The pudge nudge: New scale posts your weight directly to Twitter.
Russian newspaper slyly exposes corrupt government officials by photographing their $300,000 watches.
ACLU, Michigan sheriff settle after his deputies conducted a series of illegal raids on homes for alleged underage drinking. Two officers were fired, and the department is overhauling its search warrant procedures. Good for Sheriff Oltersdorf.
In addition to bringing coerced new business to the health insurance companies, Obamacare also likely to net billions for the pharmaceutical industry. Thank god we’re ridding the health care industry of evil corporate profit mongering! Instead, the government is just going to give private corporations taxpayer money directly. Much better.
Blackwater execs approved $1 million in bribes to buy support of Iraqi government officials after contractor employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians.
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on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 11:06 am by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
“Good for Sheriff Oltersdorf”
Two posts praising police officers in two days.
hmm
Who are you and what have you done with the real Radley Balko?
;P
So, how long until we have dead Russian journalists?
those Blackwater execs we’re merely lobbyists dealing with the government of iraq. you’ve got to get onboard with the new phraseology that’s new, current, groovy. maybe not groovy.
What’s your solution to the healthcare crisis in this country, Radley?
Blackwater’s former president resembles a long lost cousin of Kim Jong-Il.
@#4 – I think the archives will help you find that.
I love the Russian story for it’s creativity, but they almost seem to be admiring the corruption by being so subtle… I bet the politicians are competing to see who can get their photos in the paper showing off who has the nicest suits and jewelry.
I can’t wait to see who else stands to get rich off healthcare reform. It looks like Obama keeps buying more and more support…
Remember when your gradeschool teacher admonished the class to not criticize ideas if they have none of their own? Yeah you do.
That was bullshit. Bad ideas ought to be called out regardless.
And for the record, if you were actually interested in the answer to your question rather than making a thinly veiled attack, you could find the answers to your question in about 30 seconds with google.
Just when we were full of good feelings towards our boys and girls in blue: LA cops hassle photographer for taking photos on the metro, threaten to put him on the FBI watch list
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY2cCPW3H7g
OK, here’s a bad cop story to balance things out.
http://www.theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/530805.html
Deputies detain then hold down student for flu shot.
Can someone explain the pudge nudge to me? Why, why would anyone want to broadcast this? Maybe they can create a nub stub app to broadcast the size of your penis when you get out of the pool.
cleavingSpace:
Letter in today’s local paper by a woman seeking employment in a field that requires TB tests. It seems this woman always tests positive an must have xrays to prove she doesn’t have TB. Local hospital (Culpeper, VA) wanted $485 for xray, plus $52 to read the xray. Fauquier Hospital (next county to the north) wanted $217 for xray, plus extra for reading. Medical Imaging in Fredericksburg (45 miles east) wanted $78 for xray, reading fee included.
For 15 years I have bought my own insurance, and always choose hi-deductible plans. Only one year has the insurance company ever paid anything. And yet, my charges get reduced by half, sometimes by 2/3, just because that’s all the insurance company will allow the provider to charge; it’s just like a membership in a buyer’s club. Clearly, the standard rates are set absurdly high to begin with, and only suckers pay full price.
The healthcare crisis is basically caused by providers grossly overcharging, and consumers being too insulated from those costs. We need to re-arrange the market so consumers are encouraged to shop around, and then competition will bring down costs.
The Deputies held down a middle school student who’s mother had taken him to get the shot. Sometimes kids don’t want needles and have to be held. Usually its by the parents or nurses, but sometimes you take who’s around. If the mother didn’t want her son being vaccinated she shouldn’t have taken him or told them to stop instead of running away. For once I don’t blame the officers.
You mean more dead Russian journalists…they’re have been more than a few offed in the last couple years if I’m remembering correctly.
#4, a quick summary of Radley’s proposed solutions:
1. malpractice “reform”
2. lowered standards for medical professional credentials
3. lowered standards for what plans must cover, and (which will)
4. shrink risk pools
The type of “malpractice reform” that’s being suggested has already been instituted in Texas; so far the result has been that Texas health insurance costs have risen 7 times faster than incomes and are currently the highest in the country. Combine this with #2 and you have a lowered bar for what it takes to become a medical professional, and a raised bar for what it takes to get proper compensation when that less-trained person screws up. #3 might seem like a good idea until you find out you have a malady that you’re not covered by at which point you’re uninsurable with a pre-existing condition and completely screwed, and #4 goes against the whole concept of how insurance works and would drastically increase costs for the elderly because they’re no longer in a larger pool with those with lowered risks. It would lower a young person’s monthly insurance bill at the expense of all others, and wouldn’t actually contain health insurance costs overall.
That being said, Radley is (somewhat) right about the proposed health care bill in it’s current form and how it could be a “giveaway” to Pharma and that needs to be addressed, stat. But for someone who has stated in the past that pharmaceutical companies need large profits in order to spur innovation and development of new drugs it’s an odd stance to take.
PS – if you don’t like being labeled a “glibertarian” then don’t call it “Obamacare”, TIA.
@SamSam:
“For 15 years I have bought my own insurance, and always choose hi-deductible plans.”
Not everyone can afford their own insurance. Health costs are the #1 cause of bankruptcy for American families. Health care costs are currently ~17% of GDP and rising every year (this is with privatized health care). This is simply unsustainable. I was simply asking what other alternative libertarians/right wing nutjobs are suggesting besides running around in circles and screaming “OBAMA IZ A SOCIALIST!!11″
#4–Without getting into actual policies, I’d make 2 points:
1. Is there really a health care “crisis?” Survey after survey shows that a large majority of Americans like their doctors and are satisfied with the health care they obtain. That’s not to say there aren’t problems–of course there are–but do we fuck up things for the satisfied majority in order to try for Utopia?
2. There are no solutions, only tradeoffs. Stop trying to pretend that there is enough money to pay for all the health care that everyone could possibly benefit from. There isn’t. Care has to be “rationed” in some form. Right now the main deteminants are your resources and what kind of insurance you have. If we want single-payer, govt.-run health care then let’s say so. But we can’t pretend that wont be rationed too.
You’ve got to be brave to be a journalist in Russia.
Wow, you almost completely whiffed, “Mojotron.”
Some of those are good ideas, but none are what I’ve said are the critical problems with the health care system. It’s like you just went to some conservative activist website, copied their talking points, then attributed them to me.
Also, I don’t remember ever writing that “pharmaceutical companies need large profits in order to spur innovation and development of new drugs,” especially if those large profits are fueled by government handouts. I’ve consistently railed against corporate welfare on this site. Moreover, the biggest hindrance to development of new drugs isn’t R&D money but the excessively laborious process of getting FDA approval.
You’re not really even trying, are you?
Even if you are for more socialized healthcare, none of what is being proposed now is a good idea. There is nothing which will reduce costs or get significantly more people insured. As someone else pointed out above, it is still a good thing to oppose bad ideas even if you do not have a positive alternative to offer. And there are some good alternatives which are at the very least worth thinking about being offered by libertarians (and which differ quite a bit from the caricature mojotron created above). For a good example, see John Mackey’s article about it from a few months ago: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html
The problem with health insurance is that it is not really insurance. Medical costs for a car accident, a broken leg, etc, are insurance. Risk pools and insurance are designed for this kind of insurable event, because it occurs randomly, and to a small subset of the insurred population. However, medical costs for old-age are a completely predictable expense. Just like retirement, child rearing, replacing a worn-out-car, and college education, the costs of end-of-life medical care are completely expected. For forseeable expenses, the typical solution is not insurance, but loans, savings, doing without.
The current health insurance debate conflates both uses of insurance. I am young, I would be happy to purchase insurance for a bicycle crash, broken leg, etc, and to separately save for my predictable old-age medical care. A health plan forcing me into a larger pool is nothing other than a cross-generational subsidy from me to older people who did not save for their predicted expenses. The social bargain is the assumption that in 30-40 years, younger generations will be happy to cross-subsidize me.) I’m not saying that this social bargain is wrong, but that its existence must be recognized, to have an honest debate. I can be compelled into the social bargain (the Obama plan). I can be taxed into supporting the (predictable) health expenses of others who did not save for them (medicare). Maybe the solution is a ‘lifelong health-care savings plan’?
Insurance is NOT suitable for expected and planned expenses. If an insurance company wants to sell insurance, not run savings plan— and one where their clients have little incentive to minimize expenditures, they are several things they’re going to naturally try to do. They’d be high-deductable to not have to deal with the paperwork of handling the (predictable) earaches, sore throats, etc. They’re going to avoid insurring pre-existing conditions, which are, after-all predictable expenses. This also explains adverse selection, after all, any rational buyer with a predictable expenses greater than the insurance premium is going to purchase the ‘insurance’.
Solution to health care problems:
1. Abolish all federal laws, regulations, and schemes pertaining in any way to the health care industry.
2. Strongly encourage states to abolish the above as well, in addition to any state-run licensing.
Woog:
I’m not sure abolition of all gov’t controls will work. Some organization(s) need to exist to document the competency of doctors, hospitals, EMTs, etc. If the private sector provides such services, how do you handle the libel and slander lawsuits from low-ranked doctors?
Less gov’t control is generally a good thing, but I don’t want to do a month of research to pick a doctor to treat my wife’s stroke.
Society works better with less interference, but society also works better when citizens can specialize. I am an electronics engineer; my knowledge of banking, medicine, auto mechanics, and many other things is limited. Yes, I can educate myself, but that prevents me from being as good an engineer as I could be.
Some regulation is good. How much and in what aspects of commerce are the questions that need debate.
*facepalm* @ my improper use of they’re above. Should have been there. Damn, and I’m an english major.
1 – Malpractice reform (did I just go to a conservative website and copy talking points?) – there you claim that trial lawyers are one of the major reasons we’re facing a health care crisis right now.
2 – lowered standards – I can’t find the link, but I’m fairly certain that you proposed here that one solution to the “doctor shortage” was to lower the standards for the credentials required for medical personnel to see patients. Is this not accurate?
3 – and here you are linking to a video that supports point #3 and you say “The video specifically is a criticism of Massachusetts’ plan, which forces everyone to buy into some third-party-payer system even if they have no need for comprehensive health care“, which means lowered standards for what plans must cover. Same for your proposal for plans to cross state lines- it essentially means that the cheapest plans will be those in the states with the most lax requirements, i.e. “Delawareization”.
Do you or don’t you support Whole Foods CEO Mackey’s health care proposals? Maybe your two posts about that were solely about his right to have his opinion without facing a customer boycott, but it seemed like you were approving of his positions- there was no real criticism and you stated that these were things that he saw “had worked” and you were going to shop there more often.
I thought that you had posted that capping pharm company profits would stifle innovation for developing new drugs, but that may have been John Stossel and others posting at Reason.com; if you disagree with that point I’ll withdraw it, but if your only complaint is the implication that it’s true only if it isn’t funded by “government handouts/corporate welfare” then I don’t understand what your point really is. and what are the specifics for streamlining FDA approval? Fewer tests and shorter testing periods?
Give people a choice of a state system, whether a mixed (British) model or a single-standard (Canadian) model.
Fairly simple, isn’t it? Market choice in action. If people don’t want “socialized medicine” they can vote against it.
Give people a choice of a state system, whether a mixed (British) model or a single-standard (Canadian) model.
I thought the British and Canadian systems were both single-payer.
Fairly simple, isn’t it? Market choice in action. If people don’t want “socialized medicine” they can vote against it.
That’s political choice, not market choice. In the market, if 40% of the population wants to buy something, it won’t become unavailable to them because 60% don’t want to buy it.
True, Les, 1% can easily have products pulled off the shelves if they can be loud enough about it.
Les: The British system has some provisions for private care; the Canadian model doesn’t; the Canada Health Tax specifically prohibits them for matters covered by provincial health plans.
Fine, give them the political choice. Call it Timmy the Aardvark if you like, I don’t care. The point is choice, not the adjective in front of it.
I just get tired of hearing people blather endlessly about choice and doing their damndest to prevent the US populace from even getting a look at an option that the rest of the Western world has chosen and doesn’t want to go away from. (In Canada the surest way for a politician to commit political suicide is to touch universal health care.)
Hell, the assorted wholly owned health care subsidiaries called “US Senators” are turning the country inside out to prevent even the palest form of public choice in the laughingly tiny “public option”. The underlying rationale of gutting any form of Euro- or Canadian-style health care reform is fairly simple: when people get their health care under those systems they’d rather eat underfried cockroaches than go back, which is why the health care and insurance industries are batshit terrified of the public ever getting to see such a system work in action. So “choice” is limited to “the shitty extortionate criminally rapacious private options”.
The Canadian public consistently kills any American-style privatization. Up here the dynamic is more 90-10 than 60-40 and the electorate has taken the position that if the price for 90% of the population getting what it wants and needs is 10% of the population getting what it needs but not what it prefers then so be it. Ideologically contrary to economic libertarianism, granted, but it is a valid political choice.
Seeker: since your “political choice” involves sticking a gun in my face to make me pay for your decisions, I think the appropriate context here is “fuck you” with a double helping of “fuck your mother” and a side of “fuck you in the face”.
I would say something negative about Blackwater, but I don’t want to get shot in the head. Oh yes, they’ll do it just as easy in America as in Iraq.
Nice job creating a beast, Mr. President(s).
Blackwater execs approved $1 million in bribes to buy support of Iraqi government officials after contractor employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians.
I thought bribing a foreign official or businessman had been made illegal way back during obama the 1st reign.
Here is my solution to increased health care costs (it’s capitalist and based on competitive free markets):
All doctors and care giving offices post the services they provide and the cost for each, kind of like a menu with prices. That way, you can go to several websites and “shop around” for whatever floats your boat. There will be those willing to pay the higher prices because of a perceived increase in quality (kind of like buying a Lexus instead of a Buick), but there will also be those who are happy to shop at the “Dollar General” of healthcare. This allows people to take price into consideration when deciding where to get care, plus the competitive nature of business would drive down prices in general.
#26 re: giving people a choice of a single-payer versus free market system:
You can’t offer both simultaneously. People will act according to their best interests. Young healthy people will reject a single payer option because their insurance premiums will be less in a free market system, as compared to what they would have to pay into a single payer system to subsidize the care for all the old sick people. And without the young healthy people there is no one to subsidize care for all the others.
Samsam,
If you’re not researching a surgeon already, you’re likely going to get what’s coming to you. I’d thought Radley had even posted about how certain doctors’ organizations help shuffle around negligent surgeons, and they can do this because of the monopoly on licenses… but I can’t find the posting using Google.
Such private ratings systems exist already – I’d cross-referenced a half dozen to attempt to get a feel for a surgeon I’d ended up consulting with, and better-organized outfits such as Angie’s List have gotten into the medical review aspect as well. Ask them how they plan to deal with lawsuits – probably with their own lawyer and case law that protects opinions and fact, just like anyone else.
The problem with many peoples’ idea of government is that they think government sucks, and yet they somehow believe that the jobs the government has monopolized can’t be done better. I ask you to name one government program that has done well. Then consider the power of voluntary transactions combined with the information-sharing capabilities of tools like the Internet and see if you still believe that the government can do a better job that the truly free market.
Anyone else see the horrifying potential link between the data-transmitting scale and government-run healthcare? *shudders* Tax increases for those above a certain BMI, caps on how much weight you can gain in a certain time period, etc. Orwellian? Yes. Possible? Yes.
What I am not hearing in many debates about all this healthcare BS is the eventual impact on personal liberties once the taxpayers are all chipping in to pay for everyone’s care. Does anyone really think there won’t be more prohibition on all the things that “aren’t good for us” (AKA those products/activities in industries with weaker lobbying abilities)? This has always been the scariest part for me.
We’re fucked.