StrangeSox

No you weren't, you were shown that the fraud and waste is comparable to and often better than the private sector alternatives. And that $716b isn't entirely from fraud, a big part is negotiated payment rates with doctors and hospitals.

It's pretty bad, but salon's new format is unreadable for me.

this has gotta be the most bizarre white sox winner thread ever

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Aug 22, 2012 -> 08:51 AM) Slowly but surely, summer is disappearing, and I hate it. My wife started back today, but they'll be finished before Memorial Day this year. Unless they're changing to year-round programs, it's still the same number of days.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 22, 2012 -> 09:07 AM) I don't wish to sound like an insurance company shill here, despite full disclosure that I presently work for one. Insurance companies do a lot of things I disagree with, a lot of things the ACA actually corrected for the better. But it takes more than insurance companies to mess this up...the doctors/hospitals/drug companies share a majority of the blame, but haven't been touched. Remember, they're the ones that send the arbitrary and exorbitant bills...but nobody seems to care about that. It's all the insurance companies fault. The ACA, or OBAMACARE as you prefer it, actually does something about arbitrary/fraudulent billing, at least with respect to Medicare. I think insurance companies get the majority of the ire because we absolutely need doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, but we don't need private insurance companies to have a functional health care system. If we switched to a single-payer, Medicare-for-all type system, then they'd just be an optional thing for people who want supplemental coverage whereas even in a fully nationalized NHS-style system, you still need doctors and hospitals and medicine. That makes them an easy target.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 22, 2012 -> 09:45 AM) So let me get this straight...the accepted defensive statistical calculations are ignorable because you and a few others on Soxtalk say so? No one who uses dWAR thinks it's a perfect metric. Sometimes outlier cases like Beckham highlight some internal flaw in the model.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Aug 22, 2012 -> 08:57 AM) I just thought of something about Walt and Jesse. It's a longshot, but what if

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Aug 22, 2012 -> 08:53 AM) That scene was one of the most uncomfortable scenes to watch, which seems silly bcause it's just three people having dinner. But damn did we not feel for Jesse at that moment. I loved how he ends his speech about frozen dinners with a shaky, "Yeah, it's bad." That article goes into some of the reasons why it's so uncomfortable, namely that visually it's a 'nuclear family' sitting down to dinner (show a still of that scene to someone unfamiliar with the show and they'll identify it that way) but you know it's very, very different from that.

...which tells you how horrible private plans are.

We made sure we were at least back to the valley in Yosemite before dusk. I really didn't want to be stuck on a road like the Tioga Pass at night.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 22, 2012 -> 08:00 AM) Not in Chicago. Depends on the schools. Schools going to year-round schedules in the CPS system started last week. A bunch of schools in the suburbs are starting today.

I thought the Beatles sold all their song rights years and years ago? Michael Jackson owned them for a long time.

An in-depth breakdown of the dinner table scene in last Sunday's Breaking Bad. Goes over directing/filming conventions and techniques and how they're brilliantly used in BB to add realism and tension.

The study measured 11 different types of quality, some of them being economic-oriented. If you can't afford the care, then it doesn't matter what quality it is, right? The key conclusion:

Health plan competition improves quality, right? Right???

Ozzie can never fail, he can only be failed.

Band of Horse's last album was awful but I liked their first two.

There's this new Phoenix-based cartel/drug ring now.

Beckham's dog has not been dying for the last three years. This isn't an explanation for him sucking at the plate.

Biden rumor?

Steve King is doubling down, saying that he's never heard of a rape-induced pregnancy. I'm shocked that women don't come running to Steve King to tell them about their rapes. He's such a nice, sympathetic guy.

They very heavily implied that he and Gretchen had some sort of thing in the past and that the love triangle is why he wasn't involved with Grey Matter.

Somewhat ironic coming from Reason but a good encapsulation of how the pundit class earns its pay.

Here's another example of "separate-but-equal" not working:

Romney opens up a big cash lead: