Commy Michael Moore lied in 911 and being SuedFollow

Not *just* articles, video feeds. Many more resources, tailored for each student's speed. Whats the difference if you sit at a desk in a building listening to some teacher at a blackboard versus sitting comfortably a home watching the exact same thing, without the bullying, without the distractions, without the angst? Tens of billions in yearly savings is the difference. Teachers in the 99.8th percentiles and below, this buggy whip is for you.



Sure it would. But don't prescribe a super HMO, a "single-payer", "universal healthcare" non-solution worsening of the problem. They make money by making sure less people use the "system"; by making sure people pay for stuff they won't use. In a free market, the only way doctors, hospitals, and drug companies make money is by providing a quality product at the best price.



Edited, Fri Jun 2 10:58:12 2006 by MonxDoT

This would never work. It's been demonstrated time and again that students who get personal attention from their instructors with plenty of time to ask and answer questions are the ones who excel. A video feed to thousands or millions of kids at once can't provide that.

It has also been proven many times that home is one of the worst places a kid can study. There are too many distractions, or temptations of distraction. If you have a parent there homeschooling the kid, then yes, maybe they can keep the kid on track. But that is not possible for most families. Every college student I've ever spoken to--and this includes myself--can avow that their most profitable and productive studying is done in the library or on campus, not at home.





What color is the sky in your world?

Class participation, social interaction, hands-on assignments (including labs), instructor feedback, one-on-one interaction, etc?

Straight lecture is one of the absolute worst ways to teach students at an elementary level and is still a shoddy way for many high school level classes.

Wonderful, with this model every child will get to be socially inept and will bruise in the rain!


Welcome to life in a bubble.

Actually, you're quite wrong in your assessment of the "cause" of the problem. Not that this is in any way surprising, but for the sake of factualism, I thought I ought to interject some reality.

There was recently an article in the Oregonian about a woman who gave birth at Oregon Health Sciences University Hospital (my soon-to-be alma mater.) She noticed on her bill that an ibuprofen tablet cost $7.61. This is a tablet that normally costs about $0.10 when bought generically. The total cost for her delivery was roughly double what the hospital actually estimated the value of the procedure to be. The article basically dealt with WHY health care costs are as inflated as they are, and the problem actually has little to nothing to do with the cost of the medical supplies themselves.

Let's say the tablet of ibuprofen costs $0.10 for just the tablet. Now add on the salary of the loading dock workers who take receipt of the shipment of ibuprofen tablets. Add on the fee of the doctor who prescribed it and his malpractice insurance premiums in case you should develop a bleeding ulcer from it. Add on the salary of the nurse who administered it. Add on a portion of the cost of the new state-of-the-art fetal monitor that was used during the delivery. Add on the salary of the droogie whose job it is to keep inventory of all the ibuprofen tablets and the other droogie who ordered more to replace it. Add on the salaries of the droogies whose job it is to file the paperwork billing the insurance company for it, and the hospital administrators, laundry services for the hospital gown and sheets, water, utilities, building maintenance, etc, etc, is ALL built into the "cost" of that pill. Basically, the "cost" to the hospital of administering that $0.10 ibuprofen pill is something like $3.75. The $7.50 or so is double that. But the $7.50 or so is NOT what the hospital gets reimbursed for it.

Basically (research grants and the like aside) hospitals make their money from three sources: out of the consumer's pocket, from the insurance companies, and Medicare/Medicaid. The only one of these sources that actually pays what's on the bill is the consumer. Both the insurance companies and Medicare/Medicaid have their own estimations of what the procedure SHOULD cost and will only pay that amount. Insurance companies will generally pay about 60% of what the actual billed amount is. Medicare/Medicaid will pay much less than 50%. Uninsured patients, of course, won't pay at all. Insured patients will sometimes pay their co-pays and sometimes not.

So when the bill is inflated to twice the actual cost of the services rendered, what a lot of that extra charge is is compensatory for what the uninsured and those covered by Medicare/Medicaid leave unpaid. Some of this is covered by the fact that the insurance companies will pay slightly over and above the 50% that is the actual "cost" of the service in question. Research grants, etc, often take up some more of the slack. But hospitals also have to keep improving and expanding their facilities, buying newer, modern equipment both to replace outdated equipment and to instill confidence in the patients that the hospital is a state-of-the-art facility. Sometimes they do this with the help of government grants, sometimes with private funding.

THIS is why medical care costs so much. To say it's because medical suppliers charge too much is to oversimplify and overlook the extremely complex, convoluted, and outdated way in which a hospital assesses the cost of care and bills in such a way as to try to eek a few extra cents out of insurance companies and Medicare/Medicaid. It was a dance they began doing with insurance companies DECADES ago when insurance companies and Medicare/Medicaid decided they weren't going to pay the billed value for services rendered, and it's only gotten worse as more and more uninsured people find themselves defaulting on their hospital bills because the price is too outrageous.

Universal healthcare would HELP, but that's not the only thing that needs to happen. The entire system needs to be overhauled, the entire way a hospital determines what its cost of care is in order to play paycheck roulette with insurance providers. Unfortunately, getting a hospital, which is at its heart a bureaucratic institution, to change its way of doing business is pretty much impossible.

I'm studying to become a Certified Nurse Midwife and I've got another term left to get my BSN, then two years of study to get my MS as a CNM.

Though I've been giving some thought to becoming a licensed direct-entry midwife rather than a CNM lately. Ends up, nurse midwives aren't doing birthing-center deliveries much because the liability is too high, and that's the kind of work I want to do. I don't like the hospital model for childbirth and believe that, except in cases where there are complications, excessive and unnecessary medical intervention can hinder and complicate what would otherwise be a completely traumaless birth. Your body knows how to give birth and the best thing (unless there's indication of trouble) is to just get out of the way and let it do what it needs to do.

Up side of being a CNM: rotating shifts and more pay. Up side of being a LDM: job satisfaction. Down side to being an LDM: lower pay and being on-call 24-7. Also, I won't get the satisfaction of having a Masters degree, but will instead have two bachelors.





Edited, Fri Jun 2 12:48:41 2006 by Ambrya

I'd lie and say I support g-dub for far less than $85 million.

They can reap it every time they apply their research to physical tangible things they own. It's *not* free market to use violence to prevent someone from copying you or independently coming to the same discovery. Patent is pure theft in the direct tangible form of robbing the freedom of others to shape their personal tangible property in any many they would so choose for any reason whatsoever.

You have the right to remain silent, not the right to impose silence upon others.



Clue # 1: Medicare/Medicaid. The U.S. system is nowhere near free market. Do you need insurance from your employer to pay for auto maintenance?



You're witness to social participation on this forum right now. Not to mention I school you for free each day. :P All of that feedback is limitlessly better on line. Same questions, better answers, real time updated and saved in the archives. And you're free to volunteer to assist as is everyone else. **** the teachers unions and their overpaid monopoly b.s. certifications.



Do you need supervision to get a kid to level his mmorpg character from 1 to 75? No. They will advance on their own, much more quickly and efficiently, with real time tests, quizzes, etc. If they won't avail themselves to that freely available material then they have even less reason to use government to rob others to pay for "education". Sure, some might lag, but with it on-line they can come back to where they left off whenever they want. Competiton will dramatically increase the efficiency and college degrees will routinely be gotten in the mid teens. There's so much wasted time in the current educational model, it's unbelievable.

Parents by all sorts of learning toys and learning programs for their toddlers. That model can be extended all the way to genius level.



Even if as a transitionary step you just fired 99.9% of the teachers and kept the physical buildings 99.9% of the students would suddenly be listening to exactly the same highest quality instructors, and not the bad actors they currently listen to.



A few thousands versus a few billions? I think we can cover it. Take some of that teacher pension func money they don't deserve back.



You know nothing. Universal health care changes nothing of supply and demand, but it sure as hell screws over natural competitive incentives to provide the best at lowest cost to get patient business. Consumer wants health care. Business wants patient business. It IS extremely simple. I already said by definition government intervention in every instance makes health care poorer quality and more expensive. It's simple free trade. Why does trade occur? Because both parties are better off having traded. Trade creates wealth. Theft destroys wealth, creates poverty, in every single instance, *by definition*. There's a simple irrefutable wealth FORMULA which is produced by the division of labor and free exchange. It creates wealth.

Think a little and qustions the absurdities which you observe. Why in the hell would middleman employers and HMOs evolve in between consumers and providers and distort prices and result in far inferior quality and out of whack prices? The same thing would happen if you repeated that model in say the auto insurance industry.

We don't have $1 cures for cancer and AIDS because fools like have ****** that up from happening.

Universal health care does nothing, moron. It's code for violently enforced rationing, price fixing, and whatever the innumerable garbage consequences. You can't conscript and enslave doctors, force people to work for less than they're willing, etc. Get off the crack. You can't just order high quality at low prices. The Soviet Union tried that. It doesn't work for precise specific scientific economic reasons. Learn them before you start spouting and advocating government violence which can never magically duplicate nor get anywhere close to what the free market naturally does -- provide the highest quality for the lowest price to the most people.

Edited, Fri Jun 2 18:24:39 2006 by MonxDoT

What about the bullying and angst though?

Oh bugger. And there was me thinking that since 1948, UK Healthcare (the NHS) is completely free to UK subjects, costs less per head of population than Medicare/Medicaid, has some of the best paid Drs and Nurses in the world, and is the envy of every Government.

Silly me.

You wanted the central building waste of violently stolen money to pay for it, not me.

Indeed, the quality you receive is unbelievably far less than it otherwise would be in a free market system.

Actually it's not. You heard someone else say that once, though, and they seemed really sure so you figured it must be true and you'd randomly repeat it and look like drooling simpleton, when really all you are is a mushbrained lemming who can't think for himself.

Terrible. People might get the wrong impression.

Oh, sure... if you want to be called a "subject"!

God save the Queen! Pip, pip cheerio and all that!