to heavenlyboy34:

Forget Aristotle and Socrates, centuries have passed since their time, and while their ideas may have laid the foundation for western thought, the progress of civilization has built a skyscraper on that foundation, adding more and more caissons and pillars to support the weight. Aristotle and Socrates are in the center of the bottom, they are BASE, far from any edge/boundary, which is where contemporary thought resides. You proclaim radicalism with he call to disband the government, but rely on western-centered conservatism to back up your rhetoric. You're a paradox.

We live in a global economy, where global corporations, NOT REGULAR INDIVIDUALS, rule the market. To claim that supply and demand in strictly economic terms can apply on a micro-political level, such as the exchange between a doctor (or a team of health professionals) and a patient is absurd. The demand for medicine is not set by a 'consumer', it is set by the number of people ailing from a particular disease. It is not a demand out of want, but that of necessity. Since no private enterprise provides the citizens of a state with essential goods and services that address basic human necessities (of which health is one), it is the government's job to sub-contract a private enterprise or simply take on the role of the provider in such instances. That's why we have welfare, which simply can't be administered through private operation.

You claim to have provided factual proof that the government is a detrimental player in the economic field, but I see nothing but two very general claims - 1. one economist among others agree with you 2. the decline of the dollar in the course of the last century is tied to 'govmnt intervention'. I don't really need to give you counter-examples for the first, or point out the flaws of relying on outside sources as sole support for an argument (TRY using this REASON and LOGIC you keep thanking dead greeks for). As far as the second goes, the shifting geopolitical landscape, worldwide dependence on increasingly scarce oil, and most importantly the emergence of a global market, ALL have more to do with the decline of the dollar than 'govmnt intervention'.

Oh, you still haven't answered a direct and simple question!

Why do you prefer a private business (health insurance company) to act as an arbiter in the case of life/death decisions, among others, when you go to seek medical attention?

Your health is not a commodity to be traded on market terms. Health care is not a service that operates on a commodity-centered exchange, at least it really shouldn't be.
You speak of this as if healthcare is somehow equivalent to a 'presumably' value-laden good, such as an ipod. That's an intentional mis-identification of a service with a physical commodity, just to drive the point home. In proper terms you're equating healthcare to something like a 'happy-ending massage', claiming that if more people COULD afford it, we'd all be down at the parlor for HOURS after we clock out from work.

Reducing medicine and it's application to a dumb market exchange between a service provider (DOCTOR) and service consumer (PATIENT) is borderline insane. FIRST AND FOREMOST there are sick people and people who have decided to become trained to help the first group become healthy, THEN there are the subtleties of the rewards involved in the interaction.

Please explain to me where a private company that operates on a revenue-generating model, with it's representatives in hospitals getting to decide whether some treatment can or can not be administered, fits into the process of going from being sick to being healthy?

wouldn't have the waits if the private practice dominant system in the States didn't suck so many of Canadian doctors out of the country

I keep reading about the backed-up emergency rooms in the news, but the last time I had to go to the hospital after a wasp sting (I am severly allergic), I was rushed through the sign-in process and straight to a doctor seconds after I walked in. As soon as a staff member saw me (that's the blood-red stay puff marshmallow man version, 30 min after the sting), a nurse was called to administer a preventive dose of epinephrine. I was in a bed with an iv stuck in me for an hour within 10 minutes of arriving at the hospital (and there WAS a line in the emergency room), and was monitored afterwards for another two hours. All of it was covered by my province.
But that's a case where a patient's survival was directly related to the time it would take to be treated. An ingrown toenail won't kill you, your throat swelling shut will. Hospital staff has to make these distinctions and negotiate between them. Nowhere in that process should an 'insurance agent' representing a privately-run company be involved.

I KNOW that employers aren't providing the coverage directly - I KNOW they subcontract that to the insurance companies. My point was that nothing stops either your employer or yourself individually to get government-run healthcare. I don't imagine that the government can deny you coverage in the case that your boss is a douchebag who only cares about profits.

So I will ask my question again, now directed to you, doubting Thomas... EXACTLY WHY do you wish to be insured by a private insurance company via employment benefits as opposed to having a government-run health plan? WHY do you want the decision to provide you with medical attention to rest with your boss (whom, you yourself are suggesting is motivated by the bottom line more than anything else) and a company which exists primarily to generate revenue (insurance companies don't actually concentrate on providing access to medical care for their 'clients', it's really quite the opposite that they do...)

please take the time to process the words on the screen, then maybe we'll avoid the aloofness of your responses. thank you.

That still doesn't mean you can't go and get coverage from the government. That's why their calling it the 'public option', isn't it? And if that is true, then can you please explain to me EXACTLY why you would prefer to be covered by an employer who would rather pay a penalty than provide for your health as opposed to the government, which is trying to provide for the health of as many citizens as it can get away with?

As a Canadian living in the States, I am absolutely baffled by the controversy over this healthcare reform that exists in this country.

The obvious fact is that much of this is troll-baiting by the media: 'left' and 'right' media sources alike are rolling on the wave of disagreement as coverage of this 'hot' issue guarantees ratings, thus bringing in ad revenue, while simultaneously allowing them to downplay any truly meaningful stories from around the globe, and perpetuating their own dominance over public opinion. Just think about how much any US-based news-source plays up the opposition between supposed democratic and conservative 'values', polarizing the public and minimizing the diversity of socio-political opinion.

And though it's a separate point, tangential at best to the healthcare issue, it needs to be driven home - given the typically formulaic approach to the 'discussion' of two-party state politics, the capacity of an issue to break down along the lines of simple opposition can be linked directly to how much coverage it gets in mainstream media.

On to the subject at hand - healthcare reform - there really are two basic issues, which are intrinsically at odds with each other. The first can be broadly described as 'coverage' and the second as 'affordability'. Seemingly EVERYONE who speaks up is either optimistic or worried about both human lives and money. And this is where my train of thought crashes. How can anyone sane claim to care about both to the same extent?

Raising the quality of life in the country, which is essentially what extending healthcare coverage will do, can only be done at cost (but will pay for itself in the long run, as more people are able to access medical services).

On the other hand, bashing the idea of a 'public option' as ideological socialism because it relies on taxation and the redistribution of budget (in other words for 'taking' money instead of 'making' it) is a form of narrow-minded support for an abstract notion of profit, which is tied to the well-being of private enterprises (such as insurance companies, which are at best bureaucratic entities that exist with virtual independence of the people employed by them).

So, you either prefer to support the idea that people deserve to receive medical attention (the cost of such services being a secondary concern), or you prefer to support the idea that medical attention is a service to be capitalized upon (that its a potential source of revenue).

SIMPLY PUT: extending healthcare coverage aims to provide for the well-being of all the country's citizens; balancing the budget by relying on private enterprises to cover healthcare aims to provide for the well-being of said enterprises (read: a very small percentage of the country's citizens).

Since this is already too long to read for the select group of readers that will surely attack this uninvolved bystander's opinion, the conclusion will have to be hasty: it is inane to assume that a non-profit-motivated entity such as the government will withhold medical services from those that need it for budgeting reasons, while believing that profit-motivated companies will assure coverage for the reasons of 'good business' and 'competition'.

JUST WHAT IS SO WRONG about letting the government take the $500 billion over 10 years from one medicare provider and reallocate it to another one? All it means is that more medicare providers will have better equipment, better ability to provide said medicare (this is built on an assumption that the money will be taken from the budgets of well-established service points and moved toward establishing new ones and/or bettering the less-established ones).

And can anyone explain to me why this 'discussion' is so freaking clouded with jargon? What is a Medicare provider? is it a hospital? is it a doctor? is it both? and if so isn't it just a bit silly to lump an individual in the same category as an institution?

p.s. if I get seriously sick, I'm getting my *** across the border to Canada, where I, along with millions other citizens, have paid a relatively small tax to get a plastic card in my wallet that assures I will get treatment, no matter what the nature and severity of my illness. Did I mention that Canadian government-run health insurance actually is NOT mutually exclusive with employer-based private health benefits? In fact everybody has health coverage from their province (Canadian equivalent of a state), and most people have employer-provided benefits IN ADDITION to that. But what do we know, we're crazy socialists, though I'm sure the Europeans are even crazier and even more socialistic

just ask!

blows my mind how many women don't do this. drives me even crazier when I simply ask a girl if she's feeling attracted to me, but instead of answering she'll go off on some other subject, avoiding the question. It's either a YES, a NOT QUITE YET, or a NO - not that hard to figure it out on the spot, is it?

ps. if I'm 'in' I can't keep my eyes off the girl, and just genuinely feel great about being next to her. Are these signs that someone can look for? I don't know, but I know that if YOU are starting to feel something you should express it, including verbal communication.

his profile pic is a peice by Patricia Piccinini, made from silicone (and possibly acrylic) and hair.
see http://www.indesignlive.com/articles/people/indesignlive-com-special-report-australian-hyper-realist-sculptors for examples of her sculptures... other contemporary artists who give their work a similar level of detail and 'life' are Ron Mueck (mentioned in the link), John de Andrea, Evan Penny, and to a lesser extend Maurizio Cattelan (just because his focus isn't on the realism - I haven't seen any of his work in person, but doubt that you will see pores on the skin, unless he's using a taxidermied animal) and Robert Gober (more of a surrealist bend to his stuff)

but more to the point of this story - his pic isn't him, nor is it his

well you DO have the perfect profile image to have full-blown conversations with self between posts...

mastodon and dragon force are the only two bands in that line up worth seeing...
to each his own though, I s'pose...