ReallY??? I guess if you suffer from cognitive dissonance you could believe that, but since I am quite sure I have vastly more knowledge on the subject than you, I will take your laughable rebuke as the uninformed, petulant response it actually represents.
Btw, Wilkinson and Pickett? Experts? I suppose if you consider rabid idelogoues who's prime work has been discredited by mainstream economists as experts, then I see why you don't even understand the basic concepts of statistical analysis.
Or you know, since multiple readers came away from your pathetic arguments with the same response, it was not your readers who were at fault.
Or you know, since multiple readers came away from your pathetic arguments with the same response, it was not your readers who were at fault.
Nonsense. He's clearly the only person on the road who knows which side we drive on. Everyone else, including the person who installed the steering wheel, has it wrong.
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Congratulations. This is probably the most aggressive bad quoting I have been subjected to, Crimson Jester. Impressive! And it illustrates pretty well the theme of misrepresentation we have seem lately. You are well aware that what I felt was f*+&ing b#++$&& insane was something else - but you did not saw fit to include that, did you? If you are prepared to go that far in misrepresenting my position, you also illustrate perfectly why sugar coating will not work.
Again, there seems to be a problem of communication here. I do not say things like "moronic religion" or "religious stupidity", and yet I have now been misrepresented several times.... Or, not to be too delicate about it: It's f**$ing b@*&%*$ insane.
All I was doing was an attempt to point out that people may respond negatively to the way you were posting. More flies with Honey, that sort of thing.
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The laws are on the books. That someone should even begin to be treated like a criminal for consensual sex is insane. And regarding anal sex, I seem to recall a case where a neighbour videotaped a couple having it, making it a criminal case. I REALLY, REALLY hope I remember incorrectly here. But given that anal sex is in fact illegal in various states... anyone care to guess WHY there are such laws? Anyone else think "religion"? I do, mostly because I really can't see another reason. I also find it deeply depressing that someone should be subjected to working through the legal system for years to actually get the ruling that gay oral sex is unconstitutional...It is still on the books and police can use it to make arrests. Just because the prosecutors wont prosecute what they know to be losing cases doesn't mean the cops can't be jerks.
But when certain states still have laws stating that two men having consensual oral sex is punishable by prison time... that is FAR beyond anything within the bounds of reason. Or, not to be too delicate about it: It's f*&+ing b%$$%$* insane.
They don't have those laws, or if they do, they are unenforceable as unconstitutional.
Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
I would like to point you to a wikipedia page Lawrence v. Texas Which invalidated Sodomy laws in every state of the union. It was a landmark case that got a lot of press. Been few years now.
Still, there are some things that should never be subject of laws.Well, the idea that sexual behavior should never be the subject of laws is a relatively recent one.
Even in Europe, written law does not necessarily match enforceable law. For example, antimiscegenation laws were overturned judicially in France in 1818, but it wasn't until 1833 that the law was formally repealed and removed from the statute books.
I realize that you probably don't mean this, but rape, sex with a child, and probably a couple of others should certainly be the subject of laws.
Say that consensual sexual behavior should never be the subject of laws, and I would agree.
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In any system that rewards success over failure, there will be disparity. Obviously if you compare the lowest denominator to the highest you will get a bleak picture. However, when you compare the overall success, or the mean results, you get a better idea of which system is best.
The mean (average) is the absolute worst stat to use for that. Donald trump and 10 homeless people, on average, have a very high level of income.
Try the median.
Out of developed nations, the US*:- has the highest levels of income in equality(world bank)
- is fourth lowest on the UNICEF index of child wellfare (UNICEF)
- is in the bottom half for levels of trust (european and world values survay)
- is in the bottom half for positive status of woman in society
- is the second lowest provider of foreign aid (by % of national income) (OECD)
- is, by a large margine, the most mentally ill country (WHO)
- is the 4th highest consumer of illigal drugs (UNODC)
- has the 4th lowest life expectancy
- has the highest infant mortality rate
- has the highest rates of obesity
- has the highest rates of child obesity (unicef)
- is the 6th worst mathimatics and literacy scores.
- has the highest level of 15 year olds aspiring to low skilled work.
- has the highest rate of teenage pregnacy.
- has the highest rate of homicide.
- has the 4th highest level of childhood exposure to violence.
- has the highest rate of imprisonment.
- has the lowest rate of social mobility
- is in the bottom five for patents held/million people.
- has the 3rd lowest rate of recycling.
*this not the recent data, but it is representative of the data being used in research published between 2008 and 2011. Exact ratings may have changed slightly, but the general point I understand to have remained the same.
The true problem with those statistics, is that they insult most of the world, by calling it not developed. For example Eastern Europe, South America, Central America, Mexico, and others are considered "not developed." That would probably surprise most of those countries.
Define "developed country." Because if you do, I think that you will find that Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, Turkey, South Africa, Romania, and many others are developed, and fall behind the US in most of the things you listed. Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, most of the Caribbean, and others also.
Many of them are also disingenuous, the US may not have the highest number of patents per person, but they have the highest number of patents over all. The US doesn't give the most aid as a percentage, but it does give the most in real dollars (that statistic also doesn't count private donations which does put the US near the top by percentage). The lowest rate of social mobility is a true joke, considering where two of our last three Presidents came from.
Life expectancy 2008 This list has Denmark, Portugal, Ireland, South Korea, and Taiwan behind the US (along with a lot of other countries that are developed).
Infant Mortality I'm sure that quite a few of the countries on this list behind the US qualify as Developed.
You are quoting the WHO statistics of all 14 countries that they have data on? That is 14 out of the about 200 countries in the world.
The US has the fourth lowest homicide rate in the America's, so none of the countries in the America's except the US and Canada are developed? The US homicide rate is less than 1/4 that of Greenland! (Gotta love statistics) The FBI doesn't agree with you.
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In any system that rewards success over failure, there will be disparity. Obviously if you compare the lowest denominator to the highest you will get a bleak picture. However, when you compare the overall success, or the mean results, you get a better idea of which system is best.
Also depends on how you measure success. Most societies devalue their low skilled workers. These lowest income earners are generally the ones that keep your lifestyle running. What would life be like without our lowly paid (less successful?) workers in food prep and service, shop workers, farm workers (yeah your food), cleaners and childcare workers (for example)? The problem is not success its simply a matter of finance. In Australia where I live we always say we value health, security and education. Sadly these three groups of people have to fight tooth and claw for a wage increase just above the CPI because there are lots of them, very large labour costs that make a budget look bad. Without police, teachers and nurses I imagine life would be a little less pleasant - are these people not successful? Are their jobs of little value? No, but they will never earn the huge money.
Garbage collectors also fall into a lower wage area I imagine and when they stop work we really get to see the impact of our "less successful" workers. And I do realise they can earn reasonable wages, but that is by doing lots of overtime (money at the cost of life and family - another thing we often accept as a mark of success)
Check out this graph. Each line is the life expectancy of the world's best countries and America is the dot.
Notice how we are falling down the line.We are getting better, but at a lower rate than other countries. WHY??
.
My guess is more stupid people...lots of stupid people lower your countrys life expecantancy.
The US has the fourth lowest homicide rate in the America's, so none of the countries in the America's except the US and Canada are developed? The US homicide rate is less than 1/4 that of Greenland! (Gotta love statistics) The FBI doesn't agree with you.
Murder rates vary by year, it is rather more work that I really want to go through, to go and get the exact year that remained true, but that article doesn't really say what your presenting it as saying.
What it does show is that the US performs worse than nearly every comparable country on violent crime, again.
The trend is pretty standard across years worth of data, when it comes to violent crime, there is something very wrong going on with america.
Greenland is also a very poor country, with a very small isolated, but incredibly dense population. Oh, and large chunks of the population suffer from S.A.D. because of location.
ReallY??? I guess if you suffer from cognitive dissonance you could believe that, but since I am quite sure I have vastly more knowledge on the subject than you, I will take your laughable rebuke as the uninformed, petulant response it actually represents.
Btw, Wilkinson and Pickett? Experts? I suppose if you consider rabid idelogoues who's prime work has been discredited by mainstream economists as experts, then I see why you don't even understand the basic concepts of statistical analysis.
You might not like them.
They maybe "rabid ideologues".
they may even have been discredited by "mainstream economics"(not nearly the blow you appear to consider it, given that neo-liberal economics has been a disaster for the vast majority of people, in the vast majority of nations that have adopted its mind set, rapidly expanding social and economic inequality and benefiting only a tiny portion of the population.)
But they DO have a legitimate claim to expertise in the field of social epidemiology.
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Agreed. The basic tenets of I.D. are bad Science and worse Theology.
Mind you, I'd disagree with both statements. Pushing intelligent design may actually be very clever for those groups: It's just evil.
But decent politics and awesome fundraising.
Which is the whole point.
Which it may well be. I find it horrible politics. Thats just me.
The US has the fourth lowest homicide rate in the America's, so none of the countries in the America's except the US and Canada are developed? The US homicide rate is less than 1/4 that of Greenland! (Gotta love statistics) The FBI doesn't agree with you.Murder rates vary by year, it is rather more work that I really want to go through, to go and get the exact year that remained true, but that article doesn't really say what your presenting it as saying.
What it does show is that the US performs worse than nearly every comparable country on violent crime, again.
The trend is pretty standard across years worth of data, when it comes to violent crime, there is something very wrong going on with america.
Greenland is also a very poor country, with a very small isolated, but incredibly dense population. Oh, and large chunks of the population suffer from S.A.D. because of location.
And you are ignoring that "facts" are anything but. The French study listed 4 developed countries with higher murder rates than the US, and I know that at least two of them have consistently higher rates.
My point about Greenland is that statistics can be made to say anything that someone wants. Do you know how many murders it too in Greenland to give that high murder rate? 11, but it has such a small population that those 11 are all it took.
But still, you have failed to define what a developed country is? Can you? Do you even know what it means?
This. Americans work more hours, and take fewer vacation and sick days than other similarly situated countries.
It doesn't work, though, does it? I know that Germany, where the average working day is a full hour shorter than the UK's, actually has higher productivity rate almost right across the board than the UK's. Working yourself to death is actually self-defeating because it produces more stress, which impact on your ability to be productive and successful.
The US has the fourth lowest homicide rate in the America's, so none of the countries in the America's except the US and Canada are developed? The US homicide rate is less than 1/4 that of Greenland! (Gotta love statistics) The FBI doesn't agree with you.Murder rates vary by year, it is rather more work that I really want to go through, to go and get the exact year that remained true, but that article doesn't really say what your presenting it as saying.
What it does show is that the US performs worse than nearly every comparable country on violent crime, again.
The trend is pretty standard across years worth of data, when it comes to violent crime, there is something very wrong going on with america.
Greenland is also a very poor country, with a very small isolated, but incredibly dense population. Oh, and large chunks of the population suffer from S.A.D. because of location.
And you are ignoring that "facts" are anything but. The French study listed 4 developed countries with higher murder rates than the US, and I know that at least two of them have consistently higher rates.
My point about Greenland is that statistics can be made to say anything that someone wants. Do you know how many murders it too in Greenland to give that high murder rate? 11, but it has such a small population that those 11 are all it took.
But still, you have failed to define what a developed country is? Can you? Do you even know what it means?
Do you? It's a common global economic term. Somewhat loosely defined, but essentially Western Europe, the US, Canada and some eastern European ones, Japan, Australia and a few others depending on who's list you're looking at.
Not Greenland. Not Brazil, Estonia, Mexico or Russia, who were the other 4 listed with a higher murder rate in the linked study.
Two of them are BRICs, only one is a OECD nation, and only one makes it into the top 40 of the Human Development Index, or considered to have a very high human development level.
Because we ration health care by money.So, America has less money than the other countries? I thought America
had more money, more doctors, more medical schools, etc.
Okay, you're not going to like this, because it's a bit of an oxymoron... but...
Your thought is both right and wrong.
In actual medical degrees, the United States has the largest number in the world. In general practicioners (the doctors who actually do most of the general treating of patients), we're somewhere in the lower half.
The reason is the American Medical Association. By their standards, specialists get paid more. Add in the high cost of getting a degree in medicine and most doctors specialize just so they don't die in debt. However, specialists generally need recommendations from general practicioners to see... which, combined with how swamped most general practicioners are and the fact that emergency rooms are generally a poorer quality of care for most people but also more reliable... pretty much means most people won't see a specialist they probably should have seen at any point before they die.
Now, that's the situation BEFORE Obamacare came along and screwed millions of people out of insurance (and, in turn, forcing millions more people than before to rely upon emergency rooms as their primary source of health care). So, yeah, expect things to get worse.
To complicate it is the diet issue... it doesn't help that overly processed foods are cheapest and fresh foods are relatively expensive in most cities (in general, this means a salad is actually a costlier decision than a week of TV dinners), you're pretty much facing a problem where most poor people probably can't even afford the diet they should eat... and that's before you get into the fact the United States has a massive, glaring food distribution problem that is only getting worse as time goes by. See, some areas don't have those fresh stuffs for sale at all... which means it's eat processed junk or starve to death, even if you could afford the healthier items.
That's only two parts of the problem. The third is HFCS. Note that HFCS isn't an artificial sweetener; it's two naturally-occurring sugars (fructose, or fruit sugar, and glucose, or blood sugar) that have had part of the fructose converted to glucose (they actually use a method that is, pretty much, the same method the human body uses). Then they, if I read it right, mix it with water to produce the syrup. The problem? That is simply too much sugar at once in the amounts it is used in; if they used it in sane amounts, it wouldn't be any more dangerous to you than eating an orange.
Part Four: Artificial sweeteners. Nasty stuff. Keep in mind the body, at its most basic level, gets energy from burning sugar; this is what actually fuels your cells. They simply use the rest of the materials for self-repair and chemical interactions. So, on the whole, you need certain levels of natural sugar for your body to work properly; eating a balanced diet covers that nicely. Now, what do you think happens when you replace that natural sugar with something artificial? Long-term side-effects are unknown, but short-term has demonstrated it causes increased appetite that causes people to consume the artificial sweetener in excessive quantities.
Then there's part five: Mental health, birth defects, and physical diabilities. Both of these play parts, as some mentally ill people cannot exercise due to their mental illness. Some people with mental development issues have the same problem. And then you get into birth defects, such as thyroid problems, which either make exercising difficult at best or outright make it nearly impossible for you to lose rate. Physical disabilities I shouldn't even have to talk about. The United States has comparatively high rates of those problems.
Part Six: It's possible we might just be naturally fatter. A paper on using electricity to try to trace body fat within the human body a few years ago discussed something surprising in their results: Americans, even ones who were obviously at the peak of physical health, showed more body fat than their non-American counterparts. This was, apparently, across the board, suggesting that it was related to something unique to Americans and not seen elsewhere. Now, it's been years since then, so it's possible that was all hogwash or they didn't know what they were doing. If it is true, though, then it adds a problem we might not be able to correct without genetic engineering.
And that's my overly simplistic answer to your question ^^ I hope it was what you were looking for ^^
Edit:
TL;DR
The health care system is badly managed, our food distribution networks are in shambles, what food is easily found is sewage quality, and Mother Nature doesn't like us.
Most probably a big factor there are also some huge companies like Monsanto and the U.S. army (+derivates), which have a major say in politics and their very own interests, largely money and power, but not the health or happiness of normal people, even U.S. citizens.
Since more then 50 years there are real time experiments run in the society, most often without the knowledge of the "participating" people.
Things like people react to DDT, nuclear radiation exposure, various mew medics and chemicals, drugs, genetically modified agents (including food you might take for organic) are run in the U.S..
You might be surprised what some of them are doing outside of the U.S., to people who have no rights whatssoever in the U.S.A..
Are there any demonstrated health risks for genetically modified foods?
Turns out the answer is "Edumication".
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I'd like to see some documentation on those numbers. Near as I can tell, we're somewhere in the middle, at least for the developed world, in doctors per capita. Possibly highest in absolute numbers, but that's largely meaningless and we're certainly not in the lower half in terms of GPs in absolute numbers.
According to this, we're 48th in doctors per capita and that seems about what I've seen elsewhere.
Yes, but that's 48th in the world, not 48th among developed nations. I'm not particularly impressed that we are above Malawi and East Timor.
The IMF lists 35 countries as "advanced economy," which is a reasonable third-party list of developed economies. Of those 35 countries, 24 of them are above us on the list you referenced. The CIA has a different list of "developed countries" with 34 nations on that list; 23 of them are ahead of us.
I think that's pretty firm documentation that we're in the lower half of doctors per capita among developed countries, which is the basis of comparison we're using here.
Are there any demonstrated health risks for genetically modified foods?
None. There have been side-effects of the pesticides some of them can make, but the majority of GMO foods don't make those pesticides or anything else demonstrated to be any more or less harmful to humans than non-GMO foods.
Now, some like to argue that altering any part of a plant's genetic makeup makes it harmful. If that were true, humanity would have died out five to six thousand years ago. After all, even most food crops today are genetically-modified descendants of their original wild variety that humanity specifically altered through selective breeding to produce the desired genetic modifications.
Because we ration health care by money.So, America has less money than the other countries? I thought America
had more money, more doctors, more medical schools, etc.Okay, you're not going to like this, because it's a bit of an oxymoron... but...
Your thought is both right and wrong.
In actual medical degrees, the United States has the largest number in the world. In general practicioners (the doctors who actually do most of the general treating of patients), we're somewhere in the lower half.
The reason is the American Medical Association. By their standards, specialists get paid more. Add in the high cost of getting a degree in medicine and most doctors specialize just so they don't die in debt. However, specialists generally need recommendations from general practicioners to see... which, combined with how swamped most general practicioners are and the fact that emergency rooms are generally a poorer quality of care for most people but also more reliable... pretty much means most people won't see a specialist they probably should have seen at any point before they die.
Now, that's the situation BEFORE Obamacare came along and screwed millions of people out of insurance (and, in turn, forcing millions more people than before to rely upon emergency rooms as their primary source of health care). So, yeah, expect things to get worse.
I'd like to see some documentation on those numbers. Near as I can tell, we're somewhere in the middle, at least for the developed world, in doctors per capita. Possibly highest in absolute numbers, but that's largely meaningless and we're certainly not in the lower half in terms of GPs in absolute numbers.
According to this, we're 48th in doctors per capita and that seems about what I've seen elsewhere.We do have a shortage of primary care physicians and it is certainly related to the high cost of a medical...
I will state up front some of my information is old.
Edit: Thejeff, the following bit on GDP isn't actually addressing you. Occurred to me as I read it, after correcting all of the typos and mispasted links, that the following comes across as addressing you. I was also addressing Orfamay for the most part. But it provides data you had requested. The part about the AMA and after is purely addressing you.
I will also state that "GDP" is a worthless measurement in this case. A nation with a GDP of 2 goats and a bushel of wheat, but which has three doctors within it, would easily have a massively high amount of doctors per GDP. That doesn't tell you at all how many of the people in that nation even have a chance to see a doctor.
What you actually want is doctors per 1000 people. Now, I will admit this information shows my claim was off, but the figures put the United States at 2.4 doctors for every 1000 citizens, which works out to one doctor for every 416.7 people. World Health Organization also provides similar data. That's general practicioners and specialists combined.
And interestingly, the AMA itself is claiming the United States is going to be short by 160,000 physicians and is currently seeking solutions because medical education isn't producing enough of them.
Now, as for the AMA not controlling prices to some degree... there are those who disagree with you. In fact, apparently, there's an ongoing conflict between the AMA and the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee over the AMA's practices. And, in fact, the AMA has apparently been in conflict with the U.S. government for decades over Medicare and its policies for charging procedures. To the point that the Democrats and Republicans both teamed up in Clinton's era to try to force the AMA to be more reasonable about what it was charging Medicare.
Interestingly, doctors might not too happy about the current pay situation either.
As for Obamacare... Well, if you want to say that people didn't get screwed, you're going to have to find some way around all of the lies. Then there's the fact the initial loss of millions of policies was blamed on insurance companies. Then the projections of one third of the nation losing medical insurance hit. At one point, one paper reported that fourteen people were losing insurance for every one who got it (for the record, I'm one of the fourteen, and there's no insurances in my area to replace it that are within my budget; the tiny amount of money I've spent here in the last month wouldn't even amount to one payment). Then comes the fun when you have two different news agencies saying Obama knew millions would lose insurance coverage before it happened. And then, finally, you have Obama himself admitting it's not working and the fixes are an utter failure... to the point millions were exempted from Obamacare entirely.
Oh, the insurance I lost? It didn't cover everything... but it meant an emergency doctor's visit would only cost me $10. The closest replacement is five times the monthly and the cost for an emergency doctor's visit is $150... so I guess I'm just going to have to go to the doctor less often.
Welcome to things being worse. And if I come across as bitter, that's because I am.
Note to self: Check for typoes before posting. Rapid copying and pasting of text puts the wrong words in the wrong places, accidentally post a link to Disney instead of Forbes, and I think one of my mispasted links would get you caught in an endless loop of trying to load the page and getting redirected. That's all corrected.
Luckily, it was all in the right language; nothing quite as embarrassing as trying to make a point in English and accidentally posting in Russian. Even though I don't speak Russian. Still not sure how I managed it that one time...
Are there any demonstrated health risks for genetically modified foods?
To my knowledge none have been found, but the organizations in charge of funding the studies are also the ones who bennefit from them finding nothing.
Edit:
The necessity of studies also varies greatly from GMO to GMO. Some are pretty inocuous changes and others, like the ones that produce their own pesticides, we need independant studies on.
On genetically modified food:
That is still in research and an open experiment.
The problem there is, who knows what´s really going on?
That is actually true for a lot of fields.
Often things prove to be problematic decades later, so just because nobody dies instantly, doesn´t mean it´s safe to go.
What´s already happening is that there are traces of genetically modified plants where they should not be, namely in other fields and products.
And there lies the real problem, where the biggest criticism is.
So, say there are several experiments like this and also generally loose recommendations on what is allowed for chemicals and similar stuff in food and food processing, of course it will show in the population.
Are there any demonstrated health risks for genetically modified foods?To my knowledge none have been found, but the organizations in charge of funding the studies are also the ones who bennefit from them finding nothing.
Edit:
The necessity of studies also varies greatly from GMO to GMO. Some are pretty inocuous changes and others, like the ones that produce their own pesticides, we need independant studies on.
Are you trying to tell me NO governmental, health, environmental agency or blood sucking class action lawsuit lawyer can scrape together the cash for one of these studies?
Are you trying to tell me NO governmental, health, environmental agency or blood sucking class action lawsuit lawyer can scrape together the cash for one of these studies?
Well, class action lawsuit lawyers don't have money to spend on this kind of long-term research. Governmental agencies are at the beck and call of their political masters, and if you think that Monsanto is above making a phone call to a senator, think again.
So what's left? Greenpeace?
Except that every PiP crop is tested by the EPA, not the biotech company producing it.
That's what THEY want you to think.
Two of them are BRICs, only one is a OECD nation, and only one makes it into the top...
The US has the fourth lowest homicide rate in the America's, so none of the countries in the America's except the US and Canada are developed? The US homicide rate is less than 1/4 that of Greenland! (Gotta love statistics) The FBI doesn't agree with you.Murder rates vary by year, it is rather more work that I really want to go through, to go and get the exact year that remained true, but that article doesn't really say what your presenting it as saying.
What it does show is that the US performs worse than nearly every comparable country on violent crime, again.
The trend is pretty standard across years worth of data, when it comes to violent crime, there is something very wrong going on with america.
Greenland is also a very poor country, with a very small isolated, but incredibly dense population. Oh, and large chunks of the population suffer from S.A.D. because of location.
And you are ignoring that "facts" are anything but. The French study listed 4 developed countries with higher murder rates than the US, and I know that at least two of them have consistently higher rates.
My point about Greenland is that statistics can be made to say anything that someone wants. Do you know how many murders it too in Greenland to give that high murder rate? 11, but it has such a small population that those 11 are all it took.
But still, you have failed to define what a developed country is? Can you? Do you even know what it means?
Do you? It's a common global economic term. Somewhat loosely defined, but essentially Western Europe, the US, Canada and some eastern European ones, Japan, Australia and a few others depending on who's list you're looking at.
Not Greenland. Not Brazil, Estonia, Mexico or Russia, who were the other 4 listed with a higher murder rate in the linked study.
You might want to check yor list of OECD members, because both Estonia and Mexico are members.
Oh, and six of those OECD members have a higher rate of income inequality by their Gini coefficients.
You really should check your "facts."
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Die, pinkskins, die!!!
I'll give you some love, Goblin :-P !
[*hugs the goblin in a ferocious grapple of Love, which slowly turns him blue in the face (the goblin, not the gnome)*]
[Returns ferocious grapple of love and waggles eyebrows]
As far as residency...remove those restrictions as well. Let med graduates work apprenticeships on terms they and their mentor agree upon.
AAahhhhhhh...uuhhhmmm...no?
For now I'll let the AMA = ≠ Politburo pass me by and say that while I can see some of what you are trying to articulate I cannot conceive of how lifting educational and, more importantly, experiential requirements and replacing that with "ye olde apprenticeship" does anything to advance the issues of care.
Less work load? Yay!
Perhaps smaller paid but less stressed doctors? Yay!
That said pushing a field as critical as medicine back to the days of being defined by what you as an individual "student" can get someone to agree to without some sort of larger consensus seems dangerous and counter-productive?
For one, it was their fault. The only way you could end up losing your insurance is if your insurance company changed it after the ACA was passed. Moreover, nobody is forcing insurance companies to cancel these plans; rather, they're choosing to, and there's no rule they they can't. (It was a mistake to not include this rule in the ACA.)
For another, the Daily Caller? Really? The Daily Caller is a fairly infamous right-wing tabloid that wears its Tea Party affiliation on its sleeve. It was founded by the co-host of Fox and Friends, Tucker Carlson, and that particular article was written by Neil Munro, best known for being censured by the White House for interrupting the president's prepared remarks.
[relevant link removed though copy-past laziness]
The part you're missing is that whose fault it actually was doesn't matter; blaming it on them instead of immediately taking action to fix it was still grossly mishandling it and making an increasingly bad problem worse.
And, actually, some insurance policies did have to be cancelled. And that's actually according to the Obamacare Facts website. Or, you can just read the act for yourself. Check section 1251. The date of enforcement is in section 1253. So, yes, federal law was forcing some plans to be cancelled.
The link itself is one of the ones at the bottom of my list. I grabbed ones people could argue with, but which still presented somewhat factual information.
That prediction is according to a right-wing thinktank whose stated purpose is to promote "limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate". The article itself is Newsmax (a conservative news aggregator) summarizing a Fox News story.
Breaking news! Fox News reports that a dirty Democrat/Socialist bill is going to cause the end of the world, according to right-wing thinktank.
My point in speaking about it was to show just how horribly it was mishandled and just how badly the public perception was being damaged on this front.
No, that is not "one paper". That is some guy's blog. In fact, the guy in particular is Ernest Istook, a right-wing radio host and former Republican member of the House of Representatives.
He is comparing the number of people who have completed their insurance signups through the Obamacare website (at the end of November, which was relevant then but is a little out of date now), to the number 7 million. 7 million isn't the number of people who supposedly lost plans, but rather the number of people Obama stated he hoped would sign up through the website by March.
Shockingly, he finds that the number of people who signed up after a month is much smaller than the people the federal government expects to sign up over six months.
Believe it or not, but I actually got to that blog through a newspaper link. I went with the original source over the newspaper. Mainly because I've seen too many cases of newspapers muddying the waters through misunderstanding (read a recent news story about Arctic heating related to greenhouse gas-caused warming; greenhouse gases don't cause warming, but enhance warming effects already in place).
One of the more liberal, smaller-circulation newspapers I have on my list. They cited the story, and were in turn cited a few times in local grumblings. It's part of the cycle of how this entire thing is both an implementation and public relations failure.
And, again, this is just plain wrong. This is the Obama administration telling everyone who was wronged by his (dumb) promise that they are immune to penalties for not being insured. This is the right thing to do.
I actually had a mainstream source for it, but I couldn't post the link here due to forum rules about swearing, racism, threats of violence, and the fact the comments section included a mix of all three in large quantities. I seriously hope the Secret Service has improved their security measures for the White House.
And it was the right thing for him to do... but the fact he didn't do it immediately instead of blaming insurance companies made it look more like he was admitting defeat than trying to fix a mistake. At least, that's how everyone I know, including those who support it, have seen it. Having the man whose name has become synonymous with the program appear to admit the program isn't working right after a massive onslaught is very, very bad PR.
There's no possible way for me to verify this, but the reason you can't have your old insurance is that your insurance company cancelled it. It is a shame that they've successfully passed the blame onto someone else, though.
My insurance policy was purchased in May of 2010; it was not eligible for grandfathering at the time it was cancelled. So, yes, this one was government action.
Thanks to my state government being one of the ones to successfully sue over the Medicaid bit, the local exchange isn't exactly functioning.
Have you considered not getting your news from right-wing blogs?
I considered it. But then I would have to stop reading left-wing blogs to balance it out. Which narrows my news choices to people who either don't understand enough physics that they make scientists look like idiots every time they write an article on the science or who are purposefully out to sabotage science in ways in some areas. And in my local area, it was the mainstream news agencies that had the biggest blowup over Obamacare and made the most coverage of it being a problem headed for being a failure. So I think I would end up even more bitter if I took that advice.
You mean the immediate action of granting penalty amnesty to everyone affected? Or the immediate action of extending the deadline on non-compliant policies?
The only scales I know of in which a delay of two months counts as "immediate" do not apply to humans.
Only if they were non-compliant plans that were changed after 2010. The insurance companies knew that changing their plans after 2010 would make them non-compliant and illegal to offer, and went ahead and did so anyway.
Combine that with a president telling people they could keep their plans. I'm not saying I am not angry at the insurance company as well... but I am more angry at the man whose incompetence caused him to make a promise that caused the entire situation.
The insurance companies will be what they are, no matter how much I would like otherwise. What the public doesn't need is people like Obama making promises that only end up getting people hurt in the end. The government is supposed to be above that.
Again, Fox News/right-wing blog reports that Democrat/Socialist folly is destroying America. This is proof of what, again?
Also, I like your bonus non-factual off-topic global warming nonsense in there!
It helps that there are several sources outside of the ones I picked that actually blame Obama even more for it. The ones I picked were a bit more fair to the man by comparison to what I saw on the non-conservative sites. Unless you count NBC outright saying Obama intentionally lied to the public as more fair than the conservative bit.
Oh, and that bit about global warming? I was complaining about the journalist who wrote this article. Before calling what someone says nonsense or nonfactual, it helps to make certain that you have a factual basis for doing so.
You were sold a policy by people who knew it was illegal and knew they were going to have to cancel it. Yet, this is the government's fault.
I wouldn't have bought the policy if ACA had not been passed to begin with, and wouldn't have bought that policy in particular if I did not decide to give a President the benefit of the doubt and assume he wasn't lying through his teeth. It is not the company's fault I didn't think Obama to be a liar. While it is their fault for selling the bad policy, it was not their marketing team that enabled them to sell a policy while knowing it would not be acceptable; it was the combination of a badly-worded law and a President's own promise.
So, yeah, I do hold Obama at fault. Just as I am at fault for trusting him to be a decent human being and the company is at fault for taking advantage of that. That does not mean that I do not deserve some measure of justice for the deception a public official laid upon millions. But I also am not foolish enough to believe such a justice would ever be seen, and I can't legally go after the insurance company on the matter. Already checked.
So you're mad at Obama and not your state government, because your state government is obstructing your access to a choice in medical insurance providers. Okay.
I've already been over my state's finances. I know why they had to sue: They can't afford the Medicaid bill they have now, let alone the one they would have had if they had not sued. The only way it can be successfully done in this state is if the federal government completely takes over all Medicaid funding in perpetuity. The federal offer of only the first two or three years of extra funding actually would have created a bigger problem: In the short term the state could afford it, but once the federal funds dried up the only way the state could balance the budget would be to completely defund Medicaid. Considering it's the largest expense in the state budget and all others have been cut down to what are considered the absolute minimum in funding to continue functioning, it should be no surprise that my state had already cut Medicaid twice before the issue of the exchange even came up.
So, no, I can't be mad at my state government on this one. They're actually, by comparison, in a worse financial situation than I am and not seeing any way out manifesting itself. One of the lovely things about the economic downturn is that it hasn't ended yet for some areas.
Tell me... why should I be mad at my state government for not having the money, despite their best efforts, to fund the exchange and not wanting to accept a temporary funding that would only hurt the entire state in the long run?
If you don't want me picking on your sources, maybe you should put some thought into them next time.
Pick on them as you wish. This is an internet debate; if I get too emotionally invested in it, I can literally walk away. If I end up getting too emotionally invested and get hurt, that's only my fault for not taking the chance to walk away when it was there. I don't expect others to hold to that standard, as it applies only to me.
I like how you've walked back all of this to "Obama said something wrong."
When did I ever stop saying it? My entire argument this time has been that he said something incredibly bad and then the entire campaign was mismanaged under his watch to the point his own program became indefensible and he actually had to correct a problem.
Okay. Let's read them, then.
The Washington Post link is talking about annual plans being up for renewal in 2014, and that they will need to conform to PPACA rules. Targeting these plans was a major goal of PPACA, because they frequently got worse and worse every year, offering almost meaningless coverage of both routine medicine and emergency cases. You know all those stories about "I had to declare medical bankruptcy, even though I was insured!" This sort of annually-renewed employer insurance was why.
PPACA or not, you weren't going to "keep your plan" with any of these, because every year your employer gives up benefits in order to keep prices down.
The second article you've already linked before, and, again, isn't in dispute.
The first article is also noting how the promise that not that many individuals having to shop for insurance may not actually be true due to a projected massive drop in employers providing insurance.
That article doesn't say anything like what you thought it said. It doesn't say anything about anthropogenic warming at all, in fact.
I didn't say anything about anthropogenic warming at all either. In fact, here's my original comment:
Believe it or not, but I actually got to that blog through a newspaper link. I went with the original source over the newspaper. Mainly because I've seen too many cases of newspapers muddying the waters through misunderstanding (read a recent news story about Arctic heating related to greenhouse gas-caused warming; greenhouse gases don't cause warming, but enhance warming effects already in place).
I bolded the relevant section. Now, for a quote from the article
Pithan and co-author Thorsten Mauritsen tested air layering and many other Arctic climate feedback effects using sophisticated climate computer models. On a regional scale, climate feedback effects can amplify or dampen the global warming caused by greenhouse gases.
The article says exactly what I said it did. And, note the part I bolded; that's the part I was complaining about.
You bought a scam because you misunderstood something the president said, and this is somehow the fault of the president and not the scammer. Therefore, the law that is restricting the power of the scammer to scam you is bad.
Even you admit what the president said was bad... so are you now backtracking? Because "misunderstood something the president said" is quite a long ways from "Obama was wrong to say that everyone could keep their plan."
Interestingly, the law does not seem to be restricting the power of the scammer to scam... considering how successfully they have scammed an entire nation into thinking some of the plans that were grandfathered in were dropped because of the law. Nor does it stop another person from scamming the nation by promising they can keep their plans, when a link even you don't dispute reveals they knew it was false. So, since one of the scammers happens to be backing the law, how does this limit their ability to scam?
What state is this? Because a lot of states have been rejecting Medicaid co-funding from the federal government for much longer than three years, as a political statement that just s%$%s all over the people who need that medical coverage. Texas is one of the most infamous examples of this.
This is a bigger story than the one you're telling, but you're not offering enough context for anyone to comment.
There is no bigger story here; just an ability to look up information. And, actually, you can find the state budget for Texas on this site. And the U.S. budget happens to be here. If you know what to google, you can find a lot of information.
And, no, I'm not telling you what state I'm from. Mainly because, given your actions thus far, I don't trust you enough with the information. No offense meant, but I don't want to deal with the kind of argument that may result.
You bought a scam because you misunderstood something the president said, and this is somehow the fault of the president and not the scammer. Therefore, the law that is restricting the power of the scammer to scam you is bad.
"With respect to the pledge I made that if you like your plan you can keep it . the way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate."
President Barack Obama, news conference, Nov. 14, 2013
Where the copy/paste came from, blame them for the editing
Apparently President Obama misunderstood it when he said it too.