GeorgiaDon

also true. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I'm thinking of you guys too, although you don't know me. I guess our little skydiver community is like that. I like the sentiment of the poem "I'm not there" ny Mary Elizabeth Frye. Maybe it'll help some, I hope so. Don Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am in a thousand winds that blow, I am the softly falling snow. I am the gentle showers of rain, I am the fields of ripening grain. I am in the morning hush, I am in the graceful rush Of beautiful birds in circling flight, I am the starshine of the night. I am in the flowers that bloom, I am in a quiet room. I am in the birds that sing, I am in each lovely thing. Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there. I do not die. _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I hope he didn't barf himself out of existence. Come back, Vinnie. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

NEWS FLASH!!! OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SAYS BREATHING IS ESSENTIAL FOR GOOD HEALTH!!! Hah! Now watch all the right-wing ODS types hold their breath until they pass out. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Do you have "graduated licenses" (at least I think that's what they're called) where you live? Here in Georgia, for the first 6 months after getting a license, kids can't have anyone else in the car while they're driving except one other family member, so no friends. There are some other limitations, they can lose their license for speeding at a lower threshold than people with full licenses for example, but there are so many exceptions for that it's kind of a joke. The main thing is to eliminate the distraction of talking to friends until they get some experience behind the wheel. It hasn't been in effect long, so I don't know if the sample size is sufficient to see if it's helping or not, but I don't see how it could not. Unfortunately a lot of adults allow their kids to ignore the law, and there's no way for the police to know who is allowed to have passengers and who isn't unless they have other grounds to stop the car. This summer, two of my daughter's friends were killed, and a third critically injured, in a rollover/fire accident. The driver had had his license for only two weeks, so he should not have had any passengers, but he wanted to go to a mini-golf place with his friends and his mother said OK. The survivor, who was in the back seat, told police the kid driving was turned around to talk to him (the survivor) when he lost control. I bet that mom will relive and regret every day for the rest of her life that she let her son ignore the law that day. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Do you have any evidence that the gov't is using it as a tool, as opposed to just handing it to people to take away and read on their own or not as they see fit? I didn't see any requirement to fill it out and send it back to any agency, unlike tax or census forms that are tools. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Wendy, The estimate of 18,000-22,000 additional deaths is from a series of Institute of Medicine reports. The most recent is here: http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/20090224iomamericasuninsuredcrisis.pdf It seems the methodology was a fairly simple comparison of mortality rates of uninsured vs insured. A study by RG Kronick published this month (abstract and link to full article is here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19453392?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum) (epub was available April 21 2009, so still a very recent paper) reanalyzed the mortality data, factoring out things like smoker/nonsmoker, obesity, etc. He found that all the differences in the IOM study could be accounted for by lifestyle associated factors, and insurance did not have a significant influence on mortality. From the abstract of the paper: "CONCLUSIONS: The Institute of Medicine's estimate that lack of insurance leads to 18,000 excess deaths each year is almost certainly incorrect. It is not possible to draw firm causal inferences from the results of observational analysis, but there is little evidence to suggest that extending insurance coverage to all adults would have a large effect on the number of deaths in the United States." Elsewhere he says that the results were not what he was expecting, and indeed he has a long history as an advocate of improved access to health insurance, so there is no indication that the findings were "cooked" to fit a political leaning. My personal take on things: 1) The study only examined mortality (death) as an outcome variable, and the sample of patients was capped at age 64 as it is assumed that at 65 everybody goes on medicare and is therefore insured. Given the average life expectancy in this country (white females: 80.6 yrs; black females 76.5 yrs; white males 75.7 yrs; black males 69.7 yrs according to the CDC), the sample size of expected deaths prior to age 65 might not be large enough to detect subtle influences, especially considering that many of those deaths would be due to accident or homicide, where insurance might be moot. Also, as has been pointed out by many posters on this and other threads, when it gets to the point of life-or-death situations, everyone can just show up at the hospital and they have to be treated, so in that sense no-one is really denied life-saving treatment regardless of insurance status. The question is, who pays for the treatment (patient, taxpayers, other patients who are insured, or the hospital eats the cost?). This last-minute intervention will also (IMO) obscure the role of insurance in influencing outcome. Basically, lack of insurance correlates with other lifestyle choices (diet, smoking, exercise vs couch potato, etc) that are more influential than insurance when it comes to risk of dying. 2) I really think a more useful metric would be to look at morbidity (sickness) and disability. The WHO now uses a measurement called the DALY (Disability Adjusted Lost Years) to measure the impact of disease on economic productivity. There are lots of diseases that won't kill you (so no impact on mortality), but they will disable you to the point where your ability to work is diminished or eliminated entirely. River blindness (Onchocerciasis) is an example of one such disease that I happen to work on. You can live with chronic heart disease well past 65, but you might not be able to walk up a flight of stairs (much less handle a full shift at Walmart). My intuition (and obviously I haven't done a statistical analysis) is that lack of insurance will lead to delayed treatment and a greater risk of chronic illness and disability (increased DALYs in the no-insurance group). 3) Another interesting thing to look at would be life expectancy past age 65 in the group that didn't have insurance up until medicare kicked in. Hope this helps, Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The government administers medicare. It does so because, in a system where medical insurance is to an overwhelming extent obtained through ones employment, retiring means also losing your insurance (except in the case where you belong to a union that negotiated coverage as a retirement benefit, such as the auto workers you guys love to hate on). As retired people tend to be older (duh!), and older people have more medical issues and so expenses, no private insurers were willing to cover retirees at rates that were affordable to any but the most wealthy. In the absence of a free-market alternative, the government was compelled to create medicare. Given the average life expectancy in the US, it is safe to say that end-of-life decisions in the great majority of cases apply to retired people on medicare. So absolutely the government DOES have an interest in encouraging people to think in advance about these issues. Let me ask you, is your hatred of Obama and the government so strong that you plan to refuse medicare and social security, if in your opinion they are none of the government's business? Or are you all hat, no cattle? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

WTF are you talking about? Have YOU read the document? It is completely reasonable, and I would hope that every skydiver has gone through this sort of thing with their family. YOUR LIFE-YOUR CHOICES, what could possibly be wrong about that? Anyone who dumps end-of-life decisions on their loved ones without providing them with pretty specific information about what treatment they would want to receive is selfish and thoughtless at best, negligently inflicting unnecessary pain and distress on their own families. If you do it out of your blind hatred for Obama, that's truely demented. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

That was REALLY funny. Thanks for the laugh. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Sort of a federal constipation? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I'm afraid that's true. It's even worse when the whole community is in the same situation (such as housing projects). If everyone around you is on welfare, it must be normal, right? It's especially bad for the kids that grow up in a community where no-one is self sufficient. How are they supposed to learn that that is not OK? I'm not opposed to a hand up for those who really need it, but I think the way we do it is often does more harm than good. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Well, admitting it is the first step towards a cure. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Sure. I'm just saying that simplistic knee-jerk solutions are unlikely to have the desired effect, and are likely to have unintended consequences such as American citizens being required to carry proof of citizenship, which seems to upset civil libertarian and privacy advocate types, or risk being denied needed services such as emergency medical care. What CAN be done? I'd suggest: 1) create economically realistic avenues for legal immigration so people have a viable alternative to sneaking across the border (I talk about this more somewhere else so I won't repeat the whole thing here.) 2) create an accurate, fast mechanism for employers to check the social security number of potential employees. Congress mandated this years ago, but never funded it properly, and so a half-assed system with an unacceptably high error rate is all that is in place. Last I heard, almost 5% of legitimate social security numbers were erroneously rejected as false, because of misspelled names in the database and similar clerical errors. If you are a citizen whose social security number is rejected, an employer could not legally hire you, and you could be arrested for using a false number. Because of the high error rate, many employers refuse to use the system to check applicants. Fix it, and use it. 3) Once (2) is up and running, fine the ass off any employer who knowingly or negligently hires illegals. Find the CEOs and sew up their assholes till crap comes out their eyes if need be. The last administration refused to do this, in fact prosecutions of companies fell almost to nothing, because like it or not illegal immigrants are great for some businesses. You can pay them squat, ignore workplace safety rules, demand 16 hour work days if you want, and they can't complain because they're illegal and if they complain they get deported. But Americans look the other way (while whining about all them illegals) because they love their cheap chicken. 4) if companies want to bring in labor from Mexico or elsewhere, make them pay for the visa costs and provide health insurance so the taxpayers don't end up subsidizing the companies profits by paying for the employees health care. Either that, or pay wages that allow the workers to pay for their own health related expenses, in which case Americans might actually be interested in taking those jobs. Of course, your chicken will cost a bit more. How's that for a start? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Could be, I don't have any data about that. My point was more that the article had three different numbers, and the most negative one was chosen for the headline, because it was the most sensational or perhaps reflected the politics of the writer. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I'm inclined to agree. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Just to quibble about the "1 crime per 1000", the article indicates 1 crime was solved per 1000 cameras, not 1 crime was solved and 999 not solved. If there was only 1 crime per 1000 cameras one might wonder whether the expense/invasion of privacy is justified (a very legitimate question in my view), but it would be a 100% solved rate. Actually the article does say that 70% of murders, and 8 out of 269 robberies (about 1/30), have been solved using the cameras. 70% of murders is pretty good, 1/30 robberies not so much, but both are very different from "1 in 1000". Just another example of how numbers can be cherry-picked to slant a story. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Who could possibly watch that many TV screens, in real time? If they're just recording for playback later, they are obviously not very effective. If there was a watchable number of cameras, accompanied by on-the-beat police patrols in the area, maybe they could help the police be more effective by directing them, in real time, to trouble spots. Sounds like a data management problem in a way, too many cameras in too many places = too much information to process = impossible to use in real time. Sometimes less is more. Doesn't address the privacy issue of course, but how much of an "expectation of privacy" can you really have walking down the public street? Is your privacy more invaded by a real beat cop on the corner watching you than it is by a camera? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

No debate about that. Which is why I think sometimes it's necessary to look at the big picture and not just pieces here and there. However I'm glad Obama hasn't put immigration reform on his plate on top of everything else. Anyway the health care bill (heh, I just noticed "bill could mean both "legislation" and "cost" at the same time, kind of funny) does have provisions against enrolling illegal immigrants, although I realize that doesn't address the emergency care situation. Which of course is what "universal health care" is all about. For the "scale", you'd have to look at the proportion of the population that was uninsured prior to introducing universal coverage. For Canada, I think it wasn't too different from the US today. Smaller overall numbers, because the population base is only 10% of the US, but a similar proportion. The illegal immigrant issue is very different though certainly. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

1) once they are stabilized most of the cost has already been incurred, really no $$ left to save after that point. 2) WHAT papers? If I stopped you on the street right at this minute, would you have "papers" that could prove to me that you are a US citizen? I don't think we have any debts to Mexico. I'm afraid your suggestion is not very useful in the real world. Got any other suggestions? Unfortunately, these problems really are complicated. I can't think of any easy answers. If you want to be able to check citizenship quickly and easily, you have to have something like a "national identity card" that everyone must carry at all times. But, that offends our sense of civil liberties and desire to keep our lives private from the government. What is more important to you? It's easy to say "check their papers", but not easy to do in practice without compromising other important things. It's easy to say "send them home with a bill" but that would be useless at best, dangerous if you are talking about criminals. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

+1!!! Just to add on a bit, when people say "illegal immigration is a problem" (and I agree it is) they seem to think mainly in terms of stopping the "immigration" part. Why not address the "illegal" part? People come to this country because of the opportunity for jobs which, while mostly low-skill and low-paying from an American perspective, are very attractive compared to what is available back home, as Wendy said. But, why do they come here illegally? To a large extent, it is because it is either impossible or prohibitively expensive for them to do so legally. I came to the US (from Canada) legally, became a permanent resident as soon as it was possible for me to do so, and started the process to become a citizen again pretty much as soon as I was eligible. Over the years I have paid tens of thousands of $$ just in fees for visas, green card applications, and naturalization applications for myself and my family. I have spent years at a time where I was unable to leave the country to go home to visit family, while this or that application was being processed. I and my family have sometimes been treated well, and sometimes like shit, by immigration officials. At the end of the day it was all worth it because I have a great career that pays a respectable (not extravagant) salary. I was able to get into the country because I have an education and "skills" that filled a perceived need, which is to say there is a list of "needed professions" and what I do happened to be on that list. Contrast that to the situation of the typical "illegal immigrant". There is no visa program that says "welcome to America" if all you have to offer is a strong back and a willingness to work long hours in the hot sun. There are a few slots for temporary "agricultural workers" that greatly limit how long they can stay (months only) and for whom/where they can work. Also if you are working for minimum wage or less, thousands of $$ in fees is a big chunk of your annual income. How many of us can pony up 25% or more of our income just to pay for the privilege of being able to work? There are many disadvantages of being illegal in this country, living in hiding and in fear of being caught and deported is just the start of it. I'm confident most would not choose that route if there was a viable legal alternative. If we as Americans really want cheap food, yard work, and the rest, we should create an economically realistic way for people in those low-wage low-skill jobs to come here legally. If we don't want that type of immigration, we should be prepared to pay more for our "stuff". We should also stop with the predatory policies that cripple Latin American and other economies. For example, because of our subsidies to corn farmers, and our export subsidies, Mexican food manufacturers (the big companies, more than the Mom-and Pop operations) find American corn is cheaper than it can be produced locally. As a result, tens of thousands of Mexican farmers who once made an acceptable living at home have been displaced, and many have come here, illegally, because they have to support their families somehow. Ironic, isn't it? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So how would that work, really? Someone here illegally commits a crime, and we just send them back where they came from? Do we bother with the time and expense of a trial, if we're just going to send them back at the end of the day? Isn't not trying and imprisoning criminals creating an open invitation to criminals around the world to come here and ply their trade? If we do put them on trial and sentence them, and then send them home, we have no way to force other sovereign nations to enforce our laws. It sucks to be sure, but if they commit the crime here, we have to deal with them here. I asked this in another thread, and at the risk of being redundant I'll ask you the same question: Can you offer a suggestion of how exactly this can be accomplished in practice? The only legal proof of US citizenship generally available to people, and not easily forged, is a passport. Should people have to show a passport to obtain emergency room treatment? A birth certificate is easily faked, at least as easily as is a social security card and illegals have those by the truckload. Your suggestion has emotional appeal, I'll give it that, but I guess I'm not smart enough to see how to implement it so you'll have to explain it to me, in enough detail so I can understand how it will work without at the same time keeping legitimate American citizens, legal permanent residents, legal foreign nationals such as tourists and non-resident visa holders, etc from obtaining necessary emergency treatment. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Sure, on late evening/nighttime programming and channels that cater to a relevant audience. It's not just teenagers that need to think about that either. On the other hand, 8-yr olds probably don't need the trauma. My teenage daughter knows 4 kids from school who have been killed in car accidents in the last 2 years. We can do without this waste of lives. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I'll try harder. Well, the list wasn't meant to be comprehensive, just to give some examples. You probably don't want the whole list, I'd need chapters not paragraphs. I do think that everything the government pays for should be justifiable, ideally in terms of a benefit received that exceeds the cost to purchase that benefit privately. Of course, if we were to list every government "service" or "benefit", for each one there would be people who would think it is essential, and others who think it totally crap. People who never fly may feel that they derive no personal benefit from air traffic control, so why should they pay for it? Then there are the cases where people do derive a real benefit, but it is indirect or kind of "behind the curtain" so they may not recognize it. Funding for basic medical research through the National Institutes of Health, or public health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are examples of these. There would certainly be a lot of disagreement about where to draw the line. I think it would be an interesting exercise to have every government agency listed on the income tax form, with an explanation of what they do and what benefit they provide (and maybe even an explanation of how they are justifiable under the Constitution), and then people could "vote" by allocating their tax dollars to the agencies they want to support. Sort of an open competition between agencies for their share of the tax base. Of course, because the real world is not simple, people would have to be able to read and understand text longer than a Twitter message or a bumper sticker, so the concept probably wouldn't work, but it would be an interesting exercise. I suspect NIH would do quite well, ATF not so much. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Every country with universal health care (which is all of them in the developed world, except the US, also absorbs those costs, so that can't be the reason for the difference. I totally agree that that is a big problem. The question is, how to fix it without also leaving people who do suffer from real medical malpractice (which is rare but does happen) without recourse. Here in Georgia "tort reform" has capped malpractice awards at $250,000 pain&suffering plus actual economic damage. Despite this, the cost of malpractice insurance has not come down, in fact in many cases it has continued to rise, and doctors in many specialties are still leaving rather than coming to the state. Also as a consequence of the legislation poor, young or elderly people who have been (at least, allegedly) injured are in many instances unable to seek redress, because they can't prove big economic damages (which usually is lost income due to long-term disability; not a lot of money if you have a minimum-wage job or retired, and impossible to prove what it might have been for children who aren't yet working), and the cap doesn't allow for enough money to cover expert witness, court, and lawyers fees. The only people who are cost-effective for lawyers to represent are the ones who can show that they have lost a decade or two of a six-figure income. So tort reform in Georgia (and from what I have read in other states too) has not reduced malpractice insurance prices, has not increased the supply of doctors, and has had the effect of banishing at least some people who have a legitimate case from seeking relief. Insurance company profits are apparently doing just fine, though, so it's not all bad. Maybe tort reform needs more thought than just a simplistic one size fits all cap. Can you offer a suggestion of how exactly this can be accomplished in practice? The only legal proof of US citizenship generally available to people, and not easily forged, is a passport. Should people have to show a passport to obtain emergency room treatment? A birth certificate is easily faked, at least as easily as is a social security card and illegals have those by the truckload. Your suggestion has emotional appeal, I'll give it that, but I guess I'm not smart enough to see how to implement it so you'll have to explain it to me, in enough detail so I can understand how it will work without at the same time keeping legitimate American citizens, legal permanent residents, legal foreign nationals such as tourists and non-resident visa holders, etc from obtaining necessary emergency treatment. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)