nathaniel

haha Anthrax is natural. Oil is natural. Uranium is natural. Radiation is natural. Nightshade is natural. Botulism is natural. Poison ivy is natural. Arsenic is natural. The list is endless. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Brakes are an excellent example, because you don't just have brakes or not have brakes (on cars, anyway). Well, you do, but that's not the whole story. Newer brakes, generally, are safer than older brakes. But you don't have to replace your brakes when the dealer / manufacturer suggests, and lots of people don't. People get to decide when they replace their brakes depending on their desire for safety and how much they're willing to spend. Careful with the analogy, tho. The analogy breaks down, because, among other things, the capability of a set of brakes is a mechanical contraption that is easily measured. While you are allowed to drive without brakes in some states (on certain historical vehicles, and probably not on highways), generally one can't test out of having brakes, no matter how many hours or cars one has driven. 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 romantic way to put it, but it's still utterly impractical. Each one of us has to accept that at any given time he has X amount of dollars, and come to terms with how much safety he can afford and how much risk he's willing to accept. To me, that some people are resistant to advice from people they ought to and probably do trust is a strong indicator of their will. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Increasingly wide temperature swings are part of the predictions of global warming. Should be a fun ride. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Social security is a pyramid scheme, and it's largely worked so far because the particpating population is roughly pyramidal over time. The crisis faced today is that it's not exactly pyramidal. The sides of the pyramid are wavy, and we're approaching a point where the group at the top is expected to be a little bit wider than it ought to be under the current financial terms, and the group in the middle making all the money is a little narrower. 3 things 1) we've not yet experienced a massive decline in the birth rate, so it's reasonable to expect a swell after this trough. There has always been a natural periodicity to the population growth rate. cross reference with China, where they /have/ experienced a massive decline in the birth rate due to population controls. China, in short, is f*cked in 20-30 years' time. 2) since it's reasonable to expect periodicity in the population cycle, massive debt would be a reasonable way to address the issue. Yes, it will be our children's debt, but by the time they grow up it will be the current "narrow" population of adults receiving social security being supported by a "swell" of people. Situations like this are precisely what debt is suited for--although there is always some overhead 3) to cut off social security now, in a sense, is to throw away all that the current working population has already committed to it. Unless you propose that the gov't refund all social security taxes to current workers. You'd really have to unroll the whole thing. That can't be done, because much of it's already spent. We can't un-spend it. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I say it's condensation, and if you persist in trying to "fix" it with your powersander you might sink the boat. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

My schedule puts me in Memphis for the last 2 weeks of January, possibly incl the weekends. Does it get busy in the winter at all? NOAA says the max temperature gets at least to the 60's in late January, sure beats Chicago

Of course they do, and that's the way it should be . The intarweb is full of quacks, and taking shortcuts is essential to maintaining a good signal:noise ratio. I challenge anyone who thinks otherwise to administer any high-volume anything on the internet. Sometimes you get the short end of the stick, and it invariably sucks when you do. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

An Islamic tradition is that Mohammed said that his followers will be divided into 72-odd sects, and only one of which follows the path into heaven. Islam has greater divisions internally than it does with the rest of the world, or at least, has for the last several hundred years since the decline of the Ottomans. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Insurance doesn't exist to right the wrongs of wrongdoers, it exists to make known risks more palatable. This is by the economic definition of risk. It's a little confusing, because sometimes the uncertainty that an insurance policy addresses is actually a crime (eg, car theft), but the point is that the quantitative aspects of the risk must be available & considered explicitly. Medicine is different from cars in this case because it is much more difficult to establish the baseline for "comprehensive" style medical coverage. The knowledge is too specialized and the technology changes too fast to establish the underlying probabilities effectively. Which is not to say that someone won't sell you insurance for it, but rather to say there's going to be a sizeable inefficiency in the process. Which can manifest itself in extraordinarily expensive policies or in insurance companies going out of business due to underquoting their policies. By involving insurance in righting wrongs we're breaking our medical markets. That's what arbitration & if they fail then the judicial system is for. Due to the complexity of medicine the courts aren't too good at it, so it seems that improving our specialized arbitrators is a promising strategy. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Thank you for writing that, for despite what I wrote I like your terms better. It is these known risks that can happen despite perfect management for which the insurance business is perfectly suited to protect a patient against, should the patient be willing to pay for protection. Things like leaving instruments in a patient's chest cavity or chopping off the wrong leg are things that insurance has a hard time with, because there's no "natural" or underlying rate at which it should happen. There's a nasty gray area between the two types, and defining the standardsto differentiate them is something that's just outside the skill set of our justice system. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

No, thats not what I mean by the economic theory of governance. What you described I would call the government of economic policy. I put the emphasis on economic. Economic theory of government is the study of how to use the theory of economics to further the government's own ends. Eg, make a fine for littering at least 10x as high as the economic benefit of littering to the litterer, because the probability is only 0.10 of catching him (I made up the percentage). Set civil sanctions just high enough to create an economic incentive for desired behavior. Voucher systems for pollution, and the like. Using the theory of economics to determine the innovative approaches for solving issues of government, in this case, to fix undesired market behaviour. Strictly speaking there's nothing immediately wrong with the market as it exists today, it's that patients and doctors are asking the government to try to bring insurance prices down. Insurers aren't all going out of business, and in most places services are still available, though at a higher price than many patients would prefer.... With a few wrong turns, the market is probably in danger of collapse tho, and the gov't should address this too. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

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

You must not be familiar with economic theory of governance, because it is what I am spouting here. Damages exist not to punish per se, but to reconcile the diverging interests of the two parties involved. So that well-intentioned doctors, in aggregate, and by default would take the same precautions for their patients they would have for themselves. Which, presumably is appropriate for the average person reflecting the doctors' specialized knowledge of medicine. Patients wishing yet less risk should purchase additional insurance themselves. Patients wishing more risk should be given the facilities under which it may be rationally selected based on the patient's preference, and provision of such facilities should exonerate the practitioner should the risks turn sour. This one of the things that industry associations have been particularly good at, in other industries at least. The justice system has not yet defined it efficiently, it has terms like negligence vs gross negligence, etc. Specialized arbitration bodies are much more suited for the task as they are much more capable of keeping pace with technological advance. edit to add: In the states we have a separate set of damages that a court may award depending on the circumstances, called Punitive Damages, that are intended to dissuade actions that are wanton or willfully malicious. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I'm not familiar with any major medical arbitration bodies. What I have in mind is akin to what the NASD (specifically, the NASDr) does for the financial markets. Specialized arbitration body != lawyers duking it out before court, although specialized arbitration bodies tend to get used before court. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I partitioned accidents away from negligence. Accidents as things that could reasonably happen despite appropriate precautions. Some types of negligence are due to acute failures on the part of the medical practitioner. This type cannot be addressed by insurance, the practitioner needs to stop. Defining the boundary between accidents and acute failures is a job that the justice system cannot fill. We need specialized arbitration bodies for this. They work weill in other industries. In medicine it does both, the latter directly and the former indirectly though market conditions caused by artificial excess demand. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Not getting rid of insurance, but removing artificial demand for negligence. This will cause market conditions that favor medical practices that can reduce their risks. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It is how the justice system fails to interoperate with medicine negligence. Specialized arbitration bodies can probably fill this role, as they do in most other major industries. That was the other proposal I've made in this thread nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

No...see the insurance wasn't bought against negligence, its against accidents. Like we said. Insurance can't protect against negligence, only cover it up and allow it to fester. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

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

And that's where precautions come in. If insufficient or inappropriate precautions are taken, then there is negligence. Forcing people to take insurance widens the tolerance they have in their practices for such negligence because the insurer will foot the bill. It's called a moral hazard in economics. And as insurers foot the bill, the price of insurance goes up. We see the price of insurance going up. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Because when the patient pays he can decline insurance altogether and still get medical service. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

If doctors didn't pay for insurance for their patients, presumably they could offer lower prices. Just moving around the payments doesn't change who ends up footing the bill. What it does change is that all of a sudden people can decline to pay. The slackening of demand would put a negative pressure on insurance prices. Your accounting is flawed. nathaniel 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 putting your perception of the real world up against the basic theory of economics. What do you say to someone who believes in perpetual motion? or who disbelieves the laws of thermodynamics? nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

The doctor does, it's built into the cost of medical service. You don't get a chance to decline it. It isn't sold separately because it isn't sold separately. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?