JayB

Once it gets scarce enough it'll make economic sense to install graywater and rain-catchment systems in homes, etc, etc, etc and people will start to use way less clean water, and recycle the water that they do use 2-3X before it hits the sewer. There'll also be plenty of incentive for agricultural and industrial users to conserve water when prices get high enough. Yawn.

This thread is just screaming out for a classic from yesteryear... M8pR1rZZHEs

Given the high odds of having all of your gear jacked while climbing in Squamish for the past several years, I'd say it's been an expensive thrill for a while.

My choices at this point: A) Go into deep debt by paying $250 per month for health insurance that would likely cover only 80% of major medical costs.. should something big happen. B) Go into deep debt (probably for life) by not paying $250 per month for health insurance that would likely cover only 80% of major medical costs.. should something big happen. C) Hope that.. nothing big happens.. til Im too old to give a fuck about things like debt. not much "control" there. Sounds to me like your best choice is A) plus either cutting back your expenses or getting a second job to cover the extra $250 per month in order to cover the cost of insurance without going into debt. I'm not sure where you live, but when I was between jobs in Washington I was paying ~$50 a month for a catastrophic plan with Blue-Cross/Blue Shield. Making a dramatic lifestyle change and/or working a second job in order to keep yourself covered may suck, and being in a situation where $250 a month is going to put you under is pretty rough, but if you are an able-bodied adult of working age I don't think that you're going to get a whole lot of sympathy from the general public.

It doesn't necessarily follow that the optimal solution is nationalizing all medical care. By the end of the year, Massachusetts will have everyone insured with a combination of free care for those too poor to pay for their own insurance, subsidies for those who qualify, and mandates for those who make enough money to purchase their own insurance - who can choose what kind of coverage they want.

I agree with your assessment, but am wondering how transferring control of the entire medical economy to the state would have affected your care. The odds are quite high that the state would not only determine whether or not you could even get the surgery, but also when, at what facility, and from whom you could get it. Other than the decision to seek treatment or not, it's not clear to me how one could take control of the situation in the manner that you advocate under a universal single payer-system.

I trust that you will continue to make it for me whenever the topics addressed in either of the articles, but especially the second of the two, come up for discussion. You seem happy in your world. I trust that you will continue to confine your reading to whatever has endowed you with your current perspective.

I think that a fair amount of the petro-dollars generated in the past few years, which have been far too numerous to invest productively in the Middle East, have been plowed into securities created by slicing and dicing all of the various exotic mortgages that have gone mainstream over the past few years, so if anything this resembles something more like a plot foisted on Islamists by drunks. Let us borrow that oil windfall for a moment so that we can entrust it to a sub-600 FICO borrower who wants to plow it into a home selling for 10X his yearly-gross.... How do you say "Reset Schedule" in Arabic? Might get a bit tougher to compete for the petro-dollars now that they've started issuing "Sharia Compliant" bonds in London, though.

Sorry. I was drunk when I posted that...

Hey MindDoc: I wish you well in your study, and hope that you'll share the results here when it's complete. When I was just getting into climbing, I had this idea that whenever I found myself in a stressful situation in my day-to-day life, be it a job interview or what have you, I'd be able to look back to one of the leads that had my at my physical, mental, and emotional limits - and whatever I was facing at that moment would seem less dire and consequential. Unfortunately, despite some persistent effort on my part, this state of climber-zen never materialized. Ultimately I found that other than the relationships and memories forged in that environment, the overwhelming majority of the joys and benefits of climbing are contained within the act of climbing itself. Moreover, rather than deliberately reflecting on climbing as a means of coping with the petty hassles and everyday stresses that I confront in the course of my day-to-day routine, I found that the primary psychological benefit that I've derived from climbing or any other risky activity comes from the moments of pure focus that they demand, which leave no room for reflecting on or worrying about anything outside of that particular instant. In many ways, climbing and activities like it seem like a way of escaping from the stresses of everyday life, and perhaps alleviating the affects of the same, rather than dealing with it directly at the time and place where it's encountered. I'd have to say that on the whole, there almost seems to be an inverse relationship between one's accomplishments as a climber and the condition of one's personal and professional life. This isn't a hard and fast rule, and there are plenty of people out there who do amazing things on the rock and ice without their devotion to the sport having any adverse effect on their life outside of climbing, but on the whole I'd say that beyond a certain point - the devotion to the self and the sheer amount of time and effort that climbing at a certain standard often demands can undermine quite a few important things that lie outside of the activity.

It's because I frequently read The Guardian and other publications like it that I mock the Left. It's quite a shame that LeMonde would never deign to publish an english edition....

Since we're on the topic of things that mattp will never read, I'd encourage you to read "The Looming Tower, " by Lawrence Wright as well. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/books/review/06filkins.html?ex=1182571200&en=0c490c225671cad4&ei=5070

I don't think that's an especially good summary of the first author's point, but I'd encourage you - since you are not mattp - to invest some time in reading the second article and see if you can identify the manner in which it relates to the first.

...will never read. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2104994,00.html http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9635

Thankfully they're keeping a tight lid on this story at the moment... "Bear Stearns Hedge Fund Woes Stir Worry Updated: 1 hour, 8 minutes ago NEW YORK - The uncertain fate of two Bear Stearns hedge funds which loaded up on mortgage-backed securities that are now souring has cast a sharp light on the fragility of the collateralized debt obligation market, a strategist warned. Collateralized debt obligations, known as CDOs, are structured finance products that bunch together a portfolio of bonds and other fixed-income asset into a new blended security. These securities are divided between senior and subordinated debt. In theory, any losses taken by the security are applied first to later classes of debt before earlier ones. However, there are mounting concerns that the deterioration of many subprime mortgage-backed securities is yet to be properly reflected in the CDOs that hold them, according to Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. This is because the value of CDOs is measured by a "marked to market" technique that pegs them to their value in the market, rather than their book value. Complicating the situation is the fact that CDOs containing mortgage-backed securities seldom trade, which can mean that their "marked to market" value does not reflect recent events. "As long as these CDO bonds stay off the market, as they universally have, asset managers have the luxury of 'marking them to market.'" Schiff wrote in a research note. "Not surprisingly, using this method the vast majority of these bonds are valued at par or greater," according to Schiff. He argued that if the bonds in the Bear Stearns Companies Inc. funds were auctioned on the open market, much weaker values would be plainly revealed. "This would force other hedge funds to similarly mark down the value of their holdings. Is it any wonder that Wall street is pulling out the stops to avoid such a catastrophe?," Schiff said. He further cautioned that the impact of hedge fund losses would be pale in contrast to the likely impact of an open market auction of subprime CDOs. "Their true weakness will finally reveal the abyss into which the housing market is about to plummet," he said." http://www.cnbc.com/id/19359041/for/cnbc/

Anyone notice that this story made it to the front-page of the WSJ today? Looks like someone may have escaped a mauling for now. "You guys better bail us out so that we never have to put this stuff up for sale in the open market and put a real price on this stuff, because if we do, everyone is gonna know that all of the securities made from sliced-and-diced sub-prime-neg-am-I/O-ARMs or their cousins that you've got in your portfolios are also absolute shit and are, much like the absolute shit sitting in our imploding hedge-fund, worth way less than face-value - which is what you've got written on your ledgers at the moment, which is the value you use to calculate your fees - and then things are going to get real ugly real fast." It'll be interesting to see how much the other investment banks with a stake in this business are willing to fork over to keep this under wraps, as that should be a rough indication of how widespread and severe these problems really are. "The high-stakes game of brinksmanship began early yesterday on Wall Street, and continued throughout the day. Bankers traded telephone calls, frenetically negotiating the fate of two hedge funds. All wanted to avoid a fire sale in the troubled mortgage-securities market, but at the same time, not get stuck with an exploding liability that could result in steep losses. The day ended with deals that appeared to have forestalled a meltdown. But questions remained about how successful they were and whether they had merely delayed the inevitable. As the morning unfolded, lenders to two hedge funds at a unit of Bear Stearns, the investment bank, tried to ascertain what they could expect if they auctioned off mortgage securities with a face value of up to $2 billion. The solicitations were hastily withdrawn when investors reacted with little enthusiasm. But by the end of the day, some of the less-risky securities did change hands. At the same time, several lenders, including JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, reached deals with Bear Stearns that forestalled a need to sell securities in the open market. It appeared that some lenders pulled back over concerns about the effect that a large liquidation would have on bond prices and investor confidence. While the securities involved represent a fraction of the market, a liquidation could have forced a bigger sell-off while setting a lower price." http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/business/21bonds.html?hp "Junior subbrime-neg-am-I/O-option-ARM CDO tranches....mmmmmmm"

I'm not taking sides against you here, just wondering how this rule would apply to someone with a severe brain injury, massive mental retardation, etc...

-I'm not sure if you are familiar with the process that it takes for say, a nurse, to get fired from any unionized hospital - let alone a government run facility like the VA. If you think that the doctor's would be easier to fire under a system like the one you are proposing, you can believe that if you wish, but I think it's highly unlikely to say the least. The effect on who chooses to go into medicine, the extent to which they have the freedom and motivation to develop new treatment, technologies, etc is something that's rarely taken into consideration, but warrants at least a moment's consideration. -Funding basic research is part of bringing new technologies to the market, but it's only one part of a much more complex picture. The collective circumstances, choices and priorities of hundreds of millions of people currently drive resource allocation and determine which of the potential new devices, drugs, and technologies ultimately make the move from concept to reality. The outcomes that this produces may not meet with your approval, but it's difficult to argue that this allocation is inconsistent with the needs of the people who are able to pay for their own care as they and their doctors understand them. When it comes to those that can't pay for their own care, you have to make the case that they'd be better served by central planning than by subsidized health insurance - which is a difficult case to make, especially when you factor in the fact that they will no longer be in a position to benefit from the innovations developed for those who can. I think that reforming the tax-incentives and regulations that are responsible for some of the problems associated with access to healthcare in this country is more likely to be beneficial than nationalization, but you are free to disagree. -Missallocation of resources - this has more to do with those decisions being driven by those who need care as opposed to those the government decides to fund. Even if you accept that the government will be staffed by competent people who act in good faith, the track record of those who have attempted to substitute central planning for the information conveyed by prices hasn't been terribly good. Theres also the matter of who decides which new drugs, therapies, or technologies that do become available under this regime get funded, who gets them, and for how long. What about people who are willing to spend their own money over and above what the state provides? The ethical problems that this will present in terms of desperately ill people who may or may not respond to them are, if anything, going to get quite a bit more complex under a single-payer scheme. Providing for preventive care is cheap and easy by comparison. When it comes to our status relative to the rest of the world, that's a good question. I'd chalk most of it up to the way we live, and the choices we make concerning our health. When you are comparing longevity from one society to the next, it's difficult to tell what's attributable to lifestyle and what's attributable to a particular approach to providing health-care. Ultimately - the argument will be between reforming health-insurance and providing subsidies to expand coverage to those who can't afford it and some kind of nationalization. When you compare these two models, the net benefits derived from nationalization, price controls, and rationing will likely have costs and negative consequences that exceed the benefits.

Just to take the case of the first statistic alone, the standards by which infant mortality is assessed vary massively from one country to the next, so what counts as an infant death in the US may not even be logged as a live birth in another country. ": Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol. 2002 Jan;16(1):16-22.Click here to read Links Registration artifacts in international comparisons of infant mortality. Kramer MS, Platt RW, Yang H, Haglund B, Cnattingius S, Bergsjo P. Department of Pediatrics, McGill University Faculty of Medicine, Montreal, Canada. michael.kramer@mcgill.ca Large differences in infant mortality are reported among and within industrialised countries. We hypothesised that these differences are at least partly the result of intercountry differences in registration of infants near the borderline of viability (<750 g birthweight) and/or their classification as stillbirths vs. live births. We used the database of the International Collaborative Effort (ICE) on Perinatal and Infant Mortality to compare infant mortality rates and registration practices in Norway (n = 112484), Sweden (n = 215 908), Israeli Jews (n = 148123), Israeli non-Jews (n = 52 606), US Whites (n = 6 074 222) and US Blacks (n = 1328332). To avoid confounding by strong secular trends in these outcomes, we restricted our analysis to 1987-88, the most recent years for which data are available in the ICE database for all six groups. Compared with Norway (with an infant mortality rate of 8.5 per 1000), the crude relative risks [95% confidence intervals] were 0.75 [0.69,0.81] in Sweden, 0.97 [0.90,1.06] in Israeli Jews, 1.98 [1.81,2.17] in Israeli non-Jews, 0.95 [0.89,1.01] in US Whites and 2.05 [1.95,2.19] in US Blacks. For borderline-viable infants, fetal deaths varied twofold as a proportion of perinatal deaths, with Norway reporting the highest (83.9% for births <500 g and 61.8% for births 500-749 g) and US Blacks the lowest (40.3% and 37.6% respectively) proportions. Reported proportions of live births <500 g varied 50-fold from 0.6 and 0.7 per 10000 in Sweden and Israeli Jews and non-Jews to 9.1 and 33.8 per 10000 in US Whites and Blacks respectively. Reported proportions 500-749 g varied sevenfold from 7.5 per 10000 in Sweden to 16.2 and 55.4 in US Whites and Blacks respectively. After eliminating births <750 g, the relative risks (again with Norway as the reference) of infant mortality changed drastically for US Whites and Blacks: 0.82 [0.76,0.87] and 1.42 [1.33,1.53] respectively. The huge disparities in the ratio of fetal to infant deaths <750 g and in the proportion of live births <750 g among these developed countries probably result from differences in birth and death registration practices. International comparisons and rankings of infant mortality should be interpreted with caution." With regards to the rest of the statistics, assuming that they are accurate - the statistic with respect to immunization "ranking" strikes me as one that screams for further examination- argument must be that all of the statistics would improve under whatever health-care nationzalization scheme you are envisioning. If you look at the leading causes of death in the US, and what role lifestyle choices plays in their genesis, one crucial component of such a claim is that nationalizing health care would lead the citizens of this country to substantially modify their behaviors in a way that the operation of the current health-care market does not. None of this deals with the previous argument about the effect about allocating the nation's health-care resources via centralized rationing/planning in comparison to efforts to limit expenditures on the part of private insurers. Then there's the quality aspect - since all lawsuits in a nationalized system are ultimately paid out of tax revenues, there's a very, very high probability that the legislature will strive to and succeed in placing caps on liability judgments against doctors and hospitals. You seem to have argued that the threat of financial losses is an important means by which to force those in the medical industry to provide a certain standard of care. Are you arguing that nationalizing healthcare will suddenly promote a degree of caution and vigilance in doctors and hospitals that the threat of large financial losses hasn't? I think if this debate about nationalizing health-care in this country ever gets too serious, the attorneys that make their living from the current system are smart enough to figure out what this will mean for their practices, and you'll see a fairly dramatic about face from the trial lawyers, who will become one of the most vocal and effective opponents of any such plan.

Cost-controls, like statutory caps on liability, will be a fixture of any comprehensive single-payer system. In the case of a state-run system, the motive will be different, but the rationing will be at least, if not more severe than anything people have to endure at the hands of private insurers. There's also the matter of what happens to the allocation of health care resources when the government attempts to replace the price system with planning. Even if you accept that folks in whatever health-care bureaucracy that would emerge after the advent of a single payer system have everyone's best interests at heart, the fact remains that they will be attempting to do the impossible - and the misallocation of resources that results from price controls and central planning will be at least as severe as anything that we have to contend with today, and here I'm speaking only of the health-care resources that are on the table today. The effect on innovation will be even more dramatic when central planning makes it impossible to measure, let alone respond to effective demand.

"Merrill set to sell $850m of Bear Stearns fund assets By Ben White and Saskia Scholtes in New York Published: June 20 2007 03:00 | Last updated: June 20 2007 03:00 A highly leveraged Bear Stearns hedge fund that made bad bets on the subprime mortgage market was on the brink of failure yesterday after Merrill Lynch rejected a proposed rescue plan and prepared to auction off $850m of the fund's assets that had been pledged as collateral for a Merrill loan. In addition to large losses for investors and lenders to the Bear Stearns fund, some analysts fear the fund's failure could accelerate losses in the subprime mortgage- backed securities market and perhaps also trigger a crisis of confidence in the wider market for complex structured finance securities. That in turn could lead to heavy selling and large losses for investors, including Wall Street banks that hold some debt instruments before they are packaged and sold to investors." http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3e687946-1eca-11dc-bc22-000b5df10621.html

I'm more partial to screeds, perorations, and phillipics than soliloquys, but it's nice to see that Carl has an acolyte....

My conclusion from your reply was that you were intentionally being vague, evasive, and mendacious so as to avoid having to defend a specific central argument. Emulation in word and deed is a much higher form of tribute than mere praise.

I think we've got ourselves an acolyte. Now if he can summarize the central argument, proposition, or thesis that the Prophet pur forward in "Farhenheit 9/11"...