both ways. I could see it being slower, since we interpret their motion from OUR position on the ground, subject to a slower clock. But I could also see it being faster...I'm not sure why I think that.

And don't you think that's wrong? Why should a business be allowed to murder people and just pay fines for it? Sounds like people should be doing time, since people committed the crime. The business is their group label. So they construct a building and meet there everyday...big deal. They are a group of people and should be treated as such. Just to be clear, this is an argument for what is, which is not a sound argument for what should be. Not sure exactly what you mean here. An example would help as I'm drawing a blank on corporate law. I asked you about this in our last exchange on the subject. Again, did this leveraging happen asymmetrically? Did they manipulate and use regulation and law to do this? Or did they create this co-dependency by shrewd trading practices? Coke has their soda in every freaking restaraunt and fast food joint in the country, exclusively. If they started having financial problems to the point they could not provide a steady product flow to those who depend on them, then that could be considered systemic damage, no? If business suffers for these dependents, how is that fair? It's not their fault. It's not my fault as a consumer either. Yet all of us would be losing out. Granted, soda is a far cry from banking, but we all assume the risk when we participate in a market. No, I don't think it's fair for one to be voluntarily ignorant about the banking system while investing heavily in that very system, capitalizing and getting what one wants from the system and then crying foul and appealing to fairness when details of the system - that were always available - suddenly become apparent to them. A better educated citizenry is the answer to these issues. We are ridiculously stupid about how we prioritize education. My 13 year old ought to be able to tell me about stocks, the nature of money and how it gets its value. We ought to act like we live in a capitalist country and teach the framework required to live in it. Instead, we allow it to be "advanced" knowledge, so only a small number of people really understand it, while most just drift along oblivious to the entire concept. People are suffering because they are participating in a system they don't understand and can't make informed decisions about.

They do. And without the benefit of permanent self labelling, could this faction be dynamic from issue to issue? Without the official label, doesn't that remove the intensity of obligation to a group, even if they are in the group de facto?

No, you misread me. I was being sarcastic. My position is similar to yours. My position is about objective interpretation. If it's muddy now, then it was even muddier then, and I don't like retroactive punishments when we've enjoyed the luxury of time to mull it all over. And when it comes to punishing subordinates or even the leadership, due to the destructive nature of partisanship and political warfare, the requirements for launching investigations and punishments should be much higher and far more objective in interpretation. Anything less invites political hack jobs on our leadership and is far more destructive to our goverment and our people than criminals in office. I'll take a GWB over a scared-shitless-to-even-move president any day of the week. I'll take a GWB over a contentious government frozen in fear of opposition power. That's how you get conquered and fail at everything.