Wait…wouldn’t that be a good thing?
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No.
Any chance your behavior/physical abilities later in your youth were affected by those early (birth and newborn) injuries?
We just had a baby die at 5 months from complications due to her mother having been shot and killed while she was pregnant (baby was saved, but born prematurely). Don’t underestimate how much early trauma can have lasting consequences even if they don’t seem directly related.
Please explain. If he turns off the meter, then you pay less than you would of if it ran all the way to your destination. What am I not getting?
That is not at all what I am saying, Troll - and I was referring to Paul Ryan.
Paul Ryan, quite rightly and justifiably, was able to avail himself of survivor benefits after his father’s death. This allowed him a more normal and safe childhood in what must have been a difficult time for him and his mother.
He has then spent the rest of his adult life to date trying to take those benefits away from other people. I don’t know a proper word to describe how horrible a person must be to do that.
And, by the way, congrats on joining to defend BoingBoing just to derail the thread and defend the indefensible. How’s the weather in Yekaterinburg this time of year? Your English is quite good, but I’m sorry you have to take such a shitty job.
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Death Panels is such a misnomer. As someone who was by their Mothers side during the last months of palliative care, let me tell you, having someone tell you point blank “it is never going to get better, it is only going to get worse, here is what you do when its as bad as you can stand it to be” - well, fuck everyone who says that “death panels” are a bad thing.
This whole thread of tweets explains it so much better than I do.
https://twitter.com/SaraKateW/status/830530425844035584
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I had heard this, but I looked into to recently and I’m not sure the connection is there. The American Heart Association isn’t convinced, neither is the Mayo Clinic (though note, this is a “more research needed” not a “that’s a myth”). Research has tied gum disease to heart disease, but it’s unclear whether there is a causal relationship or if they both result from the same risk factors (smoking, high blood pressure, etc.).
They are already being rationed. Their private health care providers don’t pay for everything, in fact they pay for fewer things and lower quality treatment than we receive here. In many cases you can’t even go to the nearest hospital if you are sick or injured because it’s not in your network.
Studies of privately run vs. publicly run hospitals in the US showed that private operation made everything worse. Longer wait times, higher death rates, higher infant mortality. It turns out when you make patient health your first priority, you end up with better patient health than when you make profit your first priority.
The tradeoff is that in a Canadian system almost everyone gets better quality care and pays less taxes to support it, and in an American system a handful of people get to be extremely wealthy insurance company executives. People have intuitions that their system produces more choice or better results but those intuitions don’t match reality.
To use your later analogy, this isn’t housing everyone by demolishing all the houses and building shabby apartments. This is realizing that it turns out you could demolish all the houses and build everyone a reasonably sized detached home with a nice back yard and it would miraculously save you a bunch of money. If somehow that were true, and we weren’t doing it while every other developed nation in the world was, I think it would be right for other nations to look at us and say, “What the hell is wrong with those people?!?” The fact that this obviously couldn’t be true about housing shouldn’t make us lie to ourselves that it can’t be true with health care. All evidence says it is true with health care.
But besides all that, Americans are ready to pay less for better quality care - 58% want to replace the ACA with a single payer system. America doesn’t have a health care issue so much as it has a democracy issue.
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No, you pay more. Because they make up the fare. This is what I was having a hard time communicating to Oren last night, it is incredibly similar to a hospitals charge master. Neither are grounded in reality, and both lead to price gouging.
I could talk about this for days. However since I have a modicum of respect, I will just paint some numbers.
Dr. Visit, $15. Urgent care visit, $45. ER visit, $800-$2000.
(For the ride I took) Uber $4.99. Lyft, $8. Cab, $45.
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This.
Due to a generation (more like two) of having an education issue. Ignorance is a bigger enemy of democracy than even war.
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I am trying to wrap my head around this. They turn off the meter, then inform you when you get to your destination that the fare is magically 7-9x the real rate?
You’re a big imposing white guy: why not tell them you’re taking a picture of their cab license info to report them if they do not correct their fare immediately, and then leave without paying if they refuse that request?
I can understand grumbling and paying (without tip) if they charged $10-12 instead of $5-8, but at $45 they are actually robbing you. I wouldn’t pay it, and I’m milquetoast in comparison to you.
I don’t mean to be coming down hard on you, but this really shocks me. Maybe it’s a function of how we have to accept outrageous (and totally opaque) pricing on things like medical procedures, which I know you’ve had to contend with. Sometimes fighting isn’t worth the energy drain, especially if you think/know that it won’t help anyway. But damn, that is so beyond gouging that I don’t know what to make of it.
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Alcohol may have been involved.
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Ooh. OK then. I’d hate to think you wouldn’t normally stick up for yourself!
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They claimed at the time that there was no lasting damage, but fuck knows. Our understanding of neurology in the ’70’s was caveman level.
I’ve got plenty of psych/neuro issues, but the psych stuff is in line with family history and the neuro is primarily medication induced.
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Yeah, sometimes (japhroaig, for you, it is often) ya gotta make a choice between several bad options.
But in summary: preventative care as best you can, and be careful when out of town friends come to visit. 
Everyone’s wallet will thank them.
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I’ve told a few tales of the corporate propaganda that spews out of a little TV screen in the elevator of my office building. The latest one was one of their classic “stat shots” with a single stat and a single, short, unhelpful sentence (they could fit more context, but then where would they put the half screen ad that usually cough coincidentally cough aligns with the stat shown below).
This one said 51% of people support the ACA, in the context of the republican repeal effort. It seemed tepidly supportive on the surface, until you realize that they conveniently left out that another huge chunk of that 49% doesn’t like the ACA, but it’s sure as hell not because they like the republican plan better, and a huge amount of them want single-payer.
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Oh, you know that can be a felony, right?
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That’s why I said you start with declaring that he’s done something illegal, which you will report to the authorities if he doesn’t fix the situation immediately.
Unfortunately, this can’t be done in a medical center, where the highway robbery is many magnitudes higher!
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Yup yup yup.
As a meta note, this is why I always prefer to have a sounding board, trusted colleague, good friend around. I am exceptional at spotting graft, and very good at standing up for myself. But occasionally I need a nudge. (Occasionally!?)
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Thank you for your intelligent response.
Thank you for sharing your story. That is a horrible thing that happened to your friend.
