birdog1960

well, in this case i think relativism would be desirable. not the dualism of white = capitalism and black = socialism. do we have any "pure" functioning examples of either?

makes a great deal of sense....boom times trigger leveraged speculation which eventually triggers disasters. is capitalism therefore inherently doomed to fail?early on this quote struck me:" this does not make them immoral, merely astute interpreters of the circumsytances they face". so financiers that "progress" from speculative to ponzi models are to be at least understood if not forgiven? seems like moral relativism to me. i think a goodly number are truly immoral or at least amoral.

i really think it's time you diagram out your arguments before you post to see how ridiculous they can be before you actually type them. this one goes something like this: premise- i can read a map and it's war implications. premise - wesley clark has few important military contacts premise (i'm surmising) - wesley clark can't read a map and discern geopoltical implications conclusion - i understand the reasons and likelihood for war in the middle east better than wesley clark.

replace iran with iraq throughout that paragraph and you have a pretty accurate description of the lead up to bush's war.

negotiated average cost http://www.healthcar...29&dataset=hosp numbers for prostate cancer (most common cancer in men) are astounding but difficult to nail down on a per patient basis. the really amazing thing is that we don't know what works best in whom, regardless of cost. here's a piece by a recognized expert that explains it well: http://www.cancer.org/aboutus/drlensblog/post/2011/03/18/the-costs-of-prostate-cancer-treatment-up-up-and-away.aspx. just so happens that the treatment of prostate cancer is a big profit center for many hospitals. maybe y'all can begin to see the reasoning behind support for an expert national panel....

won't do your homework but about 1/4 us deaths are due to heart disease. cost of bypass without followup care is about $65k. you might want to look up the cost of an automatic implantable defibrillator that is becoming quite common in heart patients. here's a list of common cancer prevalence in men: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/data/men.htm. you can google cost estimates for treatment but rest assured they're higher than the average 401k balance in the us for most all of em. so, with a huge number of baby boomers approaching or at the age where these illnesses become even more prevalent and little time to save for a decent sized hsa, how does carson's plan work in the next 30 years or so?

but once again, the reality is different from the perception. very few people can afford the type of end of life care that we frequently provide or even many life saving surgeries and treatments for common life threatening ailments. for all but those very few "what would be covered by the new breed of catastrophic care" will decide what care they obtain. in essence, very, very few people would be affected by the change in terminology. there will still be a decider of care level and for the vast majority that will continue to be the gov't. if the provisions of the decider become more restrictive, the end result is that those with extraordinary means will pay more for the care they already get paid for by medicare now. fine with me...just didn't think that's the outcome you were after.

and once again you miss my point. how is "beyond what would be covered by a new breed of catastrophic care" any different than "death panels". it's still the payors, in this case (shock, horror) the gov't, deciding what is appropriate care...something i've been supporting all along through expert panels but something you've been decidedly against. it's just a slighlty different iteration of the same principle given a different name. if perception is really more important than reality than this is a prime example.

that's a valid point. currently, private insurance companies are held harmless if their refusal to cover a test or procedure results in a bad outcome (just another example where the law seems totally f*($ed from my perspective). guess who is targeted with the lawsuits, consequently? don't think the system could be changed to being any worse for doctors in this regard.

tell me again how either of the 2 cases i presented "wisely allocate their dollars"?

and exactly none of this or what tasker described was verbalized by carson at the prayer breakfast....has it been subsequently as bman alludes to? i wouldn't know. no one has posted a link.

ok, so where's the savings. $2000 is a drop in the bucket for this pt's care cost. in fact, "noncatastrophic" care as currently defined by most hsa's is a small percentage of total health care costs in the us. do you not understand that? end of life care is by far the most expensive care we provide. this doesn't address that at all. you'd still need someone or something defining extraordinary care. isn't that we you all call death panels?

sort of. apparently, a short, vague blurb uttered at an inappropriate time and place is the answer to all of our healthcare problems.

carson said about 30 words on the subject at the prayer meeting. very few of yours above were included. i think you're confusing your plan with his. no, it's cuz he said very little. a broad outline that might be very good or very bad. but from what little he said we can't even hazard a guess which that might be.

so what are the govt subsidies? for a pt on medicaid does that mean that medicaid funds an HSA and pays for "catastrophic' illnesses? how do you define catastrophic? if the patient needs a bypass and has $5000 in his hsa as funded by medicaid, does medicaid pick up the rest? it's easy to say "pay for everyhting with hsa's. it's much more difficulty to make that fit with the realities of healthcare. and since, in this model as i described, medicaid essentially pays for all care anyhow, how does that save money?

i read his comments at the prayer breakfast that had nearly every nutjob con radio host wetting themselves with excitement. i didn't see where he published a position paper on the "plan". care to steer my towards one?

you didn't get the playbook?

so were you for "citizen's united" before you were against it or vice versa.

what is there to read? he says everyone should have hsa'a...nothing else. like how to fund indigent hsa's. or would the funding allow for "catasrophic" coverage, presumably from medicaid while medicaid simultaneously funds the hsa? simplicity is good but this "plan"is far too lean on details.

stockman complains bitterly about the low 15% capital gains tax being counterproductive and unfair. doesn't have much good to say about milton friedman. what's yall's take on these opinions.

the biggest offseason mistake was retaining nix. given his track record, how many other teams would even have him on their payroll much less be their gm?

so surprised...those that can't afford to adequately fund an hsa are undeserving to you.

i think she's acknowledging that a $15k chest pain ER visit for indigestion for lower wage worker is catastrophic. yes, we need to get the cost of that er visit under control but it ain't happeming overnight.

i take away something very different from this chart. the czech republic and estonia have nearly the same out of pocket cost as the US but from lowest to highest there's an 8 fold difference in per capita costs. you leave out the linear regression line and it's kinda hard to see the correlation put forth especially with that strange outlier point at the top of the Y axis (US). the better question is why are we such an outlier. as someone, alluded to earlier, healthcare in the us is not a simple free market, supply/demand relationship. people often demand as much as they can get to keep them alive, often for unproven and expensive treatments and tests. and as we've seen from the brill article, the industry can charge even more than the market can bear. sorry to disagree but the path to cheaper healthcare is regulation: of costs, of covered services, of lifetime benefits, of payment for quality, of removal of redundancies and excess capacity, of removal of middlemen. the system is fundamentally unable to self regulate because very sick people will do almost anything to stay alive as we've seen by the number of medical bankruptcies. and the industry is happy to take their money at the highest prices they can get and provide abundant care of questionable value. higher copays won't significantly change these fundamental truths.