TomAiello

Just my opinion. Some people think Americans have a right to spend our tax dollars flying half-way around the world and killing hundreds of thousands of people that live in other countries, for no justifiable reason. I think our tax dollars should be spent on taking care of our citizens. I'd prefer neither, thanks. I think Americans have a right to keep the money they earned, and not have politicians spend it to appease whoever gave money to their election campaigns. I realize that's a somewhat revolutionary and very politically incorrect opinion. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Farmers? Why is that a big deal? Farmers, as all right thinking Europeans know, are lesser humans, who rightfully ought to be ruled by their more intelligent urban brethren. A good farmer knows their place and stays on the farm. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I hope not. Healthcare reform is definitely needed. A government take over of medicine, on the other hand, is definitely going to make things worse, not better. I hope we get a real, substantive reform of current government rules--something that benefits all of us. I hope that the current 1000 page set of half-baked ideas is well and truly dead. I'm not confident that it is, but I'm hopeful. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I think this is probably one of those cases where both guys fucked up, and neither is willing to admit it. Professor Gates probably was confrontational with the police officer, but his extremely eminent place in Black Academia (and Black America) means that no one is willing to admit that. The cop definitely went overboard. Gates is practically an invalid. Handcuffing him was totally unnecessary, even if you wanted to take him in. And frankly, taking him in after you've established that it's his residence is just dumb. If both men could have just looked each other in the eye at the time and said "shit, man, I fucked up, sorry about that..." They both would have gone their ways and no one would be worried about it. As it is, we've got a giant, overblown political mountain being made out of a particularly silly molehill. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Right. Just like "jobs created or saved." And much like "jobs created or saved" that means that it's a meaningless noise that can be used to great effect by a skillful orator. Which is exactly what the president did last night--used the boogeyman of "it'll ruin the economy not to do what I want" to push a political agenda. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Oooooh, you lawbreaker, you! -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

This is the kind of shit that politicians want to us to jump on board for? GREAT! No. That's the kind of shit politicians hope you don't notice until 15 years later, when they can say "hey, you should have known it was there all along." -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Write your question in English could you? Sorry, I got distracted in the middle of the post--danger of having a toddler. I had started out to write "should we call you..." and then came back and finished with "are you..." -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It means that if you are on a VA health plan, the Secretary (I think that's the Secretary of Health and Human Services) can decide, without further approval from anyone, to impose an additional 2.5% income tax on you. It even allows use on an individual basis, so they could just penalize you, but not other veterans. Or they could do it to all veterans, at the whim of the Secretary. Damn, that's crazy. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You're assuming that he even saw it. From personal experience, I can say that assuming a moderator has seen every post is always going to be a bad assumption. We all have lives, other things to look at, and arguments we're just tired of reading. A failure to catch every PA buried on the 7th page of a thread is not an indication that the moderation is biased--just that it's being done by humans. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Interestingly, although your argument is definitely stronger, you are the one who's feeling a need to resort to ad hominem attacks. These are personal attacks: Please review the Forum Rules, specifically: 1. No personal attacks. I've banned you from this forum for 14 days. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The irony there is astounding. You're using classic political doublespeak (if you don't favor my proposal, then you are against "solutions") to accuse someone of political gamesmanship. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Wow. I don't know what to say. You were carried, unconscious, into an ER, and then had to wait for care? There was no examination of you? What if you were having a heart attack or something? I'm pretty shocked that they didn't even examine you before making you wait. I've never seen that happen, not even i one those "shockingly caught on video" kind of things that turn into big lawsuits. What hospital were you at? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You were unconscious? If you were unconscious, how did they get a urine sample? You didn't receive any other care, or examination, between the time your unconscious body was carried into the ER and the time you left? Just a urine sample? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Let me get this straight: You had passed out, and then regained consciousness, and you went to the ER? The ER is not the right place for that. You should have gone to an urgent care, where you'd pay a lot less, use up a lot less emergency resources, and (horrors) have to wait a while to get care, because your condition wasn't an emergency. Why on earth did you go the ER? It's people making decisions like that (going to the ER with non-emergency situations) that makes ER care (and healthcare generally) so expensive. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

There are also a lot of regulations created by the federal government, that have a similar effect. And medicare isn't exactly the nicest "insurance company" to work with, either. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Curious them, that the best, easiest, cheapest and highest quality solution (opening up the federal employees plan to low income people and having the government pay their premiums) is not even under discussion, isn't it?

Come on, dude. "I like to see people ram themselves into brick walls" adds value to the discussion? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Anybody? Biden takes over. Since he's now the president, he gets to pick a new VP. He picks Obama, who continues to be the lead guy, and business continues as usual. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

This is very true. My wife is the medical director of a rehabilitation unit at one of the "clinic" model systems that Obama has held up as an example. She regularly gets horrifically bad discharge summaries from the main hospital (things like the patients meds not being listed, or the wrong meds being listed, or the same meds being listed three times). She also regularly sees "notes" that are just copy-and-paste of the previous days note, over and over for an entire hospital stay. One patient had exactly the same note for 17 days in a row--no mention of any treatment done or change in condition in that time. She is of the opinion that the main culprit is the EMR (which makes it too easy for an overworked provider to copy and paste instead of actually writing a note) and the "clinic" culture, which emphasizes (as Obama would like) quantity of patients seen over quality of care provided. Most of Obama's proposals will actually make those kind of quality issues far worse. Absolutely. And the problem with that is that doctors now spend half their day filling out paperwork instead of actually caring for patients. We send these people to school for 12 years, to make them very good at caring for patients, and then we make them spend time filling out paperwork (which they don't really get trained for), instead of doing the job they've spent half their lives becoming experts at. In Idaho, there is a central drug database run by the state, so a physician can check and see what drugs a patient has gotten from other doctors. Odd aside--my wife once had a patient arrested in her office because he had falsified a police report (stating that the narcotics she'd prescribed were stolen), and asked her to prescribe more. She called the police to check that the report was genuine, and they sent a car to pick the guy up (he was already on parole). -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Wow. I must live in a different country than you do. I've had to deal with Medicare for two different elderly family members, and to say that it's "working well" and that patients don't get screwed is to describe an experience entirely different from mine. What's the nonpayment rate from Medicare, for doctors? In other words, how often does medicare actually pay them? Do you have any idea? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I am not convinced of the wisdom of PR voting. I'm not a huge fan of our current system, either. PR voting has a lot of downside. Voting for the party instead of the candidate gives the party bosses a lot of power relative to the regional delegates (because they control the candidate lists). Minority "kingmaker" parties can stay in office (and hold onto portfolios) for decades, creating their own fiefdoms in a government office, using public funds. I'd rather see something different entirely. At present, the best option I see is reforming the voter base (to people who pay taxes, for example), but I don't really see that as a realistic possibility. In actual fact, I don't see any meaningful reform, or the survival of our current system, as realistic possibilities, either. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

In all seriousness, I'd be interested in discussing your research on the issue of where to flee to. I'm coming to the conclusion that it will be necessary to relocate my family outside the USA, probably before my children leave our home. How stable are those countries you've investigated? What's the chance they'll nationalize our home because we're foreigners? What is their healthcare system like? Anything you can share would be appreciated. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Recall that John McCain (the latest Republican standard bearer) had voted against tax cuts because they were not balanced by spending cuts, and he was opposed to the increase in deficit spending. While I'm not necessarily a huge fan of FPP voting, I think PR has it's own problems. I'll make another post with those thoughts, though. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

tk, did you have any thoughts on CanuckinUSA's experience? Specifically, how to avoid that sort of thing? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com