Balta1701

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 05:18 PM) General expectations where for it to bottom again after (which it did), somewhere at or a little above that line. That's about where its at now. But months of inventory right now would be effectively at their modern-era highs if anyone did the seasonal adjustments. That's why this one bothers me; I could have predicted this number with publicly available data and a day or so of sitting around and calculating averages.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 05:15 PM) Perhaps the 800 years old are you, it has to do with more? It really started to worry me when I started taking pills as a 26 year old that when I opened them up, had pictures of senior citizens in the package.

Former Sox GM Roland Hemond named 2nd recipient of the "Buck O'Neil Award".

iPad 2: 1 week.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 04:01 PM) I'm not a doctor, but wouldn't glucosamine help? Taking that for years now, have I been.

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 04:12 PM) I really don't like blaming the victim...but really? What the hell are you doing there? Distributing Bibles and heading towards the Suez. Really, any ship heading for the Suez is at a reasonable amount of risk.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 03:26 PM) Supposedly Libya and oil prices primarily. Also, Case-Schiller home index showed a bigger than expected drip, and they forecast significant further downside price risk. How on Earth can people not have predicted a large case-schiller drop to close to the 2009 pre-tax-credit low?

Just think how much it'll do to help the Illinois budget situation when Democrats from all over the country become refugees and start paying taxes in Illinois.

Yeah, although the NFL has floated things like an enhanced schedule, they're basically arguing first and foremost over revenue distribution. The NBA seems like it will have a much more philosophically based lockout. Can teams be allowed to go over the cap? Is it good for the league when things like the Lebron incident happen? How do you create a situation that doesn't require owners to take a loss in order to win games?

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 12:15 PM) Balta, are you Watson? Y'all want to know why I enjoy serious discussion in places like this forum? Half the stuff I can pull off the top of my head or find with 1-2 google searches is stuff I know about because I've brought it up in here before. Then I get the nice added benefit of being able to pull the same statistics and studies out of my head in other conversations, and I've already practiced trying to put it into non-technical language.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 12:09 PM) Ok, that's a good example of a system with potential for abuse if not outright fraud. There's financial incentives for them to perform unnecessary and expensive treatment (and a small fraction of that is related to defensive medicine). How do you reform medicare/medicade to reduce or eliminate that potential? Can it be done without harming patients' care? Worth your time to read...

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 12:06 PM) It might be hard to prove that. To use a line from another debate...it's nearly impossible to prove that a single test was unnecessary if recommended by a doctor. However, on the aggregate, the data are overwhelming. We have 50 states and however many municipalities we can compare on the matter. If every test was necessary, then there should be a direct correlation between spending on health care and health care outcomes, which is absolutely not the case. There is essentially no correlation in this country between increased health care spending and improved health care outcomes at the state or municipality level. You can do case studies, like the 2 towns in Texas we looked at back during the ACA debate, which have similar levels of disease but 1 city spends 2x as much as the other, per capita, on health care. You can look at individual hospitals/providers and get the same conclusion; spending more or doing more tests doesn't translate to better outcomes. Great case example; the U.S. screens heavily for prostate cancer. Much more heavily than the UK. The US spends more on doing so, and spends a ton more removing any abnormalities when they're found. However, the death rates from prostate cancer between the US and UK are nearly identical. This data strongly argues that the U.S. catches and spends a ton of money to detect and remove non-threatening prostate conditions that the UK does not.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 12:05 PM) Well, "massive" is relative, but there's plenty of examples of fraud. Google medicare fraud and start reading the stories. But the fraud i'm talking about is basically unprovable. What doctor is going to admit that their treatment isn't 100% necessary? We all know it exists. These doctors know they'll get paid so long as they send in the right form. Worth adding an addendum here; the exact same thing happens in the private sector. This problem is also why the PPACA included funding for comparative effectiveness research, which the U.S. currently does not fund. If you have 9 possible drugs and treatments for a patient, no company is going to pay to research which one is the best, because it might not be their expensive drug. That's a really good part of the job-killing health care bill of 2010.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 12:01 PM) I don't think you can support the claim that there's a massive amount of fraud. It depends on how you define "Fraud". If you read his statement, he's defined fraud in a certain way which is actually correct...we pay most medical providers based on how many procedures they perform, not based on whether or not they actually make their patient healthier. The PPACA had some clauses that allow funding to explore outcome-based payment for health services, but really radical reform on that front would be labeled as evil, socialist, and it would cost you the support of the American Medical Association, which has a habit of killing health care reform bills.

Since we've already cited the Professor once in this discussion, it's worth noting as well that he made a few points on defense spending over the weekend.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 10:24 AM) What's the biggest budget problem out there right now (and specifically growing into the future)? Entitlements right? I'd say it's the jobs crisis. At least at the state level. Let me steal a quote here:

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 11:52 AM) Part of the problem because of the way it's structured and funded or part of the problem because benefits need to be cut? The big problem is the health system in general. It can't grow at 7% above the rate of inflation forever. Medicare and Medicaid tend to be 1-2 percentage points below the rate of growth of the health care system. So, their spending grows less quickly than the system as a whole, which is a good thing and does suggest some measure of cost control is plausible. The real way to look at it is the John McClain way...If they're not being part of the solution, they're being part of the problem. Government health care costs can't grow at 6% a year when the country's growth rate is 2% a year without rapidly becoming the entire economy.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 11:03 AM) I'll say it again, link the retirement benefits of public sector unions to the retirement benefits of the everyday joe, i.e. social security, and problem disappears. Want to retire, go ahead, but you get reduced benefitss at 62, and receive full benefis at what is now, nearly 67 yrs? You do not have to change anything. Can all police, firefighters, construction workers, and teachers physically make it to that age?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 11:41 AM) I think our medical system is seriously and fundamentally flawed. I don't know if medicare/medicaid is a significant part of the problem. Yes, it absolutely is a part of the problem. The PPACA helped, and could be a starting point towards the solution.

Gonzalez mailbag.

After a bit of reading, Christchurch is described architecturally as having a number of classic, gothic-style buildings. Probably without any sort of seismic retrofit.

As I usually do, I'll pick mid-90's wins and the division. Comeback seasons from Peavy and Quentin would make this team run away with things.

-Charles Barkley.

QUOTE (DBAHO @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 08:45 AM) Don't think there was any warning at all that this was coming, happened about 10-11AM local time. It wasn't that big of a quake obviously only being a 6.3, it just did the majority of the damage in the city centre and with it being a weekday, you had people at work in buildings etc. who are still now trapped. The lack of warning shouldn't matter. Let me give you an example...the Northridge quake hit the L.A. basin directly, with a magnitude of 6.7 (quite a bit more intense than this...it's a logarithmic scale), with building codes that were up to date for the U.S. 20+ years ago. It killed 57 people, mostly in the collapse of a single brick apartment building. Edit: and multi-story, "Office" buildings are generally the safest type of building to be in during a quake like this...because the force that it exerts on them is similar to the force exerted on them by an extreme wind event. Building codes for wind usually wind up being enough to protect modern office buildings.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 22, 2011 -> 08:32 AM) So... why is it surprising then? By the way, even though this quake was "only" a 6.3, it looks like it was quite shallow, and Christchurch sits on a plain of silty soil (causes the liquefaction, I think). Because usually the magnitude of damage is a very, very strong function of the building codes and their enforcement. I always sorta thought of NZ as a fairly modern area where they know quakes are coming.