The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central This is the country I want

When schools can not have crosses on the walls, when schools can not have the bible on a teachers desk, and when schools can not have a prayer before school starts or before a game; there will be a separation. School boards will avoid lawsuits, it is either spend money on a case that they will lose, or spend money on the football program. In Texas football is king, and not even god can stop it.

As a side note, my childeren school does not have a football program. Every year it is brought up and every year it is voted down. That is why they have state of the art computer labs, biology labs, and were hireing teachers when everyone else was firing them.

That's only because it doesn't exist anywhere in our founding documents. Not the way you all choose to interpret it anyway. All it says is that the federal government "may make no law respecting the free exercise of religion." I doesn't say what religion can or cannot do, only that government doesn't get a say in it.

Shameful how quickly you capitulated. I was actually curious what new take you going to try, apparently just a new doze of denial with a side order of selective amnesia. What makes you think that this time around your exactly same flawed argument would work?




/facepalm

Do you really think if you re-attempt this line or argument, it would go any better for you this time?

so lets translate sinjispeak into reality here

1) Doesnt make a difference? Your misusing the concept of normalization here. Societies and organizations of such differing scale and scope have a much different structural dynamic - you are tying to compare them as apples to apples , and thats just wrong.

2) The benefit is not "the system" , the benefit is being a micro entity functioning within a much larger economic context. The countries that do relatively well with their socialized medicine are able to support the systemic inefficiencies for the time being because of myriad other factors. Most socialized countries do not do very well with it - just the ones that either have a lot of interchange with the USA, or super small states that can , in a macro sense, purchase what amounts to bulk health care as a large corp would.

3) Its not unsupported at all, as the largest consumer, originator, developer of health care in the world - in absolute terms - the USA not only incentivises the bulk of health care advancement it develops the bulk, and consumes a great amount. If you seriously think normalization applies here... there probably is not any hope for you. The world isnt so simple as to be understandable by such simplistic methods, especially when misapplied.

4) Its one example of how their overall economy is crutched by outside influence. Another example is their export economies and sounder position within the EU itself. Wealth and talent from poor EU countries flows into these countries which affects everything from price stability to relative valuation/inflation and more... while not having to maintain a large military per capita frees up societal and economic resources that can then be squandered inefficiently in other sectors.

5) I previously posted up the relative numbers. Smoking differential alone explained the life expectancy gap.. sure there are Euro smokers, but the ratio of smokers in the US was much higher. That is without even getting into dietary or other differences. If you want to be taken seriously, at least cognitively process information that comes your way and don't ignore it.

6) Top 1% eh? Thats not even worth addressing, you cant even believe that. Most countries with socialized medicine are abysmal failures, as I have also previously pointed out. Countries that are less abysmal have certain specific circumstances that help them be less abysmal, relatively speaking. But you only seem to be able to process 1:1 correlating relationships, anything more complex goes right over your head.

Plus your selective memory gets old.

Lets translate:

Sorry anything more complex or detailed than a flat 1:1 correlation goes over your head. It is also unfortunate that you cant seem to accurately turn text into thoughts. Theres really nothing I can do to fix those issues, other people will have to read and judge on their own.

What you suggest - that you can't normalize consumption of X to population - is absolutely absurd. If we follow this broken logic we can easily claim that no country can be compared to any other country in any way.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a good way to look at productivity of any country, it measures overall productivity of any given country. When you measure portion of say manufacturing or healthcare against GDP it tells you how much of that country's "effort" goes toward that activity. So when I say 15% of GDP is spent on healthcare, that translates to 15c of every dollar going to healthcare.

When you want to compare countries with different populations you simply normalize to population, so you have GDP/population of country A compared to GDP/population of country B. This is Economy 101.

You can also look at raw numbers, total money expended/population vs. total money expended/population. This isn't as accurate as above, but does and can give you an idea.

Last but not least, you can just look at costs vs. cost, this is by far crudest method because it does not reflect the fact that countries with higher population tend to be more productive than countries with lower population.

Your attempted critique of all these methods reveal your complete lack of understanding of these concepts. When you start talking about specific differences between countries you show lack of understanding of normalization, and when you start rejecting it as a concept you show level of ignorance comparable to science deniers.

This isn't an argument of correlation, we are not looking at modeling system, it is about looking at overall effectiveness of each system. Money goes in, results get produced kind of analysis. What numbers tell us is that US SPENDS TOO MUCH and DOESN'T GET MORE THAN OTHERS IN RETURN.

It boggles my mind that you can look at other countries, beating US in most healthcare metrics ON A FRACTION OF COST, and turn around and say that socialized medicine doesn't work. Yes it does, and it is A LOT cheaper.

Still, never mind socialized medicine, my original point was simply that it cost more to treat someone in an emergency room than, for example, at a general practitioner office. You ideological zeal won't even allow you to see that TAXPAYERS ALREADY PAY FOR EMERGENCY ROOM USE BY UNINSURED, so if you got stuck with a bill, wouldn't it be more effective to TRY TO MINIMIZE IT?!

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2007-winter/moral-vs-universal-health-care.asp

Good article. Well not for some who don't have open minds to see past their propaganda masters.

I did not suggest you couldnt make a comparison of consumption per person, just that it is not relevant to many of your arguments. First of all, dollars consumed does not necessarily correlate to value consumed. Secondly, you are completely ignoring the context regarding the social, political and economic structures those people live in. Because the thing we are trying to quantify here in these discussion, is the *applicability of process management principles as they could be applied in the USA*. Since Sweden for example, is economically several orders of magnitude smaller than the USA and its place and function within the larger scope of global economic processes is drastically different - you cannot logically say that having the USA apply the same process management principles dealing with health care would have the same effects in our environment as they do in their environment. What you are saying is the equivalent of saying that a manufacturing or financials management process that works in a mom&pop shop with 2 employees will produce the same relative results if implemented in a multi national Fortune 100 company with sixty thousand employees.

This is how you are misusing normalization - you are trying to argue that since a few specific metrics look better for the Swedes (or others) than the US after normalization, that therefore implementing the way they do things would provide an improvement to our system. Which is a fallacy.

Like I said, these systems are to complex to be evaluated in such a simplistic manner.



Again, as with our other discussions... I understand the concepts perfectly well - better than you, because I understand them well enough to inform you on how you are misapplying them.

As I said previously - I am not rejecting normalization, I am letting you know that you are misusing it. The only thing normalization can show us here is that other countries are paying less - it tells us nothing about why. That "why" is the part you get wrong. That "why" , and regarding the future of USA health care planning - the "how" - are the topics of discussion.

You are tying to build a house, but only understand how to use a hand saw. When to build a decent house, you also need hammers, and nails, an understanding of the materials properties regarding weight and stresses, etc.



Yes yes, comparing populations. What we are striving for however, is the determination of a superior system. The population comparison of dollars per capita is just one metric for comparing results. To analyze the reasons, and formulate workable solutions you have to look far beyond economy 101 - if you stay stuck on that level you will never learn how to properly apply analytical techniques or concepts to achieve the desired result.



This exemplifies where you go wrong. If you cannot model a system, you obviously are not understanding all the factors at play with that system. Its pretty fundamental, that to improve a process you have to have an understanding of the process you are trying to improve.

Trying to say that "A" is better than "B" when both exist in completely different environments on a completely different scale is sillyness. To even begin to make a valid apples to apples comparison, you have to compare the EU to the US as a whole. Even without getting into the weeds, the scale alone between the US and your poster countries is analogous to a toy model skyscraper to full size 100 story skyscraper.

Again, you can say we spend to much and get too little - and even be correct on that point, it just does not validate your assertions that your way would be an improvement. If you cannot model the system, you also have no means to begin to predict or attenuate unintended consequences either.

I am well aware that taxpayers foot the bill for much emergency room use by the uninsured. I have said as much in the past, so this attempted insult falls flat as well. The question is how we deal with it, which is where your proposals fall short.

Did you know that Nigeria uses the money scammed from people in the email and phone scams in thier GDP.
So if the US would use say mob or gang profits then the health care cost would lower by GDP standards.

No Derid, I disagree that we have to extensively model entire system to reach conclusions about it. We don't have a model of universe, yet astronomy can tell us a lot about how it works. The same principle applies here - you don't have to model minute details to observe obvious trends.

I understand your position that ONE on ONE comparison, say Luxemburg to US, there is a possibility that some factors could have disproportional effect. This is not the case here, it is US compared to ALL socialized healthcare countries. EACH AND EVERY SINGLE SOCIALIZED MEDICINE COUNTRY DOES IT CHEAPER! US population are still homo sapiens, you can't come up with "different enough scale, environment, circumstances" large enough to explain all of it away. If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, looks like a duck it must be a duck.