nathaniel

Easy. Reduce demand. Take away subsidies and "rights" to health care. Watch prices fall as doctors and hospitals have to compete for patients, and patients become unwilling to overspend because it costs their own money to consume health care instead of coming out of some invisible gov't ledger. If you kept the difference you'd see to it yourself that you got the $4000 knee surgery instead of the $100,000 one. Likewise if you got to keep the difference between the $1600 / mo insurance plan that gets you the $100k treatment and the $200 / mo plan that gets you the $4k job. Seeing as $100,000 surgeries would go out of style quick, the health care industry would reorient itself towards the affordable and the effective. Like ordinary markets throughout the economy. Have you ever seen a price chart when you discussed treatment with your doctor or at a hospital? Hospitals will often refuse to reveal their price structures in advance of treatment. Nobody asks anyway. If you were spending the same amount on a house or a car or a computer you'd walk out if you couldn't see the price. They know that patients don't care because patients have practically no incentives to care. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

We can afford the war because it's presumed finite. Heretofore no one in this thread has proposed mugging our grandchildren for the exclusive benefit of the present crop of citizens, although that's what Congress is doing by increasing benefits instead of taking them away. The money has to come from somewhere. Future wealth is a finite resource, and we share it with our grandchildren. Your remarks imply that either * the cost of health care will go down as spending on it goes up, which is self contradictory, or * the extra benefits will be for a finite set of people at the expense of future generations, which is shortsighted, or * the benefit will be diminished, which you won't endorse Let's do some math. How much do you think we would increase gov't medical care by if we extended health care to everybody? We've got 16% of people without insurance now. Versus approx 27% getting gov't health care now (source: wikipedia), that represents an increase of nearly 60%. Tack on another 5% for the underinsured to make it a 77% increase. I'd like to see some good figures on the population that is presently without insurance, compared to the population that is on gov't assistance already. Nobody was giving numbers in this thread, but we are definitely in the ballpark of a massive increase in gov't health care. Quite possibly on the scale of a 50% to 100% increase. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

That is not a safe assumption. We could nominally "afford" Medicare by printing money or issuing large quantities of bonds. That doesn't mean we can really afford it. It means we can juggle the books to postpone the collapse at the cost of making the collapse that much worse when it happens. Medicare is in a position of oligopsony. IOW vast increases in Medicare spending will increase the marginal price of health care. Not lower it, per the popular delusion. What do you think is the elasticity of supply of healthcare? Is there slack in our hospital system anywhere? Do you think we could schedule a 100% or a 50% increase in operations, consultations, radiology, pharmaceutical services etc next week and continue it indefinitely? Hire a few more doctors down the street from in front of the Home Depot? This is the far side of the problem of fixing prices. Price fixing is already done to a certain extent today with Medicare pricing and reimbursement rules. The result is increasing numbers of health care providers rejecting Medicare patients, and overcommitment, stretching thin, and decreasing quality of care those resources that remain to accept Medicare patients. Look no further that Zimbabwe for a real-world experiment in price fixing. Loading the system by increasing demand relative to supply, whether by fixing prices (and reducing supply) or increasing demand will have similar effects, at least in the short to medium term. In the long term, you're staring down the GDP. Health care spending is increasing faster than the GDP. That can only go on so long before consumers, taxpayers, and / or the government run out of money. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

When the Comptroller says that the present system is unaffordable, I take it to mean things that cost more than it are also unaffordable. Also I take it at face value when he says that the rate of increase is the killer, and that we need either massive tax hikes (unaffordable in their own right) or drastic benefit reductions to make it affordable. The whole proportionality argument in analogy to other developed nations is a fallacy because despite our first world bravado we have a third world nation amongst us. First world bravado doesn't pay the bills. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Subtracting the inefficiencies from Medicare, considering its benefits only would still result in a system that is not affordable. What proportion of Medicare dollars do you think is spent on actual benefits? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

More/most people who got sick would die, or go bankrupt treating relatively minor conditions. The idea of insurance is that many (but not all) people prefer and would voluntarily assume a small financial ding with certainty than a large financial ding whose expected cost (probability times cost) is less on average than the small ding. Insurers balance the books to make this happen. The problem is that many people think of insurance and get ideas of wealth redistribution; the rich paying for the poor to get more healthcare. That's not insurance at all, that amounts to a welfare check. Insurance does not, and cannot perform wealth redistribution on its own. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Any system that is affordable will provide fewer and lesser benefits on average than Medicare. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Until you get to the numbers. It's crooked accounting to extrapolate from your circle of friends. their healthcare needs, their SUVs and box stores to the whole US. Would you pretend that Medicare can continue past 2020 at its current burn rate, or that it could have continued at its burn rate prior to the prescription drug benefit passed a couple years ago? Medicare vs GDP http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/06/09/the_coming_crisis_for_medicare/ Google for medicare bankrupt 2007 to find a recent article from a media outlet with your favorite bias on the same issue. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Increasing coverage will increase costs. It's straight supply and demand. How could it be otherwise? There aren't economies of scale in healthcare. More healthcare costs more than less healthcare. Enslaving doctors at lower wage isn't a realistic option, and wouldn't work anyway. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

No, that's backwards. You lose rights when you suffer a communicable disease--you can be quarantined against your will. By making healthcare a right we'll just pour more good money after bad. The projected costs of our present healthcare obligations are already unmanageable. We cannot afford more, we can only afford less. This means, consequently, that the poor will get the shaft. If it's any consolation, the wealthy will pay more too. The alternatives are worse. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

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

Ask a former GW Bush economic advisor (2003-2005) and Harvard professor. 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 actually not a stretch. The Koran specifically allows it. The Prophet Muhammed had around 12 wives. His sayings and his life in general is used throughout Muslim faiths as the foundation for traditions and beliefs. In real world politics you see compromises between strict religious interpretation and secular practices. "Islamic" nations are on a bit of a spectrum. At the secular end you see some attempts to restrict polygamy, and on the fundie end you see much more tolerance. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Therein lies the fatal flaw of "universal" healthcare in anything resembling our contemporary market. The young & healthy band together in special plans, more or less poached by the competition. In a free market, you cannot rely on the healthy to subsidize the sick. Insurance only works when, on average, everyone pays in more than they take out. It can't really help people who are both poor and sick, because the poor won't be able to afford the sky-high premiums for the coverages to treat their conditions. Universal health care necessitates wealth redistribution, and the debate over universal health care should be couched in such terms. Some degree of wealth redistribution is entirely desirable and consistent with our culture and our history, but it's pointless to get up in arms on comparisons of health care between vastly different economies and ours. They aren't the same-- the needs, the resources, and the means are different. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Wouldn't it be funny if they called matches "explosives" under similar terms, because they can burn. Can't allow matches to come within 50 feet of matches. Have to sell them one at a time, and run to the warehouse for each one. Maybe a fancy conveyor belt? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Couldn't have said it better myself. Ignoring the price tags will not make them go away. Ignorance only makes our eventual choices worse when the money runs out. Illness (apart from catastrophe) and death is inevitable. We should not throw away what we have in catering to fantasies about what we can't. A realistic discussion of health care can only take place inside an economic framework, whether at macro (taxes, GDP, aggregate supply / demand, needs, costs of treatment and administration, wealth redistribution, in/equality of care, etc) or micro levels (your budget, your options and your needs), or in between. Otherwise it's fluff. Food for thought, maybe, but way more entertainment than documentary. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

buy a real pda and program it yourself. best bang for the buck, those ti-8x and ti-9x run at like 16 mhz and have like 512 k of ram, and they have these weird ti processors that only run TI software a contemporary pda will run an arm core at 200-600 mhz, have 32-64 mb of main memory and a color screen. wireless, infrared, bluetooth, whatever. and you can check your email while taking your exams. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

And car dealerships too. When I bought a new car last year, they didn't even have the dignity to ask how much I made, they just judged me based on what I was wearing. Tshirt and sneakers == no attention at all. Dress shirt and loafers == salespeople wouldn't leave me alone. What we need is the government to step in and get them to give me a car for 90% off, or "free" at taxpayer expense, because that is what I and all Americans deserve as a human right. Maybe I should have gotten citizenship in Iraq, where gas was subsidized to $0.05 per gallon. I'd have a much better chance of surviving. They are my tax dollars, after all. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Indeed. If we cared anything about efficiency we'd be using base three. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Because anonymous users can pass a Turing test? That would be a fun project, to rig a markov chain language generator and rig it up to feed off SC and reply to posts every now and then. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Even though that video seems like a cruel parody, I was wondering if there is any training or preparation that could help a person survive such torture with their sanity intact (assuming the victim survives at all). Is there any such thing? Surely it would be a valuable service, with the popularity of torture these days. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

The point that the original poster had, I believe, was in regards to centrally planned authority. All the traditional criticisms of federal rule apply more or less directly to the USPA, even though it does not have sovereign geographical boundaries--it is a federal governing agency analogous to the ones operated by the United States. It's a strawman tactic to pretend that affiliation with the US govt has anything to do with the politics of federalism. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Likewise, the FAI has Federation in its name, do you dispute that it is a federation, or that it is an agency? That the adjective federal would apply to it or its regulations? Your fascination with the US gov't is provincial and not germane to whether BSRs are federal regulations. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I didn't put it in the dictionary, the original usage in question is true to the language. Federal was and is an adjective before the US gov't was invented. 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.bartleby.com/61/30/L0073000.html BSRs are rules of conduct and procedure established by custom, and by the USPA, which is an authority on parachuting and parachuting safety. They are not the final authority on the subject, and they do not have sharp teeth. But they are essentially a legislative body. They make laws. Not criminal laws, but laws entered into voluntarily for the benefits promulgated thereby. Their structure is clearly federal. Not capital F Federal as in elected and/or operated by the United States government, but federal, as in centralized and governing over local entities (dropzones). Thus, USPA BSRs are federal regulations. Similar letter and same spirit as Federal Regulations, but different means to accomplish the ends. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?