tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post3910240839134449953..comments2024-03-25T17:38:55.490-07:00Comments on Dar Kush: McCain is a good manSteven Barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13630529492355131777noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-11624542973947819222009-08-31T11:07:09.632-07:002009-08-31T11:07:09.632-07:00while not decreasing them for those who already ha...<i>while not decreasing them for those who already have good coverage.</i><br /><br />Three trillion for war; barely any conservatives said a word. A trillion for health care (across ten years) ... trauma, fear from the conservative side of the aisle.<br /><br />Terrible priorities from conservatives.Daniel Keys Moranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-34743842182015877132009-08-31T08:27:40.226-07:002009-08-31T08:27:40.226-07:00Like I've said: if UHC was ten times better, a...Like I've said: if UHC was ten times better, and half as expensive as private, there would still be specific circumstances under which private was superior. Stats are like that. For me, I believe what the WHO says about infant mortality, life spans, and customer satisfaction and costs. I assume that Conservatives do not. I can accept that.Steven Barneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13630529492355131777noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-6920088971341184272009-08-31T08:21:20.567-07:002009-08-31T08:21:20.567-07:00Not everyone calls Republicans liars for saying UH...Not everyone calls Republicans liars for saying UHC is "Socialism." I've heard Liberals call it that. But there is an attempt to control the language ("single payer") which is tiring, but necessary. To me, one of the issues is that while I can't think of many PRODUCTS I would want government providing, there are definitely many SERVICES that seem appropriate, and Health Care is one of them.Steven Barneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13630529492355131777noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-61449966435145723412009-08-31T05:19:39.854-07:002009-08-31T05:19:39.854-07:00Dan: Okay we are back to the death thing. If you a...Dan: Okay we are back to the death thing. If you are worried about people dying, then be worried about cancer the number1 or 2 medical DISEASE killer in most countries. Now google "cancer survival rates by country." You will find the U.S. is above the UHC countries in cancer survival rates. However, the study at this link<br />http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20080716/cancer-survival-rates-vary-by-country<br /><br />indicates a clear difference in U.S. survival rates by race. Hence, my desire to make sure that through incremental changes we bring up the survival rates for Blacks and other disadvantaged, while not decreasing them for those who already have good coverage.Marty Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06465745755940914756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-32855858416914805962009-08-31T02:49:14.006-07:002009-08-31T02:49:14.006-07:00In other words gradual evolution of the system rat...<i>In other words gradual evolution of the system rather than radical change.</i><br /><br />And another fifty years goes by with people dying for lack of care ...Daniel Keys Moranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-77632601651560038102009-08-30T19:22:34.562-07:002009-08-30T19:22:34.562-07:00"But without philosophy how do we determine t..."But without philosophy how do we determine the correct ends."<br /><br />I indulged in my unfortunate tendency to go overboard. Of course we need ideology and philosophy, which model and justify political acts, and that also orient these towards larger goals. However, all to often intellectuals become so enamored or repelled by elegant or horrific ideas and schemes, they loose track the real issues at stake. This fixation appears to have captured much of the Health Care debate, which here and elsewhere often degenerates into accusations of Corporatism! or Socialism! by the proponents of opponents towards each other, during which actual and important questions concerning the plan and care it would provide are frequently forgotten. In reading such exchanges, I'm reminded of Freeman Dyson's frustration at the USSR SETI conference, where enraptured theorists captured the proceedings, which degenerated into rarefied IDEAS about aliens, and suppositions about their ideologies (usually Leninist, given the orientation of the hosts). As Jerry Pournelle repeatedly warns: "The map is NOT the territory"! <br /><br />Ethiopian_InfidelAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-58188313321948444132009-08-30T10:34:36.912-07:002009-08-30T10:34:36.912-07:00So, in a momentary complete aside from the main po...So, in a momentary complete aside from the main political/corporate/ we're right/you're wrong discussions. Steve, I really enjoy reading the tidbits about Jason and how you're helping him develop. I'm filing away little tidbits to help raise my son and enjoy hearing your perspective.Travishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15353783271100674218noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-39975742727210088642009-08-30T09:24:59.484-07:002009-08-30T09:24:59.484-07:00Suzanne: There are two sides to every issue and yo...Suzanne: There are two sides to every issue and you can pretty much find evidence to prove anything you want. See the following link<br /><br />http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/hell.htm<br /><br />Which contains two scientific proofs, one that heaven is hotter than hell and the other that while heaven is indeed hot but hell is hotter.<br />Few if any systems are perfect and as you point out our current health care system is not. You point out that there the problems with the current system and therefore say we should change the system. Okay, but how do we know the new system won't be worse. It is very doubtful it will be perfect either. So I am not against some changes designed to fix the problem, but I believe they should be small incremental changes that can be evaluated and if necessary reversed. In other words gradual evolution of the system rather than radical change.Marty Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06465745755940914756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-82770954794170941242009-08-30T08:36:48.556-07:002009-08-30T08:36:48.556-07:00MArty
you appear to be all over the place
with wor...MArty<br />you appear to be all over the place<br />with worry about one health care model or another<br />Great Britain's system<br />is NOT the same<br />as the Canadian one<br /><br />private insurance companies <br />already ration care<br /><br />just ask anyone who has experienced<br />the denial of service<br />(after paying in gobs of bucks)<br />or the infamous "pre-existing condition escape hatch<br /><br />we get it<br />you want to have your private cverage<br />but what about all the people weho can't afford private coverage<br />and all the people whio have been dropped<br /><br />I have Medicare and private insurance<br />neither of which has cost either of them a single penny<br />in the last 15 years or more<br />even though I pay $134 a month<br />out of my SS for Medicare<br />and $50 a month<br />for my portion of the private insurance<br />which is through my ex's NY state <br />retirement benefit plan<br /><br />having worked at a medical college<br />in the Office of Medical Education for 12 years<br />I am well aware of the problems such companies have fostered<br />and that so many people <br />much less healthy than I am<br />have no coverage<br />is downright EVILsuzannehttp://suzannagig.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-84078291367670943742009-08-29T15:52:48.196-07:002009-08-29T15:52:48.196-07:00Lynn: Here is where my concerns about changing pla...Lynn: Here is where my concerns about changing plans come from. Currently there is no cure for Alzheimers, but there are drugs that will help. One of these drugs is Aricept. Now if you look at the sales for Aricept roughly 62.5% of worldwide sales is in the U.S. European sales are about a quarter of U.S. sales. I don't know why this is so, but if we start to model our health care after the European model, will that bring down our use of Aricept proportionally. If so will that result in less research into drugs like Aricept and also does that imply people in Europe with Alzheimers are getting less treatment. I don't have the answers to these questions, but I would like to see convincing evidence that we won't have the negative effects I'm worried about before we make any radical changes in health care.Marty Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06465745755940914756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-8053912014203274352009-08-29T14:36:32.922-07:002009-08-29T14:36:32.922-07:00My apologies -- my comment should have been addres...My apologies -- my comment should have been addressed to "anonymous."Foxessahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06754083123669916994noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-23468885984868737012009-08-29T14:35:37.382-07:002009-08-29T14:35:37.382-07:00Marty S -- There is one in production now. Danny ...Marty S -- There is one in production now. Danny Glover and some others we know are the driving forces for it. They've been working hard for several years to bring <i>Toussaint</i> to the screen.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0785063/" rel="nofollow">More info here</a>.<br /><br />Love, c.Foxessahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06754083123669916994noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-78882568298845437112009-08-29T11:59:57.473-07:002009-08-29T11:59:57.473-07:00@Marty: In theory, yeah, a different decision-maki...@Marty: In theory, yeah, a different decision-making point could make some sort of difference to the treatment of Alzheimers. But the only data that I know how to find, that compares outcomes between different countries, relates to life expectancy, infant mortality, and cost. The UN collects data from various countries on disability, but the site that reports that data says that, due to differences in data collection between countries, the data can't be used for cross-country comparisons.Lynn Gazis-Saxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16775215056055972392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-13152956065988792312009-08-29T10:45:53.126-07:002009-08-29T10:45:53.126-07:00Even more blatant is the fact that there has not b...Even more blatant is the fact that there has not been a single movie or documentary that I know of about the Haitian revolt. Yet, the Spartacus Rebellion, a slave uprising that occurred thousands of years earlier at a much farther geographical remove has gotten extensive Hollywood and scholastic attention. Both events were about human beings fighting against the forces of bondage. In the Haitain case, the victims of slavery prevailed, making for better dramatization than Spartacus' futile efforts. Yet, the annals of this event are sparse. A travesty.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-6627147314654219652009-08-29T05:34:40.762-07:002009-08-29T05:34:40.762-07:00Lynn: Any system has a decision making mechanism. ...Lynn: Any system has a decision making mechanism. When you change the system, you usually change the decision making mechanism. This results in different decisions. So going to UHC will change the way we make medical decisions. Will this hurt or help the people with a particular problem such as Alzheimers. Who knows. We just know it will be different. Those who favor the change feel fairly certain it will be a change for the better at least in areas they are concerned about. Those who are opposed believe it will be worse in at least the areas they are concerned about.Marty Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06465745755940914756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-54827155028961693612009-08-28T17:59:44.728-07:002009-08-28T17:59:44.728-07:00One will make you completely healthy and able to p...<em>One will make you completely healthy and able to perform normal activities for ten years after which you will die. The other will keep you alive for twenty-five years, but paralyzed from the waist down.</em><br /><br />In my case, beyond life expectancy, my biggest fear is Alzheimers. If I knew that different health systems made a radical difference in the probability that I'd spend a significant portion of my final years with significant dementia, that would make a big difference to me; I'd actually trade a few years of life expectancy to keep a sharp mind for longer (if such a trade off were possible).<br /><br />I'm not aware that different health systems do make any significant difference to the incidence of Alzheimers, though, so it's a moot point.Lynn Gazis-Saxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16775215056055972392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-9728527321311338472009-08-28T15:27:20.911-07:002009-08-28T15:27:20.911-07:00Ethiopian_Infidel: Given sufficiently important en...Ethiopian_Infidel: Given sufficiently important ends the means may justify the end. But without philosophy how do we determine the correct ends. People keep talking about life expectancy as the sine qua non of health care, but life expectancy is the average age at death of individuals who die in a given year. If I adopt a plan that results in nine people dieing at age 80 who would have lived to age 85, but allows one person who would have died at 20 to live to 85 this raises life expectancy, but is it really a better fairer plan. Also what about quality of life. Is an approach to health care that increases some peoples life span,but results in five times that many people being confined to wheelchairs for a significant portion of their life when another plan would have prevented this confinement better. Ask yourself this. You walk into a doctor with health problem. He informs you there are two treatments. One will make you completely healthy and able to perform normal activities for ten years after which you will die. The other will keep you alive for twenty-five years, but paralyzed from the waist down. Which would you choose. There is no one right answer. It depends on the individual.Marty Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06465745755940914756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-31246839294816543332009-08-28T13:04:49.658-07:002009-08-28T13:04:49.658-07:00Not really directly related to this post, but here...Not really directly related to this post, but here's a web site you might find interesting:<br /><br />http://deathriskrankings.com<br /><br />It's operated by Center for the Study and Improvement of Regulation at Carnegie Mellon University, and it provides calculations of the likelihood of dying, within the next year, which can be sorted in various ways. For instance, I plugged in my age, sex, race, and location, and got that my most likely cause of death was cancer, plugged in my husband's age, sex, and race, and got that he was about three times as likely to die within the next year as I was, and his most likely cause of death was circulatory problems, and then I checked likelihood of dying within the next year, for people my age, sorted by gender and race, and found that, with being male and black both increasing your risk of dying, being black increased the risk more (from which I infer that social causes figure a lot here, since it's more plausible to me that the sex differences in longevity could have a significant biological contributing factor, such as women being built to survive more pregnancies than we now need to, than that the racial differences would).<br /><br />Comparing the US to Europe, for people about my age, this calculator says that you're more likely to die within the next year if you're in the US, and the breakdown shows that there are some particular causes where the death rate's much higher in the US (for instance, homicide and endocrine/metabolic diseases), and others not so much.<br /><br />I just did those few quick comparisons only for people my age, but you could do a lot more with it.Lynn Gazis-Saxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16775215056055972392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-31145312660001868112009-08-28T13:00:03.958-07:002009-08-28T13:00:03.958-07:00Mike, I don't believe conservatives about much...Mike, I don't believe conservatives about much any longer. They believe in the Constitution, limited government, and fiscal responsibility, except that they trashed the Constitution, blew up the size of government, and bankrupted the country.<br /><br />Do rank and file conservatives want to get rid of medicare and social security? No, not the ones depending on it, which is a large number. But the people running the party and setting the agenda surely do. Conservative working people didn't vote for Bush with the intention of having bankruptcy laws tightened for the benefit of rapacious credit card companies; it's just what they got once they voted Bush in.<br /><br />It's hard for me to credit "conservatives," by which I mean the people actually running the Republican Party in this case, for trying to destroy Social Security and failing. Wouldn't Private Investment Accounts have worked out great, back when the DOW was at 14000?<br /><br />Of course it's at 9500 now.....Daniel Keys Moranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-59732115540033978062009-08-28T08:35:09.673-07:002009-08-28T08:35:09.673-07:00>But I want conservatives to stand up and hones...>But I want conservatives to stand up and honestly say what they believe: that social security and medicare are socialism, and they want to get rid of them both,<<br /><br />While the idea of abolishing those programs is definitly more popular in conservative circles, I don't think that the majority of people who self-identify as "conservatives" honestly _do_ want to get rid of social security and medicare. <br /><br />Do keep in mind that those who self-identify as "conservative" outnumber those who self-identify as "liberal" in all 50 states, and if a majority of them wanted to abolish those programs I think we'd see more actual proposals to do just that then is the case. <br /><br />One could argue that this means that those who self-identify as conservatives aren't being true to their ideology, but ultimately a group's ideology is what that group actually believes, neither more nor less.Mike Rhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13634414529649908616noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-24858650595926268582009-08-27T20:52:05.927-07:002009-08-27T20:52:05.927-07:00"I believe neither pure Capitalism nor pure s..."I believe neither pure Capitalism nor pure socialism works"<br /><br />I confess to being uninterested and bored with ideology. In polices, I believe the ends DO often justify the means. By this I mean obtaining the aims of most rational people, maximum individual and collective prosperity, progress and happiness, are what matter, not, within sane limits, the mechanisms for achieving these. For instance, I categorically reject Leninism not from distaste for arguing the fine points of Dialectical Materialism, but from the unmitigated disaster the Party Vanguard + Collectivism model produces wherever it's implemented (Ukraine, China, Cambodia, Ethiopia..). Dido for Nazism and Theocracy. All else from Socialism through Quesi-Fascism and Corporatism and unto limited Anarchism's up for consideration. I'll consider championing whatever political system has a proven record of delivering the goods or a rational prospect for doing so. The results, not (again, within sane limits) the process matters. Or, as the celebrated Physicist and Futurist Freeman Dyson proclaimed at a SETI conference in the USSR: To Hell with Philosophy! <br /><br />Ethiopian_InfidelAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-58235549634691161162009-08-27T14:03:02.710-07:002009-08-27T14:03:02.710-07:00Dan: I have stated before that I am happy with my ...Dan: I have stated before that I am happy with my current medical coverage and unhappy that my company will force me to give it up for medicare next year. So I am one conservative who is unhappy with medicare. Similarly, give me all the money paid into social security for me, with the interest and I will gladly give up my social security payments. I would be much better off financially that way.<br /><br />On the other hand I realize that without social security my parents would have been in worse financial straits and my sisters and I would have had to pony up more money to support them than we did with social security. On the whole for people in general I think social security is good, because most people would not have the discipline to save the money if it was given directly to them.<br />At any rate I do think we need a medical safety net for those who would have none without it, but I don't favor the public option approach to the safety net and I think the number of individuals who need it are fewer than advertised. The 47 million number includes people who are already eligible for medicaid but haven't enrolled and younger people who can afford to purchase their own insurance, but don't choose to.Marty Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06465745755940914756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-54501545946103457162009-08-27T12:31:46.994-07:002009-08-27T12:31:46.994-07:00It was before my time but Ronald Reagan did a comm...It was before my time but Ronald Reagan did a commercial and LP talking about the evils of socialized medicine (referring to Medicare), which most people today seem to think works ok. <br /><br />It's surreal how well this fits in with current debate.<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FzNTB1qtFAShady_Gradyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00996625985002373392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-56286255371157668442009-08-27T12:05:49.388-07:002009-08-27T12:05:49.388-07:00On the subject of males knowing less about how to ...On the subject of males knowing less about how to please a woman than a woman knowing how to please a man. I think it's not really an apples to apples comparison. <br /><br />Using a puzzle analogy: most men tend to be the same puzzle (with a few variations). In other words, when a woman learns to make love to a single man, she can be pretty sure that the techniques she develops with him will mostly work on other men. I realize that this is a sweeping generalization and therefore not true when fully applied to an individual, but in GENERAL this seems to be true. <br /><br />Women on the other hand are generally their own puzzle. One can be a 1000 piece puzzle of a corvette, while the other is an ocean landscape with 4500 pieces. When men spend a long time with a woman, they basically learn how to make love to that woman...they are a good lover for her and her alone (hence the reason that most women find that they have more orgasms in long term relationships). Should that relationship end through disolution or death, the skills that the man learned in this relationship don't necessarily carry over to the new woman. He basically needs to start from scratch and learn to build a new puzzle. Which can be fun too. <br /><br />In my view, the wisest thing a male can do is to know that they don't know and allow their partner to guide them (either directly or indirectly) to where each puzzle piece fits. <br /><br />Peace,<br />Scott.Scott Mastertonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9339191.post-4218189183281695942009-08-27T11:37:30.885-07:002009-08-27T11:37:30.885-07:00Actually, if you want to know where I think conser...Actually, if you want to know where I think conservatives are dishonest, it's not in calling the public option in healthcare socialism; I don't think that's accurate, but it's not worth quibbling over.<br /><br />But I want conservatives to stand up and honestly say what they believe: that social security and medicare are socialism, and they want to get rid of them both, because socialism is bad'n'stuff.Daniel Keys Moranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com