OT: Straight From The Horses Mouth

[paramount]

I really thought the end game (of Obamacare) was to end up with 5 or 6 large health care insurers.

Sort of like the Chase, BOFA’s of health insurance.

[spdrun]

Fuck you and your horseshit. Everything is very black and white to you.
…
For him it was about the attention to the elderly in day to day circumstances. The lack of preventative care that could prolong life.

Hey, at least I don’t resort to ad hominem, which is how you know that the other side has lost a debate. Thanks 🙂

Funny that life expectancy in most of Europe, including the UK beats the US by a few years.

[CDMA ENG]

[quote=spdrun]

Fuck you and your horseshit. Everything is very black and white to you.
…
For him it was about the attention to the elderly in day to day circumstances. The lack of preventative care that could prolong life.

Hey, at least I don’t resort to ad hominem, which is how you know that the other side has lost a debate. Thanks 🙂

Funny that life expectancy in most of Europe, including the UK beats the US by a few years.[/quote]

Your arguement is weak though mine is no winner either and really mine is not even an arguement because I have expressed no conclusion one way or the other.

You just tend to be nasty and mean spirited in 80% of your post. So the the point still stands.

Lastly your conclusion of life spans has very little to do with health care systems.

It has everything to do with the way americans live thier lives compared to other countries.

We work far to much and too hard in this country compare to our European cousins. I have even had job offers because they wanted staff from India, China, and the US becasue they could not get their own citizens to work hard enough to bring projects in on time.

Lastly, you dont actually win many arguement or even issue good points of debate so, in fact you didnt “win” either.

CE

[spdrun]

But I agree with you re: working hours. And feel that a good safety-net is one way to reduce job-related stress and discrete hiring costs (thus enabling employers to hire more people with fewer average hours). This should be beneficial in itself.

Lastly, I’m a New Yorker largely raised in NJ, and I tell it like I see it. If you don’t like it, go bite me, and feel free to ignore-list me.

[CDMA ENG]

[quote=spdrun]But I agree with you re: working hours. And feel that a good safety-net is one way to reduce job-related stress and discrete hiring costs (thus enabling employers to hire more people with fewer average hours). This should be beneficial in itself.

Lastly, I’m a New Yorker largely raised in NJ, and I tell it like I see it. If you don’t like it, go bite me, and feel free to ignore-list me.[/quote]

Whatever man… I typically get taken for a NY Italian.

I lived in NY to but was raised in Las Vegas. I have the demeanor of a NY’er though I am really more of a Chicago Italian due to my family being from there…

You can straight to the point and outspoken… but you don’t have to be nasty about it…

Your comment above is the example of a good exchange.

CE

[all]

[quote=spdrun]So what?

Perhaps different spending priorities would have produced unprecedented advances in biotech, artificial organs, etc, and delayed the Internet by 20 years. Would society be worse for it?

In short – who gives a flying spaghetti fuck? Besides, there was plenty of good civilian research in the late 1800s and interwar period of the 1900s without the massive/parasitic military-industrial complex to fund it. Other mechanisms of funding existed.[/quote]

Military innovation during the 1920-1930 interwar period is why we have radar, space program, submarines…

Military drives innovation, creating the need (you need to innovate in order to survive) and the funding (you need to give up your time/goods in order to survive).

The first few minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey explain the importance of military innovation – you either do it or it gets done to you.

[ucodegen]

[quote=spdrun]But I agree with you re: working hours. And feel that a good safety-net is one way to reduce job-related stress and discrete hiring costs (thus enabling employers to hire more people with fewer average hours). This should be beneficial in itself.[/quote]A good ‘safety net’ doesn’t encourage better working conditions. It may actually do the opposite. It also helps people stay out of work and not bother complaining to their legislators about the unfair tactics some companies use. Its a form of throwing money at someone to keep them quiet.

Simple approach would be to reduce H2Bs (it is reducing the wages of the white collar labor force), tighten the borders/stop giving citizenship away (it is reducing the wages of the blue collar labor force). Labor is a supply/demand function. A lot of the need for the high hours needed to make profits has been from the 3 Ps (Piss Poor Planning). Companies not wanting to invest in tools&training because the labor is cheap enough to throw manpower at it. Contributing to it is something that almost looks like the inverse Peter Principle. The incompetent get promoted because they don’t offend and are no threat to the ladder climbers above them (they are not likely to be able to cut ahead of them due to better skill). To offset the effect on the company, they work the bottom end harder (not smarter)… so how is extending a social safety net going to help here?

[spdrun]

I’m saying that people staying out of work is a GOOD thing — I consider one-to-1.5 (i.e. one is part time, or both work 30hr/wk) working parent families (assuming two parents) to be ideal. You’d have fewer people working just for the insurance, and insurance/benefits would become less of a tool for employers to tie employees to jobs with crappy conditions of employment.

[spdrun]

I disagree — nuclear deterrent is cheap, and no one will be very likely to “do unto” a nuclear-armed state.

And just because the violence industry (call it what it is) has been the source of a lot of past innovation doesn’t make it the ONLY source of innovation possible, especially going forward.

Besides, we’re not only talking about R&D money…
Spending several trillion in the Middle East over the past decade has been totally inexcusable. That’s 10 grand per person in the US, think about that.

[Jazzman]

[quote=dumbrenter][quote=Jazzman]Here we go again. The documentary is NOT about socialized vs private. That is not the debate. The core issues are about how care is administered and how it encourages out of control spending, often to the detriment of patient health, and sometimes with fatal consequences. There is a direct relationship between increasing costs and decreasing quality care. Doctors and hospitals obviously understand this better than we do. Whether you have an aunt in the Netherlands, or an ailing mum in the UK, if you haven’t watched the documentary you may be missing the point here.[/quote]

To copy from Mark Twain, those posters who are expressing opinions here are not going to confine themselves to the narrow constraint of the link you posted.[/quote]
LOL! That’s patently absurd, and you clearly haven’t seen the documentary like many of the other posters you refer to. If you don’t mind me saying so, it is a little parochial of you. However, I’m going to take some of the blame here as my post was provocative. It was intended to goad people into watching the documentary. I had hoped that non-political, non-biased factual information coming from doctors and hospitals might diffuse the “war” and make an intelligent contribution to the debate. Too bad so many are so intent on denying themselves the opportunity of finding out the facts and truths. I’m left wondering if that is the problem here and whether it’s worth the effort.

[CA renter]

[quote=spdrun]I’m saying that people staying out of work is a GOOD thing — I consider one-to-1.5 (i.e. one is part time, or both work 30hr/wk) working parent families (assuming two parents) to be ideal. You’d have fewer people working just for the insurance, and insurance/benefits would become less of a tool for employers to tie employees to jobs with crappy conditions of employment.[/quote]

Could not agree more, spdrun. By taking healthcare (and retirement) off of the employers, it enables them to be more nimble and focus more on getting the job done. As you’ve said, it also gives workers the flexibility to go where they are best suited since they’re not tied to the job for healthcare (or retirement) reasons. IMHO, employers should have nothing to do with healthcare or retirement issues.

[livinincali]

[quote=CA renter][quote=spdrun]I’m saying that people staying out of work is a GOOD thing — I consider one-to-1.5 (i.e. one is part time, or both work 30hr/wk) working parent families (assuming two parents) to be ideal. You’d have fewer people working just for the insurance, and insurance/benefits would become less of a tool for employers to tie employees to jobs with crappy conditions of employment.[/quote]

Could not agree more, spdrun. By taking healthcare (and retirement) off of the employers, it enables them to be more nimble and focus more on getting the job done. As you’ve said, it also gives workers the flexibility to go where they are best suited since they’re not tied to the job for healthcare (or retirement) reasons. IMHO, employers should have nothing to do with healthcare or retirement issues.[/quote]

CAR I think somebody hacked your account. Your giving up on defined benefit retirement plans? It can’t be true.

[CA renter]

Social Security is a defined benefit retirement plan/insurance, and while employers contribute to it (which would likely always be the case), it is a public plan. I am a staunch supporter of DB pension plans…for everyone. Always was, and always will be. 🙂

I should amend my comment by saying that the employer would contribute to the plan, but that the plan is fully portable, and not on the employers’ books.

[livinincali]

[quote=CA renter]Social Security is a defined benefit retirement plan/insurance, and while employers contribute to it (which would likely always be the case), it is a public plan. I am a staunch supporter of DB pension plans…for everyone. Always was, and always will be. 🙂

I should amend my comment by saying that the employer would contribute to the plan, but that the plan is fully portable, and not on the employers’ books.[/quote]

You’d have to radically redesign most DB plans because it would be incredible difficult use a percentage of highest or average of highest salary and transfer the benefit. If you had a job that was averaging around $50K and the actuaries were planing for a $35K DB, and then went to a $100K which would correspond to a $70K DB there’s not a way for the DB to pay. The money to pay you $70K annually wasn’t planned for and doesn’t exist.

I favor defined contribution that can be switched to a defined benefit using something like an annuity. That way you don’t have any of the incentives for various abuses by employees and employers. Want the safety of a DB put your total defined contributions and investment earnings into a risk pool that guarantees a fixed payment.

The reason nobody getting a defined benefit pension likes that idea is because they know that they can get more by gaming their defined benefit than an annuity would pay from their defined contributions. The problem is that somebody has to make that difference up and the reality is that nobody will so defined benefit pensioners are going to get screwed somehow. Most likely it will come through bankruptcy imposed haircuts.

[Coronita]

Probably not representative of everyone, since I guess people who posted here are the ones that got screwed. But it’s just interesting to see…

http://mycancellation.com/

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