U.S. health care sucks when you look at costs per person compared to benefit

I've argued for years with a friend of mine about the need for change in the U.S. healthcare system.

My friend, being the kind of guy who plays it safe politically, always trotted out the old trope of how we have the best medical care in the world and other people with money come here for our state of the art medicine.

I always opted for the reality argument. Specifically, that our system should not be judged by how good we are at dealing with the unique and novel medical mystery, but how effectively we treat what ails the vast majority of Americans, viz., heart disease, diabetes, etc.

Now, doctors are jumping on the universal health care bandwagon. They wisely foresee their future will not be in business as usual, but as part of a system focused on prevention and efficiency.

Some doctors are starting to point out the significant inefficiencies in our current system.

Those inefficiencies create massive profits for some and their incentive to change that waste is very small.

I see health care as a moral issue: If we can save two people through prevention for the cost of what we pay to cure one person, then we have a duty to save the two people.

John Stuart Mill was correct when he said we must provide for the greatest number.

The moral thing won't keep doctors and insurers rich. Too bad the pocketbooks of a few are keeping a majority at greater risk for death.

U.S. government has a medical patent on chemicals that the DEA says have no medical use--Huh?

For those of you into irony, here's a funny one.

For years, the U.S. government has followed a "zero tolerance" policy toward marijuana.

Despite all credible evidence about the low risk marijuana poses, the DEA classifies pot as a Schedule 1 Drug. To meet this qualification a drug must have "no accepted medical value and pose a high risk for abuse."

Here's the irony part. The U.S. government sought and obtained a patent on some of the chemical constituents found in marijuana!!

Here's a link to the complete patent.

Here's my question: How can the government claim a drug has no acceptable value and throw people into jail for its use on one hand, while obtaining a patent on the chemicals in this plant for the treatment of medical issues on the other?

Regardless of your position on drugs, you must admit that this really takes the cake of government hypocrisy.

The ugly spectre of DEFLATION!

For those of you enjoying the drop in prices all over the place, especially right before Christmas, I should caution you about a tricky little thing called: Deflation.

Here's a good article explaining deflation and why we should all be concerned by it.

What is it exactly?

Well, it's where prices fall. Normally, we like falling prices, but not when it's caused by large scale deflationary forces like we're seeing now.

Prices are falling because demand has fallen. Lower demand equals lower prices; it's classical economics.

Deflation is good at the beginning, so if you got the cash, spend it now on those good deals.

As deflation drags on, you see downward pressure on wages. This hurts.

Be prepared for lower wages and more unemployment if we can't shore up the economy soon. It's a nasty cycle that we can ill-afford to get into.

Virtual economies serve as a lab for real world economies

This story is rather cool. At least the geek in me thinks it is.

Virtual economies are providing some insight into how real world economies work.

It seems that the libertarian utopia of zero regulation in Second Life has led to downright fraud and economic ruin for virtual banks.

That's the trouble with self-regulation. It's another word for libertarian economic policies.

We're seeing the results of such extreme de-regulation in our own economy.

Virtual worlds provide insight into the real world, but without the costs to real people.

Cool stuff.

Country music is a little slow on the uptake in the political game

Finally someone other than me has spoken the truth about Country Music.

Ironically, it is the New Republic that carried the story.

I've bemoaned the state of country music for years. It ceased being country and morphed into country-flavored pop music.

This occurred when the Nashville music scene was invaded by New York and L.A. music business transplants. They couldn't make it in pop, so they moved to Nashville, changed country music to fit their tastes, and show us bumpkins how it was really done.

What are we left with? Crap.

Country music made the mistake of cozying up with the Right. That was a big mistake, but typical of Nashville. Nashville doesn't have the balls to strike out on its own, so it waits to see how the wind blows, then jumps on the bandwagon.

Unfortunately, the bandwagon shifted and is going the other direction.

Natalie Maines is having the last laugh on Toby Keith.

Former middle class could spell trouble for stability

I normally find Brooks a bit of an intellectual simpleton. Like many of his brethren in the openly-conservative camp, he's fond of simplistic characterizations that really don't hold up under scrutiny.

For example: In the present article he equates collective action with a loss of individual rights.

This isn't alway the case. Sometimes, group action is necessary to expand individual rights. Kind of a no man's an island view of things.

Simple solutions and simple social constructs appeal to a specific audience: Simple people.

Brooks is an affable sort, so I avoid being too hard on him. Sometimes he does make a valid point.

His take on the financial turmoil results in a conclusion that I agree with (thus, I don't think he's too bad...).

I've said for a time now that financial trouble is dangerous when those most affected by it are educated, ambitious, and carry a certain degree of expectation from their society. They'll be the sort to create trouble and can carry it out because of their education, experience, and degree of motivation.

Brooks agrees, in a round about way.

Anxiety disorders more prevalent than we realize

About one fifth of all patients visiting a doctor suffer from an anxiety disorder.

Anxiety disorders go untreated so often that we scarcely realize the trouble they cause.

Medically, they account for a significant portion of patients presenting with pain or other symptom.

My suspicion is that humans carry a predisposition to certain anxiety disorders from our evolutionary past. Those without the hyper-vigilance caused by anxiety were often the first ones eaten by a predator. Hyper-vigilance causes one to be more cautious too, so it can have a positive effect in small doses.

The downside: Hyper-vigilance associated with anxiety causes sufferers to sense greater physiological issues leading to more self-diagnosis of health problems. Ultimately, anxiety results in more doctor visits.

Public Jobs are the ticket out of the economic downturn. It's an oldy but a goody.

Despite what some laissez-faire types think, problems in the economy are tied to jobs.

The Washington Post offers up dismal information related to the economic downturn.

Consumption drives a significant portion of our economy. Available credit greases the wheels of consumption allowing us to acquire the things we need and want. As long as credit is available and we have income to pay the debt, things work fine.

Jobs are essential to consumption. When jobs are scarce, credit becomes scarce since creditors have a duty to ensure repayment of any credit they extend. Simply, No job, no credit?

Wages have remained stagnant in the face of every-increasing productivity gains for some time now. Plain English: People are working harder and more for less money; this includes benefits that have the power of money too, like health insurance and so on.

The productivity push has been driven in part by policies and an atmosphere encouraging off-shoring and workforce flexibility. Workers responded rationally to this environment of instability by increasing productivity (making them more valuable) and accepting less money (making them cost-effective to retain). Workers accept more work for less money because its economically rational to have some work rather than no work.

Wage stagnation occurs when inflation outpaces wage growth. When adjusted for inflation, wages are lower now than they've been in years. The net result: Workers are making themselves poor by working hard just to keep a job and to stay in place.

Inflation reduces the dollar's purchasing power. I remember when sodas cost $0.20. What do they cost now? $1.00 - $2.00. That's inflation.

To make up for inflationary wage losses and wage stagnation, many workers relied on credit to fill in the gap. Now, credit is drying up leaving those who were on the edge falling off the precipice.

As a nation we cannot borrow our way out of this. Consumption is out of the question because we have no means to consume when wages are falling and credit is non-existent.

What about growing our way out of this? Can't happen. Why? No credit and no money equals no tools to pump the economy and thus no growth.

Taking a page from history, our government must begin a jobs program much like the public works projects from the New Deal.

Only by infusing the country with cash via workers will the economy start working.

New technology may be missing its true calling.

I've wanted an e-reader for a time. However, the thought of getting always nagged me and I couldn't figure out why until now.

This article from dvice.com hits the nail squarely on the head.

I love books. Most of what I read is non-fiction, so the pressure to get rid of them once used is less than for fiction.

The e-readers don't really allow me to keep a bookshelf of non-fiction. The e-readers are designed mostly for readers of topical fiction.

The author of the article makes the point that e-readers should focus on periodicals that have a limited shelf life.

I couldn't agree more.

Libertarian hypocrites. Libertarians should be for personal freedom.

Here's what I don't get.

Libertarians are worried that Obama's election spells the end of libertarian ideals.

Many libertarians have bought into the notion that only Republicans and by extension, conservative ideals represent the last best hope for freedom.

What I want to know is why do libertarians drink the kool aid from the Right?

Where were libertarians when a Republican and self-described conservative took complete advantage of a crisis to push through one of the most invasive restrictions on our privacy rights? (Patriot Act)

Where were libertarians when this same politician sought to restrict a woman's right to control the use of her own uterus?

When Republican supporting libertarians talk freedom, they should choke on their words.

Neither party has the market cornered on freedom.

I, myself, have rather libertarian views. I've even voted libertarian in the past.

What I won't abide is a hypocrite. And for libertarians to suck it up and vote for a party that seeks restriction of personal rights, then I call them for what they are: Liars.

Conservatives are lying to themselves and trying to get us to believe it too.

Here's what I don't get about the "conservative" movement.

Those who call themselves such were more than happy to support George Bush, not once, but twice for the presidency.

Now, when his malfeasance has come back to tarnish the Republican brand and along with it, conservativism's bona fides, those same conservatives claim that Bush "wasn't a true conservative."

This is nothing but post hoc definitional hedging. In other words, it's bullshit.

Conservatives may need to lie to themselves about the state of their ideology and the status of the party who carried their banner (Republicans), but they shouldn't expect the rest of us to buy into their lame excuses and justifications.

I get so tired of conservatives who, when times were great for their agenda, were content to ignore the obvious signs of idiocy in their chosen candidate. But now, when time and reality smack them in the faces, they are wont to cut loose the very same people and party they hooked their wagon to.

The pretzel-like machinations they go through in order to maintain some semblance of cohesiveness in their ideological world is astounding.

AIG screws up again. It's this kind of decision-making that got them into this mess in the first place

Let's see if I get another comment from AIG after posting this one.

AIG, you know the big insurer who begged for taxpayer money because they were on their last leg, has managed to blow a bunch of money at another resort.

Of course AIG has the money to pay someone to cruise the internet looking for bad press and respond, so they have the money to send their executives to a resort.

AIG's response? Well, they said someone else paid the majority of the expense. Fair enough

BUT, here's the issue: AIG should be conscious of what we in the legal profession call the appearance of impropriety.

Even if what they say is true and they are not technically exploiting taxpayers for lavish events, they are still under the microscope and should be cognizant of the effect such extravaganzas would have on those lending them a whole bunch of cash. A technicality is not going to fly in the political world of taxpayer bailouts.

When you live in the rarefied world of corporate compensation, creature comforts like resorts, spas, and golf are just every day things to help a beleaguered executive out.

Back on planet earth with the rest of us, we see this as a con job.

Sowell's an idiot trying to paint liberals with an excessively broad brush--He must listen to Limbaugh

I find this diatribe from Thomas Sowell on RealClearPolitics to be absolutely hilarious.

The humor comes from his ending the article with an accusation that PhDs are ignorant. The larger theme is that intellectuals are really idiots.

Sowell goes on to talk about the mistakes intellectuals have made in the past. All good points.

Unfortunately, Sowell's attempt to lump all intellectuals together is bull. It's a logical fallacy called an Inductive Fallacy. Rush Limbaugh uses the same moronic crap to keep his sycophants hating reason and education.

Of course, individual intellectuals make mistakes, but that doesn't mean all intellectuals are guilty of those mistakes or share some complicity. Sowell implies as much by his indictment of intellectualism.

Using the same argument, I could just as easily indict the whole of conservativism and republicanism by the mistakes of the last eight years.

That would be bull also, but I have a whole truckload of evidence buttressing my argument, instead of just a few cherry-picked incidents like Sowell.

Give it up Sowell. Grow a cerebrum and learn how to use it. If can be fun riding with the big boys with big brains.

Automakers are short-sighted crybabies who deserve a spanking

I don't get it.

Automakers are staunch Republican allies. They advocate the free market so they can clean up and fight the unions.

When times get tough they turn into the biggest bunch of cry babies.

The free market is fine when money's rolling in, but when the losses start mounting over the bad management decisions, then what do they do? They turn into a big group of pussies.

Of course they'll hide behind that tired old chestnut: It'll hurt the economy and hurt working families.

I got news for you: Of course it will hurt the economy and hurt families, but the responsibility for that falls squarely on the shoulders of management.

Everyone would like the power to make decisions affecting the economy. With that comes the responsibility to man up and bear the burden of those decisions for good or ill.

I have no sympathy.

The hypocrisy is astounding. Free marketers when profit is involved, but panty wastes when their short-sightedness leads to economic ruin for the rest of us.

I repeat: No bailout.

We can't keep bailing out industries for their bad choices. That removes any incentive for them to behave in the future.

Atheists suffer at the hands of the religious

This article suggests that prejudice against atheism is why many American atheists are less happy than their religious brethren.

Prejudice of any sort makes the victims of it suffer, so this stands to reason.

Interesting.

GM asks taxpayers for some of what the banks got. HELL NO!

Holy crap! I'm getting a sense of deja vu from General Motors' cries for taxpayer help in the form of a government bailout.

U.S. car companies have had decades to change to leaner companies with better and more fuel efficient cars that consumers would buy, but did they do the smart thing?

Hell no.

Instead they hitched their wagon to bigger cars and refused to look around the corner at the coming oil shortage and the alternative energy push.

Should we bail them out? Hell No!

Of course the economy will take a hit. Of course workers will suffer.

Those are the consequences of poor management decisions over decades and consumers who've bought into the whole Hummer/SUV/Land Rover phenomenon.

Whose fault is it that U.S. auto manufacturing has shed jobs affecting the whole economy? It's management's fault. They could have made better, more forward-looking cars that people wanted, but they chose to maximize present profit at the expense of future viability. That's poor management and the cost of these bad practices should not be externalized to the rest of us. The free market should deal with this, not the U.S. taxpayer.

Let them fail. Maybe the actual threat of failure will provide the necessary impetus for them to do what they should've done all along...being a real American company. Americans are in front of the market instead of being behind the curve and getting hammered by excess and inertia.

GM's timing is highly suspicious. They stood back and watched what happened with the bank bailout. Now, their hands' are out. They're hoping a lame duck Bush will help before Obama takes office.

Republican message is to blame for their losses, not people

Republicans are quick to try to blame a person for their stunning loss on November 4.

Campbell Brown calls them to task for blaming Sarah Palin. Rightly so.

Blaming a person for the loss is bullshit, even if that person wasn't qualified for the job. Perhaps it was the Republican message that was at fault?

If the republican message is to blame shouldn't that be re-tooled?

That's a hard pill to swallow for the Republican faithful. Like religious fanatics, they'll scapegoat people without the power to damage a whole movement rather than look to their own beliefs as the source of their failings.

Until the Republicans look at their message, the real cause of their failure, they'll be stuck in limbo.

Conclusive proof that human activity the cause of global warming

Rush Limbaugh actually is a big fat idiot after all.

Rush is a strong opponent of human-induced climate change.

Well, there is now conclusive proof that climate variability has exceeded natural variations.

Of course, like holocaust deniers, Rush will point to the scientists as being some liberal cabal of pointy-headed intellectuals and are therefore not to be believed.

Here's what I say to that: If you're standing on a train track with lights approaching and horns blowing, you can deny the fact that a train is coming up until you get run down.

Or, you can take the evidence and take action.

GOP should move toward fiscal responsibility and away from conservative orthodoxy

The GOP has some tough times ahead.

Although I don't consider myself a Republican, due in large part to the overly religious nature of the party, I share some common values with the Republicans on the fiscal front.

The Republicans need to attract more moderates if they wish to regain some measure of power in the future. The conservative wing will fight this, but the party cannot afford the orthodoxy of the extreme right if it wishes to return from the wilderness.

I suspect that the Republicans will come out of this newly chastened. I also suspect that they will adopt many of the attitudes and practices of the New England Republicans. Specifically, Mitt Romney.

Those values are less wingnut and more economics driven.

Rush Limbaugh gives Republicans some stunningly stupid advice for winning the next election.

Here's some advice to Republicans from everybody's favorite stink-wind, Rush Limbaugh.

Rush advises Republicans to run to the Right even more if they want to win.

All I can say is this: I hope the Republicans take the supreme bloviator's advice. If they do, that will ensure continued Democrat dominance.

Rush is known for ignoring reality in the service of his religion--Right-Wing Ideology.

Must be nice to get paid so much to live in a fantasy world and spew idiocy to like-minded sycophants.

Go Rush!