09:40 – Beware the Ides of March.
When I took Colin out around 0745 this morning it was 10.5F (-12C), with winds gusting to 40 MPH (64 KPH). As usual, our morning paper hadn’t arrived yet. Until the end of last year, it arrived reliably. Even when I went out at 0630, it was already there. Then, around the first of this year, we apparently got a new carrier who thought nothing of delivering the paper at 9:00 or 9:30, when she delivered it at all. When she did deliver it, half the time it ended up blowing across the road because she hadn’t bothered to put it in the box under our mailbox and I’d have to go off in search of it. It seems that we now have yet another new carrier. This one puts it in the box, but thinks nothing of delivering it at 8:30 or even later. For us, that’s just annoying, but for someone who has to leave for work in the morning, this carrier has basically converted a morning paper into an afternoon paper.
Barbara is at the gym this morning, and is then going to visit Bonnie to make sure she’s doing okay. Today is going to be a good day to work inside. I’ve printed labels for several hundred specimen envelopes, which Barbara will fill and label today while she watches some streaming shows that I don’t watch. She wears headphones on the Roku remote, so I can work here at my desk without being distracted by the audio.
The more I read about TrumpCare, the more it looks like it just puts lipstick on the pig that was ObamaCare. It’s pretty obvious that the Republicans intend to keep all of the worst features of ObamaCare. The real losers are going to be people who are 50 to 64 years old. TrumpCare allows insurers to charge up to five times the base rate (versus three times with ObamaCare) and reduces subsidies dramatically for this age group.
Trump should have done what he promised–abolish ObamaCare–and not replace it with anything. Let the private market offer policies under whatever terms they wish, and let private individuals choose to buy those policies or not. Instead, we’re back where we were, with the government conflating having health insurance with having access to medical services. It’s not the same thing, even remotely.
FedEx showed up yesterday with my three gallons of peanut oil from Walmart, a day earlier than promised. The case of twelve 28-ounce cans of Keystone pork should show up today. Speaking of which, Barbara is making pork barbecue sandwiches for dinner tonight, using a can of Keystone pork and the leftover homemade barbecue sauce we made up the other night.
And after dinner I’ll load and run our current dishwasher for the last time. Herschel is supposed to show up tomorrow or Friday to install the new dishwasher and haul off the old one, so in the meantime I’ll just hand-wash the dishes. The only thing I’ll salvage from the old dishwasher is the utensil baskets, which may come in handy.
* * * * *
Morning papers are just yesterday’s papers…
I subscribe to two papers, both of which are usually here by five and always by six.
OTOH, my daughter has one of those that comes usually far later and frequently not at all. She calls when apparently not coming and I advised her to tell them that she would no longer pay until satisfied that situation is rectified. As you have noticed, such will require firing and replacing deliverer.
We get the Winston paper because Barbara is a Winston native and has taken the paper since she got her first apartment after college. We actually used to get both the morning and afternoon Winston papers until 1985, when the afternoon Sentinel folded.
Caesar got what he deserved.
Caesar was the equivalent of Trump. The Boni were the equivalent of our current Deep State. Given the choice, I’d support Caesar just as I supported Trump. Grudgingly, but in preference to the alternative.
Trump should have done what he promised–abolish ObamaCare–and not replace it with anything.
Ryan and the Redumblicans tried to repeal OdooshCare for 5 years. Now, when they have a real shot, they come up with the lipstick-on-a-pig option. I hope this has consequences in 2018.
Mr. Miles-Teg out peeing again, I see:
Beachgoers have been sharing stunning images of the bright blue glow on the Australian island’s north-west coast.
Unless that “blue glow” is from flames, it’s not Miles_Teg’s doing. Didn’t he say it burns when he pees?
“Wireless Headphones Catch Fire During Long-Haul Flight”
http://www.pcmag.com/news/352379/wireless-headphones-catch-fire-during-long-haul-flight
“When lithium-ion rechargeable batteries go wrong, they do so in an explosive manner. We’ve seen laptops and smartphone explode and burn very hot for minutes at a time, but now the same thing has happened to wireless headphones.”
Ouch !
Oh yeah, there will be consequences next year alright, but probably not any to do with elections, per se.
Net friggin’ slow today; and I HATE that the FF scroll slider is the same color as its background and most site pages, i.e., gray or white. Looking for a FF addon or plugin that will simply change its color to no avail.
Burlap got a record 24 inches and we got 30 here. 20 degrees now and I’m on continuing snow removal ops. Andy the ‘Nam vet across the street plowed the whole front of the driveway by the street for me but I still had/have much to do to get the cars out via shovel and snowblower. One is good to go, pretty much; I am gonna let the Saab stay buried for now. Until warmer temps or wife gets home, whichever comes first.
Interestingly, no back pain or sciatica; my major malfunction is lack of wind and some asthmatic wheezing, plus crummy flexibility with back and knees. Gotta stop every few minutes and catch my breath. Haht is A-OK, though. But why risk it.
Noticed several V-formations of geese heading back south again and had a good laugh with Andy. That’ll learn ’em.
re FF scrollbars, you could change the skin if you can’t find a slider-specific plugin.
You can have some of ours. We have plenty. And coming from varying directions, which makes it a challenge to throw snow without getting it in your face or right back where you picked it up from.
Gotta give my wife credit: she came out to help with clearing the driveway and the cars and all, without bitching about it and without me having to glare at her. She and I are both working from home today, so we’d go out and move snow for half an hour and then come back in to see what crises arose in our absence. More her than me for that, as she mostly does database operations support while I do development. (And most of the people I nominally work with seem not to be putting in a whole lot of effort today.)
Chinese guest#2, the woman with the SUV, lived down to expectation this morning. I (with minimal help) got the driveway cleared behind her and got the car freed of its entombment (on the windward side the drifts were above the hood and almost to the roof) and all she had to do was back straight out of the driveway, hook the wheel over, put it in forward, and drive away. Same as every other day. Instead, I was treated to watching her do about a 23-point forward-and-back with minimal turning of the steering wheel in between. And also watched someone in a pickup with a plow blade come whipping up the street and around the circle at the end of the dead end and then almost smash into her because I guess a dark blue SUV just turns invisible in the fresh snow.
And also watched someone in a pickup with a plow blade come whipping up the street and around the circle at the end of the dead end and then almost smash into her because I guess a dark blue SUV just turns invisible in the fresh snow.
Must of been one of those newfangled self driving snowplows.
The more I read about TrumpCare, the more it looks like it just puts lipstick on the pig that was ObamaCare. It’s pretty obvious that the Republicans intend to keep all of the worst features of ObamaCare. The real losers are going to be people who are 50 to 64 years old. TrumpCare allows insurers to charge up to five times the base rate (versus three times with ObamaCare) and reduces subsidies dramatically for this age group.
Congrefs should just kill off Obolacare and move everyone aged 50 on up to Medicare. 50 is the age where everything starts to fall apart and the cost of insurance skyrockets.
Of course, they will later add more age ranges to Medicare. And then just the whole populace.
Just got my Anker LC90 FLASHLIGHT http://amzn.to/2murrBW today.
Nice! Really bright. Nice discount, too — $23.97 with tax, arrived in two days with Prime.
No. The government needs to get completely out of medical insurance for anyone who’s under 65. People who’ve paid all their lives for SS and Medicare are owed it, but that’s the only entitlement there is. I’d also discontinue all pensions and health insurance for retired government employees, including military. Let them draw SS and Medicare once they turn 65, but base everything on what they would have been eligible for if they’d paid SS/MC taxes on their government pay. Also limit bailed-out private/union pensions to the same terms.
Must of been one of those newfangled self driving snowplows.
Just like the XXXXX in “Logan”.
Someone talks about healthcare and Lynn starts in on “Medicare for all!” “Single payer!” “Single provider!” It’s sort of like ringing in the changes, except for the “change” part.
No. The government needs to get completely out of medical insurance for anyone who’s under 65.
The problem is that people start to lose their jobs when they turn 50. And when they lose their job, they lose their health insurance.
Someone talks about healthcare and Lynn starts in on “Medicare for all!” “Single payer!” “Single provider!”
I have never ever advocated single provider. Never. Down that road lies rack and ruin. Something like the VA which I have frequented enough times to really dislike them. In fact, the VA needs to be turned into a Single Payer.
I think you’re confused.
If people want health insurance when they turn 50, let them buy it themselves.
If people want health insurance when they turn 50, let them buy it themselves.
With your vertigo you would have rates of a couple thousand a month just for you, if you could get insurance. Add in your spouse and you could be pushing $3K a month with a high deductible. Vertigo is a high risk condition because of the danger of falls that would cause other significant injuries.
I have no record of vertigo on my medical records, which are pretty much non-existent. But even if I did, it’s not your problem and, unlike Lynn, I don’t expect other people to pay for insurance that I choose to buy.
As Mr. SteveF reports, yeah, the wind has been coming at us from varying directions, so much of the snow removal ops involved getting regular blasts of snow in my face, while also clotting up all my hair, facial and otherwise.
This street is bare pavement, but the main drag, Lake Street, which leads over into the “city,” was messy and a bumpy ride. I looked both ways carefully and pulled out onto it from between our town hall and post office and no one was in sight. Naturally someone came flying around the curve and immediately got on my tail most of the way into town. I slowed to a crawl, which I otherwise would not have done, as the RAV4 has all-wheel-drive. In the store parking lot (no, I was not there for the French toast ingredients) I got to see complete morons exhibit truly comic driving maneuvers, including one wallyhog who exited the lot sideways at way too high a speed for the pavement conditions.
I am done for the evening; I tried importing iPhone pics to this Mint machine to no avail, and to Google Drive, also a failure. Gave up and just sent them via Message to wife so she can show them to the peeps in Nawlinz who are bitching about the freezing 60-degree temps amid the palm trees there.
Why oh why would Firefox make its scrolling slider button/bar the same friggin’ color as its default skin/theme and its own background and most web sites? They couldn’t give us an option to change its color or highlight it?
As for our semi-retirement years and health care and health insurance, fuck ObolaCare and RINOcare and fuck this administration for trying to dump this shit on us again, even worse than the last time.
We’re waiting for the confirming VA paperwork to come through for Mrs. OFD so she can piggyback on my VA med care, which up here has been great, zero complaints. That is evidently not the case in big states full of zillions of veterans like Floriduh and Texas. There are lots of vets here, too, but the med center and the outpatient site down in Burlap have always treated me like a prince.
So we’ll get wifey on it and I’ll continue to collect my piddly SS and piddly disability payment on a regular basis, unlike her pay checks, and both of us will continue to work at stuff to produce other revenue as along as we can. I’d hoped to keep working full-time into my 70s so I’ll have to develop something else and I’m on it. Once she stops working at her current gig, she’ll be collecting at least twice what I am from SS.
We’ve both paid into it all our lives, me from my teenage years, and I believe I earned the disability benefit and am focused on trying to help other vets get what should be coming to them, too, especially the young people coming back now all fucked up and all those vets who are killing themselves at the rate of 20+ a day here.
And now the rest of the evening is goof-off time, having spent two days on snow removal and some kitchen cleanup, and the store run, which coulda been hazardous.
I’ll continue listening to the scanners and see if I can find a better position for the shortwaves and their antennas.
Please, please tell us you weren’t clearing the driveway sans pants.
We’re waiting for the confirming VA paperwork to come through for Mrs. OFD so she can piggyback on my VA med care, which up here has been great, zero complaints. That is evidently not the case in big states full of zillions of veterans like Floriduh and Texas. There are lots of vets here, too, but the med center and the outpatient site down in Burlap have always treated me like a prince.
My complaint with the VA is that they are great at fixing immediate problems but not so much at long term problems. My FIL had a spot on his lung, they watched it and when the spot starting growing, the VA removed that lobe. Stopped lung cancer at stage zero. Yeah !
But my FIL had heart problems starting around age 70 with fairly severe tachycardia and atrial fibrillation. The VA gave him pills which needed to be carefully taken. Which, he did not. So he ended up going to an outside cardiologist who performed an ablation on him. No more tachycardia and atrial fibrillation.
So, the VA both performeth and disperformeth. A Single Payer system would have allowed him to get a second opinion sooner for his heart.
Of course, they will later add more age ranges to Medicare. And then just the whole populace.
Won’t work. The fee schedule for Medicare would require everyone in the healthcare industry to take 30%, 50% or higher pay cuts. It’s politically impossible. Medicare and Medicaid basically cover marginal cost of services, although Medicaid doesn’t even do that in many cases. This is why medical practices limit how many Medicare patients they take and often won’t take Medicaid patients.
Single payer vs single provider is a distinction without a difference. The single payer calls all the shots, starting with remuneration for services provided, to specifying which services will be provided, to specifying qualifications for service providers, to specifying fines for any lapses whether substantive or clerical. And when the myriad providers are driven out of the market or choose to leave because it’s not profitable, what’s left will be either single-payer-subsidized providers or … single provider.
Feel free to provide contradictory examples of single-payer systems which aren’t heading down the tubes. Only systems which have been in place for several decades and which can’t leech off of (somewhat) free market systems.
And so would the private health insurance systems I remember from 40 years ago. The insurance companies wanted you nto get a second opinion.
“Please, please tell us you weren’t clearing the driveway sans pants.”
Wouldn’t want the wallyhogs and portly neighborhood matrons to get all excited, plus the chill factor out there was close to zero again today. Not even I consider that tee-shirt weather, but I bet by this time next week when the temp rockets into the high 20s and low 30s, we’ll be back to the tee shirts.
I had ice and snow in my beard and ponytail which probably amused the cats, who show little to no interest in going outside. They also seem to know when it’s below zero and will sometimes look out the back door when I open it, but quickly back off into the nice warm kitchen and living room.
Will be checking the road conditions tomorrow before I head out to the vets group meeting; I may just bag it this week. Not so much the road conditions but the imbeciles and cretins driving like, well, imbeciles and cretins.
I did all my shoveling and snowblowing in shorts and unlaced sneakers. I had a hoodie and gloves, too. The blowing snow caked on my legs, and when I went back in it didn’t melt. I joked with the 20-y-o house guest about that probably being a bad sign.
Ah, sweet sweet internet…..
Cable modem went tits up around noon today.
Had to have spouse stop at comcast and get a new one.
New one works.
Ah, sweet sweet internet…….
n
@Dave : regarding Mrs. P’s Reading program – send me a message via the contact page at http://www.cellarweb.com if you want to try the demo. (Or anyone else here that wants to try it.) I might limit the number of people, so don’t ‘share’ the demo page URL, please.
There’s just one lesson (4 screens) plus a game. At the end of the lesson you should know how to read six words. (Not an opinion of anyone here, just that the first lesson teaches six words.)
There will be 80 lessons in total. There is also a “Status Page’ link at the top which contains mucho design info, plus known issues, plus bugs squashed. On the demo pages, ignore the stuff above the top header; it’s just where I put various things for debugging.
Interested in comments from those that try it out – especially if you let children try it out.
“I did all my shoveling and snowblowing in shorts and unlaced sneakers.”
No doubt the neighborhood wallyhogs down there in the tropics were going wild, you evil person.
I take back what I said about never seeing any Chinese women up here; lo and behold, one was behind me in the checkout line at the local market, chattering away in Chinese on her damn cell. Dunno where she dropped in from; our ethnic exotics tend to be the six or seven Afrikans who appear to live in the “city” and the males show up regularly in the cop blotter and various front-page squibs about their criminal activities, usually dope related. We don’t consider the froggies exotic because they’re at least a third of the population, and most of them speak Quebecois French at home and didn’t speak English when they first showed up for elementary skool.
And thank goodness Mr. nick got his sweet innernet back up.
I thought about that and if it happened here for say, a day, a week, a month, we wouldn’t care that much. Our email would pile up and we wouldn’t have Netflix or the phone, either, come to think of it. The cells would crap out eventually as far as net usage. So we’d be stuck with all kinds of radios and a chit-ton of books, plus actually going outside into all this wunnerful snow!
Just talked to wife in Nawlinz; she’s gonna show my pics to her class tomorrow, let them get a look at what living in the north country can be like. I told her to tell them that this is the tropics compared to Alberta, NWT and Alaska, not to mention Baffin Island and Greenland, so called.
With your vertigo you would have rates of a couple thousand a month just for you, if you could get insurance. Add in your spouse and you could be pushing $3K a month with a high deductible. Vertigo is a high risk condition because of the danger of falls that would cause other significant injuries.
Actually, here in The Great State of Texas, RBT and his other coworker, Barbara, could apply for business health insurance since they both work at least 30 hours per week for their small business. Small business health insurance here in Texas is for businesses with 2 to 50 ? 99 ? 100 ? employees. The cost for them to get on BCBS Silver PPO here would be somewhere between $750/month to $1,000/month each. The cost is gender and age based. I do not know if there is an experience factor, there used to be before Obolacare but I think that got tossed out the door.
I do not know if this is applicable in NC.
For all you fans of Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers”:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/starship-troopers-reboot-works-943882
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/starship-troopers-may-be-controversial-adapt-faithfully-944083
The problem is that people start to lose their jobs when they turn 50. And when they lose their job, they lose their health insurance.
Perhaps if companies weren’t required to offer their employees health insurance, they wouldn’t be letting their most experienced employees go starting at age 50? Not that the companies couldn’t find other excuses to replace them with younger, cheaper hires, just that rising health costs after age 50 wouldn’t be one of them.
Some douche judge in Hawaii blocked President tRump’s new travel ban before it is even in effect. Using 1st Amendment. Ridiculous. OdooshNozzle banned travel. No judge did jack shit. This has nothing to do with banning religion, but that doesn’t even apply to fukstik immigrants. They aren’t citizens. No “religion” is banned. tRump needs to get his SCOTUS nominee on the bench stat and get his DoJ off it’s ass and squash legislating from the bench.
[snip] I’d also discontinue all pensions and health insurance for retired government employees, including military. [snip]
Military retirees, at least, signed a contract. (I don’t know about civilians.) I like the idea of contracts, and all the parties thereto abiding to the specifics thereof.
[snip] We get the Winston paper [snip]
Longtime subscriber to the local paper here; the occasional late deliveries are almost always the fault of the fancy new press system they installed a few years back. I take it that when it goes down the repairman has to curse it in just the precise Gaullic flair.
[snip] For all you fans of Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers”: [snip]
I remember seeing the late 90’s version, and thinking that whoever was in charge of Heinlein’s estate should hire a contract killer to expunge all the persons responsible.
Climate scientist claim Climate ejaculation will cause mammals to shrink:
Mammals shrink when Earth heats up — horses the size of cats?
Also Mr. SteveF’s XXXX size.
“Judge Douche has made his decision. Now let him enforce it.”
“I like the idea of contracts, and all the parties thereto abiding to the specifics thereof.”
The government isn’t competent to contract. I didn’t sign that contract, and am not responsible for paying for it. As I said, military and other government employees should be lumped in with civilians and be covered by SS and Medicare.
Lynn wrote:
” 50 is the age where everything starts to fall apart…”
Was at the physiotherapist yesterday. When I tried to use age to explain my slow, clumsy movement she said “age is just a number.”
In particular, Congressvermin should be put in the cruddiest health insurance system available. Good enough for the serfs, good enough for Congress.
Yeah, and the other big thing we need is to eliminate is health insurance as an employee benefit. Everyone who wants it should have to buy private insurance.
For once* Miles_Teg says something I agree with. Sure, there’s decline with age, but the rate varies for everyone and the “knee” of the curve varies for everyone. And — and this is the key point — mind over matter is huge. If you “know” that you’ll start to fall apart the day of your 50th birthday, your body probably will start to fall apart at an ever-increasing rate. If, on the other hand, you “know” that medical care and nutrition and the absence of crushing physical labor will let you make it at least to your 80s in reasonably good health, you’re more likely to make it through each day, brush off the aches and pains, not psychosomatic yourself into a painful funk, and just get on with your life.
* OK, this is probably the second time. Maybe even the third. But we’ll never agree on the concupiscence of Hillary Clinton or sheep.
I don’t think I agree, but I can be persuaded. The key point is to either remove the tax break for employers or give the tax break to individuals. Preferably the former.
Was at the physiotherapist yesterday. When I tried to use age to explain my slow, clumsy movement she said “age is just a number.””
I bet she says other stupid shit like “Give it 110%” or “there’s no I in team”, or cut back on salt and fat…..
n
(“There IS a ME in team you cow….”)
In particular, Congressvermin should be put in the cruddiest health insurance system available. Good enough for the serfs, good enough for Congress.
I would be ok with putting them on Medicaid.
Yeah, and the other big thing we need is to eliminate is health insurance as an employee benefit. Everyone who wants it should have to buy private insurance.
There are enormous dollars floating around this with the Teamsters, UMW, UAW, etc, etc, etc. These people might have something to say about this.
A friend of my Dad’s turns 65 next week. He and his doctor have knee replacement surgery ready to go on the day after when Medicare will pay for it. He is in a lot of pain now with no insurance.
Boy, what a a lot of hate and bitterness and probably a chit-load of micro- and macro-aggressions here tonight.
Still…not enough. We need to have more of that. It’s the only logical response to the crap the gummint keeps dumping on us, from douche-nozzle judges in Hawaii (Obola’s alleged birthplace) to alleged physiotherapists and warmist ejaculators.
I will add to that by bitching about the jingo generals and chickenhawk necon asswipes who keep angling for a way to get into fucking shooting wars with Russia, the Norks and the Chicoms. They have to be insane. And in bed with arms and weapons systems manufacturers. Oh, also the batshit crazy mullahs in Iran. What’s to worry about? Other peoples’ kids will go. And be maimed and killed or come back full of their own craziness and bitter rage.
I have had it for the day. A guy can debug fortran code using pointers to pointers for only so long. And, I love storing integers in double precision variables. I have no idea how this crap ever worked.
temf = vdy (vdy (lot + 13) + j – 1)
I note that the “Augason Farms Whole Egg Product 33 oz #10 Can” are back up to $31.
https://www.amazon.com/Augason-Farms-Whole-Egg-Product/dp/B0096I5DJU/
I knew that I should have bought some when they were $13. Looks like everyone else did. I do have six cans in the closet though already.
I feel your pain.
It’s especially bad when you fix something which never could have worked, and after the fix it doesn’t work. And then you’re told by the project long-timers that you should never touch that code. “Because”.
And then it’s most especially bad when you find that the reason it worked before was because something else was kludged to be broken so it would pass bad data into the already-broken procedure so that the end result would be right. If you can track down the culprit who broke the second method, the usual explanation is “It works. Why are you even looking at it?”
And furthermore, if you point out that the kludges don’t actually work but only mostly work for the “happy path” case, as demonstrated by this here sheaf of unit tests, well, you’re likely to not make any friends at all and to get your contract cut early.
My understanding is that health insurance as an employee benefit came about due to WWII wage controls, or rather a way to bypass ’em. A “free” benefit that wasn’t cash didn’t count…
Kaiser Permanente in Cali basically invented employer provided health insurance and the HMO, iirc, and I think it was earlier than WWII, more part of the great depression and the works stuff that was going on out west.
IANAhistorian so YMMV
n
Supposed to be getting something like 30MBps downstream with my new cable modem and plan. Still getting the same 5 MBps that I’ve been getting. It’s like freaking dsl.
I get 6 plugged right into the back of the modem, so I’ve got a bottleneck somewhere in my side of the network, but FFS, I’m losing 1 mbps not 25.
I’m REALLY not looking forward to hours with india tomorrow. Maybe I can just escalate to tier 2 if I’m angry enough? I’ll try patient and nice first.
n
WRT to the origins of health insurance in the U.S., Wikipedia says 1890. Accident insurance by a MA firm before that.
“I’m REALLY not looking forward to hours with india tomorrow. Maybe I can just escalate to tier 2 if I’m angry enough? I’ll try patient and nice first.”
I take it the 800 # for support will be handled by personnel in the Asian subcontinent? How exciting for you! And it’s a new “plan” or ISP? Yikes.
New rate plan from same provider, Comcast.
Supposed to have more up and down with less cost than the plan and service I’ve had for last 8 years.
Not happening so far.
n
I’m REALLY not looking forward to hours with india tomorrow.
I bet they didn’t “flip the switch”. You’ll be happy tomorrow after they belittle you then admit they frakked up.
I hope you can make it work tomorrow to your satisfaction.
We’ve got Comcast up here with the TV/net/landline bundle and nearly zero complaints since we’ve had it, but we’ll be waiting to see if they jack up the monthly nut this year.
Dropping to 14 here presently and then mid-30s on the weekend. Looks like we’ll have a winter wonderland here at least into the first days of “spring.” And we’ve had snow as late as May.
“During World War II, the government financed much wartime spending by printing money while, at the same time, imposing wage and price controls. The resulting repressed inflation produced shortages of many goods and services, including labor. Firms competing to acquire labor at government-controlled wages started to offer medical care as a fringe benefit. That benefit proved particularly attractive to workers and spread rapidly.”
http://www.hoover.org/research/how-cure-health-care-0
How to Cure Health Care
by Milton Friedman
Monday, July 30, 2001
At 20% of GDP, healthcare is better than selling each other burgers, but not by much. Absent government interference, I believe that prices would recede to where cash and carry would be sensible for all but the most catastrophic of illness. That would need an insurance system of modest cost.
I can’t bring numbers to my “belief” because of the government’s massive part of the market, though.
Karl over at market-ticker.org has done the math and this is a favorite topic of his.
The one thing we haven’t tried is a transparent and free market and competition.
What could it hurt to give it a try?
n
More likely a black market after the wheels come off the economy resulting in some full nationalization scheme with all the worst features of Dr. Mengele and Atlas Shrugged is put in place. But hey, a black market is just the free market shoved underground.
Lynn wrote:
“I knew that I should have bought some when they were $13. Looks like everyone else did. I do have six cans in the closet though already.”
The fembats would have stolen or ditched them.
Yeah, it was the wage and price controls during WWII. That was also when that other abomination, withholding, was introduced as a “temporary” measure. The effects of the former started to show up immediately in the cost of medical services as a percentage of GNP.
Yep. In 1989 or 1990 TN added one percentage point to the state sales tax, a temporary measure, that was supposed to benefit schools. That increase is still there today and none of the money went to the schools. So TN installed the lottery system where the losers on welfare spend most of the check from the government on beer, cigarettes and lottery tickets. A lottery is basically a tax on the stupid.
‘Nuff said, Mr. President:
Trump Budget Proposes Killing All Funding for PBS, NPR and National Endowment for the Arts
Time for President tRump to quintuple his SS protection.
A few years ago, I read an article by a guy whose wife had just had a baby. He was cleaning out the attic or something and came across the hospital bill for his own birth, which IIRC was in 1947. Even in constant dollars, the difference was striking. His mother had spent a week in the hospital, versus overnight for his wife for a simple delivery. His wife’s bill was something like 100 times higher than his mother’s had been, even adjusted for inflation. That’s mainly because (a) his father had paid cash, as nearly everyone did back then, and (b) the incidence of lawsuits against doctors and hospitals was probably 0.001% of what it is now.
Speaking of which, my friend David Silvis waited too long to apply to med school. By the time he decided to go, all the US med schools were full for that year, so he started applying to foreign med schools. He was accepted in Chile, spent that summer learning Spanish, and then moved to Chile. He did med school and his residency in Chile, and then opened his own clinic for ten years or so before he moved back to the US. I remember him commenting on the difference between practicing in Chile and practicing in the US. Here, he said, he could be sued even if he’d done nothing wrong, and had to carry very expensive liability insurance against that. In Chile, liability insurance cost almost nothing, because no one sued doctors and hospitals. David said when he lost a patient, the patient’s family would often show up en masse to thank him for trying. Here, not so much.
Yep. As I said, the prices of a lot of stuff bounce all over the place on both Walmart and Amazon. They’re at war for on-line customers. You have to grab stuff when you see it at a good price, let alone the occasional ridiculously low price. I grabbed four more cans at $13/can. I almost ordered a lot of them, but we need only so many eggs. Still, you’ve got about 35 dozen worth now, which is 35 dozen more than most people have.
Using my buying method, I sometimes pay more than I might have, but my average cost turns out pretty decent. I have a total of 13 #10 33-ounce cans: 9 cans @ $17.50 plus 4 cans @ $12.99, for a total of $209.46 and an average of $16.11/can.
RE: Dishwashers – living overseas we went several years without a dishwasher. I found I actually enjoied standing at the sink, hand washing the dishes. It is a mindless task that allows you to spend the time thinking of something else AND it produces immediate positive feedback as the dishes, pots, and pans go from dirty to clean, giving a feeling of accomplishment. Now, back in the US, we have a dishwasher and it becomes a dirty dish storage facility that is run only a couple of times a week. Of course here, I don’t have the beautiful valley views out the kitchen window to contemplate while I wash.
he could be sued even if he’d done nothing wrong, and had to carry very expensive liability insurance against that
The joint for my wife’s hip replacement, just the joint, was $24,000.00. Two pieces of metal, highly machined, that cost as much as a new car. It was explained to me that the joint probably only cost $1,000, the other $23,000 was for liability insurance and money set aside when there is a judgement against the company. Not “if”, but “when”.
In fact for the entire procedure the joint was the most expensive part of the operation. Not the four days in the hospital, not the surgery room, not the surgeon, but the joint.
I also got really pissed off at another doctor who simply put his head in the door of my wife’s room (I was there) and said “How are you doing?”. I got a $1500 bill from the doctor as a “consulting and services fee”. I never asked for the doctor nor did the surgeon who did the procedure. I contested the bill with no success. Insurance was paying everything at that point so it did not come out of my pocket. If it had come out of my pocket had there would have been a small claims court on that billing. That same doctor probably scammed every other patient in the joint replacement wing of the hospital by going door-to-door and sticking in his head.
Multiply this by thousands of procedures each year in the hospital, multiply by thousands of hospitals, and doctors like this are ripping of the insurance companies which affects the rates for all of us.
Many years ago my wife had some outpatient surgery. When I got the bill (which I had to pay a significant part) there was no billing detail. I asked for a detailed bill from the hospital and received multiple pages of itemized charges. Aside from the usual $20 aspirin and $55 plastic drinking cup there was a charge of $250 for video.
Since I did not have the video I asked the hospital for the video since I was paying for the video. The hospital refused as they said the video was for their protection. I then told the hospital either I get the video or the hospital remove it from the bill. Since it was for their protection they should not be charging for the video. The hospital removed the charge from the bill.
But I am sure that many people with better insurance than I had at the time had their insurance company pay the bill. Multiply that by thousands of operations per month, then by the thousands of hospitals in the US and the $250 is a lot of money that insurance companies are paying to hospitals for the hospital’s protection. Another scam of the health insurance.
I work for a company that makes orthopedic devices, hips, knees, joints, etc. The ammount of work done on research of these devices and coatings designed to reduce rejection is astounding. These are mechanical joints operating in a very hostile environment without ability to be maintained. They have a finite lifespan and replacement is both expensive and dangerous so must be designed with as long a life as possible. Our products are manufactured to the users specifications. CAT scans are taken, the multiple images sent to a company in India to produce a 3D representation that is used to create CAD design for the part (knee / hip / etc) that creates data to feed the automated cutting machines and laser finnishing devices. Then, after inspections, special coatings are applied to extend life and decrease chances of rejection. Then a custom installation kit is assembled for that device / patient pair that includes templates for cutting & drilling and special tools required to install the device. In some cases, special tools have to be manufactured for that specific device / patient. BTW: We have over $30 million of install kits currently outstanding. Our special pattented coatings are applied in a special facility that is on a large property because the chemicals and processes are HIGHLY explosive. And we have to maintain massive documentaion to meet the regular inspections and reviewes from US, UK, and EU regulatory agencies. We also provide extensive training and education facilities for surgeons on how to use our tools and devices. The whole process is VERY expensive. Now, you can go to China and get a joint replacement made on in an industrial plant without special coatings and fittings but you get what you pay for.
I note that the “Augason Farms Whole Egg Product 33 oz #10 Can” are back up to $31.
https://www.amazon.com/Augason-Farms-Whole-Egg-Product/dp/B0096I5DJU/
I knew that I should have bought some when they were $13. Looks like everyone else did. I do have six cans in the closet though already.
Yep. As I said, the prices of a lot of stuff bounce all over the place on both Walmart and Amazon. They’re at war for on-line customers. You have to grab stuff when you see it at a good price, let alone the occasional ridiculously low price. I grabbed four more cans at $13/can. I almost ordered a lot of them, but we need only so many eggs. Still, you’ve got about 35 dozen worth now, which is 35 dozen more than most people have.
I’ve also got four Augason cans of the scrambled eggs mix. I am not sure if I can eat this due to my milk allergy but, I have learned that I can eat items with cooked milk in them. My wife has no problem with milk but my daughter has picked up my milk allergy and way younger than I did (25 vs 49 ???).
Federal income withholding, the temporary measure, is older than my mother. Makes you wonder when the emergency will end.
Six years ago, following a change in township leadership, a $30M budget hole was discovered. An emergency, one-year property tax increase, from 2% of assessed value to 2.5%, was imposed to close the gap. Five years after the expected lapse in the rate hike, we’re still waiting. And there’s some discussion of a temporary half percent increase needed to fund something or other. (That 2.5% is the total for township, county, and school district; not sure what fraction is for the township, but they got the whole half percent increase back then. There’s also income tax here. And sales tax. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate New York? Eight and a half more years…)
Wow, that’s a tough sentence to hack. Maybe with good behavior…
Or it could be his bad behavior makes it bearable….