Hard News: A voice of reason and authority
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If you work for Company X doing Job A you can't work for Company Y and do job A. It's a clear conflict.
Say what? I do it all the time. It's called contracting. Occasionally it's been for the government, but they're just another client.
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NBH,
Although that particular rort isn't really working for Company X doing Job A and working for Company Y and do job A - it's more "working for Company X and referring people to yourself at Company Y, where you get paid three times as much for doing something than you would if they'd chosen Company X".
ScottY's right that it is probably a necessary evil though.
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so do I - you just have to be up front with your clients - and I find it's useful to be careful to avoid people who are in heavy competition with each other
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The thing about the US Healthcare system is that the people who decide what you get are not medical professionals - when I lived there I has excellent insurance (I do miss the dental and vision coverage here in NZ)
But trying to get anything done required permission from the accountants at the insurance company - took a year of being put off to diagnose my gallstones, and 2 days to get them out. People with no insurance just show up at the emergency room when things get too bad.
Look it another way - in the NZ when you go to the doctor there's a receptionist behind the desk - in the US there's always someone else back there, maybe 2 someones - their job is to harass insurance companies to get paid
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James:
Don't you think it's rather odd that in all countries with a national or socialised health system, there is no great outcry over the fact the nanny state clearly has it's jackboot on our throats?
I don't see all that many people marching down Whitehall chanting: 'give us fully privatised health insurance, or give us death', while Gordon Brown hides in his bunker.
Presumably we're all just ignorant savages, who have yet to be converted by your missionary zeal and brought into the great white cleansing light of The Free Market Uber Alles?
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Krugman made a useful (ie: not batshit insane) comparison between other systems and what's actually being proposed by Obama:
In this country, the Massachusetts health reform more or less follows the Swiss model; costs are running higher than expected, but the reform has greatly reduced the number of uninsured. And the most common form of health insurance in America, employment-based coverage, actually has some “Swiss” aspects: to avoid making benefits taxable, employers have to follow rules that effectively rule out discrimination based on medical history and subsidize care for lower-wage workers.
So where does Obamacare fit into all this? Basically, it’s a plan to Swissify America, using regulation and subsidies to ensure universal coverage.
If we were starting from scratch we probably wouldn’t have chosen this route. True “socialized medicine” would undoubtedly cost less, and a straightforward extension of Medicare-type coverage to all Americans would probably be cheaper than a Swiss-style system. That’s why I and others believe that a true public option competing with private insurers is extremely important: otherwise, rising costs could all too easily undermine the whole effort.
But a Swiss-style system of universal coverage would be a vast improvement on what we have now. And we already know that such systems work.
So we can do this. At this point, all that stands in the way of universal health care in America are the greed of the medical-industrial complex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda machine, and the gullibility of voters who believe those lies.
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We actually went with private obstetricians for him, and a private pediatrician. But when the shit hit the fan, and he was having seizures in his bassinet, the public system took over almost 100%. I have no bitterness on the private specialists over this, nor do I apportion any blame on them for his 'accident'. They did everything they could to help out, going well beyond what had been paid for, and even waived some of their bill, but the final point was that they couldn't do very much by comparison with the incredible resources of the state.
This is the vision of a Mactional party health care.
The private sector takes the cream from the top. The sour difficult nasty stuff at the bottom is picked up by the state - they have the resources.
True, a private coy could have the resources to deal with this nasty difficult medical stuff, but their fees would require you to re-mortgage your house and your children's house.
I'd far rather pay a little more in taxes to have equitable health care.
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Actually, I think his point is that that makes banning the use of non-handsfree headsets tokenism, but tokenism that looks good.
And that's an argument Professor O'Hare is quite entitled to make, but I have a funny feeling that what he calls a "cop-out" Stephen Joyce might well describe as "legislation that has a snowball's chance in hell of passing".
Although that particular rort isn't really working for Company X doing Job A and working for Company Y and do job A - it's more "working for Company X and referring people to yourself at Company Y, where you get paid three times as much for doing something than you would if they'd chosen Company X"
You know something, that's an argument we can have until the sun grows cold. But I still have no problem sleeping that my partner's by-pass was performed in the private sector. Really -- and I don't know how fair or useful a term like "rort" is.
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Krugman made a useful (ie: not batshit insane) comparison between other systems and what's actually being proposed by Obama:
Hey, I'm still waiting for a Birthing tea-bagger to stand up and say this filthy nest of government-run 'socialized medicine' needs to be rooted up and destroyed.
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Hands-free cellphones -
shouldn't internationally recognised scientists and their research inform policy and law, which is exactly what he's asking for in the article?
Not exactly, he's asking that he and his research determine the policy and law, much more than inform it. It seems he can only imagine Government either ignoring his research, or doing his bidding.
But it is perfectly rational to pay careful attention to the results of his research, accept that it is the cell-phone conversation that is dangerous; then ban hand-held cell-phone use by drivers on the basis that this would be enforceable and effect a major reduction in cellphone-related distraction and resulting deaths, injuries and crash costs.__A ban on use of hands-free cell-phones while driving would be about as enforceable as a ban on thinking of sex while driving.__
Actually, I think his point is that that makes banning the use of non-handsfree headsets tokenism, but tokenism that looks good.
Can't see this - it would imply that all other forms of driver distraction were trivial alongside the huge problem of hands-free cell-phone use. That it's not worth making a useful reduction in driver-distraction unless we can stop it 100%.
I dislike much of what the current Government is doing, but it looks to me that Stephen Joyce has persuaded it to do something sensible instead of succumbing to the nanny-state bullshit that might have been expected.
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You know something, that's an argument we can have until the sun grows cold. But I still have no problem sleeping that my partner's by-pass was performed in the private sector. Really -- and I don't know how fair or useful a term like "rort" is.
I don't think anyone has actually demanded the immediate abolition of the private sector, Craig. That doesn't mean that you can't look sideways at weird contracting practices. I'm perfectly happy for the private system to exist, and quite likely I'll get health insurance if I ever have enough money - but I don't want the private sector taking advantage of the public one, either.
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Not exactly, he's asking that he and his research determine the policy and law, much more than inform it. It seems he can only imagine Government either ignoring his research, or doing his bidding.
He's pointing out that as far as his research goes, the change won't improve the situation. Contrary to your statement:
But it is perfectly rational to pay careful attention to the results of his research, accept that it is the cell-phone conversation that is dangerous; then ban hand-held cell-phone use by drivers on the basis that this would be enforceable and effect a major reduction in cellphone-related distraction and resulting deaths, injuries and crash costs.
He's saying that it's not holding onto the cell phone that's the problem, it's talking into it while driving, held or hands free. If that's true the law change won't help things.
Enforceable: yes. Reduce distraction/deaths/injuries/costs?: Not according to his research.
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Kyle, you seem to be assuming that all cell-phone users will convert to hands-free in their cars. Is that a valid assumption? (Happy to concede that it might get an 80% uptake.)
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That doesn't mean that you can't look sideways at weird contracting practices.
Certainly doesn't, and I'm sorry if I gave you that impression. But over on Kiwiblog (where else?), some hapless troll certainly picked the wrong time -- about three weeks before the BH's by-pass -- to go on a rip about how the private system was a pack of parasites and rich pricks who didn't deserve to live. Believe it or not, my response to that one attracted a cease and desist note from DPF. :)
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You have to laugh sometimes eh, Just read this in the Dom;
"Mr Theobald has received a letter from human resources head Patrick Crawford.
In it, Mr Crawford said: "Information has come to my attention which indicates that you may have intentionally driven a car through Inland Revenue's Christchurch building ... I am concerned that your conduct may be inconsistent with the Code of Conduct.""Love it.
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But over on Kiwiblog (where else?), some hapless troll certainly picked the wrong time -- about three weeks before the BH's by-pass -- to go on a rip about how the private system was a pack of parasites and rich pricks who didn't deserve to live. Believe it or not, my response to that one attracted a cease and desist note from DPF. :)
Oh, I can just imagine. People apparently forget that the idea of public healthcare is to ensure everyone has access to it, rather than to put the rich in their place.
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This is the vision of a Mactional party health care.
The private sector takes the cream from the top. The sour difficult nasty stuff at the bottom is picked up by the state - they have the resources.
Seems to work OK. The private care does give you a little more of some things that you might value, which just seem like extraneous luxuries to the public institutions. If you want them, I can't see that you shouldn't be allowed them if you're prepared to pay. If you don't let rich folks get some advantages from all their cash, they get uppity.
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If you want them, I can't see that you shouldn't be allowed them if you're prepared to pay. If you don't let rich folks get some advantages from all their cash, they get uppity.
Damn right -- they were going to take that solid platinum bed pan out of my cold dead hands. Not like I had to have my chest cracked open or anything...
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Kyle, you seem to be assuming that all cell-phone users will convert to hands-free in their cars. Is that a valid assumption? (Happy to concede that it might get an 80% uptake.)
Oh yes indeed.
But what you're saying is "by making using a cell phone slightly more inconvenient, they won't be any safer, but some people will just stop using them in cars, which is safer".
If the research indicates that not having them on in cars is actually what will make us all safer, it seems strange to bag on the academic who knows this for getting publicly frustrated when the government claims that making them hands free will make them safer, when he obviously feels that his research shows that isn't the case.
If the government doesn't want to have the debate about doing what the research indicates would be safer, well that's politics. Ragging on the academic for calling them on it?
There's a lot of bitching that goes on PAS about science and academics not getting coverage for their research and the implications it should have for policy, in the media. Until a newspaper covers an academic doing that very thing and then people attack that. WTF?
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he's asking that he and his research determine the policy and law, much more than inform it
Umm, I'm pretty sure I didn't say it was his research, and I don't think he claimed it was his either. And I'm sure the journalist played no role in leading you to your interpretation that he wants to determine the law, bound as they are to report in a non-sensationalist fashion.
Looking at it a bit further, while you are right that it is much easier to ban something that you can see, whether it's actually useful might be more debatable.
Why do people have hands-free sets? Is it because they spend more time talking on their phones while driving? Will a ban of hand-held phones reinforce their sense that they made a good choice to use a hands-free set because it makes them safer? Will they consider that this ban endorses their practice of talking and driving as safe? Will people who currently don't think have hand-free sets buy them, and then thinking that they're being safe now, increase the amount they talk and drive? -
I don't doubt that, in cars, hands-free is safer than not, but that removing that distraction altogether is safer still. But the politicos realise that banning all distractions will not work, and that banning hands-free telephonic communication would be effectively impossible to enforce. Hence the pragmatic decision to restrict in-car use to hands-free.
I am not getting into the perception of the place of science in policy, or of the coverage of science. Let others who care more and have something useful to say have the floor on that one.
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There's a lot of bitching that goes on PAS about science and academics not getting coverage for their research and the implications it should have for policy, in the media. Until a newspaper covers an academic doing that very thing and then people attack that. WTF?
Kyle: I had no problems with O'Hare putting forward an argument regarding his area of expertise. Just could have done without the ""Why do we do research?" plaint -- especially when the Prime Minister's own science advisor seems to have a more realistic understanding of the limits of his influence.
There's also room to debate what kind of influence you can realistically expect to have when you're snarking about the legislation being a "cop-out". But, as I said, I certainly hope O'Hare is drafting his submission as we speak.
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Perhaps a little less Fox TV of an evening would be a step in the right direction.
But that's James..wanders on here every now and then, toddles out a few Fox talking points as fact, has them fairly sharply shot down by anyone who's turned the dial one notch further in any direction or picked up a recent newspaper. He gets angry, either doesn't or is unable to, counter the shoot down and then disappears, only to repeat it a few weeks later.
And yes, agreed with all, NZ's healthcare is fantastic. We often don't know how lucky we are until we travel to a country that doesn't have such an encompassing umbrella.
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Hence the pragmatic decision to restrict in-car use to hands-free.
In this part of the world I'd just be happy if they could stop people from txting on a motorbike whilst riding with three children and a dog in the fast lane.
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I don't doubt that, in cars, hands-free is safer than not
One of the reasons why psychology research often gets bagged for testing the apparently obvious, is that it's surprisingly how often the 'obvious' is not true. I gave some instances of why this might not be true above (and also why banning hand-held could even be counter-productive in terms of endorsing hands-free use).
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