I'll believe its a crisis when peoples start acting

[Jeemie]

The problem with "waiting for humans to act like it's a crisis" is that humans severely discount the future in favor of immediate needs.

It's how our brains evolved, and it made sense when our lives depended upon satisfying our immediate needs.

This applies even to those who believe AGW is a threat that we must act upon before nature signals us of an immediate threat (because if we wait for such a signal, it will be too late to do anything about it).

Even though those that think AGW is a threat understand the above intellectually, it is still difficult for them to fight millions of years of evolutionary hard-wiring...so their actions oftentimes will STILL belie their words.

[MarleysGh0st]

But...having your own private jet is great!

Not that I know from personal experience, but I can imagine...

[Jeemie]

But...having your own private jet is great!

Not that I know from personal experience, but I can imagine...

I was flown in a private jet once.

They are nice.

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

New York Time's Cap and Trade Cheerleader Thomas Friedman's modest home

[hf_jai]

What I don't understand is why ANYONE would judge whether global climate change is a crisis or not by the actions (or inactions) of a bunch of politicians.

[Weyoun]

The problem with "waiting for humans to act like it's a crisis" is that humans severely discount the future in favor of immediate needs.

It's how our brains evolved, and it made sense when our lives depended upon satisfying our immediate needs.

This applies even to those who believe AGW is a threat that we must act upon before nature signals us of an immediate threat (because if we wait for such a signal, it will be too late to do anything about it).

Even though those that think AGW is a threat understand the above intellectually, it is still difficult for them to fight millions of years of evolutionary hard-wiring...so their actions oftentimes will STILL belie their words.

I think that's a copout

[ten96lt]

Executive flies Chef 860 miles to prepare pizza

It will be a casual lunch ...

Londoners are going to wonder what the hell chicken and hot sauce have to do with Hyde Park.

Spoiler

I know it's a district of Chicago.

I'm from the Chicago area and I don't even know what Chicken and hot sauce have to do with Hyde Park. That's where the University of Chicago is.

[silverscreenselect]

The United States will believe a crisis exists when the President has to get in and out of the White House by rowboat.

The U.S. will believe it's a crisis when we have a president who treats it as a crisis and not as another campaign issue, to be brought up whenever the particular audience warrants it and then discarded until the next time it's a convenient talking point.

The environment is like health care with Obama, something to make a stirring speech about every now and then and leaving the actual work of legislation to Pelosi and company who come up with a monstrosity that Obama is more than content to allow to get hacked to bits and then filibustered/amended into oblivion.

Obama needed to pick and choose his battlefields wisely in getting legislation through and built on accomplishments. Instead, he's resorting to the con that everything is an immediate crisis to which only his own, poorly thought through and difficult to comprehend legislation is the answer. He's either the most inept president since James Buchanan at getting legislation through or a cynical huckster (my money's on the latter).

[Thousandaire]

Economy in crisis, Democrat's fixes making it worse.

Health care, best system in the world, Democrat's fixes will ruin it.

Global warming, manufactured crisis, Democrat's fixes won't help, except make a few people rich (see economy above).

[silverscreenselect]

Health care, best system in the world, Democrat's fixes will ruin it.

Canada, Britain, Sweden, and France, among others, have "survived" nationalized health care.

Our system is the best for those who have very good insurance or are very rich or very healthy. Unfortunately, a lot of people fall through the cracks. And for those who think they are either very healthy or have very good health insurance, they usually don't find out to the contrary until it's too late for them to do anything about it.

But as I've said on a number of occasions, Obama isn't interested in fixing the system. He's just interested in making it look like he's interested in fixing the system.

[BackInTex]

Canada, Britain, Sweden, and France, among others, have "survived" nationalized health care.

While Canada may have survived, a lot of Canadians have not.
While Britain my have survived, a lot of Britains have not.
Same for the French.

Our system is the best for those who have very good insurance or are very rich or very healthy. Unfortunately, a lot of people fall through the cracks.

Nationalized healthcare will not fix the cracks other than to make sure those who previously did not fall through the cracks, will now, also. Oh, and the cracks will not be called cracks. They will be called policy and guidelines.

And for those who think they are either very healthy or have very good health insurance, they usually don't find out to the contrary until it's too late for them to do anything about it.

Well, them's the breaks for living in a free society. Sometimes people get burned. But the alternative is worse.

[silverscreenselect]

Canada, Britain, Sweden, and France, among others, have "survived" nationalized health care.

While Canada may have survived, a lot of Canadians have not.
While Britain my have survived, a lot of Britains have not.
Same for the French.

Life expectancy tables 2008:

France (#5 in the world) 80.87
Sweden (#7) 80.63
Canada (#10) 80.34
UK (#26) 78.7
US (#30) 78.06

So I guess a lot of Americans haven't survived either under our best health care in the world. We rank right below Bosnia.

[hf_jai]

Well, them's the breaks for living in a free society. Sometimes people get burned. But the alternative is worse.

I suspect you would not say that if it were your child who will be uninsurable and therefore unable to get life-saving medical care because of a pre-existing condition. I hope you never find out. But my daughter will become uninsured (and uninsurable) when she turns 19 next year if she drops out of college, at 23 if she stays in. We will be hard-pressed to buy her diabetes supplies out of pocket, and it will be a long time, if ever, before she can afford them. If she develops complications (which is almost guaranteed eventually), or God forbid gets pregnant, she will become a charity case. She may die, and you will end paying for whatever care she gets anyway.

The list of childhood illnesses that can leave a young adult uninsurable is practically endless.

Fwiw, I also do not believe the alternatives are worse. There may be problems with the Canadian system, but the majority of Canadians like it very much. There is no political pressure in Canada, none at all, to change to a system like ours. Even the most conservative Canadian politicians wouldn't dare to suggest that sort of change.

Nor have I ever known anyone who received medical care in France or Germany complain about the quality or cost of their care and I have known quite a few. We used to have to take our son to a German pediatrician, because the American military hospital was so far away; he was well cared for and it didn't break our budget.

[Thousandaire]

Well, them's the breaks for living in a free society. Sometimes people get burned. But the alternative is worse.

I suspect you would not say that if it were your child who will be uninsurable and therefore unable to get life-saving medical care because of a pre-existing condition. I hope you never find out. But my daughter will become uninsured (and uninsurable) when she turns 19 next year if she drops out of college, at 23 if she stays in. We will be hard-pressed to buy her diabetes supplies out of pocket, and it will be a long time, if ever, before she can afford them. If she develops complications (which is almost guaranteed eventually), or God forbid gets pregnant, she will become a charity case. She may die, and you will end paying for whatever care she gets anyway.

Have you tried Medicaid?

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

Life expectancy is a poor statistic for determining the efficacy of a health care system because it fails the first criterion of assuming interaction with the health care system. For example, open any newspaper and, chances are, there are stories about people who die "in their sleep," in a car accident or of some medical ailment before an ambulance ever arrives. If an individual dies with no interaction with the health care system, then his death tells us little about the quality of a health care system. Yet all such deaths are computed into the life expectancy statistic.

Life expectancy also largely violates the second criterion - a health care system has, at most, minimal impact on longevity. One way to see this is to reexamine the table constructed by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The interpretation that the Center for Economic and Policy Research wants readers to derive from Table 1 is that the United States would be better off with a system of universal health care. However, a careful examination of that table yields a more accurate interpretation: There is no relationship between life expectancy and spending on health care. Greece, the country that spends the least per capita on health care, has higher life expectancy than seven other countries, including Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. Spain, which spends the second least per capita on health care, has higher life expectancy than ten other countries that spend more.

More robust statistical analysis confirms that health care spending is not related to life expectancy. Studies of multiple countries using regression analysis found no significant relationship between life expectancy and the number of physicians and hospital beds per 100,000 population or health care expenditures as a percentage of GDP. Rather, life expectancy was associated with factors such as sanitation, clean water, income, and literacy rate.8 A recent study examined cross-national data from 1980 to 1998. Although the regression model used initially found an association between health care expenditure and life expectancy, that association was no longer significant when gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was added to the model.9 Indeed, GDP per capita is one of the more consistent predictors of life expectancy.

Yet the United States has the highest GDP per capita in the world, so why does it have a life expectancy lower than most of the industrialized world? The primary reason is that the U.S. is ethnically a far more diverse nation than most other industrialized nations. Factors associated with different ethnic backgrounds - culture, diet, etc. - can have a substantial impact on life expectancy. Comparisons of distinct ethnic populations in the U.S. with their country of origin find similar rates of life expectancy. For example, Japanese-Americans have an average life expectancy similar to that of Japanese.10

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA547Com ... ealth.html

[BackInTex]

I suspect you would not say that if it were your child who will be uninsurable and therefore unable to get life-saving medical care because of a pre-existing condition.

Let me make this clear.

I would never ever feel that others should be required to support me or anyone in my family, in any way, what so ever, just becase I live in the same country. Period.

That said, where I have paid, either voluntarily or by force, into a system that is suppose to provide me or my family with a benefit should it be needed, I will fight for that benefit. But, I do not want to be forced into anything.

The problem with socialized medical is that the inputs are not enough for the desired outputs. Therefore the outputs will be rationed (as those outputs are rationed now). What is deemed to be wrong with our current system is that the rationing is not fair. Why does anyone think the rationing will be any more fair under a govt. system? What will happen is this:

Current input: x
Current output: x - y

Under a government system:
Input: x + t
Output: (x+t) - (y+t)

The output is the same. The input in more. Thus, what we have left to spend on butter (or guns) is less.

[Appa23]

Yet the United States has the highest GDP per capita in the world, so why does it have a life expectancy lower than most of the industrialized world? The primary reason is that the U.S. is ethnically a far more diverse nation than most other industrialized nations. Factors associated with different ethnic backgrounds - culture, diet, etc. - can have a substantial impact on life expectancy. Comparisons of distinct ethnic populations in the U.S. with their country of origin find similar rates of life expectancy. For example, Japanese-Americans have an average life expectancy similar to that of Japanese.10

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA547Com ... ealth.html

Winner, winner. Chicken dinner.

[silverscreenselect]

Yet the United States has the highest GDP per capita in the world, so why does it have a life expectancy lower than most of the industrialized world? The primary reason is that the U.S. is ethnically a far more diverse nation than most other industrialized nations. Factors associated with different ethnic backgrounds - culture, diet, etc. - can have a substantial impact on life expectancy. Comparisons of distinct ethnic populations in the U.S. with their country of origin find similar rates of life expectancy. For example, Japanese-Americans have an average life expectancy similar to that of Japanese.10

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA547Com ... ealth.html

Winner, winner. Chicken dinner.

Or let's say that those ethnically diverse people in the US don't have access to quality health care in this country just as their counterparts in other parts of the world don't have access to quality health care in their native countries and are just dragging the life expectancy numbers down for everyone else.

The problem isn't how much total money is being spent on health care, it's how it's being distributed. We have a system where some people are able to spend enormous amounts on health care and others can't even afford basic treatment (so they wind up going to emergency rooms in life threatening situations which is a very inefficient expenditure of health care dollars)
.

[Jeemie]

The problem with "waiting for humans to act like it's a crisis" is that humans severely discount the future in favor of immediate needs.

It's how our brains evolved, and it made sense when our lives depended upon satisfying our immediate needs.

This applies even to those who believe AGW is a threat that we must act upon before nature signals us of an immediate threat (because if we wait for such a signal, it will be too late to do anything about it).

Even though those that think AGW is a threat understand the above intellectually, it is still difficult for them to fight millions of years of evolutionary hard-wiring...so their actions oftentimes will STILL belie their words.

I think that's a copout

Your thought is incorrect.

Humans' tendency to massively discount the future is well-known.

[silverscreenselect]

The problem with socialized medical is that the inputs are not enough for the desired outputs.

And how is that any different from what happens now? The inputs (health insurance premiums and copays, etc.) are not enough for the desired outputs. So we have people who don't have insurance, or whose insurance is riddled with exceptions, or to whom the insurance companies dictate what sort of treatment they can or cannot receive.

Two big differences between a nationalized system and what we have now are that (1) you eliminate the profit factor that drives most insurance companies. If they take in $1, they can only afford to pay out (in claims and expenses) less than $1 in order to keep their stockholders happy. and (2) you get much better bargaining leverage on the part of the government than you do in our current patchwork quilt of private insurers.

I know that BiT had extensive medical work done over the past few years. Unless you are independently wealthy, you were probably at the mercy of your insurance company in determining how much medical treatment you would actually receive under those circumstances.

[Bob78164]

I know that BiT had extensive medical work done over the past few years. Unless you are independently wealthy, you were probably at the mercy of your insurance company in determining how much medical treatment you would actually receive under those circumstances.

And the key is that their economic incentive is to answer, "As little as possible."

Moreover, insurance companies are repeat players in the system whereas most of us (individually) are not. Therefore, it is relatively must more costly for us to fight even in the case of a good faith dispute over coverage. God help you if you have the misfortune of finding an insurance company (or even a rogue employee) who is not interested in good faith. Making matters worse, such a fight almost necessarily happens when the insured is least able to protect his or her own interests because, after all, he or she needs medical attention. --Bob

[hf_jai]

I suspect you would not say that if it were your child who will be uninsurable and therefore unable to get life-saving medical care because of a pre-existing condition.

Let me make this clear.

I would never ever feel that others should be required to support me or anyone in my family, in any way, what so ever, just becase I live in the same country. Period.

You would if the lack of support would result in the death of your child. But that's not the point.

My husband and I have paid for health insurance, through our labor and our cash, for all our lives. We have also done our share to defend all of those people who live in the same country. Now, when our child will need it, it will be denied to her. Granted, it will be because she has become an "independent" adult. But she will still be our child, so we will still do our best to make sure she doesn't die.

But that's not really the point either.

You think you have made it all by yourself, that you don't take anything from the other people in this country and you have no obligation to them. But that's just bull. You wouldn't have this country without the people who have sacrificed for her. And not just by military service, altho that's certainly part of it, and the military needs an educated and healthy citizenry and always has, and it's kept that way by public schools, public health, public utilities, public sanitation, public safety, and many many other public institutions, run by government and paid for by taxes. But you also wouldn't have what you do without an economy that keeps your business or other livelihood going, which requires an educated and relatively healthy workforce, created by those same public institutions. You could not sell your product or service without people with the capability to buy, which means they must be employable and have places to be employed. You would not be able to deliver those goods or services without an infrastructure paid by their taxes and built by their labor.

It's all a big interdependent web, and every part of it is just as important as every other. That's not socialism, But it is reality.

And I know you will never see your success as anything but the result of your own efforts. Which is sad.

The problem with socialized medical...

If you meant to write "socialized medicine" or "socialized medical care," those would be inaccurate. No one is talking about involving the government in medicine or medical care. Only in the system of paying for them.

...is that the inputs are not enough for the desired outputs. Therefore the outputs will be rationed (as those outputs are rationed now). What is deemed to be wrong with our current system is that the rationing is not fair. Why does anyone think the rationing will be any more fair under a govt. system? What will happen is this:

Current input: x
Current output: x - y

Under a government system:
Input: x + t
Output: (x+t) - (y+t)

The output is the same. The input in more. Thus, what we have left to spend on butter (or guns) is less.

Again, you're only seeing the parts of the process that you want to. The current output is not x-y. It's x-(y+p+a), with "y" being the cost of medicine, "p" being the insurance industry profits, and "a" being administrative costs both at the insurance company and the doctor's office. I would also suggest that using "x" for input is an oversimplification since it ignores hidden inputs, for example increased prices for routine care that are used to pay for the emergency care of the uninsured.

You don't define what the "t" is in your output equation, but I will assume it is the administrative costs borne by government? If so, the question becomes whether the output in the government system (y+a) will exceed the output in the current system (y+p+a). You apparently believe that the free market will automatically ensure that the private system will be cheaper by keeping insurance company p+a less than government a, and/or the government will have to reduce its y by rationing care more than the insurance companies do now, but the empirical evidence from existing government systems, both here and overseas, argues that it will not.

[BackInTex]

The problem with socialized medical is that the inputs are not enough for the desired outputs.

And how is that any different from what happens now? The inputs (health insurance premiums and copays, etc.) are not enough for the desired outputs. So we have people who don't have insurance, or whose insurance is riddled with exceptions, or to whom the insurance companies dictate what sort of treatment they can or cannot receive.

Two big differences between a nationalized system and what we have now are that (1) you eliminate the profit factor that drives most insurance companies. If they take in $1, they can only afford to pay out (in claims and expenses) less than $1 in order to keep their stockholders happy. and (2) you get much better bargaining leverage on the part of the government than you do in our current patchwork quilt of private insurers.

You honestly believe that Private Insurance (inputs - expenses) < Government Insurance (inputs - expenses)?

Bargaining leverage? If you mean that the government will be able to force the best and brightest to spend half their youth in medical school then work for the same wages as a school principle, I think not.

I know that BiT had extensive medical work done over the past few years. Unless you are independently wealthy, you were probably at the mercy of your insurance company in determining how much medical treatment you would actually receive under those circumstances.

That mercy was much greater than I would have received up in Canada. From diagnosis to replacement of my hip was 53 days. And that included a 2nd opinion. From my "let's do it" decision, it was 11 days. I challenge anyone to find more 'mercy' in a socialized system. Especially since I was not crippled, but only had a slight recurring limp that left unattended would have gotten worse over time.

Now, "mercy" is defined as receiving something you did not derserve. I paid for the medical insurance. I've been paying for over 25 years. Counting the money my employers paid on my behalf (considered wages to me) they insurance companies are probably still way ahead of the game.

[silverscreenselect]

Now, "mercy" is defined as receiving something you did not derserve. I paid for the medical insurance. I've been paying for over 25 years. Counting the money my employers paid on my behalf (considered wages to me) they insurance companies are probably still way ahead of the game.

I'm not saying you didn't deserve treatment. However, unless you (or your employer) is an expert at it, you would have a hard time deciphering just what is and is not covered under a particular policy, and there's often a lot of wiggle room for insurance companies to decide just how much should be covered. And by then it's too late for you to do anything about it.

The bankruptcy courts are filled with people who found out too late that their insurance coverage wasn't what they needed to cover what actually happened to them. And that's not counting those that wind up in the morgue because they can't get treatment at all.

[BackInTex]

You think you have made it all by yourself,

I've never said or thought that.

You would not be able to deliver those goods or services without an infrastructure paid by their taxes and built by their labor.

What about the food they ate, the clothes they wore, the homes they lived in, the vehicles they took to and from work? Guess you think we should provide those as well, yet it wouldn't be socialism? But without them, they could not produce any more than they could if they couldn't read.

It's all a big interdependent web, and every part of it is just as important as every other. That's not socialism, But it is reality.

I understand "for the common good". An educated workforce. A safe country. A shared and reliable infrastructure. Giving me a new hip, Grandpa a triple by-pass, or Dad his monthly Viagra is not for the common good. Making sure others' kids are innoculated against communicable diseases? O.K. Sold.

And I know you will never see your success as anything but the result of your own efforts. Which is sad.

That's twice in on post you've said that. You must really think that zings me. And that is sad (and incorrect).

No one is talking about involving the government in medicine or medical care. Only in the system of paying for them.

You are simply delusional if that is what you think. If you control the money, you are involved.