Better Rate of Growth Data

[Martin Brown]

On 01/04/2020 18:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 1 Apr 2020 18:04:38 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 01/04/20 17:42, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 5:18:03 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/04/20 02:35, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Companies have to make a profit.
Governments don't have to make a profit.

Ah. Do you /really/ think profit is the most
important thing?

Absolutely.

So, you a company's profit is more important than
your health and freedom, and that of your loved ones?

Really?


My company's profit funds the health and freedom of my employees and
their loved ones. If there had been no profit in the past, there would
be no company. No employees. No salaries, vacations, health care,
continued education, bonuses, 401K, ice cream sandwiches. No donuts.

America leads the world in price gouging parasitic organisations to such
an extent that they have had to pass emergency legislation to try and
head it off. That is how "patriotic" US businesses are:

https://www.mcknightsseniorliving.com/home/news/ppe-hoarding-price-gouging-now-a-crime-attorney-general-says-ceo-cites-misplaced-hierarchy-for-equipment/

It says a lot about American "society" that price gouging is not a crime
under normal circumstances. An outsider looking in would consider the
entire US privatised health system to be a price gouging operation.

It will be very interesting to see how they cope in this pandemic.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

On Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 1:04:43 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 01/04/20 17:42, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 5:18:03 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/04/20 02:35, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Companies have to make a profit.
Governments don't have to make a profit.

Ah. Do you /really/ think profit is the most
important thing?

Absolutely.

So, you a company's profit is more important than
your health and freedom, and that of your loved ones?

Really?

Quite the opposite. You're arguing that people who band together to
work ought not be allowed to earn more than their cost, ought never
be able to set aside for their futures, or a rainy day. Is that what
you do? Do you work for less than your cost of living? Would you?
No, of course not, because it's obviously unsustainable.

But banding together and producing is how all of this health care,
innovation, and much more essential commodities are generated to
support us all in the first place. If you want to strip innovative
people's innovative property and call them 'evil,' you'll destroy
that, and you can destroy it very quickly. We've seen it all around
us in our lifetimes, in societies that fall into chaos and ruin.

We could surely have Raul Castro, beneficently directing our society
and investments to the 'common good.' But that produces misery and
poverty, not to mention tyranny.

That latter road is not the greater good; our road is.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

On Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 8:41:28 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

On Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 7:31:15 PM UTC-4, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

Not really. If you're sick, your results will be better here.

It is expensive, but that's mostly government's 'helping' hand
at work. If we let people shop and reap the benefits of shopping,
we'd cut the cost in half almost overnight.

OK, I get that you are the self appointed cheerleader for the US, but do you have any evidence to support this claim?

Of course. I served six years on a national healthcare working group
studying it. But it's way off topic, here.

> I've never seen anything to indicate the US healthcare system is significantly better than other first world countries. Well, maybe Italy at the moment. But we are pushing to catch up with them as well.

In a nutshell, if you became desperately ill in the current plague,
where do you think you'd get better treatment, a country with 170,000
ventilators, or a country with 4,000? Second question: which of those
two countries spent less on health care? That's part of the trade-off.

Actually, that is a very good indicator of problems in our healthcare. While many other countries are coping without massively overflowing their critical care, parts of the US are swamped and people are dying needlessly. Did you factor that into your comparison?

Your shopping idea is fruitless. Comparison shopping is only practical when you have information to compare and something to compare. You will never get information comparing quality of care and in many places it doesn't matter because you have a choice of one.

Yes, and consumers aren't qualified to judge a car's quality, nor
do they understand what goes into their computers, or smartphones.
But somehow they manage just fine and it all works, doesn't it?

> Healthcare is becoming a monopoly in many places.

Thanks to government impositions, but that's easily reversed.

The ACA's mandatory paperwork forced many, many small practitioners
to close up and merge with hospital behemoths. (But fans of Herr Marx
will be relieved to hear that many if not most of our most egregiously-
overcharging hospitals are non-profit foundations.)

New York and thirty-odd other states actively prohibit the construction
of new health care facilities, making sure that you don't have too many
options to choose from. After all, wouldn't you rather go to a big,
established behemoth, instead of giving a nimble little-guy newcomer
a chance to save you, and some of your money too?


> When any industry has a small number of competitors, the actual competition reduces and they all fall in lock step. When there is a single hospital in the entire county, what options do you have? When there are more than one hospital in a county, but they are all run by the same company, what are your options?

If shopping is fruitless, then we ought to remove prices from
grocery stores and ban cheapest-gasoline-spotting websites. Because
shopping doesn't work, right?


> The only way to change healthcare in the US in any significant manner is to find a way to have a national system.

You bitterly decry our bureaucratic response to COVID-19 in post
after post, then turn around and conclude we need them in charge of
more stuff? That doesn't make any sense.

We don't need a national medical system any more than we need a federal
toilet paper, gasoline, or grocery system. That's silly.

(Even Europe doesn't have one national system, they each have individual
systems, each about the size of a U.S. state.)

But there are too many competing interests and anything we come up with will just screw us more. Washington isn't run by the politicians. It's run by special interests controlling the politicians.

We are all fucked.

No we're not. We've got the finest health care in the world. And if
we just let people innovate and shop, we could have it for half the
cost.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, April 2, 2020 at 3:48:32 PM UTC-4, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 8:41:28 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
On Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 7:31:15 PM UTC-4, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

Not really. If you're sick, your results will be better here.

It is expensive, but that's mostly government's 'helping' hand
at work. If we let people shop and reap the benefits of shopping,
we'd cut the cost in half almost overnight.

OK, I get that you are the self appointed cheerleader for the US, but do you have any evidence to support this claim?

Of course. I served six years on a national healthcare working group
studying it. But it's way off topic, here.

That's very funny. Lol, off topic in SED!!! Had me in stitches for a minutes.

I've never seen anything to indicate the US healthcare system is significantly better than other first world countries. Well, maybe Italy at the moment. But we are pushing to catch up with them as well.

In a nutshell, if you became desperately ill in the current plague,
where do you think you'd get better treatment, a country with 170,000
ventilators, or a country with 4,000? Second question: which of those
two countries spent less on health care? That's part of the trade-off.

What are the populations? Who is leading the country? Who in the population listens when infectious disease experts say this is going to be a big problem??? Which country has a million people head to NO for Mardi Gras and many, many head south for spring break?

If you are talking about the UK vs. the US at the moment it's a toss. We'll see which one peaks with fewer lives lost.

Actually, that is a very good indicator of problems in our healthcare. While many other countries are coping without massively overflowing their critical care, parts of the US are swamped and people are dying needlessly. Did you factor that into your comparison?

Your shopping idea is fruitless. Comparison shopping is only practical when you have information to compare and something to compare. You will never get information comparing quality of care and in many places it doesn't matter because you have a choice of one.

Yes, and consumers aren't qualified to judge a car's quality, nor
do they understand what goes into their computers, or smartphones.
But somehow they manage just fine and it all works, doesn't it?

How many quarters in a dollar?

Healthcare is becoming a monopoly in many places.

Thanks to government impositions, but that's easily reversed.

Huh??? That the hospital's story, "The government made me expand"???

The ACA's mandatory paperwork forced many, many small practitioners
to close up and merge with hospital behemoths. (But fans of Herr Marx
will be relieved to hear that many if not most of our most egregiously-
overcharging hospitals are non-profit foundations.)

I don't know of one practice that closed shop. "many, many" is pure BS. But that is a general trend in medicine which has little to do with the government. In most industries it is hard to go it alone. Big has economic advantages.

New York and thirty-odd other states actively prohibit the construction
of new health care facilities, making sure that you don't have too many
options to choose from. After all, wouldn't you rather go to a big,
established behemoth, instead of giving a nimble little-guy newcomer
a chance to save you, and some of your money too?

I'm aware that the construction of hospitals is regulated, not unlike many business areas. Your characterization is not appropriate.

When any industry has a small number of competitors, the actual competition reduces and they all fall in lock step. When there is a single hospital in the entire county, what options do you have? When there are more than one hospital in a county, but they are all run by the same company, what are your options?

If shopping is fruitless, then we ought to remove prices from
grocery stores and ban cheapest-gasoline-spotting websites. Because
shopping doesn't work, right?

Sure, sounds as good as any of your other ideas.

The only way to change healthcare in the US in any significant manner is to find a way to have a national system.

You bitterly decry our bureaucratic response to COVID-19 in post
after post, then turn around and conclude we need them in charge of
more stuff? That doesn't make any sense.

No, I never said anything about "bureaucratic" issues. I see you read what you want to read. You adapt what others say to suit your narrative.

We don't need a national medical system any more than we need a federal
toilet paper, gasoline, or grocery system. That's silly.

(Even Europe doesn't have one national system, they each have individual
systems, each about the size of a U.S. state.)

In Europe national healthcare is very common and works the charm. You just have to manipulate the facts to suit your story.

But there are too many competing interests and anything we come up with will just screw us more. Washington isn't run by the politicians. It's run by special interests controlling the politicians.

We are all fucked.

No we're not. We've got the finest health care in the world. And if
we just let people innovate and shop, we could have it for half the
cost.

No one is stopping you from shopping. Major cities have many choices. You see the world the way you want to see it and ignore the reality. "Shopping" medical care won't do diddly squat. Doctors hold all the cards and always will unless you assert yourself. The finances are not really hard to deal with. We just need to get the insurance companies out of the loop. Completely out of the loop.

--

Rick C.

+--+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+--+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 02/04/20 21:22, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 1:04:43 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/04/20 17:42, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 5:18:03 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/04/20 02:35, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Companies have to make a profit.
Governments don't have to make a profit.

Ah. Do you /really/ think profit is the most
important thing?

Absolutely.

So, you a company's profit is more important than
your health and freedom, and that of your loved ones?

Really?

Quite the opposite. You're arguing that people who band together to
work ought not be allowed to earn more than their cost, ought never
be able to set aside for their futures, or a rainy day. Is that what
you do? Do you work for less than your cost of living? Would you?
No, of course not, because it's obviously unsustainable.

But banding together and producing is how all of this health care,
innovation, and much more essential commodities are generated to
support us all in the first place. If you want to strip innovative
people's innovative property and call them 'evil,' you'll destroy
that, and you can destroy it very quickly. We've seen it all around
us in our lifetimes, in societies that fall into chaos and ruin.

We could surely have Raul Castro, beneficently directing our society
and investments to the 'common good.' But that produces misery and
poverty, not to mention tyranny.

That latter road is not the greater good; our road is.

What on earth are you wittering about?

Stop inventing strawman arguments.

A little comprehension test for you...

If I say "I won't give you a jam sandwich before you
have given me ÂŁ100", what do you think I have agreed to
do after you have given me ÂŁ100?

 

[Rickie C]

On Thursday, April 2, 2020 at 7:37:00 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

What on earth are you wittering about?

Hey, you are the one conversing with the guy.

--

Rick C.

+-+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+-+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, April 3, 2020 at 6:48:32 AM UTC+11, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 8:41:28 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
On Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 7:31:15 PM UTC-4, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

Not really. If you're sick, your results will be better here.

It is expensive, but that's mostly government's 'helping' hand
at work. If we let people shop and reap the benefits of shopping,
we'd cut the cost in half almost overnight.

OK, I get that you are the self appointed cheerleader for the US, but do you have any evidence to support this claim?

Of course. I served six years on a national healthcare working group
studying it. But it's way off topic, here.

And judging from what you post here, what you studied was how to spin the data to make the US system look good.

I've never seen anything to indicate the US healthcare system is significantly better than other first world countries. Well, maybe Italy at the moment. But we are pushing to catch up with them as well.

In a nutshell, if you became desperately ill in the current plague,
where do you think you'd get better treatment, a country with 170,000
ventilators, or a country with 4,000?

That's not the right question. The most interesting variable is your chance of getting the disease at all. The US is at 740 case per million, and the UK at 497.

In both cases the number of new cases per day is still rising, so they are doing a rotten job of stopping infected people from infecting others. If you don't get infected you don't need a ventilator.

Australia is at 208 cases per million, and number of new cases a day seems to have peaked about a week ago. It's not going down as fast as it should be, but my chances of not needing a ventilator at all are better than yours.

Second question: which of those
two countries spent less on health care? That's part of the trade-off.

The extra that the US spends of health care is largely due to the high administrative costs of running their system. The UK is pretty fanatical about not having spare capacity that isn't used, but what they have works just as well as any other advanced indusrial country's.

Actually, that is a very good indicator of problems in our healthcare. While many other countries are coping without massively overflowing their critical care, parts of the US are swamped and people are dying needlessly. Did you factor that into your comparison?

Your shopping idea is fruitless. Comparison shopping is only practical when you have information to compare and something to compare. You will never get information comparing quality of care and in many places it doesn't matter because you have a choice of one.

Yes, and consumers aren't qualified to judge a car's quality, nor
do they understand what goes into their computers, or smartphones.
But somehow they manage just fine and it all works, doesn't it?

After a fashion. Advertising does influence consumer choice.

Healthcare is becoming a monopoly in many places.

Thanks to government impositions, but that's easily reversed.

Economists talk about natural monopolies. Right-wing lunatics want to privatise everything, and have been lnown to make a hash of it. Remember ENRON?

The ACA's mandatory paperwork forced many, many small practitioners
to close up and merge with hospital behemoths. (But fans of Herr Marx
will be relieved to hear that many if not most of our most egregiously-
overcharging hospitals are non-profit foundations.)

What's that got to do with anything? The one thing that sticks out a mile about American politics is that organsations with money can influence legislators to tilt the playing field in a way that suites them. Being "non-profit" doesn't stop you from having the resources pr the motivation to do that.

New York and thirty-odd other states actively prohibit the construction
of new health care facilities, making sure that you don't have too many
options to choose from. After all, wouldn't you rather go to a big,
established behemoth, instead of giving a nimble little-guy newcomer
a chance to save you, and some of your money too?

The nimble little guy newcomer is frequently one more price gouger who has indentified a new and profitable scam.

When any industry has a small number of competitors, the actual competition reduces and they all fall in lock step. When there is a single hospital in the entire county, what options do you have? When there are more than one hospital in a county, but they are all run by the same company, what are your options?

If shopping is fruitless, then we ought to remove prices from
grocery stores and ban cheapest-gasoline-spotting websites. Because
shopping doesn't work, right?

James Arthur does love these false analogies. You buy groceries and petrol frequently, and you can stockpile enough to have time to find another source if you regular supplier gets greedy.

You buy health care when you need it, and when you need it you often need it urgently.

The only way to change healthcare in the US in any significant manner is to find a way to have a national system.

You bitterly decry our bureaucratic response to COVID-19 in post
after post, then turn around and conclude we need them in charge of
more stuff? That doesn't make any sense.

It wasn't your bureacrats who had to respond to the Covid-19 crisis, but the politicians who had to put the country into lockdown, and get the bureaucrats to set up contact-tracing and the isolation of potentially infected people.

Bureaucrats aren't trained to set up emergency responses. Politicians aren't either, but the good ones can learn. Yours seem to be slow learners.

We don't need a national medical system any more than we need a federal
toilet paper, gasoline, or grocery system. That's silly.

That's your - remarkably silly - opinion. It grows out of your equally silly veneration for your founding tax evaders, and your bizzare idea that anything they didn't anticipate didn't need to be anticipated.

(Even Europe doesn't have one national system, they each have individual
systems, each about the size of a U.S. state.)

California - with about 40 million people - is the biggest US state. Germany has twice as many people, and France, the UK, Italy and Spain are all bigger. IT is bigger than Poland, the next EU country down the list.

But there are too many competing interests and anything we come up with will just screw us more. Washington isn't run by the politicians. It's run by special interests controlling the politicians.

We are all fucked.

No we're not. We've got the finest health care in the world.

You don't. Your average life expectancy is unremarkable. Rich people can buy any kind of health care they like (which isn't always particularly effective as health care) and the poor get poor enough health care that it impacts the health of the better off.

You six year study may have familiarised you with all the ways that can be used to spin the statistics to make the US look good, but it still delivers a substandard product.

And if we just let people innovate and shop, we could have it for half the
cost.

Ask any right-wing think tank. The staff would get fired if they didn't come up with the kind of answer you like.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney