Text 12879, 86 rader
Skriven 2008-03-14 23:15:38 av Jeff Bowman (1:229/500)
  Kommentar till text 12873 av Ross Cassell (1:123/456)
Ärende: Re: Bush Vetoes Waterboarding Bill
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RC> The biggest problem with American healthcare can be summed up by two
RC> issues that cascade into other issues..
*snip*
RC> Our healthcare costs are so high because those that can pay (either
RC> outright or via insurance) are gouged in order to compensate for those
RC> whom cant or dont pay. Ergo the insured are compensating for the
RC> uninsured.
 
RC> Because we are a sue happy society, medical malpractice insurance costs
RC> Doctors much money, they have to recoup that cost somewhere, which
RC> exacerbates the cost issue.
 
I agree wholeheartedly.  But the question is, what can be done?  It's the 'ol
catch 22.  How can you get costs down for people to afford it, when you have to
charge that much because some people can't afford it in the first place
(therefore not paying)?
 
As for lawsuits, that's another sticky issue.  I am very much against any sort
of legislation that would prevent a doctor from being sued, since there are
many times when malpractice occurs and they should be punished.  But what sort
of middle ground is there to prevent the arguably frivolous lawsuits by
disgruntled or disatisfied folks?  Even if the case is bogus, the doctor still
gets dragged to court, wasting time and money.
 
Whether it would truly fix the problem or make it worse, I dunno, but it's
stuff like this that reinforces my opinion of us trying universal healthcare. 
Everyone pays automatically, doctors get paid as a result, inevitably helping
to lower costs, and most everyone benefits one way or another (assuming it's
setup properly).  It's not quite that simple of course, but until someone comes
up with some other way to fix the two big problems you mentioned, I think we're
running out of options.  And it's only getting worse in the meantime.
 
 
RC> If our ER's our undermanned its because we dont have that many new people
RC> enterring into that noble profession, probably because they are worried
RC> about being sued into bankruptcy or how they are going to get paid?
 
Similarly, salary seems to be the biggest reason that people give for not
getting into teaching (something I've even considered).  So schools end up
desperate for teachers, and many times you're left with lots of people who
teach just because they think it's an easy job. Just in the few years between
when I left high school to the time my younger brother went there, they had
already hired in a handful or two of new people, several of which weren't worth
having around kids in the first place. Textbook teachers that cuss and/or
barely speak proper English aren't doing much to improve our educational
system.  Instead of bandaids like No Child Left Behind, we need some big
funding for schools, and incentives for people to be teachers again.
 
 
RC> Several of these programs are free, others are free Firefox Extensions
RC> (like Sage) and of course a feature built into Mozilla Thunderbird,
RC> Microsoft Outlook 2003 or better.
 
When I first got into RSS feeds myself, I used a generic program called RSS
Reader.  While it wasn't bad, it just wasn't cutting it either, so I wrote
something in Perl to run on a server, fetch feeds 24/7, and parse them to show
in a web page. I used that for a little while, until finally I just let Opera
handle them. I keep the browser open most of the time my PC is on (hid to the
tray, since it handles my email too), so that worked fine for keeping up with
the feeds for the most part, since it treated them like email.
 
Eventually though I found myself subscribed to so many that I didn't want Opera
so cluttered up and fetching so much stuff throughout the hour, so I switched
most of them over to Google Reader just recently. And I think it's great. Makes
it really easy to get through a bunch of articles quickly. Only downside is
that it has an issue or two in Opera regarding embedded content (video players,
etc).  It's still usable, but I just pop it open Firefox for my news every
morning.
 
Oh, and important to me, Google Reader gets feeds 24/7, without me needing a
machine on.  They're just sitting there waiting when I load it. That works well
for sites which update often and the older news rolls off the feed before you
get around to checking for news again.  Though a possible downside is that you
can end up with so much news for places sometimes that I end up skipping
through some of it.  There's only so much stuff one can go through in a day
before it feels like a chore.
 
 
RC> I use a program called Feedemon, there is newsgator, sharpreader,
RC> feedreader et al.
 
FeedDemon looks promising actually, I might check it out just to see how well
it works.  

--- D'Bridge 2.99
 * Origin: FyBBS (1:229/500)