Our st00pid healthcare system is st00pid
As the New York Times’ resident glibertarian dweeb, John Tierney is supposed to give a full-throated defense of our nation’s stupid, wasteful and inferior system of paying for health care. And indeed, he gives it the old college try in this article, but he inadvertently disproves his whole thesis:
To Explain Longevity Gap, Look Past Health System
If you’re not rich and you get sick, in which industrialized country are you likely to get the best treatment?
The conventional answer to this question has been: anywhere but the United States. With its many uninsured citizens and its relatively low life expectancy, the United States has been relegated to the bottom of international health scorecards.
Well yes, John. When you spend more per capita than any country in the world and still have lower life expectancies and tens of millions of people uninsured, that hurts your score. In fact, I’d wager to say that it’s a good indicator that our health care system is really goddamn inefficient.
But a prominent researcher, Samuel H. Preston, has taken a closer look at the growing body of international data, and he finds no evidence that America’s health care system is to blame for the longevity gap between it and other industrialized countries. In fact, he concludes, the American system in many ways provides superior treatment even when uninsured Americans are included in the analysis.
“The U.S. actually does a pretty good job of identifying and treating the major diseases,” says Dr. Preston, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania who is among the leading experts on mortality rates from disease. “The international comparisons don’t show we’re in dire straits.”
No one denies that the American system has problems, including its extraordinarily high costs and unnecessary treatments. But Dr. Preston and other researchers say that the costs aren’t solely due to inefficiency. Americans pay more for health care partly because they get more thorough treatment for some diseases, and partly because they get sick more often than people in Europe and other industrialized countries.
But that’s just it — the reason Americans get sick more is because our system puts less emphasis on preventative care.
It goes like this: private, for-profit insurers should have an incentive to plow money into preventative care programs for their customers because it would save them money long term. But because Americans change jobs — and therefore, insurers — every five years, the insurance companies see preventative care as an expense that won’t provide them with long-term payoff. The result is that most Americans don’t get important long-term treatment and will only get medical attention when problems hit crisis levels that require expensive and drastic medical interventions. If Tierney had read his own newspaper’s coverage on the difficulties in getting private insurers to cover long-term treatment for diabetes, he would have understood this.
The article gets worse as it goes along, especially toward the end (my emphasis):
When I brought up Dr. Preston’s work to Ellen Nolte and C. Martin McKee, two prominent European critics of the American system, they suggested that he was taking too limited a view of health care. They said the system should take responsibility for preventing disease, not just treating it.
Dr. Preston acknowledges that the United States might do more to keep young and middle-aged people from getting sick, but he says it’s not clear that other countries’ systems are more effective.
It isn’t? Gee, it’s not as though people have written entire books comparing the effectiveness of other countries’ efforts at implementing preventative health care. It’s not like those countries that have done more to emphasize preventative care have health care systems that spend less money for longer life expectancies or anything. ZOMG, there really is no way to tell! None at all!
At any rate, I’ve been spending the last couple of months researching the st00pidity of our st00pid health care system. I’ll have an AlterNet article about it later this week that you can bet I’ll shamelessly plug here.
Coming up later today, I’ll have some LOLz with RedState’s Moe Lane.
UPDATE: By the way, anyone who wants to have a real understanding of health care around the world should read T.R. Reid’s The Healing of America. It’s concise, well-written and not terribly wonkish. I’ve read a bunch of articles and books on health care over the past two months on health care in the United States and around the world, but this was by far the most comprehensive and informative.
Americans pay more for health care partly because they get more thorough treatment for some diseases, and partly because they get sick more often than people in Europe and other industrialized countries.
So our healthcare system is better than the entire world, it’s just our people suck at staying healthy?
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?????????
actor212 — he doesn’t understand that part of a health care system has to be keeping people healthy, not just treating them when they get sick.
It’d be like saying that our Federal Reserve has done a brilliant job of treating our financial crisis by stopping the economy from experiencing a total collapse. Except that, uh, they could have done a lot more to stop the bubble from building up in the first place but they didn’t. Ergo, they’re not so great.
Brad, I think that’s the part of this that Obama has to be hammering home with more vigour.
EVERYONE’S inusrance costs go down, public option or no, if we spent more time and energy on disease prevention than we do currently, and I for one would like to see the tables turned: more money and energy spent on keeping people from getting sick in the first place than spent on “curing” them.
But hey, that would mean mandatory insurance…
“even when uninsured Americans are included in the analysis.”
Is that like: “Poverty isn’t really that bad even when we include the niggers in the analysis”?
I think I’ve heard this pitch from the cigarettes-don’t-give-you-cancer crowd. “Sure, people who smoke tend to have a higher rate of cancer. But is that because of cigarettes? WE DON’T KNOW!”
The subtext, of course, being that hey – Europeans can’t be that great – we make fun of them all the time. I mean, ergo, QED, what is a Wookie even doing on Endor? It does not make sense!
More like, “Poverty isn’t really that bad even including the homeless”.
I hate using that word BTW. I thought it was needed to get the “full flavor” but now I’m not sure. I think I could have left it out. No offense was intended.
“even when uninsured Americans are included in the analysis.”
“If we really set the bar really low, like right here on the ground, it’s not so hard to get over.”
**Hop**
See?
So our healthcare system is better than the entire world, it’s just our people suck at staying healthy?
Once you realize that the H.C. system is designed to funnel money to insurance and medical companies, this makes sense and you may realize the system is working as intended.
It’s just not a racial thing, though. I mean, while Barry is in office, there will always be a “racial thing”. But this is comparing the whitey whites of effeminate east coast Europe to the tanned hard-working farmers of Appalachia. The race card isn’t really being played here. It’s just a combination of “It’s not true because I can’t believe it!” and “Hey! Even when we’re not completely skewing the numbers, we can conceivably argue that the shit isn’t actually hitting the fan, per say.”
Once you realize that the H.C. system is designed to funnel money to insurance and medical companies, this makes sense and you may realize the system is working as intended.
Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding!
Also, Americans are so unhealthy because a) they eat shitty, industrial food and get diabetes/heart disease/cancer at a higher rate than many other countries, b) because they live in places where they have to rely on cars instead of walking/riding bikes for transportation, and c) because they work long, stressful hours with few vacations. And if you’re poor, you’re even more likely to experience factors a and c, PLUS you have the great opportunity of being exposed to more environmental toxins than your richer USAians.
So, in other words, the ideology that has fucked up our health care system directly has also succeeded in fucking it up indirectly. You gotta give it to cons–they are TALENTED at fucking shit up.
Concentrating on health outcomes is nice, but it ignores economic outcomes, like bankruptcies.
“Our doctors are very good at treating people! It’s not our fault some people can’t afford to be treated! We’re good at treating the people who can afford it!”
The NHS has a lot of faults, and most of them are to do with Thatcher etc cutting funding because WAR PLANES BOOM BANG YAY. I would take our modest healthcare system over America’s, much as it guilts me to risk looking like one of those British snobs that bitches about America on principle. The US does many things well. Just not that.
Celia — were I to design a health care system, it would probably look more like France than the UK. That said, I’d take both models over the US in a heartbeat.
Shorter John Tierney: “I finally found one guy who backs up my preconceived notions. Now I can ignore everything else on record.”
Concentrating on health outcomes is nice, but it ignores economic outcomes, like bankruptcies.
Does anyone know of any studies that might show losses to our economy due to the decreased productivity of people who are sick because of inadequate health care? I supposed I could look it up, but I’m lazy.
I think if I’d had to contend with the looming threat of bankruptcy every time I got sick starting at age 23 or so when I left school, I would have slit my wrists long ago. If I were to be stupid enough to move to the US, I could try to get health insurance, but they’d just laugh in my face, because I’ve had a “preexisting condition” since I was, um, preexistent.
Disability of the chronic but not really incapacitating kind seems to be the shut-up-that’s-why elephant in this particular room.
It goes like this: private, for-profit insurers should have an incentive to plow money into preventative care programs for their customers because it would save them money long term.
I wonder about this. I think the incentives are completely the wrong way. The real money comes from making sure everybody is chronically ill for long periods of time. Sure, you don’t want your walking gold mine customer base dropping dead at 40 of heart attacks, because that’s a lot of lost income. If, however, you can arrange it so they all need frequent, highly profitable interventions from age 35 to age 85, (especially if you get to cut off coverage whenever you want and make them pay the rest out of pocket) that’s going to do your bottom line a world of good.
I mean, who wants a non-smoker who runs five miles a day and eats lots of vegetables for a customer? Sure, you get his premiums, and you might get lucky and he gets cancer from some environmental poison, but basically, he’s a deadbeat from a profit perspective.
Lurking Canadian — you’ve got it wrong. Insurance companies love getting healthy people on their rosters because they pay premiums and rarely need care. It’s the sick folks — with preexisting conditions — that they want to run away from.
A health patient is a profit center, a sick patient is a loss center.
I think if I’d had to contend with the looming threat of bankruptcy every time I got sick starting at age 23 or so when I left school, I would have slit my wrists long ago. If I were to be stupid enough to move to the US, I could try to get health insurance, but they’d just laugh in my face, because I’ve had a “preexisting condition” since I was, um, preexistent.
This is reminding me of when I was 24 and I nearly did slit my wrists because I didn’t have health insurance and couldn’t afford psychiatric care. (Actually, I would have chosen pills, but the point remains). That’s part of the reason why I’ve spent four years in a job that I hate–it’s a government job with excellent benefits and I can get health insurance despite my depression and asthma.
Ugh.
“The U.S. has had one spectacular achievement in preventive medicine,” he says. “It has had the largest drop in cigarette consumption per adult of any developed country since 1985.”
And the policies that helped bring about that drop (taxes, packaging warnings, advertising regulations, etc.) were fought every step of the way by the ideological forebears of the people who now scream about “socialized medicine.”
Apropos of nothing, but I’m sitting in the waiting room of an opthalmic (?) surgeon’s office in the southeastern U.S., waiting to take a relative home from cataract surgery, marveling at the lump of concentrated stupid sitting across from me: Bassmasters baseball hat, toilet-brush beard-thing, t-shirt, beer gut, cutoff shorts, University of Florida Gator-logo Crocs. Lump of dip lodged firmly behind lower lip, he’s filched one of the cups from the coffee service for use as a spit cup. Barely able to speak around the dip when one of the receptionists asks him a question.
Does this thing have an “off” switch?
Also, more to your point, interrobang, absolutely. Because, as Brad points out, you’re a liability. The bottom line is that these people are more interested in making sure that insurance companies make profits than they are in making sure that their fellow Americans don’t die. And that’s why I have nothing but contempt for them.
Our helath care system does a fantastic job of taking care of the afsholes in Congrefs.
Our health care system, too.
If you’re not rich and you get sick, in which industrialized country are you likely to get the best treatment?
Oh look, the glibertarian two-step, ensuring that the most salient moral question is completely NOT addressed, and instead we can selectively present some statistical fappery and carefully count angels-on-dingleberries.
Back where in the land that InstaMcTierney dare not venture, we might ask a different question:
If you’re not rich and you get sick, in which country are you most likely to be denied treatment or bankrupted by the cost of it?
Ted — you nailed it.
it seems to me, although I have no hard data to back it up, that part of the reason our life expectancy is shorter than most industrialized nations has to do with the fact that we are a violent bunch. We lead the world in death by homicide, and no health care reform is going to change that much.
Our helath care system does a fantastic job of taking care of the afsholes in Congrefs.
Given the frequency and vigor of outbursts from some of the more high-profile members, I’m guessing they traded away mental health and cranial CT scan coverage for no deductible on Cialis.
Hmm. When you put it that way, it sounds an awful lot like the optimum model for an infectious disease. You know, where your vector stays alive, but gets sick enough to develop symptoms that spread the disease.
Hmm. When you put it that way, it sounds an awful lot like the optimum model for an infectious disease. You know, where your vector stays alive, but gets sick enough to develop symptoms that spread the disease.
Do you mean to tell me that insurance cos=parasites???!
Lurking Canuck, that would be true if the system was being driven by clinics and hospitals.
But most of the money is funneled through the Insurance industry, and they get to dictate prices and procedures.
Do you mean to tell me that insurance cos=parasites???!
Hey now. Who do you think supports all the document warehouses?
Hey, and guns don’t kill people–it’s those darn bullets!
Shorter John Tierney: “I finally found one guy who backs up my preconceived notions. Now I can ignore everything else on record.”
Yeah, it seems like this is willful ignorance of reality. Why can’t some of these people come out and say, “You know, we do a lot of things in this country well, but taking care of our most vulnerable, our weakest and our sick is not one of them.”
Is it really that hard?
Somewhat OT, but, you gotta see this. The Austin American Statesman ran an op-ed by Michael Williams, who wants to replace our gal Kay in the US Senate:
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/2009/09/23/0923williams_edit.html
Choice quote :
“I oppose the president’s health care plan because it will explode the deficit, allow further government intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship and continue to insulate health care consumers from the true cost of their care. ”
That’s right. He wants those health care consumers to HURT financially as well as physically.
Oh, Spag. Left that not so-veiled reference hanging out, so to speak.
“Is it really that hard to say?”
FAP FAP FAP
Blart.
FAP. Also.
If the problem is that all these other faggot sissy Yurpeen countries and shit rank higher on health statistics then *we* do#, then shouldn’t it be a lot easier and quicker to destroy the health of their people (bombing, seiges, poisoining water, swine flu blankets and whatnot then it would be to spend a buncha damn gay money on doctors and insurance and shit here???
“…and continue to insulate health care consumers from the true cost of their care.”
He may be dumb, but he certainly has balls.
Conservatives have this way of keeping a game of discourse rolling and rolling and rolling until somehow the answer they want magically seems to pop out, or until the opinion of the masses reaches a very brief and extremely thin majority in their favor, and then they want to slam the lid on that discussion cause WIN WIN WIN YAY and NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN — BECAUSE SHUT UP IT’S ALREADY DECIDED THAT’S WHY.
That was the entire premise of Bush v. Gore as far as I can tell. They jerried the numbers until the numbers just barely came in for Bush and then said SHUT UP, ALL DONE!
It’s not about being right, or what’s effective. It’s about WINNING.
This would be a fine observation by a libertarian:
“The per person annual cost totals about $7,300 in the U.S., about $3,000 on average for the rest of the advanced economies on the planet. It’s not clear our system is more effective.”
Spending double for similar results while leaving millions uninsured, millions more one serious illness away from financial ruin. What a system.
That’s part of the reason why I’ve spent four years in a job that I hate–it’s a government job with excellent benefits and I can get health insurance despite my depression…
While at the same time, the former exacerbates the latter. Just yet another delicious irony of our for-profit health system; another being one that others here have touched on tangentially: our system incentivizes people to avoid seeking out preventative care. Particularly for the self-employed with individual policies, the only way you’ll remain insured over the long term is by avoiding going to the doctor. Because every doctor visit holds the potential for something to be added to the file, and too many even minor somethings = you’re cancelled and no one will sell you insurance at any price. If you wanted to set up a system designed to produce the worst possible outcomes, you’d be hard pressed to improve upon the one we’ve got.
On average, American bums are billionaires: Bill Gates has 20 billion dollars. A bum has nothing. Average: the bum is is billionaire!! Ain’t America great!?!!
It’s not about being right, or what’s effective. It’s about WINNING.
Yup.
<I.While at the same time, the former exacerbates the latter. Just yet another delicious irony of our for-profit health system; another being one that others here have touched on tangentially: our system incentivizes people to avoid seeking out preventative care.
Definitely. If I’m in the situation where I have to seek out insurance on my own or my employer’s insurance isn’t that good, I am totally, totally fucked.
Not to mention the fact that even with the best insurance, you still have to deal with bureaucracy and institutional fuckery and incompetence due to, in large part, the operation of a for-profit healthcare system in this country.
Good lord, I suck at HTML.
Good lord, I suck at HTML.
Shhh. That’s a pre-existing condition.
An important trick is to find a program that’ll type the tags for you.
“The real money comes from making sure everybody is chronically ill for long periods of time.”
While this is not true for those who have insurance through their employer it IS true for those on Social Security of Medicare.
Or “or” even. Also.
T&U,
I’m looking for a specific study to your question, but chew on this for a bit.
HAH! Found it:
I’m coming to better understand it now (thanks to all those who replied). If we look only at the profit motive, insurance companies want healthy rate payers who never get sick and pharmaceutical companies and health care providers want sick people who never get well.
So, the economic optimum would seem to be a system where the insurance companies get to collect premiums on the healthy, then boot them off when they become bad risks (ie: get sick and/or old) at which point the sick and/or old people (and/or the public treasury) can bankrupt themselves to pay for the care they need.
Which, as I understand it, is exactly what you’ve got now. There, you see? America is Number One! Call John Stossel!
“The real money comes from making sure everybody is chronically ill for long periods of time.”
While this is not true for those who have insurance through their employer it IS true for those on Social Security of Medicare.
I disagree. It’s true for any insurance plan. The key is to find a condition that is chronic, treatable, but not curable, like high cholesterol or high blood pressure, and then screw the doctors out of fair compensation and discourage them from anything but the most cost-effective (read: cheap) treatments.
Once you have something like those, you never, NEVER give up insurance, and the insurance co can now start to jack up your pool’s rates.
actor, I think the point on that sidebar on the first major page is pretty compelling–health insurance would increase earnings 10-30 percent, depending on the condition.
An important trick is to find a program that’ll type the tags for you.
Oooh! I wonder if I can get away with downloading it on my work computer…..
T & U:
To borrow from Tom Tomorrow: Balls, yes, if that’s what you call thinking insurance companies exist to take money and NOT provide the services for which such money was given to you.
Shorter every fookin libertarian asshole ever.
They chose to be poor or sick. They new what they were getting into. I say, let’em die.
T&U,
That 10-30% refers to the uninsured worker’s earnings. That’s what he would a) receive from better attendance and less chance of losing his job and b) save in healthcare expenses, combined.
actor–Awesome. It looks like that number comes from an IOM report from 2003.
I knew it existed, but I wasn’t sure where.
There was also a piece published in JAMA in the past month or so that compared the US and British healthcare systems, controlling for social class and education, as well as behavioral risk factors. What they found was, firstly that there was no significant difference in risk factors between the two countries and in both these were higher among the lower classes. Secondly, they found that across the board, even controlling for education and social class, Americans got worse health outcomes that the British. In fact, health outcomes for upper class Americans (the folks with “Cadillac healthcare”) were comparable to those for lower class Britons. It is worth noting that Britain is not one of the highest ranking countries in the OECD in terms of healthcare (France is number one).
If you find yourself typing repetitive text in any application, point out to your boss and/or IT that it saves time and money for free.
DrDick, yabut JAMA is a liberal publication. The only medical articles you can trust are from American Enterprise Institute. All the other journals (especially that commie piece of shit Lancet) are just part of the ivory tower trade guild.
It’s true. I heard it on FOX (nods).
So our healthcare system is better than the entire world, it’s just our people suck at staying healthy?
Which is Libertarian code for “it is our own fault that we are sick and driving up healthcare costs by eating, drinking, and smoking too much.” Their fantasy is that everybody else has lower rates of behavioral risk factors which keeps their costs lower. However, see mine at 20:01 about comparing the US and British systems (the latter costs about half what ours does).
Their fantasy is that everybody else has lower rates of behavioral risk factors which keeps their costs lower. However, see mine at 20:01 about comparing the US and British systems (the latter costs about half what ours does).
I remember reading up on that study.
More to the point, then they should have less problem with a public healthcare initiative that, you know, helps people stop treating their bodies like garbage dumps.
John Tierney looks like Regis Philbin’s stoopider brother.
OT but has anyone seen this yet? Wild Thing by The Trogs!?!?!
Warning! If you watch it, you won’t be able to unwatch it.
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/brain-bleach-alert-tom-delay-shakes
Good news, everybody! Fred Phelps and his church of the inbred are coming to NYC this weekend to harass Jews and gays.
The most amusing part is they intend to picket Brooklyn Tech High School, about five blocks from my place, apparently because GODLESS SCIENCE is taught there. My guess is that they wanted to picket Bronx Science H. S. but didn’t have a big enough underwear budget to deal with traveling to the Bronx.
More to the point, then they should have less problem with a public healthcare initiative that, you know, helps people stop treating their bodies like garbage dumps.
Which is actually less relevant for the British system, but central to many other OECD countries. Britain has been relatively late in adopting widespread preventative medicine, though they are doing dramatically better now. This is the basis for the charge leveled by healthcare reform opponents that Britain has far lower rates of survival from breast cancer (based on 15 year old studies). Since then, they have adopted routine breast exams and mammograms (already routine elsewhere) and current survival rates are comparable to the US. There is also some serious cherry picking in choosing the only form of cancer where the US has the best survival rates (again largely owing to screening).
OT but has anyone seen this yet?
Gocart Mozart! Go to …
Ah feck it. I commented on this in the previous thread (durr) and it wasn’t that funny, there, either.
Can I still say “FYWP?”
The most amusing part is they intend to picket Brooklyn Tech High School, about five blocks from my place, apparently because GODLESS SCIENCE is taught there. My guess is that they wanted to picket Bronx Science H. S. but didn’t have a big enough underwear budget to deal with traveling to the Bronx.
Hell, half the time they don’t even know what they’re picketing. They’re just attention whores. I remember going to a David Sedaris show and thinking they were picketing because he was gay, but after I overheard them talking to some people in line, I realized that they just always picketed outside that location because it was “Gay U.”
Also, I’m pretty sure DeLay’s “performance” is one of the signs of the Apocalypse. Didn’t Nostradamus or some other dude write about that shit?
Hell, half the time they don’t even know what they’re picketing.
I can believe that. It’s just that Kansans doesn’t end up on DeKalb Avenue by accident. At least, not unless three’s a big twister.
“…and continue to insulate health care consumers from the true cost of their care.”
And these are the guys who think a health care savings account is going to be the Magical Unicorn that solves the problem. Gee, I have $500 in a savings account, thanks for the tax break on the 3% interest it earns. I’m glad that will be there when I am diagnosed with breast cancer.
Isn’t “health care consumers” an interesting term…..?
The most amusing part is they intend to picket Brooklyn Tech High School
Lou Ferrigno’s alma mater??????
This deserves its own post. Evangelist Kirk Cameron Plans To Distribute Darwin’s Origin Of The Species With Creationist Introduction. Another child star bites the dust.
Here is a link to an awesome bitch slapping of him by this hot foreign chick who I think I just fell in love with.
Also, I’m pretty sure DeLay’s “performance” is one of the signs of the Apocalypse.
Well, it speaks of dignity and gravitas to me. Just like his years in the House.
The most amusing part is they intend to picket Brooklyn Tech High School
Lou Ferrigno’s alma mater??????
You wouldn’t like Techies when they’re angry.
My guess is that they wanted to picket Bronx Science H. S. but didn’t have a big enough underwear budget to deal with traveling to the Bronx.
Why wouldn’t they? They don’t change undies.
It’s more likely because of the fact that Tech is near the Metrotech complex, which means more likely to tie up traffic.
Science is near a frikkin’ football field, a reservoir, and a subway train yard, so they wouldn’t bother a soul there.
The real question is why they didn’t pick on Stuyvesant, seeing as Eric Holder and whatisface….Axelrod…went there.
You wouldn’t like Techies when they’re angry.
Hulk smash (atoms)!
The real question is why they didn’t pick on Stuyvesant
Because they’re not smart enough to figure out that much more science is taught there than at Tech?
Fuck, my father went to Science and I went to Hunter. I feel left out of the party.
(waiting for Looch to post to the correct thread in 3….2….1…)
N_B, we both changed the subject to evolution at the same time.
Please click this link. I swear, it made my day. NSFW due to language.
The real question is why they didn’t pick on Stuyvesant, seeing as Eric Holder and whatisface….Axelrod…went there.
That would imply knowledge, intelligence, and education on their part.
You went to Hunter?
Wow. Even I didn’t make Hunter!
Of course, they weren’t accepting boys back then and altho my mom had no problem with giving me my sister’s hand-me-downs–OK, we were poor, OK???? (altho I made her pink corduroy hiphuggers look hot)– the thought of crossdressing me to get me out of Wagner JHS never really appealed to her…
I can believe that. It’s just that Kansans doesn’t end up on DeKalb Avenue by accident. At least, not unless three’s a big twister.
You got me there. Honestly, I try to pretend like they don’t exist, especially since I don’t see them on a nearly weekly basis on campus anymore.
Isn’t “health care consumers” an interesting term…..?
I had the same thought. I’m counting down the days until I hear a doc refer to a patient as a “health care consumer.”
he real money comes from making sure everybody is chronically ill for long periods of time. Sure, you don’t want your walking gold mine customer base dropping dead at 40 of heart attacks, because that’s a lot of lost income.
Word. (Sorry, suck at html, don’t know how to box that quote).
I used to work for one of these “health care” organizations. I still remember going to their townhall meetings and having the CEO say to us “we love diabetics”. “we love people with chronic diseases”.
I had the nerve to raise my hand and say “sir? -erm – that’s my MOM you’re talking about there”.
He didn’t bat an eye – oh well, so sorry, Rosebuddear, but YOU know what I mean.
Yeah, I sure do sir. For sure.
Here is a link to an awesome bitch slapping of him by this hot foreign chick who I think I just fell in love with.
Get in line!, Oh damn, you saw her first.Thanks for posting the link. I think the best part was the eye-roll before, “Every single thing in the fossil record is a transitional form, you moron”. That eye-roll should be mandatory viewing in high school biology classes.
Please click this link.
Ssssssnake…
If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my bunk.
You went to Hunter?
I was zoned for Bowne. One hell of an incentive to go elsewhere.
And I was in the second co-ed year.
‘Isn’t “health care consumers” an interesting term…..?’
Yes it is. I am sure he picked it up from one or another of the business groups that fund his campaign. And if you read his entire op-ed, you will wonder if he has ever had an original thought his entire life. Of course, he is right about one thing: His race should have no bearing on the amount of ridicule he receives.
And non-Texans should take heed: Williams is likely the front-runner for the Rep nomination. Especially if Hutchison should resign, as is rumored. Governor Perry would likely appoint Williams to her seat. While Williams may be an idiot, it is an open question as to whether his appointment would raise or lower the average IQ of our Senatorial Delegation. Yes, I am looking at you John Cornyn.
(waiting for Looch to post to the correct thread in 3….2….1…)
[Enters stage left, stumbles, knocking over scenery panel, recovers grabbing line securing lighting array which unravels allowing it to crash center stage, dodges most of ensuing sparks and crashes into set door, knocking over surrounding panel while attempting extinguish flaming pant leg, stumbles toward stage right, lurching to grab curtains, which catch fire, exits stage right]
The most amusing part is they intend to picket Brooklyn Tech High School, about five blocks from my place, apparently because GODLESS SCIENCE is taught there. My guess is that they wanted to picket Bronx Science H. S. but didn’t have a big enough underwear budget to deal with traveling to the Bronx.
Hopefully they’ll get a reception like this.
[Enters stage left, stumbles, knocking over scenery panel, recovers grabbing line securing lighting array which unravels allowing it to crash center stage, dodges most of ensuing sparks and crashes into set door, knocking over surrounding panel while attempting extinguish flaming pant leg, stumbles toward stage right, lurching to grab curtains, which catch fire, exits stage right]
Either that was Looch, or the zombie invasion just started…
Hopefully they’ll get a reception like this.
We could get a 1,000 people to do the Macarena in Carmen Miranda hats!
[Double checks thread]
Please click this link. I swear, it made my day. NSFW due to language.
OK, Gocart, you totally made up for posting that inexcusable Tom Delay dancing vid.
Oooh. Smart, mouthy and, yes, hot.
Annnddd, youngenoughtobemydaughter so you kids just go have a nice evening and be safe, OK?
Either that was Looch, or the zombie invasion just started…
There’s a difference???
Methinks I will visit Ray Comfort’s blog now and post the link about his “boy toy” Kirk Cameron as she refers to him.
Annnddd, youngenoughtobemydaughter so you kids just go have a nice evening and be safe, OK?
Yeah, I know the feeling, except I think my son is actually considerably older than she is. Saw that earlier today and sent it to my physical anthropology colleagues.
Ray Comfort so totally sounds like a gay porn name.
Of course, he’d have to be partnered with Kirk Cumeron…
There’s a difference???
Ahem. You must be thinking of my older brother, Lurch. Many people get us confused. He and I are not on speaking terms, by the way.
You must be thinking of my older brother, Lurch.
I thought you told me you only had a sister, Lunch?
Or did you mean something else when you said “we should do Lunch”?
I thought you told me you only had a sister, Lunch?
Hey, don’t pick on Lunch. She’s a few sammiches short of a picnic, ya know?
(and, she’s a Lady now.)
Hey, don’t pick on Lunch. She’s a few sammiches short of a picnic, ya know?
(and, she’s a Lady now.)
*internal monologue*
Lunch. A Lady?
Lunch? Lad–
*/internal monologue
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
Hey, don’t pick on Lunch. She’s a few sammiches short of a picnic, ya know?
(and, she’s a Lady now.)
Lady Lunch? Is she the one out there off the coast of Jersey holding the lamp (or is it a corny dog?)
If you’re not rich and you get sick, in which country are you most likely to be denied treatment or bankrupted by the cost of it?
I like putting it in terms people can understand. I like to tell people, “America has the best (or at least most prolific) TV in the world. By far the most choices, the best production values, the best special effects. A thousand channels to choose from, video on demand, something for everyone, 24 hours a day. Now imagine your cable/satellite bill was $1200 a month…”.
Now imagine your cable/satellite bill was $1200 a month…”
AND your cable company could cut you off for owning a DVD.
Now imagine your cable/satellite bill was $1200 a month…”.
You mean yours isn’t?
Please click this link. I swear, it made my day. NSFW due to language.
And while watching the Kirk Cameron section of that video, I was really hoping for a giant Terry Gilliam foot to come down and squish him. It seemed, so, so right.
I don’t have sound, but I know that Cameron meant business because he was sitting on the chair backwards. Appealing to the youths, if you will.
Appealing to the youths, if you will.
He was the shazizzle, to be sure. And da yoot really dig him.
What a tool.
I don’t have sound, but I know that Cameron meant business because he was sitting on the chair backwards.
I assumed that was a symptom of secondary syphilis.
Is a banana considered Comfort food?
I assumed that was a symptom of secondary syphilis.
For symptoms of tertiary syphilis, refer to Fred Phelps.
Is a banana considered Comfort food?
Depends on where it’s inserted.
Depends…get it?…depends…
I slay myself.
For symptoms of tertiary syphilis, refer to Fred Phelps.
Kirk got it from someone…
Hey you haven’t seen Kirk Cameron until you’ve seen him in the greatest modern love story ever!
If it ever gets that high, the cable/satellite providers will find themselves where the insurance companies are now — pricing out their own customers. That is the real reason that reform is finally such a high priority, despite the fact that the insurers are screaming bloody murder about it. Nobody can afford their damn product anymore, which is far more distressing to them than people dying from lack of care.
I assumed that was a symptom of secondary syphilis.
Is that the same stage at which the patient goes batshit and thinks fossils were planted by Satan to separate the chaff from the wheat?
I thought that was when I got two different kinds. Of, er, advice. About what it might be. That other people get.
What a tool.
Maybe that’s why he has to sit backwards on a chair?
Nobody can afford their damn product anymore, which is far more distressing to them than people dying from lack of care.
Ah, yes. The nub. They want to keep all the possible payees aboard cause that’s lost revenue if they don’t but they won’t pay their actual medical bills so and basically they are on the cusp of being forced to change their business model. Anna they don’t like that, at all.
Is that the same stage at which the patient goes batshit and thinks fossils were planted by Satan to separate the chaff from the wheat?
I believe that’s tertiary. I’m basing this on dealings with some of my clients.
What pisses me off about the current state of healthcare in this country is that HMOs were designed to rein in medical costs, and yet seem to be doing precisely the opposite by not being proactive in how they determine appropriate treatment and how to best utilize their business models to help people stay away from the unhealthy and be healthier.
Yes, some pay lip service…like Oxford, which offers a rebate of $400 a year if you go to a health club 100 times, or GHI which has contracts with massage therapists for cut-rate stress relief…but mostly, there’s no real push to get people to quit smoking or lose weight.
Contrast this with England, where doctors….DOCTORS…are paid a stipend for every patient they can prove has quit smoking. What kind of powerful incentive is that to have a professional medical person looking over your shoulder, getting you to kick the habit?
This whole “short term profit for my body” model simply doesn’t work.
I’m basing this on dealings with some of my clients.
Speaking of which, where’s my colloidal silver?????
where’s my colloidal silver?????
I don’t know. Have you checked your small and large colloidons?
Speaking of which, where’s my colloidal silver?????
Ah, not feeling blue, are we?
Lunch be a Lady tonight…
I don’t know. Have you checked your small and large colloidons?
You said you would ship it with my Faradic instrument, but all you put in the carton was a wooden box with little duckies painted on it, and an empty bottle!
For like the 432,265,235th time during this process I find myself compelled to point out that if we don’t do HCR now we’re going to end up doing it sooner, not later, because health insurance companies are eating their seed corn, plus everyone else’s, and probably in less than 5 years (assuming we do NOTHING in accordance with Republican wishes) the system will simply collapse. Insurers, providers, and patients would all suffer at the same time. Rather than just patients.
I arrived at this conclusion after looking at the rate of recission/loss of coverage and doing some math. I figured out that if the rate remained the same, over half of Americans would be uninsured in another 30 years. That’s just with current rates. Since the rate of recission and loss of coverage is accelerating, and since the amount of GDP that insurers are eating up is also having secondary effects on our economy, I figured it wouldn’t be much longer before the pain point on the public made reforming HC a near-universal want.
However, I also note that HCR currently has around a 70% approval rate among Americans. There’s not much percentage left before you start running into the simply intractable imbeciles who won’t be reasoned with or listen to anything, which I believe is about 20% of America — the trogdolyte cons who couldn’t be persuaded to rescue screaming babies from boiling water if Glenn Beck called it a “socialest” rescue.
You said you would ship it with my Faradic instrument, but all you put in the carton was a wooden box with little duckies painted on it, and an empty bottle!
You’re not mature enough for the Tesla coils.
You’re not mature enough for the Tesla coils.
Then send back my check from the Nigerian princesses account!
I figured out that if the rate remained the same, over half of Americans would be uninsured in another 30 years.
How many of those end up on Medicare before they lose their insurance?
Americans pay more for health care partly because they get more thorough treatment for some diseases
Erectile dysfunction for instance?
I figured out that if the rate remained the same, over half of Americans would be uninsured in another 30 years.
Remember, “insured” does necessarily mean “covered.” Big difference, IMO. So your numbers are probably understating the true nature of the problem. Remember, something like 70 percent of the health care-related bankruptcies were among people with insurance. “Insured” has begun to lose any real meaning these days.
Which I think was your point.
And remember the Alamo. Also.
I factored in Medicare. I had to make a table up, and I used population data + projections from the Census bureau. My final figures for the year 2039 were 400 million americans, 199 million uninsured, and 89 million on Medicare based on the fact that the over-65 population of the U.S. was projected to be 20% by 2030. I extrapolated that to 22% by 2039 by working backwards the rate of growth from now. My uninsured rate was based on 14,000 people losing their coverage each day, which I assume will increase as the insurance industry’s business model starts to eat itself.
There’s an assumption implicit in all this that the insurance industry acts like any other god-damned corporation and can not manage to function without yearly growth in profits, which means they have to raise rates on a shrinking number of insured folks. I didn’t factor that in because I didn’t want to take the time to figure out to represent that in an excel table. But I could posit that doing so would only make my case stronger.
Erectile dysfunction for instance?
Are you implying that boners aren’t a Constitutional right?!
Not to dominate this thread but, I didn’t even go there. If we counted “underinsured” or “junk-insured” the number of Americans without *effective* insurance is probably already under half. Hell, I’d posit that it’s in the high nineties. I would guess that the top 1% of this country’s population has got their insurance coverage all nailed down, and the rest of us are at the mercy of how much money we can burn on our medical bills before we just fucking die.
There’s an assumption implicit in all this that the insurance industry acts like any other god-damned corporation and can not manage to function without yearly growth in profits, which means they have to raise rates on a shrinking number of insured folks.
Exactly, especially as the folks who are insured, even not well, begin to age. It is literally impossible to maintain a quality health care system and a for-profit insurance industry.
Not to dominate this thread but, I didn’t even go there. If we counted “underinsured” or “junk-insured” the number of Americans without *effective* insurance is probably already under half.
According to the Commonwealth Fund, in 2007 42% of people under 65 were either uninsured or underinsured. I’m sure that number has increased.
Adding these two groups together, 75 million adults—42 percent of the under-65 population—had either no insurance or inadequate insurance in 2007, up from 35 percent in 2003.
Gee…wasn’t that basically George Bush’s second term, when the economy was *koffkoff* booming?
when the economy was *koffkoff* booming?
The Viagra jokes are several posts upstream.
Gee…wasn’t that basically George Bush’s second term, when the economy was *koffkoff* booming?
If by “booming,” you mean that the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the middle class was only hanging on to a decent lifestyle through loads of usurious debt, then yes, yes it was “booming.”
86’d: You just described about a quarter of the population of South Carolina in your post. I lol’d, then cried just a little. (I work Charleston, where we at least have the saving grace of having some of the best restaurants in the US.)
And of course Tierney, like all blithering glibertarians, especially loves to fulminate about the superiority of “free market competition” on this topic while studiously failing to acknowledge that the health insurance megacorporations enjoy a specific exemption from the US antitrust laws.
You know, “free market competition” wink, wink.
And of course Tierney, like all blithering glibertarians, especially loves to fulminate about the superiority of “free market competition” on this topic while studiously failing to acknowledge that the health insurance megacorporations enjoy a specific exemption from the US antitrust laws.
In fairness to Tierney, I didn’t know about the exemption until just recently.
In unfairness to Tierney, I don’t write a fucking column for the Paper of Record.
Actor, there is no fair anymore. I have mentioned this in other places, but basically fuck fair. I wear brass knuckles and when I encounter conservative lies I mock and deride mercilessly. There is no more civility in our political dialogue.
Tierney is a liar, a hack, a fraud, and should be shoveling shit.
It was booming like 1929, it was!
Uhhhh….what the fuck, y’all?
Uhhhh….what the fuck, y’all?
Muss be wun dem revenoooers…
Ummm…you think so, Doctor?
Uhhhh….what the fuck, y’all?
Liberal false flag op to smear conservatives.
Liberal false flag op to smear conservatives.
I think you’re on to something there. Must’ve been ACORN.
ACORN is big in all-white, poor inbred, backwoods communities. Also.
I’m counting down the days until I hear a doc refer to a patient as a “health care consumer.”
I don’t know about docs, but that shit is rampant among health-insurance industry pimps. One guy at the New Yorker counted the use of “consumer” or its derivatives in a NYT op-ed screed about socialized medicine. It came up something like 11 times, while “patients” appeared once.
What isn’t discussed too much, maybe its not a large factor, but there are large numbers of persons who end up on the Public Option that we already have in place — Medicaid.
Unfortunately one has to become dirt poor in order to receive it, docs complain that the reimburse rates aren’t near enough. These people usually have been denied proper care for years that their neglected disease leads to permanent disability, which then requires monthly Social Security Disability benefits.
I’ve lived in poor neighborhoods for years and by my unofficial count, I’d say about almost 40-50% of the very poor subsist on SSDI in order to be able to receive Medicaid for a chronic illness or injury that if prevented or treated early would have kept them in the workforce. There is seemingly a ghetto population of people who eek out an existence on the meager payments from SSDI, soup kitchens, food pantries, food stamps and other patchwork benefits. They stay houses mostly due to Section-8 programs that subsidize market rental rates and keep housing livable.
And I’m not even touching on the pathetic state of our mental health services which absolutely do not exist unless one is deemed eligible for state services which again wait for such leads to unemployment which leads to more people on the dole and fewer in the workforce.
Anyway, where I was going, was this population seems to be increasing in number and the poor economy is encouraging it enrolling on as well as people wrangle for ways to keep themselves off the streets.
A solid, fair and workable public “option” or better single payer would remove the need for many people to wait until they were near death and past bankruptcy to get healthcare. Its ridiculous.
Wow, I’m sorry in advance, that was pretty poorly written.
I don’t know about docs, but that shit is rampant among health-insurance industry pimps.
When your worldview is such that you jerk off to the thought of businesses you don’t even have a stake in earning more and more money, this is hardly surprising. “Consumers” are those hot little numbers in your spreadsheet.
Uhhhh….what the fuck, y’all?
Needs more details and confirmation as to motive, but, what the motherfucking fuck? If it is what it looks like it is then we need to pin that shit to Michelle Bachmann’s fucking liver.
“WASHINGTON – The FBI is investigating the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery. A law enforcement official says the word “fed” was scrawled on his chest.
The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found Sept. 12 in the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky.
Investigators have said little about the case. A law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, tells The Associated Press the word “fed” was written on the dead man’s chest.
FBI spokesman David Beyer said the bureau is helping state police determine if Sparkman’s death was the result of foul play, and if so, whether it was related to his census work.”
WTF is right. Obviously he was part of ObamaHitler’s ACORN gestapo conspiracy to gather names for the coming FEMA death camps. Wolverines!
Wingnut teabaggers should boycott the census. Less wingnuts counted means less federal dollars for their districts and less representation in congress when redistricting is done. Win win.
helping state police determine if Sparkman’s death was the result of foul play
Fair enough. Why jump to conclusions? The word “fed” scrawled on the corpse’s chest could easily be attributed to natural causes.
I know I shouldn’t jump the gun but I’m beyond fucking livid right now. First the cop-killer in PA, then Holocaust Museum shooter, then Dr. Tiller is murdered, now this, and all the fucking while the fucking rightwing gasbags drone on and on about how their goddamned hate speech targeting those specific groups and people has nothing at all to do with it.
GRRRRR
I was worrying about jumping the gun, too, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they found the body on September 12.
If it is what it looks like it is then we need to nail that shit to Michelle Bachmann’s fucking liver. Preferably a rusty nine inch nail.
Also, apparently, Glenn Beck boiled a frog on live TV?
like Trent Rezner
Trent Reznor boiled a frog on TV? Wow, he’s more hardcore than I thought.
Also, apparently, Glenn Beck boiled a frog on live TV?
That’s just FNC’s new cooking show. Very thoughtful; we unemployeds can’t live on ramen alone.
“Also, apparently, Glenn Beck boiled a frog on live TV?”
WHY (he asks with some trepidation)
Let me guess, Either it was a French cooking special or Obama is boiling the waters of freedoms slowly, and the frog represents the American people. Did the frog jump out of the boiling water in time to save democracy from the evil French chef B. Hussein Hitler?
He’s claiming it was a fake, plastic frog. You know that claim is credible ’cause John Bolton confirmed it.
Is that the same stage at which the patient goes batshit and thinks fossils were planted by Satan to separate the chaff from the wheat?
I believe that’s tertiary.
No, Mesozoic!
Are you implying that boners aren’t a Constitutional right?!
They can take my boner when they pry it out of my lubed, dead hands!
TruculentandUnreliable said,
“Trent Reznor boiled a frog on TV? Wow, he’s more hardcore than I thought.”
No, Trent Rezner is the rusty Nine Inch Nail that should be hammered into Bachmann’s liver. Glenn Beck is the one who should be boiled alive on national television. Try to keep up.
Glenn Beck is the one who should be boiled alive on national television.
But Limbaugh would feed so many more.
Like the entire homeless population of the U.S.
For a year.
Glenn Beck is the one who should be boiled alive on national television.
The real Glenn Beck and not the plastic imitation. Also
“But Limbaugh would feed so many more.
Like the entire homeless population of the U.S.
For a year.”
Why do you hate the homeless?
Why do you hate the homeless?
I’m willing to throw in enough moo shu pancakes and hoisin sauce to make it palatable.
Did that stupid motherfucker really believe that the frog would jump out of the pot? Really?
Fucker doesn’t understand the term metaphor.
On a side note, I may have to go to Johnny’s Reef on City Island (that’s Bronxtucket to non New Yorkers) for some frog legs.
On another side note, the original Nathan’s on Coney Island serves frog legs as well. In the course of a trip there with a bunch of folks, I bought a couple of orders of frog legs for the table, and a knucklehead friend of mine took a bite of one, and promptly said, “This has a bone in it!”
I replied, “What did you expect?”
His response, “Chicken fingers got no bones!”
Glenn Beck should know that that dumb fucking boiling frog metaphor is in An Inconvenient Truth and is false there as well, although Gore didn’t actually pretend to boil a frog.
Does frog really taste like chicken? They always say that but I’ve never worked up the guts to test that claim myself.
Shit fuck piss! Forgot about that! Strolled the boardwalk Labor Day Sunday and my friends insisted on buying our dogs at the little Nathan’s stand. I should have been more assertive. In my defense, I was all broken up after learning that Schatzkin’s knishes was long gone. What’s left to live for?
Isn’t “health care consumers” an interesting term?
I don’t know about that but I think I’ve found a way to make ZRM into a more family friendly shambler: he could become a “cranial content consumer!”
That just sounds helpful.
I went down to a coal-mine once and there were NO CANARIES.
Does frog really taste like chicken? They always say that but I’ve never worked up the guts to test that claim myself.
To me, frog tastes more like a freshwater fish such as yellow perch. The best thing about frog legs is that they look like cooked smurfs- not that I am into Gargamel cosplay… REALLY!
Shit fuck piss! Forgot about that! Strolled the boardwalk Labor Day Sunday and my friends insisted on buying our dogs at the little Nathan’s stand. I should have been more assertive. In my defense, I was all broken up after learning that Schatzkin’s knishes was long gone. What’s left to live for?
And Totonno’s had a fire. Oh, well, you could always wander over to Brighton Beach and get some pelmini at one of the Russian cafes.
I went down to a coal-mine once and there were NO CANARIES.
Beck gassed a canary on live television?!?!?!
I’m one of kate’s statistics: I receive SSDI & Sec. 8 subsidizes my housing. No Food Stamps for SSDI recipients, though. I’m enrolled in Medicare, not Medicaid, but Medicare doesn’t pay for dental or vision. (Does cost me about $90.00/mo., though, taken from the SSDI.)
If it weren’t for the 30 yrs. of wage slavery that made me mad in the first place, my SSDI could easily be less than enough to “live” on, & I’d be food banking.
Plenty of mental services available in Los Angeles County (There’s an entire Dep’t. of Mental Health. which is separate from the Dep’t. of plain old Health.) but the quality is not the highest. Of course, being driven mad by the very society one lives in is not that easy to “cure.” They want to deal w/ my symptoms rather than their cause.
This does enable me to type 16-18 hrs. a day for the revolution. You can all thank me when, due to my efforts, it finally gets here.
They can take my boner when they pry it out of my lubed, dead fossilized hands!
Of course, being driven mad by the very society one lives in is not that easy to “cure.”
In my experience, psychiatrists get very, very angry when one points that out. And “cognitive therapists” become downright violent.
OT: But important – just read somewhere else that a 51 year old part-time school teacher/census taker was found hung in the woods in Kentucky with the word “fed” scrawled on his chest.
Is that fucker Beck happy now?
Does frog really taste like chicken?
Et some in Paris once, pretty much like a chicken wing, I thought, but the garlic butter sauce was so effing good I’d have gladly eaten cardboard dragged through the sauce.
Definitely not slimy or icky though, which I think is the immediate aversion.
psychiatrists get very, very angry when one points that out
Yeah, you’d think if they really gave a shit about the nation’s mental health they’d do something about the nation, but no, it’s shape up & get back to work.
Jumping back to Slippy’s fine work (seriously, appreciative golf clap) I had this thought:
The insurance companies are have a failed revenue stream. They can’t afford to cover an a larger and larger percentage of the population. They can only afford to cover fewer and fewer. In essence, they run out of money.
What was all that carap about Social Security going broke? It seems that the private sector can’t do as well as gummint in managing large-scale insurance pools.
Huh. Would you look at that.
Beck gassed a canary on live television?!?!?!
AND flushed a baby allegation down the toilet.
OT: But important – just read somewhere else that a 51 year old part-time school teacher/census taker was found hung in the woods in Kentucky with the word “fed” scrawled on his chest.
Is that fucker Beck happy now?
He’s already issued a pre-emptive, lameass denial.
Second embedded video:
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/does-hateful-rhetoric-really-lead-vi
AND flushed a baby allegation down the toilet.
Only because New York City regulations forbid us to equip our sinks with garbage disposals.
AND flushed a baby allegation down the toilet.
Only because New York City regulations forbid us to equip our sinks with garbage disposals.
Verbiage disposals as well!
No, Beck gets his allegations from the toilet.
Actually started to watch him today, but lasted a minute at most. The Salon series looks about right, he is AM Zoo radio w/ pictures/props, & just cooled down enough to work on tee vee, though still hotter than most tubers.
(Where hot & cool are McLuhan-usage.)
Only because New York City regulations forbid us to equip our sinks with garbage disposals.
No longer true. It’s now legal to install garbage disposals in kitchen sinks. However, an obscure codicil in the law requires simultaneous installation in the master-bathroom’s toilet.
Alligator-prevention activists AGAIN.
though still hotter than most tubers.
Stolen tuba? What? Is this attached to Actor212’s comment on the previous thread about deceitful euphoniums?
My apologies if you are leading up to a “dropped like a hot potato” joke instead.
though still hotter than most tubers.
I think that I shall never see
A girl as lovely as a pea
And if a chick says “see you later”
I always hope she’ll bring a tater.
though still hotter than most tubers
Horseradish excepted.
a “dropped like a hot potato” joke instead
Too late now.
Alligator-prevention activists AGAIN.
Alligators are the Jews of NYC plumbing standards fascism.
zombie rotten mcdonald said,
September 23, 2009 at 18:30
So our healthcare system is better than the entire world, it’s just our people suck at staying healthy?
Once you realize that the H.C. system is designed to funnel money to insurance and medical companies, this makes sense and you may realize the system is working as intended.
============================================
How cynical. Next you’re going to tell me our Defense Department isn’t all about defending the country.
~
Alligators are the Jews of NYC plumbing standards fascism.
My family tree encompasses both Jews and reptiles.
In my city there are Family trees everywhere. You can pluck a gecko right off the street.
As Ernie Anastos would say, keeping fucking that gecko.
Can Anastos walk into any restaurant, anywhere and order a poultry dish without hilarity ensuing? I think not.
Can Anastos walk into any restaurant, anywhere and order a poultry dish without hilarity ensuing?
Could he before? Can anyone?
Does anyone really know what time it is?
Ooooh oooh
Does anyone really care?
Can anyone?
This is why I haven’t had jerk chicken in years.
Some people tried to get my niece to eat frog legs, claiming “they taste like Chicken!” She replied “I HATE chicken.”
HopeMy new customised Fleshlight is the thing with feathers.Also Turduckpenis = UR DOIN IT WRONG.
Dayo on 13th Street in the W. Village used to have great jerk chicken.
I think they were gone last time I was in NYC, though. I can’t imagine anyone in there keeping a straight face if Ernie Anastos had walked in even a decade ago.
~
My new customised Fleshlight
Racing stripes and spinners?
I often patronized a tiny takeout joint a block from my apartment that offered great Caribbean food. Jerk chicken, stewed goat, oxtail soup…
Then overnight the proprietress turned it into a pet shop with live puppies in the window. This has troubled me ever since.
On reflection, it would have been a lot worse if the chronology of the anecdote above were reversed.
Either way, ‘twould be irresp., etc.
This is not the chicken + drawer + sex I was looking for, but it is amusing.
At any rate, I’ve been spending the last couple of months researching the st00pidity of our st00pid health care system. I’ll have an AlterNet article about it later this week that you can bet I’ll shamelessly plug here.
You could do what I did, and shorter it with a Dethklok video.
Much faster.
~
Was that a 9/12 teabaggers video, M. Bouffant?
~
Not quite. Them folks ain’t never heerd of Washington.
Nice gravy-tar, SomeNYGuy.
Comment, too!
~
Jeez, that was the last hurrah for the ostrich! I switched to the tailfin of a ’57 DeSoto with my very next comment there.
But thanks.
Ostrich, you say?
~
Are you going to get all emo because I misidentified an emu?
As long as you don’t accuse me of being a chundermuffin, I’m gonna let it slide.
The fact is, dammit fuck all you liberals up the ass with the wrong end of a rake, you HATE USA and The Heartland and stop it.
ifthechunderdontgetya?
I know it’s a bit of a faux pas to talk about the actual post, but you notice the discrepancy in the experts our glibbie friend brings in?
Preston is a demographer, at best a statistician and at worst a social scientist. (I do social science, I’m not prejudiced, it’s just that social sciences have limited opportunites to make strong conclusions on quantitative matters, like the apparent quality of health care.) True to Libertarian form, Tierney introduces him every time after the lede as “Dr. Preston”, which imputes on him a false expertise. Unlike the fucks who insist that Dr. Biden is just a jumped-up housewife, I again plan to dig post-holes and have nothing against my fellows, but this is precisely the wrong situation to be a stickler about “Doctor” – like refuting the claims of a group concerned with the compensation and authority of NCOs with a police sergeant, or quoting Adolf Lu Hitler Barak as a respondant to new discoveries about the monorchide German dictator.
Nolte and McKee agree with his source, but Tierney regards their priorities as wrong because they don’t allow money to be thrown at corporations. Sure, the overwhelming consensus of the medical community is that preventative care is the most important and overlooked part of healthcare for a society and most individuals, but that’s only been for a century or so, right? Surely we mustn’t abandon the classical virtues of Hippocrates and Aristotle and Ayn Rand, who would all gladly point out that in the socialist monster-states Europe has spawned, surgeons will without any hesitation cut for stone or teach their vital craft to foreigners, and voila, serfdom.
Also, basic research suggests that Nolte and McKee are seasoned medical professionals with an expertise in comparative medical systems and the hazards of privatization. The first thing that comes up for either is Lessons from health during the transition from communism in the BMJ; something tells me they’re who Tierney originally tried to contact and, finding his thesis completely incorrect, was forced by his editor to find a source besides Joe the Plumber.
I switched to the tailfin of a ‘57 DeSoto with my very next comment there.
Funny you should mention that.
I actually have a ’57 Desoto.
Jesus. Did Gary and Troofie adopt or something?
The fact is, 5:36 is a imposstur; at the time of hiz post I wuz in Clay County performing a cituzin’s lynching on a traitorous ACORN homo USA hater.
I forgot the part about how Marxism, with its ignorance of [whatever Greeks you remember from high school, try not to use Aristotle Onassis], makes a Frankenstein of doctoring – indeed, in the case of the UK and other hardline communist countries, several Frankensteins.
The fact is, 5:36 was a impostur; at that time I wuz in Clay County performing a cituzin’s exycootion on a traitorous ACORN question-asking freedom-USA-hater fag who wuz gay.
I actually have a ‘57 Desoto.
Will you marry/adopt/chauffeur me?
Arrg! “the reason Americans get sick more is because our system puts less emphasis on preventative care”
there is not such word as “Preventative” Repeat after me: Preventive.
I might be able to handle the chauffeur part.
Six people can sit in it without touching elbows.
Six people can sit in it without touching elbows.
Oh, the subcompact model!
My impossibly uncool grandfather had an impossibly cool ’58 Firedome coupe. You know the extensive chrome trim wrapping the sides/backs of the front seats? That’s where I knocked out my first tooth.
I can still see the linear speedometer “magically” changing colors.
that was the last hurrah for the ostrich! I switched to the tailfin of a ‘57 DeSoto
Way TMI about SomeNYGuy’s sex-life.
Nostradamus:
Let’s face it. That Nostradamus dude knew what he was talking about!
Hey that’s great, Nostradamus, and I’mma letcha finish but Marshall McLuhan had like the best predictions in the history of the universe…
Mine is a ’57 Fireflite 4-door
341 Hemi engine
Pushbutton transmission
And yes, the linear speedometer, which I think uses the equivalent of a typewriter ribbon.
The AM radio even has a little civil defense symbol for CONLRAD in case Kruschev was going to drop the big one on us.
Only because New York City regulations forbid us to equip our sinks with garbage disposals.
That’s right. We have to wash our food scraps down raw.
The US doesn’t have a healthcare system.
The Taiwanese worked that one out when they were looking for a healthcare system to model theirs after. They came to America, and left empty-handed.