Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 05:38 PM) Actually 60 minutes's piece was terrible. The majority of people applying for benefits under that program are still denied, and the appeal rate has actually fallen since the collapse rather than increased. The program itself is heavily audited by the GAO because of misleading claims like the one you just made and it is constantly found to have fraud rates that are well below 1%. The people getting disability under social security meet the standards for disability. In fact, under more reasonable standards, more people probably should be able to receive that. A university of Michigan study found that out of the people who applied are turned down, nearly 80% are still not working 2 years later. The main reason why disability claims have increased since the recession is an aging population. The Social Security program trustees in 1994 predicted that there would be an increase in disability claims necessitating an infusion of extra funds into the program by 2016 solely as a consequence of an aging population, putting it right on schedule for exactly what we've seen. The program itself has sent back cash to the treasury before and basically will remain close to long-term balance once what was predicted 2 decades ago happens. There was also an increase in the retirement age for OASDI benefits a couple years ago from 65 to 66, leaving quite a few more people disabled who would otherwise have been covered by regular social security benefits. That is so unbelievable it's laughable. That would basically mean every single claim was legit except for what 60 minutes reported. They literally found every case of fraud in the country. GMAB. SS disability is just like workers' compensation: you find Petitioner-whore doctors to opine about over stated injuries and there's really nothing an arbitrator/admin judge can do but accept what that doctor says in his/her medical records. Edit: Looks to me like that 1% rate has nothing to do with fraud so much as errors in calculating benefits when someone had been working or could have worked: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-635

If you want to talk about real waste in the medical industry, look no further than social security disability. 60 Minutes had a good piece on it last night. What a giant cluster f***. And you all want the government to take over the entire health care industry? http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-5760...disability-usa/

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 04:21 PM) Im not saying its a barrier. Obviously there are pay to play Doctors. But the entire argument was faulty. It was why do insurance companies pay out on cases that may not be very strong. Its about risk. And the risk of a case where a dr is already willing to testify that there may have been a lapse in care is very high. You have generally sympathetic plaintiff versus a corp. Thats not just medical mal, thats a lot of cases where companies are forced to settle just because it makes more economic sense then the risk of trial. Yeah I tell all of my defense clients that the two outcomes of the case is losing small or losing big. There is no winning as a defendant in our system because even if the case is absolute s*** you still have to pay me to defend you. You want to talk about a waste of money, a bunch of 25k cost of defense settlements put a dent in the bottom line.

I'm all things Illinois despite not going there (went to Illinois Wesleyan instead), but I grew up 10 minutes from Champaign and my family had basketball and football season tickets from the time I was in grade school through high school. So that fandom has always stuck. Illinois basketball is easily my favorite sport/team to follow. For some reason I became a huge Emmit Smith fan his last year at Florida and his first year or two at Dallas in the early 90's. From there I started to follow the Cowboys more and became a huge fan by 1992, their first Superbowl, through the late 90's. Urlacher's rookie year in 2000 brought me back to being a full-time Bears fan. And yes, to this day I still icky about liking and rooting for the Cowboys.

I knew I was officially old when I watched a 60 minutes piece about Molly and I had no idea what it was or how long it had been around (years).

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 03:52 PM) Greatest myth ever perpetrated on the American people is that its the lawyers who are evil. Just as an fyi, in Illinois you cant just file a medical mal case against a dr. You need to have another dr review the case file and determine that there is merit. In comparison, anyone can file a lawsuit against a lawyer for any reason. http://www.passenlaw.com/blog/trucking-acc...lpractice-cases Why would we ever cap the actual damages someone can receive? Having done lots of med mal cases, that requirement is a good step, but it's hardly a barrier.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Oct 5, 2013 -> 12:19 AM) Obozocare...shipping jobs overseas and giving tax cuts to billionaires http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.c...rdable-care-act more anti-middle class Obama regime attacks http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-andrzej..._b_3936877.html Wow. and Obozo is fighting for the middle class? Can we all agree... he is with the 1%? Those stories literally sicken me. This country is so f***ed.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 03:13 PM) I didnt mean bragging about having sex with a bunch of girls. I meant having a group of girls dance around the rapper while he pretends to have sex with them. It may not have been as clear as I wanted it to be, but I wanted to use the word pseudo-f***. And this is really the question. If she is aware what she is doing, then she is clever. I was referring to the people who are outraged at Miley, which is more about all the nonsensical boxes we put women in. I think Miley wants to be outrageous, I think she is doing it on purpose, I think the haircut and the androgynous Bieber look is on purpose. There just is a crushing amount of publicity/fame/attacks that are going to come from this, and most humans just cant withstand it. Yeah, I think you have to be mentally unhinged a little bit anyway to get to that point. I mean, she's not a "real" person in the sense of the word. Nothing about her life is normal and really never has been since she was a child star. The more attention - positive or negative - is probably just fine with her. She just wants to be in the conversation.

Bought tickets for Gravity this coming weekend at the IMAX. It's going to cost my wife and I 48 bucks for the tickets and parking. f***ing insane.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 01:28 PM) I think Miley is probably smarter (more clever) than people realize. She is also flying a lot closer to the sun than she realizes. I find her to be interesting. If a rapper gets up on stage and pseudo-f***s female dancers hes a hero. A girl does it and shes a slut/tramp. Whether her ultimate goal is to expose hypocrisy, who knows. I bet that Miley actually hasnt something to say, unlike those vapid Kardashians. I too find her interesting, however, you have to admit that bragging about banging a bunch of girls is different than dancing like a stripper and dry humping a finger foam in front of a national audience. She should expect that kind of reaction as she swims in her money vault filled with money made from doing that kind of stuff. Btw, her new Terry Richardson photos are...interesting. And I still don't get the tongue thing. It's not very attractive IMO.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 04:52 PM) You're making assumptions that just lead you right back to the conclusion you started with. If coaches and AD's are really where all of the money is made, fine. Let players be paid and sign endorsement deals and hold jobs and profit from their likeness. If there isn't competition for them, they won't be getting paid much. This should be like any other job market on the planet. Because he liked playing football but also wanted to go to UIUC. The NCAA isn't like any other job market, just like professional leagues aren't either. They can make their own rules. If you want to join, you agree to abide by those rules. If you don't like it, start up a minor league for football.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 04:31 PM) I don't know, nor do I particularly care. If no one wants to pay them money, then they won't be paid money. They shouldn't be barred from outside sources of money, endorsement deals, outside jobs, etc. I had a friend who was a walk-on WR at Illinois. If WR's aren't getting scholarships, 3rd string kickers aren't, either. The compensation is minimal. Many of these athletes are there primarily to play a sport. They're encouraged to take easy classes and get all sorts of extra "help." They're barred from getting jobs and internships that would otherwise prepare the vast majority of students for non-sports-playing career after school. If they are rigorously pursuing a degree and get hurt, they can lose their scholarship. As I said before, the scholarship and stipends typically don't cover the cost of living. I'm sorry, how does this argument not apply to every other sports league that actually pays its players? How do MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, etc. etc. teams figure out what to pay players, and how do players figure out their market value? How do colleges figure out what coaches are worth? Yes, exploits. Makes some people into multi-millionaires while not paying the people that are actually making the product that generates the revenue. Bars them from getting any form of compensation while making tons of money off their names and images and work. Why shouldn't they be able to be "king of campus" and also get some of the enormous revenues they generate? Why should they be playing for extremely wealthy coaches and getting paid nothing in return? Really, what is the actual argument for why it is okay not to pay these athletes for their labor? Why is it necessary that they don't get paid for you to enjoy watching them play their sport? As a general response to all of this, here's where i'm at: if you pooled together the coaches, trainers, admins, etc and everything else that goes into a program, they still end up making the university more based on their skills than a player does with his. Yes, the occasional RGIII type player is, in a sense, a huge reason for the draw to a game. But the reality is the coach who has excellent recruiting ties/abilities landed him and brought him there. He coached him and trained him and developed him. If anything, the player is a small part in the greater success of a college program. To that end, 99.9% of athletes wouldn't be worth more than the amount of their scholarship and extra benefits put together. So I don't think the system really exploits all but the rare few transcendent players. Why did your friend decide to become a walk-on at Illinois over getting a scholarship from a lesser team? Clearly there was some kind of benefit he was after there.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 03:28 PM) It's not irrelevant. Boeheim's value is $0 if there aren't people paying basketball. Why should the person who convinces them to play basketball and tells them how to play basketball earn millions upon millions of dollars, but the people actually paying basketball earn nothing? This assumes that someone else couldn't come in and do his job for less, or that he couldn't do the same job for less if the revenues were split with the people actually playing the sport as well. And it still remains 100% true that, without a basketball team, 0 people will show up to watch Boeheim stand on the side of a basketball court. I don't even know what you're arguing. I live in the real world. And in the real world basketball is played at colleges and universities across the country every year. In that real world a guy like Boeheim has value above, beyond and separate from the players that he RECRUITS, TRAINS, COACHES and DEVELOPS into athletes good enough to make a living playing a game. And the reverse of what you say is also true - without the school the players are worth nothing. Sure, .0000001% of them could go play in the NBA, the rest aren't worth anything even if they could go pro right away. Colleges make stars out of players. Coaches make stars out of players. I don't know why you view this as a one sided relationship when it's clearly not.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 03:25 PM) Every person providing labor that generates revenue for the NCAA has an argument for being paid directly by the NCAA/their colleges. They certainly have an argument for being able to profit off of their images, names, likeness, etc. I don't disagree that they have an argument. But very few college athletes (including the hundreds of thousands who don't play premiere sports) generate sufficient revenue for their school or the NCAA to warrant being paid BEYOND their scholarship and additional benefits. Let's lowball it and assume a scholarship, room and board, and extras cost a school 50k per athlete. How many players are actually worth that much to a team based on the money they generate for the school? I'll try to find it but I remember reading somewhere that football teams have like 80-85 scholarships and rarely do they play more than 50 people in a game. So yes, they do. And again, he is being compensated! Well I agree there, the NCAA has stupid rules on this (the bagel but not cream cheese example). But at some point the NCAA has to draw a line and they just chose the wrong spot. I'm fine giving athletes a little. But how much do you want to give? How much is it worth? 1% are going to be able to get an accountant or some other expert to breakdown exactly how much they made the school. The rest get what? The same? Lol, jesus. Exploits. Yes, all of those poor star athletes in college. What a terrible life they live for four years! What I wouldn't give to be exploited as the king of campus for 4 years from age 18-20. Cry me a river for these poor souls.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 03:32 PM) You are literally arguing now that insurance isn't actually useful and that people without insurance aren't forgoing medical care because they probably wouldn't have to go even if they did have insurance. This is completely absurd. There are systems where health care is much more reasonable and affordable. They're socialized. Go back and read what I wrote. I'm saying that no insurance =/= death. 30 million uninsured doesn't mean 30 million are dead tomorrow. Obviously if you have better access to healthcare, and cheap healthcare, you're going to be, on average, healthier than someone who doesn't. But it doesn't mean that if you don't have insurance you can't get healthcare so you die, just like it's not true that if you do have insurance you're going be the healthiest because you're going to use it to the fullest. I'm trying to temper your "we don't have candy and we die" comment. Make an escalating scale or something for how much your out of pocket would be based on how long you've been signed up versus how long you've had the problem. Design a system that way. Cover everyone and let everyone else pay didn't have to be the answer.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 03:00 PM) Forget that, Go Cats. I've come to realize that I am in the minority amongst Illini fans in that I like Northwestern. I wouldn't say that I like them, but I certainly like them more than OSU. Bunch of free tattoo-getters.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 02:46 PM) Boeheim brings in exactly zero dollars to the school if there aren't people playing basketball. Why should some become extremely wealthy off of this billion-dollar industry while the bulk of the labor is unpaid and barred from any compensation? I'm also skeptical that Boeheim really does bring in about $20M a year to the school. The bolded is irrelevant. They play basketball, every year. And 25-35k people show up in a stadium to watch them play (supposedly the upcoming Duke game they might move the court so 50k can attend). And hundreds of thousands/millions watch every game on TV. If the program sucked, they wouldn't draw like that. http://espn.go.com/blog/bigeast/post/_/id/...etball-revenues According to that the program brought in $18 million in 2011. That probably doesn't include TV deals with the conference that the school shares. That doesn't include tax revenue and extra money flowing in the local economy. He's worth every penny if he keeps the program elite.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 02:44 PM) No, many of them don't get "everything they need for free." Many leave with debt or have to scrape by, especially if they didn't come from backgrounds where their family could financially support them. Ok, let's break this down. Who are "they" we're talking about? The star athletes that have the only argument for being paid? Or the 3rd string kicker? I could give a s*** if the 3rd string kicker has to pay for something. He's getting a free education and a bunch of other perks and he's not making the school a dime. So really we're talking about star athletes - the ones that make the schools money and have the best argument for being paid. What do they have to pay for? What do they have to scrape by for? I'd like an example. At best you're talking about incidentals. So fine, give them a stipend of a few grand a semester to pay for books and school supplies. That's still not what people want when they say pay the athletes. How much would you pay them? How would you break it down? Does everyone get 50k cash? Does it depend on playing time? Popularity? No matter what system you design it would be a gigantic cluster f***, on top of ruining college athletics.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 01:11 PM) Ok, but that doesn't change the reality that an awful lot of people actually do go without care, which leads to chronic illness, untreated illness or worse complications down the road. How do you know the rate isn't the same for insured people? I've been covered under my wife's plan for 4 years. I've never gone to the doctor. Our insurance premium at this point is just another deduction out of her paycheck, just like taxes. We don't really think twice about it (well, we didn't, until we had to change the plan to get a kid). I feel like people forget that insurance coverage doesn't necessarily mean healthier people. The majority of people DON'T get medical treatment despite being covered. That's how insurance companies stay in business. Raising the age doesn't cost anything extra. You're still getting the premiums for those kids, just a little longer. People 20-30 are the healthiest around anyway, so it's not like they'd be using up the system. Pre-existing conditions, yeah, that might be costly, but design a system that insurance has to be more reasonable in the amount it'll cover but not to the point that the government has to be the surety on healthcare bills.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 02:04 PM) Boeheim gets $77,000 a year to buy a car. More than the average family of four earns in a year. 50% more than they earn in a year. Just for his car. The richer you are, the less you actually have to pay for stuff. How many people does Boeheim allow the University to employ because he's really good at his job? How much money has he made the University and local economy because of what he can do and the kinds of recruits he's been able to bring in? I think college coaches are vastly overpaid but at the same time they bring in ten times what they earn.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 01:34 PM) It really drives me nuts when people say "and they get free access to equipment!". Like you consider your work desk and keyboard part of your compensation package. Oh please, they get everything they need for free - food, housing, transportation, equipment, clothes, etc. They go on trips to foreign countries and participate in different group activities. Let's not pretend they have to pay for their own sneakers to play basketball. It's more akin to Google giving you free lunch off a menu prepared by private chefs than it is your employer providing you with keyboard.

Man, looking through wiki, it's disgusting how lopsided Big Ten football is: The fact that MN is 3rd and IL is 4th is laughable.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 11:20 AM) Jenks, do you not believe that millions of Americans lack(ed) access to affordable health care? Would my statement be agreeable if I modified it to "Millions of us don't have any candy at all and we literally suffer and sometimes die because of it"? It was the "dying because of it" part I didn't necessarily agree with, and I was curious if there was an actual figure out there for how many people die as a direct result of not being insured. From my experience working with clients of all backgrounds in personal injury, med mal and wrongful death cases, and being married to someone who works at RUSH and knows every program they have, I don't buy that the lack of health insurance means you go without care. There are plenty of cheap and/or free places to go. Are they John Hopkins quality? Nope. But neither are 99% of the other hospitals/clinics out there for people that do have insurance. And yes, long term diseases and long term care is more difficult, but i'm also aware of a variety of programs for people in those situations (various forms of cancer, HIV/AIDS, etc.) to obtain the long term care they need. I'm all about making our health care cheaper. I'm all about making it easier for people to obtain health insurance. I don't know that making people insured really matters THAT much at the end of the day. Edit: and as i've said before there are parts of this law I like - not being denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, college kids being kept on policies for longer, etc.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 10:56 AM) This study estimated it at 45,000/year. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009...ealth-coverage/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/ar...-year-because-/