ikol

Lawsuits against drug companies would have large awards because one drug affects several thousand people. Even with caps on noneconomic damage, that adds up to a lot. You don't have to apologize for not seeing the logic in my posts, but hoping that I get sued is a bit immature. The routine stuff is very important. I just think it would be better for patients to pay for it out of pocket instead of having insurance cover it. If health insurance were more like car insurance (covers expensive stuff like wrecks but not routine oil changes and tire rotations), then premiums would be lower. Of c

Even with tort reform, individual doctors could still get sued, there just wouldn't be ridiculous awards for noneconomic damages.

I'm between my first and second year of med school. I'm not at all happy with the status quo, but I don't see socialism as the answer. First of all, I think we need to have tort reform with not only caps on noneconomic damages but also caps on the amount lawyers can get paid for malpractice cases. Second, individuals should get the same tax breaks as businesses for providing health insurance. One problem I see with our current system is that people expect their insurance to cover everything, including their routine stuff. I think people could save a lot of money if they got high-deductible hea

All of those factors (except maybe religion, but who knows) plus whether the baby has any defects and any sort of abuse or neglect by the parents. As far as ranking all those for other countries, no thanks. I'm not that bent on convincing you.

Guilt? No (I haven't killed any babies). Sadness? Yes. Both the infant mortality rate and the number of abortions need to be reduced. Wow. You've got me figured out. I guess I could just blindly accept the stats without questioning their relevance. I forgot that it's a FACT that our healthcare system is the 37th best. Forgive me, since I'm the type of "repub" who rejects rational thought. Of course, I never claimed that the infant mortality stats were wrong, just that they weren't all that great of a measure of healthcare since they can be affected by other factors. It might be

If you had read my earlier retarded-in-a-befuddling-way posts, you would know that I wasn't making any specific comparison. My point was that even supposedly objective measures of healthcare such infant mortaility and lifespan are largely determined by factors other than healthcare. And just because nations have similar abortion rights doesn't mean that they have the same rates of abortions per pregnancies.

Befuddling or not (not), I fail to see how my statement was slowed down. Allow me to retard my point, so you might understand it: Abortions reduce infant mortality because fetuses with potentially life-threatening defects are killed off before they are born. Moreover, it's not inconceivable that unwanted babies have a higher mortality rate than wanted ones due to neglect and abuse. If a country has a higher proportion of wanted, defect-free babies (because the unwanted ones and those with defects were aborted), then it's going to have a lower infant mortality rate than a country with less abor

That just goes to show how difficult and subjective it is to rank healthcare systems. Even objective statistics such as infant mortality and life expectancy are not clearcut because factors other than healthcare such as abortions and lifestyle can also affect them.

The fact that Moore is overweight has no bearing on the message of his film. According him, universal healthcare is free.

Nevertheless, we have higher patient satisfaction than most other nations. It's not an all-encompassing measure of a nation's healthcare, but it's still significant. No, it just means that it's not a fact that nations like France, Germany, and Canada have better healthcare than us. It may be the WHO's opinion, but it's not a fact. I didn't intend to be misleading (I'm no Michael Moore). I just meant to point out that our healthcare is far from completely privatized. The fact that Singapore has so much government-involvement in healthcare and still spends a larger proportion private

For one thing, our system is far from completely privatized. Singapore, which is way up on the list, actually has a larger percentage of healthcare paid for privately than the U.S. There are factors relating to healthcare that can be objectively measured, though how much healthcare affects those factors (such life expectancy, infant mortality, etc.) is more difficult to determine. Other factors such as patient satisfaction (which the U.S. ranks highly on) are completely subjective. Which factors you emphasize and how strongly you weight them in ranking nations is arbitrary. So you canno

I just get really tired of people citing the shortcomings of the United States' health care systems when arguing against privatized medicine. At least Moore is fair minded and shows both the advantages and disadvantages of socialized medicine in his movie. It is a fact that Dave Matthews Band is a better band than Wilco. The World Organization of Shitty Music ranks DMB way higher than Wilco. Their criteria for ranking bands are not at all arbitrary or subjective, so you know it has to be true.

It's kind of interesting that a "documentary" filmmaker who specializes in misleading through splicing together taped footage won't allow a taped interview.

I would say that worshiping something you're going to eat is sick, but as a Catholic...

But is any sort of worship rational?

I have: Seinfeld 1-7 South Park 2-9 House 1-2

Nah. They're raising awareness amongst us common people. If a little oil has to be burned to spread the message that burning oil is wrong, so be it. If nothing else, they're showing us a glimpse at how grim our future may be: If we don't change the climate for the better (and maybe weaken gravity's hold on us while we're at it), there will only be more concerts for the Earth (they would hold a concert for Uranus, but they're already too far up their own assholes). Pretty soon, we won't be able to turn on a television without seeing John Mayer making his "I got a mouthful of my own semen, and I

Why do we care what future generations think about us? All those pricks ever do is judge us. They don't realize how hard we have it. I'll go on the record as saying that the people of the future are all a bunch of assholes. If the future reveres Al Gore, then I don't want them to like me.

I was there 3 years ago. Make sure and eat as much gelato as possible.

When he did his little Cuba stunt, did he mention that the healthcare that the Americans got in Cuba wasn't something that most Cuban citizens get? And did he go through any of the problems with government-run healthcare?

Olbermann is like a liberal O'Reilly, except more obnoxious.

I'm going to Gulf Shores with my family next week and to Chicago with my brother in July for Pitchfork Music Festival and the Decemberists.

My ringtone is a phone ringing.

About as well as a bloated foreign aid budget does for world poverty.

There was some sort of attack back in 2001. I don't see what arguing over whether particular military actions were right has to do with whether the government should try to end world poverty.