nathaniel

Pretend I have 2 savings accounts. The first account, with Adult Bank has $2000 in it earning 3% APY and the other, with Embryonic Bank has $1000 in it earning 5% APY. Lo and behold, I am making more money off of the Adult account, and it will be that way for quite some time. But I would still transfer all of my money into the Embryonic account if I could. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

You're right, there is no merit in discussing the present investment in two resources under comparison. It's pure barratry. Good night. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It takes an ability to process large numbers, and to understand the time involved to complete research. Embryonic stem cell research is not something you buy off the shelf. It takes time, and it takes more than $6B. There are network effects of spending more money--the return on spending money goes up the more you spend. Likewise in time. The more time you invest, the more your return on time. How much do you think has been spent on adult stem cell research? Go ahead, lowball a number. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Research cannot be promising before it exists. The theory, on the other hand, is extremely promising. Research is needed to validate, expand, and apply the theory, but since there's no funding the research cannot procede and the theory gathers dust. It ought not be the job of policy wonks to decide with a fine tooth comb which academics get researched and which do not--that is a job that academic wonks are much better suited toward. If immediate benefit was all that mattered we'd quit the research and distribute the funds directly to sufferers. No, you didn't think that question through. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Yes, and that's why we need to stop artificially starving embryonic research of funding. You're already convinced it can't ever be productive, which is a different (and distinctly unscientific) conclusion. 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 worked so well in Cambodia that everyone's clamoring to follow suit. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

The other way to spin this is that it's the outcome of Cisco's attempts at monopolizing the aftermarket. Healthy aftermarkets exist for lots of products, and the main reason IMO they get screwed up is when the OEM gets delusions of the kinds of controls they can exert. The result is typically counterproductive for suppliers or consumers, or both. Middlemen, on the other hand thrive on the inefficiencies created. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Do nothing because the kid isn't old enough to consent / sign a waiver. Tell em to wait till he's 18. 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 not far enough. We've lost sight that medicine and health is inherently a risky business. The only guarantee is that you will get sick and die, eventually. IMO it should be strictly the patient's liability for accepting their doctor's advice and consenting to a procedure. It should be a doctor's responsibility only to inform of the risks. Like stocks & bonds, you can't sue your financial advisor just because your investment lost money on their reasonable advice. Well you could try, but you'd lose. Which is not to say there isn't real fraud in stocks & bonds, or that there aren't lawsuits between investors and advisors. But the financial industry is overall relatively well managed and regulated. They face much greater risks ($billions worth) on a regular basis and aren't facing collapse due to gov't subsidies. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

What you don't see from your position is a system of subsidies that lines the pockets of people like me and our employers at taxpayer expense. Not only that, but the system we have drives up the prices on the market due to excess demand. Added to this is the sheer cost of providing defined benefit-style care for all kinds of people--like companies promising pensions they can't pay out, all the healthcare promises made by the gov't over the last 40 years are turning into a check that gov't can't cash. The gov't already today shortchanges doctors on services provided to Medicare recipients. As a result some doctors have stopped taking Medicare, and as the money situation gets tighter this will get worse until only charities take Medicare recipients. The current program is fiscally unsupportable in its own right. It cannot be improved by spending even more money on other people or by covering new treatments or drugs. The money is not there, and as the money becomes tighter, the reimbursements paid to doctors and hospitals will decrease until nobody is willing to serve Medicare recipients but out of charity. The problem is in part the conduct of individuals themselves. Not out of malice but in aggregate based on the decisions facing them. Recipients of defined benefit-style programs or subsidies do not experience the incentives to save money on healthcare. Ordinary people's decisions to pursue healthcare for themselves determine how much money flows from taxpayers to healthcare providers. Since recipients don't see the savings of less consumption themselves and experience mainly the benefits, they'll naturally take more than they need. It's selfish and it's exactly what you'd expect any rational person to do under the circumstances. Bad actors not withstanding, most everybody in healthcare is doing everything they can, but due to the broken structure and overcommitments already in place nobody can do anything about it. Everybody doing the right thing for themselves under the rules of the system still results in not enough money to go around. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Aside from the question of morality, that is the crux of the problem, because if we do not shut off the free healthcare valve it will run dry. And at the same time it'll take the pressure out of the whole system, so to speak. Opening it further will only drain the economy faster. All the people (incl me) currently dumping money into the system are dumping their money into a broken system. It's fiscally unsupportable. All the people and organizations taking money out of the system (incl me) are funneling money out of taxpayers and various into our own pockets. I do not even have a choice in the matter--my employer forces me to accept their federally subsidized health plan. Boo hoo, but at least I recognize it's an unfair system and I'd vote to fix it if I could. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Hah, that poor fellow conveniently omits demographics from his assessment. He may as well blame the English language in his conclusion. There's a reason you see crap like that published in scientific american, and not an economic journal. It would be as if you snuck a paper on nuclear fusion into the NEJM. He gets a C- My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

If anywhere there's certainly a case for subsidizing certain types of prophylaxis. Vaccinations for contagious diseases, control of drug abuse, etc. Things that will screw up other people if left unabated, and which can be prevented more cheaply than they can be cured. These are examples of externalities, classic and demonstrable market failures where government interference can have positive effects for everybody. Injuries, non contagious diseases, age-related phenomena, congenital deformities, genetic dispositions, heart disease, cosmetics etc don't pose a threat to random passersby. Why should random passersby be forced to pay to treat them? 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 would fit very well with Islamic history. Islam has had a knack for getting conquered and then insinuating itself among the invaders. A real omelette of a religion for all the flips it's been through. At least if it was Americans leading the charge for revival they'd be inclined to work with our national interests, or at least to defuse the Great Satan line coming out of Persia. On the other hand a lot of our fundies (and some of our allies, heh) openly consider Christianity to be America's national interest. They've had their fair run and screwed up enough, imo. It'll still be decades of bickering before people come around to this, if they ever do. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I dunno... * start an Islamic cultural revival ourselves. We'd need to import some more Muslims to do this convincingly. * reconquer the whole lot and try again. * Marshall Plan 2.0: Middle East. Probably wouldn't go down too well with the current fundies, or would encourage them to new heights of corruption and inanity. * continue on as we are today: let it simmer and from time to time intervene precipitously according to the latest political trends in foreign lands. I do like the idea of fostering a global Islamic cultural revival based in the US. It wouldn't go over with the isolationists, xenophobes and our own fundies tho--it would be very turbulent. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

We take kids away from parents who don't feed them. If healthcare were a right, we would take kids away from parents who didn't provide for them. There was a time that modern healthcare was unavailable. And there will be healthcare in the future that seems "essential" when it arrives but is unavailable today. Whose job is it to decide what is essential and what is not? Seems troubling to leave parental responsibility beholden to medical technology. Don't play dumb, people's lives sometimes depend on electricity and those who don't get it die. In the US and worldwide deaths are caused by heat waves, and exacerbated by power outages. Electricity and air conditioners directly result in fewer deaths. The economic and physiological causation is unmistakable. Likewise shelter. People who don't shelter their kids get their kids taken away too, but the state does not guarantee shelter (leaving a few places like SF aside...) There is no universal right to shelter. It can get expensive, but what constitutes the basics is not decided by or uniformly standardized or guaranteed by anybody. edit err..that didn't quite come out right... My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Don't challenge me, challenge the economics. From the Economist, Jan 26, "Desperate Measures" or try The RWJF I'm not sure which party you think I belong to. But I assure you that both parties are numbnuts when it comes to healthcare. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Well, effectively they've already entered the 20th century courtesy western financial companies. Compound interest and all that, it takes along time for the effect to well up. But better banking doesn't solve the main problem, which is leadership. It's tempting to me to share some blame with the "victors" of WWI for screwing up the conditions in the ME much the same way they did in Europe resulting in a 2nd world war. Then after the 2nd world war the situation in the ME doesn't really seem to have been helped -- the borders are still all screwed up. There was no Marshall plan for them. The Islamic fundies are onto something IMO in that the region would improve with the reemergence of a pan-Islamic movement. They are even less qualified than their contemporaries, unfortunately, to lead it. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Hah. No private policeman costs $1000 / hour. I defer to the real-world examples (again, refer to all major socialized healthcare systems, incl ours) before the analogies. Not having food will kill you and your little girl too. Transport and electricity, or lack thereof also variously cause death. The point of including televisions in the list is to make you wonder whether healthcare could be considered a luxury good. Even basic healthcare. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

What if you die in the ambulance while on the way to the hospital? The prospect does not lead us to take the journey by foot. The implied alternative, silly, is no healthcare at all for certain types of injuries, or death due to worse delays caused by the usual villains: supply & demand. Refer to any major socialized healthcare system for real-world example. Exactly, and healthcare as human right inherently--directly or indirectly--revokes the good tier. There is another way, of course, and it's every man for himself. The same way we treat automobiles, food, electricity, and televisions. Why can't a free (-er) market work for healthcare? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

This is a problem that can be solved with bracelets, tattoos (heh), nearly indestructible health plan cards, dog tags, registries (indexed with drivers license perhaps), or any number of technological or nontechnological administrative procedures. I'd go out of my to save somebody who injured themselves near me out of personal interest. I wouldn't demand it of anybody for me any more than I would rob them for pocket change. Of course I'd promise remuneration if they did... My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

None such. We have the best healthcare available anywhere, but you can only have it if you can pay for it. This extends to "healthcare refugees" from other countries where proper care is either impossible or infeasible due to delays. That's more fair to me than not available at all. Now you're onto something. The reason healthcare is provided through employment is that it's subsidized via federal tax breaks to employers. Basically we are dumping money into the salaries of only those people fortunate enough to receive employer-sponsored ( == federally subsidized) healthcare at the expense of the whole taxable population. Dumping money into the bottom lines of the companies that offer the plans. And screwing up the market for healthcare services all at once, driving up prices for individual consumers. Shouldn't that make more people upset? Is the answer more subsidies or less? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Well, Dr Boudreaux and I disagree, so that makes two. "most people agree that there is some level of basic health care" but nobody agrees on what exactly it is. Even establishing a basis for doing so is morally repugnant according to contemporary, popular belief systems. Not to mention that it's hugely impractical and inefficient. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1017/p09s01-coop.html The fellow makes a weak analogy but I like the gist of his argument. I''d put it outright, not only is free healthcare ambiguous but it's infinitely expensive, brutally utilitarian (and thus it ought to be morally wrong to any of you Christians out there), or both. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Could you imagine what the world would be like in 50 years if, instead of chasing away Muslims the US embraced them? Invited Pallys, Indonesians, Iraqis and Darfurians to immigrate by the millions? What if the next Pan-Islamic movement were based out of US citizens? Would it not be valuable to have one and a half billion people on our side to counter China's growing influence? Xenophobe apoplexy ensues. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?