nathaniel

Your point, what is it? What comparison would you now put forth, and how would you show it accounts for the systematic differences in healthcare needs between the US and its peers? Ever heard the one about the drunk searching for his keys underneath a lamppost? Lost them in the bar but the bar's closed... There are real differences between the US and parts of the world with "better" healthcare. Ignoring them is the surest way to perpetuate our healthcare woes. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

That just proves how dangerous your posts can be. Be thankful you don't live in Boston! My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

If your post was a bomb, it could explode and destroy your house! My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

No, I meant making comparisons between other countries and the US on the basis of raw healthcare figures. That's never been done, and to the extent that amateurs like us try it's meaningless. It's an extremely difficult academic problem, and as such it forces to zero the relevance of doing so in debates about US healthcare. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

w1: What are the different altitudes you can jump from? --- w1: hey asshole! w1: what? w2: no, you're doing it wrong, you have to say count off at the end My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Pareto Efficiency It's not my idea, but it's difficult to disagree with, imo. Definitely not the only way of looking at things, but it is key to most contemporary economics. Two big problems are 1- people develop misplaced expectations of what they have (they misunderestimate risks) and 2- people seem to really care about their relative wealth more than their actual wealth. People feel truly aggrieved when they don't keep up with the Joneses, even when their standard of living stays the same or even improves but more slowly than the Joneses. Tough nuts, imo. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Hence the magical thinking. You can't compare numbers between nations without examining the demographics, because the demographics indicate different healthcare needs. The demographics also indicate factors that excessively complicate the redistribution of wealth involved in matching the healthcare spending distribution from one nation to another. I don't know how to underscore this--it's an extremely difficult problem and probably not solvable. It's a dead end insofar as it serves as an analogy. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

That is actually true, the poor choose lifestyles that cause premature birth and they do not participate in prenatal care at rates commensurate with wealthier groups. Even the basic kinds of prenatal care that don't cost much or are already subsidized. I suggest you talk to someone who works in prenatal care with the poor if you doubt this--I have a close relative who does. She expresses amazement at how difficult it is to work with her poor patients and the disregard they show for their unborn. Poor people suffer from low education levels, from botched incentives that reward them for not pursuing their long term interests, from social reinforcement of bad habits, etc. Their lousy healthcare is as much a symptom as a cause of their poverty. Speaking in aggregate, of course. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Poverty causes distinct healthcare problems, which are properties of individuals. Your slogan refers to a property of the nation--it has no bearing on individuals in poverty. It is the aggregation of the properties of the individuals that define the nation, not vice versa. Which actual numbers are entirely inapplicable because they do not reflect our demographics due to our poverty. They do not represent the costs or the effects of those benefits on our people. There is no purpose in treating people for conditions they don't have. What's more, the money doesn't translate evenly for economic reasons--the incentive skewing effects of such a massive wealth transfer and how it must be applied to achieve the indicated outcomes. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It's batty, imo, to talk about a nation having or not having healthcare as though it were a point of arbitrage. Healthcare is goods and services that are consumed by people. It costs money. Whether people choose to buy healthcare, whom they buy it for, and the rate at which they choose to do so should be their responsibility in my book. It does get down to philosophy. What you're doing is using healthcare as a mask for wealth redistribution. That's fine, but quit beating around the bush. Start talking forthright about the quantities of dollars you're taking from Peter to pay Paul, and what you'll do with those quantities. Instead we get purely magical predictions of what benefits would come to Paul if we only had infinite funds to bestow upon him. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

That's a slogan. It does not reflect our demographics to say that all, or most, americans are rich. Most are not, and the depth of poverty inside the US exceeds that of most of our "peer" states by a huge margin. Among skydivers you don't get a good sampling of the population. We're in luck tho, the US census provides plenty of accurate data for us to talk about. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

That depends on your philosophy. IMO there's no single cause of poverty in the US, and the proximate causes often obscure the root causes. Part of it is undoubtedly the human condition, fault of the way the brain works and interacts with our society--risk aversion coupled with inability to calculate probabilities, or inability to plan ahead. Some of it was due to skewed incentives, as demonstrated by welfare reform, and some of it probably is still. Some of it is self reinforcing feedback with society--there is a culture of poverty. And then there's the regression effect. Somebody is always going to be driven toward the extreme end of the wealth distribution. What makes the US different from other parts of the world is our history, and in particular that we're made up of immigrants. Most of our population is due to ancestry most of whom moved here for the productivity benefits, the data seem to show. This way of looking at it, we're a nation built out of poverty and it is striking not that we have poor but that we have rich at all. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Press conference when they were released on bail. Classic! My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Yeah. It's only against the terms of service if you get caught tho :). Many MMO companies, esp Blizzard, are being extremely dense, to an extent that's seldom been rivalled in business. They have within their grasp the ability to print money almost, if they would only start selling characters, gold and goods per market demand. They could easily outcompete the farmers with a few lines of code, and take most of that money for themselves. Their loss, and the farmers' gain, ultimately. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

You would measure the efficiency of the oil refining industry by price of gas, distances travelled, and rate of vehicular breakdown, and purport to thus make comparisons between countries. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

HERESY! Indeed. Spending, lifespan and infant mortality are not good measures of healthcare. Someone is taking the "all people created equal" bit too literally. Prior demographics in the US predispose us to much worse outcomes than most places with apparently better healthcare. Poverty, anyone? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Well it's not poker, but you're still allowed to speculate on land and objects in multiplayer games like World of Warcraft and Second Life, and cash it out into real money on a third party auction site. Although ebay just banned virtual goods auctions, there's still a thriving business in it elsewhere. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

VMWare FTW. It's not without flaws, for instance running games inside vmware is a bad idea or impossible in some cases. If you're curious, you can download and run the VMWare player for free. The free VMWare player doesnt let you create new virtual machines, but you can get premade VMWare virtual machines made out free software, like linux or freebsd. So if you're looking to get your feet wet with linux, this is one way to do it without making the jump. http://www.vmware.com/products/player/ VMWare player http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/cat/45 Prebuilt free operating systems My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Yeah, there are two routes I can see to fix the malpractice issue. One is to standardize the use of specialized arbitration services, ideally staffed with people knowledgeable about healthcare and the specific aspects of physiology in question. The other is to do the same thing inside the court system, kinda like how we have Family Court, and some states and localities have special drug courts or traffic courts. Either way it allows the process to speed up by getting the judge and administrivia types ramped up on the same issues that crop up again and again. I'm inclined to lean towards arbitration bodies, if a neutral hosting body could be founded, instead of special courts. That seems it's going to be the outcome no matter what. Most large drug co's are already slashing their research budgets, they're not able to find economies that make it worthwhile. On the small scale, venture capital and the like, things will probably continue unabated with or without advertising. So I kinda think it's moot whether marketing is restricted or not--the economy is building resistance naturally. I am concerned that mandatory coverage without additional interventions could turn into a boondoggle, with doctors and hospitals potentially gaining incentives to overdiagnose and overtreat, hence taxing everybody through excess premiums. el Presidente's proposed taxation was at the wrong end--all income taken as healthcare subsidy should be taxed, imo. Tax benefits, if any, should be granted to encourage healthcare that benefits society in addition to just the patient, such as preventative care, vaccination for communicable diseases, proper sanitation, etc. But not things like emergency visits, hereditary diseases, trauma care, etc. that just reflect a person's own bad luck or his own poor choices in life. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

We call it Amber Alert, and we don't wait for the outcome of an investigation to do it. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

If you want a good story, put all the commandos in wingsuits and have them fly up over the wing Just have them watch for the empennage My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

http://goodbye-microsoft.com/ My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

fwiw fedex has been slipping a little bit lately too. I was at home 2 days when they said they "attempted" to deliver the box and nobody was home. They didn't even ring the doorbell. On the 3rd day I had heard a truck pull up outside but it wasn't in FedEx livery, so I didn't go up to greet it (I live in a city). Went to get the mail later and lo and behold they had dropped my package outside the front door. If they were going to do that, just do it the first day...the package didn't require a signature... My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

e) None of the above? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?