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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On October 28 2013 15:03 ticklishmusic wrote:
I really think the root of healthcare costs is education. In the US, you spend a stupid amount of time and money to become a doctor. You go through undergrad, then med school, then residency which is a commitment of 10 or more years of your life. If you go to private universities, you're going to pay around 50K a year as well, which could work out to as much as half a million for the degree.
The result is that the US has half the number of doctors per capita when compared to other nations. They get paid much more, which can be attributed to the ridiculous amount of resources that goes into their education, or rather, the amount of resources wasted. It creates this mystique and respect for doctors, who should be respected because they save lives, not because they spent their youth and credit on a piece of paper.
I fully support liberal arts education and such, but adding on 4 years of undergrad is pretty silly for an intensive professional track, especially when compared to European educational models. You have these so-called general ed requirements and then your weed-out scientific and quant classes, which really are a test of endurance (or dedication or resourcefulness) and probably knock out a good segment of kids who would have made amazing doctors or won a Nobel, but didn't want to deal with the BS.
Of course there's the problems with bad regulation and overpricing and inefficiencies from providers and such, but I think the price tag of the doctors themselves is what really anchored everything so high in the first place. Yes we have some great doctors and research, but its all a product of a really bad, unsustainable system. It's late for me, so I'll skip my proposal for revamping higher ed.
another aspect of this is that there are about half as many doctors as there should be, and medical schools are not opening fast enough/graduating enough people to fulfill this gap.
medical school price and selectivity are reflections of this cartel-like bottleneck of qualification supply
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It's the AMA keeping the wages of doctors artificially high... I believe the term is paper tigers.
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By the way, "decriminalize" generally means that's it is not illegal to use or possess. It is still illegal to sell hard drugs in Portugal. Decriminalization is just saying "drug addicts are not criminals" and treating drugs as a public safety issue.
Colorado legalized pot. New York decriminalized it. Portugal decriminalized all drugs.
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On October 29 2013 02:14 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 17:30 hummingbird23 wrote:
The drug war is fueled partly by ideology, and pays disproportionate attention and resources to enforcement. I don't know of any countries that do legalize hard drugs[...] Portugal has decriminalized personal drug use for all drugs since 2001, and had good results. Show nested quote +
In 2001, Portugal became the first European country to abolish all criminal penalties for personal drug possession. In addition, drug users were to be provided with therapy rather than prison sentences. Research commissioned by the Cato Institute and led by Glenn Greenwald found that in the five years after the start of decriminalisation, illegal drug use by teenagers had declined, the rate of HIV infections among drug users had dropped, deaths related to heroin and similar drugs had been cut by more than half, and the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction had doubled.[31] However, Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Maryland, College Park, suggests that the heroin usage rates and related deaths may have been due to the cyclical nature of drug epidemics, but conceded that "decriminalization in Portugal has met its central goal. Drug use did not rise."[32]
Latin America
Source
Interesting, thanks.
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Some evidence that the Volcker rule isn't such a hot idea.
... the paper has big implications for the move towards investors trading with each other, without the help of bond dealers standing in the middle.
"Our overall result has an important implication for the Volcker rule that is underway to rein in dealers’ risk-taking in the OTC market. The rule prohibits proprietary trading by banks except for market-making activities. As Due (2012) points out, however, once the proposed rule by the regulating agencies… would be implemented, the capacity of liquidity provision by market-makers will be reduced, and eventually, other institutional investors, including hedge-funds, will fill in the void.
This is not a very desirable outcome, because our evidence points out that the unwinding of hedge-funds’ positions can be detrimental to the cash market, and thus to the funding costs of corporations. Since dealers are typically banks and regulated by capital requirements, they can take a better role in providing liquidity. They also have incentives to provide liquidity even in the worst liquidity crisis to maintain their reputation as market-makers."
FT Alphaville article: Link
NY Fed paper cited: Link
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AUSTIN, Texas -- AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal judge has determined that new Texas abortion restrictions violate the U.S. Constitution, a ruling that keeps open — at least for now — dozens of abortion clinics that were set to halt operations Tuesday had the law taken effect.
In a decision released Monday that the state is certain to appeal, District Judge Lee Yeakel wrote that the regulations requiring doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital creates an undue obstacle to women seeking an abortion.
"The admitting-privileges provision of House Bill 2 does not bear a rational relationship to the legitimate right of the state in preserving and promoting fetal life or a woman's health and, in any event, places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus and is thus an undue burden to her," he wrote.
While Yeakel found that the state could regulate how a doctor prescribes an abortion-inducing pill, he said the law did not allow for a doctor to adjust treatment taken in order to best protect the health of the woman taking it. Therefore he blocked the provision requiring doctors to follow U.S. Food and Drug Administration protocol for the pills in all instances.
"The medication abortion provision may not be enforced against any physician who determines, in appropriate medical judgment, to perform the medication-abortion using off-label protocol for the preservation of the life or health of the mother," he wrote.
Source
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President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.
Source
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On October 29 2013 16:10 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years. Source
You can't seriously believe that Obama sold Obamacare on what he knew to be untruthful claims? That he didn't learn these things after the fact, but he continued to declare them true long after he knew them to be false?.
Or, that his agencies added regulations reducing how many plans could be grandfathered in?
Say it aint so!
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On October 29 2013 16:26 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2013 16:10 Introvert wrote:President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years. Source You can't seriously believe that Obama sold Obamacare on what he knew to be untruthful claims? That he didn't learn these things after the fact, but he continued to declare them true long after he knew them to be false?. Or, that his agencies added regulations reducing how many plans could be grandfathered in? Say it aint so!
Well if we've learned one thing, it's that any time something goes wrong, he never knows anything about it until the press tells him. The real question is why he hired so many incompetents!
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People with insurance plans so shitty, they don't manage to be "allowed" under AMA have to get another insurance plan...
So they actually have to get actual insurance... OH NOES, it's the devils work!
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Calling insurance plans newly regulation-killed as not "actual insurance" just defies belief. These dumb Americans that have bad plans and keep paying for them, they can't be trusted to buy good plans.
No true scotsman insurance plan.
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I work at a health insurance company here in switzerland. You wouldn't believe how stupid many people are when it comes to this stuff  (i'm serious, you wouldn't).
What happened is:
AMA defines what an insurance plan has to cover.
Some plans don't do that and therefore have to be ended.
People that had one of the above plans now have to get a new one.
Sorry, that sounds pretty reasonable to me or what point am I missing?
There is plenty of stuff to go, with good reason, after Obama, but this just doesn't strike me as one of them?
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BERLIN —
The United States could lose access to an important law enforcement tool used to track terrorist money flows, German officials said Monday, as Europe weighs a response to allegations that the Americans spied on their closest European allies.
Source
I'm somewhat surprised that this is not even slightly discussed in this thread (unless there is a dedicated thread elsewhere that I am oblvious about)?
This seems to be breaking news over a large part of Europe and parts of South America, but apparantly no one gives a rat's ass about it in the US.
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On October 29 2013 18:29 Danglars wrote:
Calling insurance plans newly regulation-killed as not "actual insurance" just defies belief. These dumb Americans that have bad plans and keep paying for them, they can't be trusted to buy good plans.
No true scotsman insurance plan.
Oh please. This is typical blame-the-victim mentality. You can always blame the person for getting scammed. Generally I think it is better and more sensible policy to blame the scammers for scamming people.
The whole point of scamming is earning people's trust. Trusting systems and people does not make you stupid. Highly intelligent people fall for scams all the time. To label someone as stupid and deserving for getting scammed does nothing to solve the actual problem and allows scammers to continue exploiting people.
Even worse, you're only doing this victim blaming because it feeds your ego. You just want to say "well I've never been scammed so THERE!" which is just a stupid way to consider policy.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On October 29 2013 04:32 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Some evidence that the Volcker rule isn't such a hot idea. Show nested quote +... the paper has big implications for the move towards investors trading with each other, without the help of bond dealers standing in the middle.
"Our overall result has an important implication for the Volcker rule that is underway to rein in dealers’ risk-taking in the OTC market. The rule prohibits proprietary trading by banks except for market-making activities. As Due (2012) points out, however, once the proposed rule by the regulating agencies… would be implemented, the capacity of liquidity provision by market-makers will be reduced, and eventually, other institutional investors, including hedge-funds, will fill in the void.
This is not a very desirable outcome, because our evidence points out that the unwinding of hedge-funds’ positions can be detrimental to the cash market, and thus to the funding costs of corporations. Since dealers are typically banks and regulated by capital requirements, they can take a better role in providing liquidity. They also have incentives to provide liquidity even in the worst liquidity crisis to maintain their reputation as market-makers." FT Alphaville article: LinkNY Fed paper cited: Link
capital chasing yields as it always does. another piece of coal to the shadow banking fire
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On October 29 2013 18:58 Velr wrote:I work at a health insurance company here in switzerland. You wouldn't believe how stupid many people are when it comes to this stuff (i'm serious, you wouldn't). What happened is: AMA defines what an insurance plan has to cover. Some plans don't do that and therefore have to be ended. People that had one of the above plans now have to get a new one. Sorry, that sounds pretty reasonable to me or what point am I missing? There is plenty of stuff to go, with good reason, after Obama, but this just doesn't strike me as one of them?
There are a few operational hurdles:
The new plans are often more expensive than the old plans. That gives people, especially healthy people, an incentive to not pickup the new insurance. If enough healthy people don't pick up the new insurance, premiums will rise.
Or they want to pick up the new insurance and have to get in line at the already broken exchanges. Sucks if a gap in coverage will hurt you personally. Sucks for the system if the process discourages the healthy from signing up.
Or they manage to pick up the new insurance and it simply strains their household budget.
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On October 29 2013 21:06 Restrider wrote:Show nested quote +
BERLIN —
The United States could lose access to an important law enforcement tool used to track terrorist money flows, German officials said Monday, as Europe weighs a response to allegations that the Americans spied on their closest European allies.
SourceI'm somewhat surprised that this is not even slightly discussed in this thread (unless there is a dedicated thread elsewhere that I am oblvious about)? This seems to be breaking news over a large part of Europe and parts of South America, but apparantly no one gives a rat's ass about it in the US.
Of course European govt needs to throw a fit about it. not exactly good to seem to defer to the US for re-election. Though i'd be shocked if its not been going on for at least a decade with a sort of blind eye politics from all countries. what the public doesn't know doesn't need to concern elected officials. I dunno spying just seems like one of those things all countries do on each other but no one admits it.
That being said, the CIA NSA and US military have had increasingly bloated budgets for the last 40 years, so i wouldn't be surprised to hear the scope of american spying is much larger. perhaps this backlash from europe is what america needs to save those billions of tax dollars wasted on the military and it might break the cult of jingoism surrounding the US military in politics here.
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On October 29 2013 21:06 Restrider wrote:Show nested quote +
BERLIN —
The United States could lose access to an important law enforcement tool used to track terrorist money flows, German officials said Monday, as Europe weighs a response to allegations that the Americans spied on their closest European allies.
SourceI'm somewhat surprised that this is not even slightly discussed in this thread (unless there is a dedicated thread elsewhere that I am oblvious about)? This seems to be breaking news over a large part of Europe and parts of South America, but apparantly no one gives a rat's ass about it in the US.
I think the general feel in the US is that no one really cares because we expect the US government to spy and we expect other governments to spy on us. I mean hell, we live in the post Patriot Act America, people have become numb to the government spying on people, at least this time it's not us. The perception by most americans is that the outrage by world leaders over this is more an easy opportunity to score political points with their own countries rather than genuine outrage.
"Let's be honest, we eavesdrop too. Everyone is listening to everyone else. But we don't have the same means as the United States, which makes us jealous."
- Bernard Kouchner, French ex-foreign minister
^ is a quote we've been hearing quite a bit in the US.
My personal opinion? It kinda sucks but it's pretty much expected.
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On October 29 2013 23:28 oneofthem wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2013 04:32 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Some evidence that the Volcker rule isn't such a hot idea. ... the paper has big implications for the move towards investors trading with each other, without the help of bond dealers standing in the middle.
"Our overall result has an important implication for the Volcker rule that is underway to rein in dealers’ risk-taking in the OTC market. The rule prohibits proprietary trading by banks except for market-making activities. As Due (2012) points out, however, once the proposed rule by the regulating agencies… would be implemented, the capacity of liquidity provision by market-makers will be reduced, and eventually, other institutional investors, including hedge-funds, will fill in the void.
This is not a very desirable outcome, because our evidence points out that the unwinding of hedge-funds’ positions can be detrimental to the cash market, and thus to the funding costs of corporations. Since dealers are typically banks and regulated by capital requirements, they can take a better role in providing liquidity. They also have incentives to provide liquidity even in the worst liquidity crisis to maintain their reputation as market-makers." FT Alphaville article: LinkNY Fed paper cited: Link capital chasing yields as it always does. another piece of coal to the shadow banking fire
Normally capital chases yields, but that dynamic can break down when liquidity crunches emerge.
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On October 29 2013 21:50 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2013 18:29 Danglars wrote:
Calling insurance plans newly regulation-killed as not "actual insurance" just defies belief. These dumb Americans that have bad plans and keep paying for them, they can't be trusted to buy good plans.
No true scotsman insurance plan. Oh please. This is typical blame-the-victim mentality. You can always blame the person for getting scammed. Generally I think it is better and more sensible policy to blame the scammers for scamming people. The whole point of scamming is earning people's trust. Trusting systems and people does not make you stupid. Highly intelligent people fall for scams all the time. To label someone as stupid and deserving for getting scammed does nothing to solve the actual problem and allows scammers to continue exploiting people. Even worse, you're only doing this victim blaming because it feeds your ego. You just want to say "well I've never been scammed so THERE!" which is just a stupid way to consider policy.
You once again display that in your mind, you know better.
The administration flat out lying about the law is of no concern to you because now these people will be forced to have "good" insurance by your standards. And they are clearly too inept on their own to decide which plan they want.
"Some are being 'scammed,' guess we better screw them and everyone else over, since they are unable to get what they need."
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EPT
