Balta1701

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 11:35 AM) Plus how is this going to solve the illegal alien problem. Its not like its going to change their way of medical care, showing up at the emergency room with the common cold. Actually it might depending on how it's structured...but that's not a response. Here's the actual reply; you do not keep your health care system broken because you want to punish illegal immigrants; you fix your broken health care system because it needs fixing, and then you fix your broken immigration system so that the issue you cite no longer exists.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 11:33 AM) None of that has been medically studied. It's based on user's experience. There's no true medical and scientific proof that it improves vision. I like how you pointed out that it isn't proven right after I pointed out that proving it is legally impossible right now.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 11:19 AM) Exact same things they said about A-Rod. Also, some steroids (specifically HGH) have been shown to improve vision. And no one has been able to do a double-blind study of those type of potential effects on heavy steroid users...because it's illegal. It's entirely possible that there are visual effects, but it will never be proven because doing the research is illegal.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 11:25 AM) Just from personal experience, as my father is a Viatnam Vet, those VA hospitals are almost useless to him and he opts for private care. Then in that case...let those of us who have nothing have a system of the quality of the V.A...say some sort of public option...and then anyone who wants to pay for more expensive care can feel completely free to do so. Which is what the President's plan happens to call for anyway.

QUOTE (Dizzy Sox @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 11:19 AM) If the Red Sox would trade Bucholz--and that is a big if--it would take at least one of the Beckham/Flowers/Danks group plus one or more of a Richard/Hudson/Omogrosso/etc. Despite his troubles in the majors last year, he is one of the top ten pitching prospects around. Josh Fields has zero trade value. None. Nada. Why would the Red Sox move Buchholz and want a starting pitcher back? Isn't the whole concept of this talk that they already have too many starting pitchers that the kid is blocked?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 11:20 AM) That study was financed by the VA, I'm sure they'd love to give the uncensored opinions of the people on the receiving end of that superior healthcare without any spin! Grant Support: This study was funded by a Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development grant The RAND corp study however was not.

QUOTE (Soxy @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 11:21 AM) I don't think so. I think that M.A. is pretty far off from the iranian public and I doubt they would support a war with Israel at this point. I mean, right now the Iranians are basically calling bulls***, and I think they would continue to call bulls*** if a war with Israel started up. Not if they could entice Israel in to striking first.

QUOTE (scenario @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 10:55 AM) Should be an interesting roller coaster before the ASB. After the games this week against the Dodgers and the Cubs, we play 10 straight against Cleveland and Kansas City (3 at Cleveland, 4 at KC, 3 at home against Cleveland)... then 3 games in Minneapolis. So we have 6 at home, 7 on the road, 3 at home, then 3 on the road? Let's put it this way...I want to see us continue to be right around .500 on the road (we're 17-18 on the road this season, nearly .500, which is respectable on the road for most teams) but we're 16-18 at home and it seems to be getting worse. I want to see us put up some solid performances at home and get that monkey off our backs. If we're playing like crap at the Cell still, then we're not going to win this division.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 11:15 AM) I don't know Medicare that well, but in the case of VA, it certainly isn't a good example of how government could do health care well. Quality of care has been awful, as we've seen all over the news for some time. It may be cheaper, but it isn't high quality. I think you're crossing up the military hospital system with the V.A. system. The data out there says otherwise. I'll go to the Rand corp for this study (they're as non-partisan as I can give you) Here's another study saying the same thing.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 11:07 AM) Yes, because that's how it works. Quite literally, yes it is.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 11:05 AM) When has anything you've done with the government resulted in easier/less wasteful? I mean f***ing honestly. Medicare and the Veterans Affairs Health Plan both have DRAMATICALLY lower overhead costs than private insurance. By at least 50%. Maybe more, depending on who's estimates you believe.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 11:03 AM) Actually, what I said in so many words is that it wasn't my place to decide who gets to live or die. And it isn't yours either. However, Blue Cross Blue Shield, that's who I want deciding who lives and who dies.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 11:02 AM) That's kinda my point. There are already shortages of doctors and nurses all over the country, and that is with the big 17% OF GDP getting spent for health care. Every facility I have been to for myself, my wife, and my kids is packed the gills. We have no more capacity in the system. There are no more doctors, in fact we are importing them for emergency situations from other countries. Why do you think you see so many more Doctor Patel's than Doctor Smith's anymore? There aren't any more nurses to be hired. I know for a fact that the state of Indiana has such a huge shortage of them that they are trying to figure out how to bribe more people to go to school to be nurses. Our hospital just had to add on at 50% of our old capacity just to keep pace with the need for beds. The idea that somehow we are going to add the new comical number of eighty million people to the system, and somehow we are going to get better care for cheaper is completely illogical. There is no where to treat the people we have now. We don't have enough personel to treat the patients we have now. But somehow we are going to treat all of our uninsured, plus 20 million of Mexicos, and things are going to be BETTER? Really? If they are serious about cutting the doctors wages, the shortage of staff is going to exaggerated, not to mention the attrition of supposedly asking these people to do about 30% more work (new patients totals according to Balta) who now have NO reason to be prudent in their pursuit of whatever health care they want because now someone else is paying for it. You will crush the system. As a free trader I'm surprised you don't come up with the other option. One of the reasons why there is a doctor shortage is that we refuse to allow free trade in so many industries; we only allow manufacturing to have to go up against foreign competition, so it gets dismantled. There are schools all over the world who can turn out quality doctors who would be easily willing to come work in the U.S. for a fraction of the wages that U.S. doctors currently make, but they aren't allowed to do so because health care providers are protected from foreign competition. Meanwhile, U.S. schools can't open up more slots to train doctors because they aren't allowed to by quotas; if more doctors were trained, then that would cause competition that would bring down the amount that a doctor can earn. It's a wonderful setup for anyone except the consumer.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 09:37 AM) The idea of giving the government the ability to "control costs" without any kind of rules as to how/why is crazy. What if the government decides that they'd like to pay nurses only 5$ an hour for their work? Combine that with the fact that the private insurers cannot do the same...and you have unfair price controls on one side...you'd drive everyone with talent out of the industry, which they're in because they're well compensated, and you'd end up with shoddy healthcare -- not exactly what they were looking for in the first place, now is it. This is EXACTLY the point of a public option and why it's necessary. If you attempt to put cost-controls in without a public option, you wind up with exactly the sort of thing that you're talking about...insurers still spend the same amount of money trying to drive people out of their markets, but then they also realize they can't make as much money on certain procedures so they start favoring all the areas where they can make money, and the price controls wind up screwing everything else. So you wind up with treatments being approved or not approved based on what the cost controls say, and you wind up with all sorts of creative techniques (See; the pharmaceutical industry) coming out of the industry with no benefit to people that do nothing except allow health care providers and insurers to charge more. What we're saying is...a public option is more efficient. Which is why it's necessary. It cuts down on the paperwork and the overhead dramatically because everyone can be insured and because insurers won't be able to increase their profits by only insuring the healthy (as they do now). If an insurer then wants to produce a profit...it has to be profitable by outdoing the public option in efficiency, not by finding creative ways to avoid payment.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 10:55 AM) As they say, the strong survive. Nature implemented this rule for a reason, so naturally, humanity will buck this trend to proove mother nature wrong -- only a thousand years from now, nature will show us why it was right. While the movie Idiocracy was a stretch, it's not going to be far from the truth. While I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm also saying it's my place in the world to say screw the other people, one way or the other. Really? You actually went there? Our health care system is fine because the poor get killed off by it and that's ok because the rich are better?

So their starting rotation depth chart is: Beckett Matsuzaka Lester Wakefield Penny Smoltz Anyone I'm missing? Then Buchholz? If I'm reading that right, then they have at least 1 opening for a starting pitcher to open 2010, and could have an opening sooner if they could move Penny and Daisuke stays on the DL. And Wakefield can always be moved temporarily to the bullpen.

Didn't we hear about both of those brilliant ideas like 3 years ago?

QUOTE (spiderman @ Jun 22, 2009 -> 04:05 AM) ok, then what needs to be done in your view? Let's assume that Obama won't get a single payer system. How do we improve health care through cutting costs, insuring everyone (like those with pre-existing conditions)? If there is no public option, then reform will not happen. The elephant in the room right now is that there is no motivation for anyone in the medical industry to bring down costs. If you try to craft a reform without a public option as a competitor, it won't get through Congress because the only cost-controls that can be applied are things that will be demagogued as rationing. If you try to insure the 50 million uninsured without extracting huge cost savings, then the cost of the plan goes through the roof (like $5 trillion over 10 years) and Congress will never pass it. If you try to control the cost of the plan, then you get scoffed at for how few of the uninsured that you cover (a $1 trillion plan covers like an additional 8 million people without a public option) and Congress will never pass it. We're not going to get single-payer no matter how much some of us may want it. The only way anything meaningful will happen is if we can push through a combination of a public option where the government has the ability to control costs at the same time as providing a subsidized mandate. That's the only way to get a CBO score that doesn't send the cost through the roof while at the same time making a large dent in the number of uninsured and controlling costs.

Note to self...push Lost's house over cliff...

Here's the view of the Walpin matter from the left.

QUOTE (knightni @ Jun 21, 2009 -> 03:36 PM) Actually, it's the northern part of Baja that's a part of the Drug War. San Lucas is in the southern part. Frankly, I'm not sure there's anywhere in Mexico I'd trust to be right now. The Drug cartels have spent a fair amount of effort specifically targeting Americans for kidnapping. That's not just the northern part.

On another subject, Captain Cheeseburger was pulled after 1 1/3 inning today against the Marlins. Injury currently not disclosed.

QUOTE (knightni @ Jun 19, 2009 -> 07:12 PM) There are some awesome beaches, nice little towns, and outside of a motor race, it's pretty quiet on the coast. Except for the raging drug war.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Jun 21, 2009 -> 03:23 PM) Pujols is on something. It might be steroids or HGH, but he's clearly on something. I honestly believe anyone who denies it is only doing so because they really don't want to believe it. Quite frankly, I don't want to believe it. The rational side of my mind agrees with you, but the side that enjoys sitting back and watching baseball really doesn't want to believe it.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 21, 2009 -> 03:21 PM) Viciedo's not going to be traded when the largest portion of his contract was the signing bonus for this year. We control his rights for 6 seasons in the "prime" (actually pre-prime) of his career at ages 21-26. Will he be the next Miggy Cabrera? Probably not, but trading away either Alexei or Dayan seems far-fetched. Actually I'd say 6+ years. Depends on when he comes up.