In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:

Peter wrote:

I think not. If what you were saying were true, why would there be a
clause in the recently enacted health care reform legislation that
mandates that the health insurance companies spend at least 85% of
their income on payments to beneficiaries for health care delivery? The
facts can be stubborn! Many companies were spending more than
15% of the premiums they receive on profits, marketing, perks for the
top corporate execs, etc. Not exactly consistent with your claim
that their profit is "miniscule compared to the total premiums
collected."

Take note that about half of the health insurance companies in the U.S. are
"non-profits" (think Blue Cross/Blue Shield).
Nope. Most of the Blues have changed to for profit. All of the Blues
operating (for instance) under the WellPoint banner are for profit.

--
I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator
and name it after the IRS.
Robert Bakker, paleontologist

On May 28, 8:56*am, Peter wrote:
On 5/28/2010 1:32 AM, harry wrote:



Wealth cannot be created in the stock market. *The purpose of the
stock market should be purely the finance of industry.
Wealth can only be created by work. Ie, manufacturing, construction,
mining etc. * The idea that wealth is created by a few electronic
keystrokes is stupid.
A bit of paper cannot be made to be worth more. If it is, the money it
is valued in just becomes worth less.
Wealth is not created in banks. *it's created by the "blue collar"
workers. * The sooner we get ay from this idea that wealth can somehow
be conjured up out of nothing, the sooner we will have a stable
economy.

Harry, it sounds as though you and I are both Marxists at heart! *However, I
believe both from my personal experience and knowledge of history that pure
socialism is entirely unworkable because it is human nature to require
incentives. *I suspect that the ideal economic system is some blend of socialism
and free-market capitalism. *The problem, yet unsolved, is configuring the best
blend.


"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other
people's money [to spend]"

Maggie Thatcher

The UK can use Maggie right about now, loved that gal.

Peter wrote:

Ah, but here's where your logic fails: There is no enterprise,
health care, education, etc., that cannot be done cheaper and better
by private industry. Take education, for example. No amount of money
can improve it as long as it remains primarily a government purview.


Wrong, wrong, wrong. I'll provide one example where I regard myself
as having more than average knowledge and understanding: the
military health care system. It provides much better care overall
than does the civilian sector, at substantially less cost. I know. I
trained at one of the best ivy league post-graduate medical centers
in the world, spent time in private practice, and then my entire
approx. 30 year Navy career in the Navy Medical Department, first as
practitioner, then as administrator, and occasionally, as a patient. Our
family still receives 100% of its care in military treatment
facilities. We don't have to. We could opt at essentially no cost
out of pocket to use civilian providers. We don't feel the need at
all.

I didn't say government programs were a disaster, I simply said that private
enterprises were better and cheaper.

I admit that the Walter Reed Medical Center is a top-notch facility (of
course it treats members of congress, but that's just a coincidence). On the
other hand, VA hospitals, in the main, rank somewhere between the the UK's
NHS and Cuba.


You don't seem to understand "wealth." The only people who believe
in a "national wealth" are those who believe wealth is a fixed
commodity and needs to be re-distributed. To a liberal, wealth is
like energy: it can be moved around but it cannot be created or
destroyed.
You are being condescending. You don't know me or my knowledge base.
I never said that I believed in national wealth. I don't. I know
that wealth is expandable and can contract. I know that when the
stock market tanks, everyone who is invested in those stocks loses
some of their wealth and that loss is not transferred as profit to
anyone else.


No, I'm not being condescending. I said "You don't SEEM to understand..."
That you do merely highlights your inability to express that understanding
or my inability to discern it from what you wrote. To the degree that the
slight is on my part, I apologize for getting you wrong.


To a conservative, wealth is like a souffle, it can rise or it can
flop.

Any person with a modicum of knowledge about economics, know that,
not just conservatives. Patting yourself on the back too hard aren't
you?

Well, then, liberals and progressives don't have that modicum. To them,
wealth is like a pie of fixed dimensions with unequal slices. In the
interests of "fairness," the size of the slices must be adjusted. Just
today, Hillary Clinton is reported to have said:

"The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the
kind of employment issues [America currently does] - whether it's
individual, corporate or whatever [form of] taxation forms..."

With video of her speech
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmi...r_share.h tml

"Fair" is a loaded word. Here's my definition of "fair:" Assume, in round
numbers, the national budget is $3 trillion and that we have 300 million
folks in the country. "Fair," then, is that each person forwards $10,000 to
the treasury.



A real-life and obvious example of wealth increase or decrease is
the stock market.

Every dollar the government spends in the general marketplace is a
dollar of wealth destroyed. Every transaction entered into by a
willing buyer and a willing seller creates wealth.

Wrong again. Every dollar the government spends in the general
marketplace is a dollar of wealth re-distributed.

Your "wealth is redistributed" notion has some merit, but often the money
spent is a result of the "broken window" economic theory, where the spending
is wasted. Had not the money (for a government project) not been taken in
the form of taxes, those who paid the taxes would have had money to pay
employees, make investments, or increase wealth.

And "every
transaction entered into by a willing buyer and a willing seller"
exchanges the value of the item sold for the value of the asset used
to buy it. No wealth is created by that transaction.

If there is no benefit, i.e., wealth creation, why bother with the
transaction.

Consider a farmer who sells a dozen eggs to a housewife for a dollar. To the
farmer, who has more eggs than dollars, he is richer as a result of the
sale. To the housewife, the eggs are worth more than a dollar, else why go
to the trouble of making the trade? Each leaves the transaction wealthier
than before.


I claim the reverse. Lobbyists and special interests are the foil to
the mob mentality of the masses.

If you believe that the masses are a mob, you probably believe in
totalitarian government. After all, how else to keep the masses in
their place?

I didn't say RAVAGE the masses, I said RESIST the masses.

I don't advocate SUPPRESSING the great unwashed, I encourage a COUNTER to
the plebians. When legislation is the product of an excited, sweaty, and
high-decibel crowd, you can be sure the legislation will be catastrophic.


Our system is broken. It is not working reliably or effectively at
present in either our courts or in our legislature.

Yep. It is the worst possible system, except, of course, for every other
system in the world (Hat tip to Churchill).


2. Those states with constitutional "mob rule" have the potential for
ruination. California has an "initative& referendum" methodology
where a group of citizens can propose a new law - or constitutional
amendment - and get it voted on by the public. This enables things
that sound good getting mandated even though they have catastrophic
consequences.
I finally found something to agree with. The California initiative
system is not a good model. That's why for the most part, we have
representative government. The problem is not the "mob rule", it is
that one of the most important functions of a government that
effectively meets the needs of all its citizens is to protect the
rights of the minority. In the type of government that I suspect you
envision, your minority views might be prohibited. Maybe you would
be happier living in North Korea or some other place where the "mobs"
have no say.

I never said I was opposed to considering the ravings of a lunatic mob. All
I've said is that laws created at the end of a pitchfork need to be balanced
by the input of those affected (lobbyists and special interests).

To the degree that you misapprehend my thoughts, I accept your apology.

harry wrote:

Wealth can only be created by work. Ie, manufacturing, construction,
mining etc. The idea that wealth is created by a few electronic
keystrokes is stupid.
A bit of paper cannot be made to be worth more. If it is, the money it
is valued in just becomes worth less.
Wealth is not created in banks. it's created by the "blue collar"
workers. The sooner we get ay from this idea that wealth can somehow
be conjured up out of nothing, the sooner we will have a stable
economy.

So says a Marxist.

If I have a piece of paper, say a stock certificate, for which I paid a
modest sum and I can now trade that bit of paper for a villa on the Riveria,
one has to conclude that wealth was created somewhere. If I buy an oil
futures contract for $80/bbl and sell it six months hence for $100/bbl, I've
done no labor and made a tidy profit by the push of a button. Suppose I
purchase a bit of land for $1,000 and sell it in five years for $100,000.
What labor was involved (other than filling out the tax forms each year)?

There's the story of a warehouse full of tinned sardines that were sold for
five-cents a tin. The chap who bought them for five cents, sold them to
someone else for ten, then the guy who bought them for ten cents sold them
for twice that. The final buyer went to the warehouse and opened a can. He
then rushed back to the seller and said: "Those sardines you sold me for
twenty cents are rancid! They're not fit to eat!"

To which the final seller replied: "Oh, those sardines are not for eating -
they are for buying and selling."

Much of the world has left the "industrial" age where wealth was created by
"blue collar" workers (admittedly, some areas haven't left the "agrarian"
age). We are now in the "information" age where wealth is created by ideas.

It used to be true that an enterprise needed three things to be successful:
Labor, capital, and raw materials. Now only capital is required, and often
not much of that.

Don Klipstein wrote:

The way I hear it from a conservative engineer and a conservative
manufacturing company owner, wealth is created by making nothing or
things that are worth less or worthless into things that are worth
more.
As in, at least traditionally described, mining and agriculture and
manufacturing - making goods from dirt, making raw materials into
valuable goods, especially making goods production tools.

If any transaction between willing partners creates wealth as you
say, do you claim lack of exceptions? What if one of the parties is
dishonest and the other is incompetent? What if one party pays the
other to destroy something that has value?

No, there ARE exceptions (fraud, mistakes, roads to nowhere, etc.). But, in
the main, these exceptions are nibbling at the margins.

Don Klipstein wrote:

I know about 30 Canadians, and 100% them would refuse to trade their
healthcare system for what USA has. This includes a receptionist and
other office workers, a PhD chemist, a recently retired Toronto police
detective who now owns his own little company based heavily on a very
impressive machine shop, another company's CEO and the owner of that
company, and several relatives of some of these.

I'm sure you do. Your anecdotal experience may merely illustrate the maxim:
"Better the devil I know, than the angel I don't."

Bob F wrote:
wrote:
So, your doctor gives you an MRI on every office visit? Mine
doesn't. Never had one or a CAT scan either. But I'm damn glad we
do have them, in case I ever need one.


My doctor has ordered several CAT scans (I can't have MRIs) none of
which has determined the treatment. In my opinion, they have all been
a waste of money.
I tried to talk him out of the last one, but he insisted. Time for a
new doctor?

He INSISTED?

What did he do? Strap you to the table? Conk you on the head? Threaten to
kill your dog?

Here's a rule that might help: Anytime any person whom you're paying for
advice says: "You MUST do so-and-so..." the first words out of your mouth
should be "You're fired." This applies to accountants, lawyers, and, yes,
even doctors.

On 5/28/2010 11:35 AM, HeyBub wrote:
Peter wrote:

Ah, but here's where your logic fails: There is no enterprise,
health care, education, etc., that cannot be done cheaper and better
by private industry. Take education, for example. No amount of money
can improve it as long as it remains primarily a government purview.


Wrong, wrong, wrong. I'll provide one example where I regard myself
as having more than average knowledge and understanding: the
military health care system. It provides much better care overall
than does the civilian sector, at substantially less cost. I know. I
trained at one of the best ivy league post-graduate medical centers
in the world, spent time in private practice, and then my entire
approx. 30 year Navy career in the Navy Medical Department, first as
practitioner, then as administrator, and occasionally, as a patient. Our
family still receives 100% of its care in military treatment
facilities. We don't have to. We could opt at essentially no cost
out of pocket to use civilian providers. We don't feel the need at
all.

I didn't say government programs were a disaster, I simply said that private
enterprises were better and cheaper.

I admit that the Walter Reed Medical Center is a top-notch facility (of
course it treats members of congress, but that's just a coincidence). On the
other hand, VA hospitals, in the main, rank somewhere between the the UK's
NHS and Cuba.

It's not just Walter Reed. I have personal knowledge of standards and
delivery of care at many military treatment facilities, and not just at the
major military medical centers. I've never practiced in, inspected, or visited
one that was as poor or inferior as many private community hospitals that I've
also known. And, private community hospitals form the backbone of this
country's inpatient infrastructure.

You don't seem to understand "wealth." The only people who believe
in a "national wealth" are those who believe wealth is a fixed
commodity and needs to be re-distributed. To a liberal, wealth is
like energy: it can be moved around but it cannot be created or
destroyed.
You are being condescending. You don't know me or my knowledge base.
I never said that I believed in national wealth. I don't. I know
that wealth is expandable and can contract. I know that when the
stock market tanks, everyone who is invested in those stocks loses
some of their wealth and that loss is not transferred as profit to
anyone else.


No, I'm not being condescending. I said "You don't SEEM to understand..."
That you do merely highlights your inability to express that understanding
or my inability to discern it from what you wrote. To the degree that the
slight is on my part, I apologize for getting you wrong.


I understand you perfectly, and I believe that you understand me perfectly.
However, rather than deal with the issues in straightforward language, you
appear to prefer to hide behind least plausible interpretations of both your own
comments (when defending your words upon being challenged) and the comments of
others.

To a conservative, wealth is like a souffle, it can rise or it can
flop.

Any person with a modicum of knowledge about economics, know that,
not just conservatives. Patting yourself on the back too hard aren't
you?

Well, then, liberals and progressives don't have that modicum. To them,
wealth is like a pie of fixed dimensions with unequal slices. In the
interests of "fairness," the size of the slices must be adjusted. Just
today, Hillary Clinton is reported to have said:

"The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the
kind of employment issues [America currently does] - whether it's
individual, corporate or whatever [form of] taxation forms..."

With video of her speech
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmi...r_share.h tml

"Fair" is a loaded word. Here's my definition of "fair:" Assume, in round
numbers, the national budget is $3 trillion and that we have 300 million
folks in the country. "Fair," then, is that each person forwards $10,000 to
the treasury.



A real-life and obvious example of wealth increase or decrease is
the stock market.

Every dollar the government spends in the general marketplace is a
dollar of wealth destroyed. Every transaction entered into by a
willing buyer and a willing seller creates wealth.

Wrong again. Every dollar the government spends in the general
marketplace is a dollar of wealth re-distributed.

Your "wealth is redistributed" notion has some merit, but often the money
spent is a result of the "broken window" economic theory, where the spending
is wasted. Had not the money (for a government project) not been taken in
the form of taxes, those who paid the taxes would have had money to pay
employees, make investments, or increase wealth.

You are changing the subject. The subject was whether a transaction creates
wealth or not. We are not discussing whether any particular transaction is
meritorious. There are unwise government expenditures and unwise private
expenditures. Neither entity is immune from stupid, or misguided behavior.

And "every
transaction entered into by a willing buyer and a willing seller"
exchanges the value of the item sold for the value of the asset used
to buy it. No wealth is created by that transaction.

If there is no benefit, i.e., wealth creation, why bother with the
transaction.

Again, you are changing my words so that you can flail against them. I
never said that transactions have not benefit. YOU believe that because you are
the one who believes that all transactions create wealth and of course that
would be of benefit to at least one of the parties. If I go to the store and
spend $1.50 to buy a dozen eggs, I benefit from obtaining the eggs I wanted, and
the seller benefits from disposing of the eggs and gaining money, which can be
used for any of many purposes. Both parties have benefited from getting what
they want from the transaction.

Consider a farmer who sells a dozen eggs to a housewife for a dollar. To the
farmer, who has more eggs than dollars, he is richer as a result of the
sale. To the housewife, the eggs are worth more than a dollar, else why go
to the trouble of making the trade? Each leaves the transaction wealthier
than before.

No, the housewife is not wealthier. She has forfeited ownership of a dollar
and gained a dozen eggs. The seller has forfeited ownership of the dozen eggs
and gained a dollar. Each is equally "wealthy" but they have traded assets. No
wealth was created!


I claim the reverse. Lobbyists and special interests are the foil to
the mob mentality of the masses.

If you believe that the masses are a mob, you probably believe in
totalitarian government. After all, how else to keep the masses in
their place?

I didn't say RAVAGE the masses, I said RESIST the masses.

And by resisting the masses, which democratic principle are you following?
Don't you realize that you are one of the "masses", along with all the rest of
us? Why do you think that you are in a special and by inference, superior group?

I don't advocate SUPPRESSING the great unwashed, I encourage a COUNTER to
the plebians. When legislation is the product of an excited, sweaty, and
high-decibel crowd, you can be sure the legislation will be catastrophic.

Our system is broken. It is not working reliably or effectively at
present in either our courts or in our legislature.

Yep. It is the worst possible system, except, of course, for every other
system in the world (Hat tip to Churchill).


2. Those states with constitutional "mob rule" have the potential for
ruination. California has an "initative& referendum" methodology
where a group of citizens can propose a new law - or constitutional
amendment - and get it voted on by the public. This enables things
that sound good getting mandated even though they have catastrophic
consequences.
I finally found something to agree with. The California initiative
system is not a good model. That's why for the most part, we have
representative government. The problem is not the "mob rule", it is
that one of the most important functions of a government that
effectively meets the needs of all its citizens is to protect the
rights of the minority. In the type of government that I suspect you
envision, your minority views might be prohibited. Maybe you would
be happier living in North Korea or some other place where the "mobs"
have no say.

I never said I was opposed to considering the ravings of a lunatic mob. All
I've said is that laws created at the end of a pitchfork need to be balanced
by the input of those affected (lobbyists and special interests).


Nothing wrong with input. I favor legislation being made by informed
legislators. However, showering those legislators with gifts of cash and
in-kind perks does not constitute information. It is bribery. You worry about
balance? It seems that the majority of our laws are drafted by the special
interests (their lobbyists) for the legislators. The balance that I seek is to
enable the masses to have equal voice with the special interests.

To the degree that you misapprehend my thoughts, I accept your apology.



I never apologized to you. I have nothing to apologize for.

On 5/27/2010 1:09 PM, Jay Hanig wrote:
On 5/27/2010 9:53 AM, Peter wrote:
On 5/26/2010 9:41 PM, h wrote:


So, you think that your genes are so superior that you will never
develop a non-injury illness? You need to examine the actuarial data
that medical insurance companies use and learn that most people are
healthy until the day that they become sick. And most people who become
sick have not had an injury. I would bet my retirement fund that the day
you develop an illness that warrants medical attention, you'll get to
the doctor for care and not "lie down and die". Why are you blabbering
on alt.home.repair you should take this to home.brain.repair




Consider it natural selection.





Jay

So you admit that you are an advocate of social Darwinism.

h wrote:

We purchased some suture kits and other medical stuff. I will, never,
ever have a "medical professional" touch me ever again. Maybe in 13
years when I hit Medicare age, but not likely. I doubt I will buy
into Medicare. It's not like they pay for everything yet it costs
over $50 a month. I've spent about $100 on healthcare in the last 4
years. Yeah, like I'll be signing up for that money sink. Not so much.

Heh!

When you were a lad, even in your twenties, maybe even last week, you went
to the doctor when you were sick.

When you reach a certain age, you go to the doctor to keep from GETTING
sick.

About five years ago, I started going to a doctor to help me manage
incipient diabetes. The first thing he did was vaccinate me against TB,
pneumonia, and tetanus. The most important vaccination, though, was for
shingles. Shingles is the reemergence of the virus that caused chicken-pox
among children. The vaccination is 85% effective in preventing the disease
and 100% effective in mitigating the disease's effect.

None of these had anything to do with my initial visit.

HeyBub wrote:
harry wrote:
Second?
Thirds?

The same guy who stated that Cuba has better health care than the
USA.

Imagine that.
How do you know it's not true as your gov. won't let you go and see
for yourself? Cuban health care is free to everyone. Even you if you
could get there.
You are another of the brainwashed.

Free does not equal good.

Health care in Canada is free also, but we see a significant number of
Canadians in the U.S. for care.

No, it isn't free in Canada. It is paid for through taxation. Those
with private insurance in Canada can't use it in public facilities, thus
the trip to the US?

For example, there are fewer than 200 MRI machines in the whole country of
Canada (and probably none in Cuba). We have more MRI machines in my CITY
than in the whole country of Canada.


The number of MRI machines is pretty irrelevant without considering the
populations served, the access, the quality of medical care by the
provider who orders testing, the patient's cooperation, etc. There are
probably 20 MRI machines within 5 miles of where I live, but if I can't
afford an office visit, the machine's existence means diddly squat.

My local hospital has marble floors, walnut panelling, free transport to
their network facilites, volunteers crawling all over the place...some
are entitled to luxury, some entitled to nothing.

On 5/28/2010 12:13 PM, HeyBub wrote:
h wrote:

We purchased some suture kits and other medical stuff. I will, never,
ever have a "medical professional" touch me ever again. Maybe in 13
years when I hit Medicare age, but not likely. I doubt I will buy
into Medicare. It's not like they pay for everything yet it costs
over $50 a month. I've spent about $100 on healthcare in the last 4
years. Yeah, like I'll be signing up for that money sink. Not so much.

Heh!

When you were a lad, even in your twenties, maybe even last week, you went
to the doctor when you were sick.

When you reach a certain age, you go to the doctor to keep from GETTING
sick.

About five years ago, I started going to a doctor to help me manage
incipient diabetes. The first thing he did was vaccinate me against TB,
pneumonia, and tetanus. The most important vaccination, though, was for
shingles.

Actually, not likely. The only vaccination that is effective against TB is BCG,
which is rarely used anymore and certainly not in the US. Reason: It is not
100% effective, but permanently converts you into a positive tuberculin reactor,
forever destroying that test's ability to detect early TB infections (when they
have a much higher chance of being successfully treated and put into a dormant
state). You probably received a tuberculin skin test to see if you had become
infected, even though you might not be showing symptoms. The tetanus booster
was arguably the most important thing done for you at that visit. Tetanus is
still very very difficult to treat successfully, much easier to prevent with
periodic booster shots. Although very painful, and on occasion producing
permanent pain syndromes, scarring, or even blindness, shingles is rarely life
threatening. The shingles vaccine also is not 100% effective although it does
statistically reduce the risk of severe cases when they do occur. I have a
close relative who got the shingles vaccine yet came down with shingles about 18
months later.


Shingles is the reemergence of the virus that caused chicken-pox
among children. The vaccination is 85% effective in preventing the disease
and 100% effective in mitigating the disease's effect.

No medication can ever be said to 100% effective in mitigating a disease's
effect unless that disease has an absolutely 100% complication rate (e.g., skin
scars after smallpox, or fatality rate (e.g., rabies). To stipulate a 100%
mitigation rate for an agent against a disease with a variable outcome, you
would have to be able to know how severe a specific patient's course of illness
would have been had they not received the agent in question. Mitigation effects
in almost all cases can only be quantified as a statistical likelihood for a group.

None of these had anything to do with my initial visit.

HeyBub wrote:
h wrote:
We purchased some suture kits and other medical stuff. I will, never,
ever have a "medical professional" touch me ever again. Maybe in 13
years when I hit Medicare age, but not likely. I doubt I will buy
into Medicare. It's not like they pay for everything yet it costs
over $50 a month. I've spent about $100 on healthcare in the last 4
years. Yeah, like I'll be signing up for that money sink. Not so much.

Heh!

When you were a lad, even in your twenties, maybe even last week, you went
to the doctor when you were sick.

When you reach a certain age, you go to the doctor to keep from GETTING
sick.

About five years ago, I started going to a doctor to help me manage
incipient diabetes. The first thing he did was vaccinate me against TB,
pneumonia, and tetanus. The most important vaccination, though, was for
shingles. Shingles is the reemergence of the virus that caused chicken-pox
among children. The vaccination is 85% effective in preventing the disease
and 100% effective in mitigating the disease's effect.

None of these had anything to do with my initial visit.


Ah, but each of the illnesses against which you were vaccinated (with
exception of tetanus, which is pretty bad anyway) is highly likely to be
worse if you are diabetic. No diet?

In article ,
" wrote:


Health care in Canada is free also, but we see a significant number of
Canadians in the U.S. for care.

No, it isn't free in Canada. It is paid for through taxation. Those
with private insurance in Canada can't use it in public facilities, thus
the trip to the US?

Unless the CND Supreme Court decisino of a few years actually
changed things, there is no private insurance in Canada. 3 of the 7
Justices actually said the system was unconstitutional, 3 disagreed and
I never did hear what happened with the swing vote. Probably abstained
so they could agree on the more focussed areas.
Interesting take on that, the response of the governments, and how
the amount of money available for health expenses has floated around
with the whims of politicians over the last few years, I commend to you.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/healthcare/

--
I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator
and name it after the IRS.
Robert Bakker, paleontologist

On 05/28/10 12:36 pm, Peter wrote:

Actually, not likely. The only vaccination that is effective against TB
is BCG, which is rarely used anymore and certainly not in the US.
Reason: It is not 100% effective, but permanently converts you into a
positive tuberculin reactor, forever destroying that test's ability to
detect early TB infections (when they have a much higher chance of being
successfully treated and put into a dormant state).

I am certain that I had a BCG vaccination a few decades ago in Australia
before a trip to India, but I do *not* test positive when I get my
regular TB tests for the hospice where I volunteer.

Perce

On 05/28/10 12:08 pm, Peter wrote:

I admit that the Walter Reed Medical Center is a top-notch facility (of
course it treats members of congress, but that's just a coincidence).
On the
other hand, VA hospitals, in the main, rank somewhere between the the
UK's
NHS and Cuba.

It's not just Walter Reed. I have personal knowledge of standards and
delivery of care at many military treatment facilities, and not just at
the major military medical centers. I've never practiced in, inspected,
or visited one that was as poor or inferior as many private community
hospitals that I've also known. And, private community hospitals form
the backbone of this country's inpatient infrastructure.

And the non-government nature of these hospitals does not guarantee
efficiency. Officials and board members of non-profits can waste money
on empire-building. We have two non-profit hospitals with about 6 miles
of each other. The smaller of the two relocated into a fancy new
facility a couple of years ago, and now the larger of the two is
constructing a facility less than a mile from the smaller hospital's new
facility.

Perce

In article ,
"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote:


I am certain that I had a BCG vaccination a few decades ago in Australia
before a trip to India, but I do *not* test positive when I get my
regular TB tests for the hospice where I volunteer.

Perce
I haven't had the vaccination or TB itself and yet I test positive.
Not that it means anything, btu I thought I'd throw it out there.

--
I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator
and name it after the IRS.
Robert Bakker, paleontologist

On 5/28/2010 1:09 PM, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
On 05/28/10 12:36 pm, Peter wrote:

Actually, not likely. The only vaccination that is effective against TB
is BCG, which is rarely used anymore and certainly not in the US.
Reason: It is not 100% effective, but permanently converts you into a
positive tuberculin reactor, forever destroying that test's ability to
detect early TB infections (when they have a much higher chance of being
successfully treated and put into a dormant state).

I am certain that I had a BCG vaccination a few decades ago in Australia
before a trip to India, but I do *not* test positive when I get my
regular TB tests for the hospice where I volunteer.

Perce
What you report is well known, but you are in the minority. Most people
receiving BCG become positive tuberculin reactors, at least for about the 1st 15
years. You said you got your BCG "a few decades ago". However, not all who
receive BCG become tuberculin reactors, but the majority do. I admit that the
US is outside the mainstream when it comes to using BCG.

On May 28, 7:22�am, (Don Klipstein) wrote:
In ,

harry wrote:

I snip a lot to edit for space

King Arthur didn't exist either. �Or the Lone Ranger.
BTW do you know Tonto is Spanish for fool. I could never understand
why that injun was called fool.

� But what does Tonto mean, if anything other than a "proper noun", in the
aboriginal language of that region of North America?

--
�- Don Klipstein )

Since it's fiction, I don't suppose it has to be anything.

On May 28, 2:56�pm, Peter wrote:
On 5/28/2010 1:32 AM, harry wrote:



Wealth cannot be created in the stock market. �The purpose of the
stock market should be purely the finance of industry.
Wealth can only be created by work. Ie, manufacturing, construction,
mining etc. � The idea that wealth is created by a few electronic
keystrokes is stupid.
A bit of paper cannot be made to be worth more. If it is, the money it
is valued in just becomes worth less.
Wealth is not created in banks. �it's created by the "blue collar"
workers. � The sooner we get ay from this idea that wealth can somehow
be conjured up out of nothing, the sooner we will have a stable
economy.

Harry, it sounds as though you and I are both Marxists at heart! �However, I
believe both from my personal experience and knowledge of history that pure
socialism is entirely unworkable because it is human nature to require
incentives. �I suspect that the ideal economic system is some blend of socialism
and free-market capitalism. �The problem, yet unsolved, is configuring the best
blend.

Communism is a failed doctrine. Only capitalism works because of
essential human greed and aquisativity. However ther need s to be
some serious controls. The ones that Regan and Bush took away.
But the stock market as it is today is nonsense. Also the idea of
"leveraging" and "hedge funds" All got to be stopped.





















i

On May 28, 3:16�pm, keith wrote:
On May 28, 1:11�am, harry wrote:





On May 28, 5:10 am, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

Don Klipstein wrote:
In ,
Higgs Boson wrote:

On May 26, 9:42 am, Peter wrote:
On 5/26/2010 12:10 PM, harry wrote:

On May 26, 10:51 am, "Ed wrote:
wrote
How do you know it's not true as your gov. won't let you go and see
for yourself? Cuban health care is free to everyone. Even you if you
could get there.
You are another of the brainwashed.
At any given time, there are hundreds of US citizens in Cuba. Have a good
reason t go, fill out the forms, and you get permission. There is a also a
difference between free and good.
So, you need permission? On what grounds might that permission be
rejected? Why should you need permission anyway?
It's true. It is illegal for the average U.S. private citizen to
travel to Cuba (e.g. for tourism) without explicit permission from the
Department of State. It's a legacy from the American foreign policy
towards Cuba (part of the blockade mentality) that was implemented in
the early 1960s, after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Isn't it great
how often we in this country (U.S.A.) complain officially (at the U.N.
and Dept. of State) and unofficially about other country's foreign
policies being stuck in the past? Time for us to look in the mirror
and realize that we can be hypocritical too.
My understanding is that one can travel to Cuba but one cannot spend
money there.

One travels via Toronto or a Mexican city. Buy one ticket to that
destination and a new ticket to Cuba.

SNIP from here to edit for space

I have friends in Canada, especially Toronto. One of them tells me that
he has vacationed in Cuba, and that some Americans do. They go to
Toronto, get a separate ticket to Cuba, and have Cuban customs stamp a
separate piece of paper for Americans to keep in their US Passports until
they return to Canada. Another thing my Cuba-vacationing Toronto friend
tells me is that Americans doing this trick are doing so in violation of
US law, and theoretically can be punished after returning to US.

Has Obama bowed to Castro yet?

TDD- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

No, but he bowed to the Queen. � :-)

Biden?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Dunno.

On 5/28/2010 1:38 PM, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In ,
"Percival P. wrote:


I am certain that I had a BCG vaccination a few decades ago in Australia
before a trip to India, but I do *not* test positive when I get my
regular TB tests for the hospice where I volunteer.

Perce
I haven't had the vaccination or TB itself and yet I test positive.
Not that it means anything, btu I thought I'd throw it out there.

Hate to dispense unrequested medical advice, especially on the internet. You
tend to get what you pay for! However, if you test positive on a tuberculin
test, either the old fashioned Mantoux test (little bleb injected just under the
skin) or the tine test (tiny needles pushed onto your skin that just barely
break the surface) there are only 2 possibilities:

Either you are a valid positive, because your system has been exposed to TB (at
one time you have had the living TB bacteria in your system) or you are a false
positive (most common cause is have had a BCG inoculation but there are also
some medically significant causes). Best advice is that it should be explored
by a competent doc. If the false positive reading can be ruled-out (eliminated
as the reason), consideration should be given to providing you with a limited
course of anti-tuberculosis drugs to minimize the risk of the latent TB
infection activating some time in the future. Of course, there are all sorts of
valid medical reasons for not taking that course of meds, and a doc who is
familiar with your details and all of this should be your guide. If you are
unsure about your usual doc, request a consultation with an infectious disease
specialist.

On May 28, 4:50�pm, "HeyBub" wrote:
harry wrote:

Wealth can only be created by work. Ie, manufacturing, construction,
mining etc. � The idea that wealth is created by a few electronic
keystrokes is stupid.
A bit of paper cannot be made to be worth more. If it is, the money it
is valued in just becomes worth less.
Wealth is not created in banks. �it's created by the "blue collar"
workers. � The sooner we get ay from this idea that wealth can somehow
be conjured up out of nothing, the sooner we will have a stable
economy.

So says a Marxist.

If I have a piece of paper, say a stock certificate, for which I paid a
modest sum and I can now trade that bit of paper for a villa on the Riveria,
one has to conclude that wealth was created somewhere. If I buy an oil
futures contract for $80/bbl and sell it six months hence for $100/bbl, I've
done no labor and made a tidy profit by the push of a button. Suppose I
purchase a bit of land for $1,000 and sell it in five years for $100,000.
What labor was involved (other than filling out the tax forms each year)?

There's the story of a warehouse full of tinned sardines that were sold for
five-cents a tin. The chap who bought them for five cents, sold them to
someone else for ten, then the guy who bought them for ten cents sold them
for twice that. The final buyer went to the warehouse and opened a can. He
then rushed back to the seller and said: "Those sardines you sold me for
twenty cents are rancid! They're not fit to eat!"

To which the final seller replied: "Oh, those sardines are not for eating -
they are for buying and selling."

Much of the world has left the "industrial" age where wealth was created by
"blue collar" workers (admittedly, some areas haven't left the "agrarian"
age). We are now in the "information" age where wealth is created by ideas.

It used to be true that an enterprise needed three things to be successful:
Labor, capital, and raw materials. Now only capital is required, and often
not much of that.

So, you sell your bit of paper for 100 times as much? Then the money
you recieve for it is essentially worth 100 times less. It's only
worth more if someone somewhere has worked, created value. That['s
one reason why we have had our recent disaster. This something for
nothing mentality. We're just going to have to get back to the
industrial age where work counts. The gov. in the UK has accepted
this and intends to support manufacturing and design.

On May 28, 5:08�pm, Peter wrote:
On 5/28/2010 11:35 AM, HeyBub wrote:



Peter wrote:

Ah, but here's where your logic fails: There is no enterprise,
health care, education, etc., that cannot be done cheaper and better
by private industry. Take education, for example. No amount of money
can improve it as long as it remains primarily a government purview.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. �I'll provide one example where I regard myself
as having more than average knowledge and understanding: �the
military health care system. It provides much better care overall
than does the civilian sector, at substantially less cost. �I know. I
trained at one of the best ivy league post-graduate medical centers
in the world, spent time in private practice, and then my entire
approx. 30 year Navy career in the Navy Medical Department, first as
practitioner, then as administrator, and occasionally, as a patient. Our
family still receives 100% of its care in military treatment
facilities. �We don't have to. �We could opt at essentially no cost
out of pocket to use civilian providers. �We don't feel the need at
all.

I didn't say government programs were a disaster, I simply said that private
enterprises were better and cheaper.

I admit that the Walter Reed Medical Center is a top-notch facility (of
course it treats members of congress, but that's just a coincidence). On the
other hand, VA hospitals, in the main, rank somewhere between the the UK's
NHS and Cuba.

� � �It's not just Walter Reed. �I have personal knowledge of standards and
delivery of care at many military treatment facilities, and not just at the
major military medical centers. �I've never practiced in, inspected, or visited
one that was as poor or inferior as many private community hospitals that I've
also known. �And, private community hospitals form the backbone of this
country's inpatient infrastructure.





You don't seem to understand "wealth." The only people who believe
in a "national wealth" are those who believe wealth is a fixed
commodity and needs to be re-distributed. To a liberal, wealth is
like energy: it can be moved around but it cannot be created or
destroyed.
You are being condescending. �You don't know me or my knowledge base.
I never said that I believed in national wealth. �I don't. �I know
that wealth is expandable and can contract. � I know that when the
stock market tanks, everyone who is invested in those stocks loses
some of their wealth and that loss is not transferred as profit to
anyone else.

No, I'm not being condescending. I said "You don't SEEM to understand...."
That you do merely highlights your inability to express that understanding
or my inability to discern it from what you wrote. To the degree that the
slight is on my part, I apologize for getting you wrong.

� � I understand you perfectly, and I believe that you understand me perfectly.
� However, rather than deal with the issues in straightforward language, you
appear to prefer to hide behind least plausible interpretations of both your own
comments (when defending your words upon being challenged) and the comments of
others.





To a conservative, wealth is like a souffle, it can rise or it can
flop.

Any person with a modicum of knowledge about economics, know that,
not just conservatives. �Patting yourself on the back too hard aren't
you?

Well, then, liberals and progressives don't have that modicum. To them,
wealth is like a pie of fixed dimensions with unequal slices. In the
interests of "fairness," the size of the slices must be adjusted. Just
today, Hillary Clinton is reported to have said:

"The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the
kind of employment issues [America currently does] - whether it's
individual, corporate or whatever [form of] taxation forms..."

With video of her speech
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmi..._rich_are_not_...

"Fair" is a loaded word. Here's my definition of "fair:" Assume, in round
numbers, the national budget is $3 trillion and that we have 300 million
folks in the country. "Fair," then, is that each person forwards $10,000 to
the treasury.

A real-life and obvious example of wealth increase or decrease is
the stock market.

Every dollar the government spends in the general marketplace is a
dollar of wealth destroyed. Every transaction entered into by a
willing buyer and a willing seller creates wealth.

Wrong again. �Every dollar the government spends in the general
marketplace is a dollar of wealth re-distributed.

Your "wealth is redistributed" notion has some merit, but often the money
spent is a result of the "broken window" economic theory, where the spending
is wasted. Had not the money (for a government project) not been taken in
the form of taxes, those who paid the taxes would have had money to pay
employees, make investments, or increase wealth.

� �You are changing the subject. �The subject was whether a transaction creates
wealth or not. �We are not discussing whether any particular transaction is
meritorious. �There are unwise government expenditures and unwise private
expenditures. �Neither entity is immune from stupid, or misguided behavior.

And "every
transaction entered into by a willing buyer and a willing seller"
exchanges the value of the item sold for the value of the asset used
to buy it. �No wealth is created by that transaction.

If there is no benefit, i.e., wealth creation, why bother with the
transaction.

� � Again, you are changing my words so that you can flail against them. �I
never said that transactions have not benefit. �YOU believe that because you are
the one who believes that all transactions create wealth and of course that
would be of benefit to at least one of the parties. �If I go to the store and
spend $1.50 to buy a dozen eggs, I benefit from obtaining the eggs I wanted, and
the seller benefits from disposing of the eggs and gaining money, which can be
used for any of many purposes. �Both parties have benefited from getting what
they want from the transaction.

Consider a farmer who sells a dozen eggs to a housewife for a dollar. To the
farmer, who has more eggs than dollars, he is richer as a result of the
sale. To the housewife, the eggs are worth more than a dollar, else why go
to the trouble of making the trade? Each leaves the transaction wealthier
than before.

� � No, the housewife is not wealthier. �She has forfeited ownership of a dollar
and gained a dozen eggs. �The seller has forfeited ownership of the dozen eggs
and gained a dollar. �Each is equally "wealthy" but they have traded assets. �No
wealth was created!



I claim the reverse. Lobbyists and special interests are the foil to
the mob mentality of the masses.

If you believe that the masses are a mob, you probably believe in
totalitarian government. �After all, how else to keep the masses in
their place?

I didn't say RAVAGE the masses, I said RESIST the masses.

� �And by resisting the masses, which democratic principle are you following?
Don't you realize that you are one of the "masses", along with all the rest of
us? �Why do you think that you are in a special and by inference, superior group?





I don't advocate SUPPRESSING the great unwashed, I encourage a COUNTER to
the plebians. When legislation is the product of an excited, sweaty, and
high-decibel crowd, you can be sure the legislation will be catastrophic.

Our system is broken. �It is not working reliably or effectively at
present in either our courts or in our legislature.

Yep. It is the worst possible system, except, of course, for every other
system in the world (Hat tip to Churchill).

2. Those states with constitutional "mob rule" have the potential for
ruination. California has an �"initative& � referendum" methodology
where a group of citizens can propose a new law - or constitutional
amendment - and get it voted on by the public. This enables things
that sound good getting mandated even though they have catastrophic
consequences.
I finally found something to agree with. �The California initiative
system is not a good model. �That's why for the most part, we have
representative government. �The problem is not the "mob rule", it is
that one of the most important functions of a government that
effectively meets the needs of all its citizens is to protect the
rights of the minority. �In the type of government that I suspect you
envision, your minority views might be prohibited. �Maybe you would
be happier living in North Korea or some other place where the "mobs"
have no say.

I never said I was opposed to considering the ravings of a lunatic mob. All
I've said is that laws created at the end of a pitchfork need to be balanced
by the input of those affected (lobbyists and special interests).

� �Nothing wrong with input. �I favor legislation being made by informed
legislators. �However, showering those legislators with gifts of cash and
in-kind perks does not constitute information. �It is bribery. �You worry about
balance? �It seems that the majority of our laws are drafted by the special
interests (their lobbyists) for the legislators. �The balance that I seek is to
enable the masses to have equal voice with the special interests.

To the degree that you misapprehend my thoughts, I accept your apology.

� �I never apologized to you. �I have nothing to apologize for.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I visited a VETS hospital whilst in America (Des Moines). It was
intistinguishable from an NHS (UK) hospital. (I have spent thirty
years in the NHS)

On May 28, 5:13�pm, "HeyBub" wrote:
h wrote:

We purchased some suture kits and other medical stuff. I will, never,
ever have a "medical professional" touch me ever again. Maybe in 13
years when I hit Medicare age, �but not likely. I doubt I will buy
into Medicare. It's not like they pay for everything yet it costs
over $50 a month. I've spent about $100 on healthcare in the last 4
years. Yeah, like I'll be signing up for that money sink. Not so much.

Heh!

When you were a lad, even in your twenties, maybe even last week, you went
to the doctor when you were sick.

When you reach a certain age, you go to the doctor to keep from GETTING
sick.

About five years ago, I started going to a doctor to help me manage
incipient diabetes. The first thing he did was vaccinate me against TB,
pneumonia, and tetanus. The most important vaccination, though, was for
shingles. Shingles is the reemergence of the virus that caused chicken-pox
among children. The vaccination is 85% effective in preventing the disease
and 100% effective in mitigating the disease's effect.

None of these had anything to do with my initial visit.

Did you have to pay for this treatment?

Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,
"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote:

I am certain that I had a BCG vaccination a few decades ago in Australia
before a trip to India, but I do *not* test positive when I get my
regular TB tests for the hospice where I volunteer.

Perce
I haven't had the vaccination or TB itself and yet I test positive.
Not that it means anything, btu I thought I'd throw it out there.

The skin test indicates that the person has been exposed and developed
antibodies.

Mac Cool wrote:
Jay Hanig:

I asked him if he seriously thought that another CT scan would show
what so many others hadn't and he said: "Of course not... but if I
*don't* order one and something happens, a lawyer will have my guts
for garters because I didn't order one."

So an expensive test is ordered essentially to head off an attorney
and for no other reason. Your health dollars at work.

And you believed that?

Not only believed, but empirically provable.

My state capped tort claims five years ago. Since then we've seen a
significant increase in physicans practicing here and malpractice insurance
rates have fallen five years in a row. There are 254 counties in my state.
Several years ago, there were many that did not have a practicing OB/GYN.
Now, all of them do.

Oh, doctors still practice defensive medicine, but it's tempered by common
sense. If you present with head lice, the doctor does not now (usually)
order a blood test for Chastic Fibrosis (a disease normally found in foxes).

In article , Peter
wrote:



Either you are a valid positive, because your system has been exposed to TB
(at
one time you have had the living TB bacteria in your system) or you are a
false
positive (most common cause is have had a BCG inoculation but there are also
some medically significant causes). Best advice is that it should be
explored
by a competent doc.
I am 56 years old, and the false positive has been around since I
took the initial test for school at 5. I was worked up then, again in
college when I was tested again having forgot about the positive, and
again when went nursing school in '82 (see above) and then yearly up to
around the mid-90s or so when OSHA finally got around to figuring out
they were probably causing more cancers than finding real TB cases and
stopped it for healthcare workers. (I only faintly glow at night any
more).

If the false positive reading can be ruled-out
(eliminated
as the reason), consideration should be given to providing you with a limited
course of anti-tuberculosis drugs to minimize the risk of the latent TB
infection activating some time in the future. Of course, there are all sorts
of
valid medical reasons for not taking that course of meds, and a doc who is
familiar with your details and all of this should be your guide. If you are
unsure about your usual doc, request a consultation with an infectious
disease
specialist.
This has been suggested but as I was clear better than 30 years (at
the time) I thought the risk/reward on this was substantially more risk
than reward. Especially prophylactically.
BTW: just to throw another interesting thing out, I also have
documented false positives to the VDRL and at least one other screening
test.
The VDRL caused all sorts of heck when I got married until my
pediatician got involved.
It is better to have failed your VDRL than to have never loved at
all. (g).

--
I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator
and name it after the IRS.
Robert Bakker, paleontologist

On 05/28/10 12:09 pm, Peter wrote:

So, you think that your genes are so superior that you will never
develop a non-injury illness? You need to examine the actuarial data
that medical insurance companies use and learn that most people are
healthy until the day that they become sick. And most people who become
sick have not had an injury. I would bet my retirement fund that the day
you develop an illness that warrants medical attention, you'll get to
the doctor for care and not "lie down and die". Why are you blabbering
on alt.home.repair you should take this to home.brain.repair

Consider it natural selection.

So you admit that you are an advocate of social Darwinism.

I few decades ago I was in the habit of referring to "economic
Darwinism" and "social Darwinism." Then I found out that biological
Darwinism caught on so readily because people had already bought
"survival of the fittest" in the economic realm -- as expressed in Adam
Smith's _Wealth of Nations_.

Perce

Jim Yanik wrote:
aemeijers wrote in
news
Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:

Our mistake was not annexing the island - as we did Puerto Rico and
Guam, after 1898. We just "administered" the island until about 1902
when we granted Cubans their independence.
Or as Sen SI Hyakawa stated so succinctly during the Panama Canal
Debate: "Of course its ours, we stole it fair and square."

ISTR a compatriot of TR's advised him to not try to dress up his
taking of the canal zone with any banal explantions, on the grounds
that such an audacious theft spoke for itself, and any window-dressing
would only diminish his legacy.

Or words to that effect- I don't care enough to look it up.


"took it"? (the Canal)
we BUILT IT (at our cost)and paid Panama for it.
The French started it,quit,and we completed it,with much loss of life.
It gave great benefit to Panama.
Then Carter gave it back to them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...e_Panama_Canal


Pay attention, now. Canal ZONE. TR wouldn't try to build unless US had
control of the land, and therefore guaranteed access to the waterway
(and more importantly, it could be denied to the unfriendlies.)

Until Carter gave it back to a tinpot dictator, of course.

--
aem sends...

aemeijers wrote in
:

Jim Yanik wrote:
aemeijers wrote in
news
Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:

Our mistake was not annexing the island - as we did Puerto Rico and
Guam, after 1898. We just "administered" the island until about 1902
when we granted Cubans their independence.
Or as Sen SI Hyakawa stated so succinctly during the Panama Canal
Debate: "Of course its ours, we stole it fair and square."

ISTR a compatriot of TR's advised him to not try to dress up his
taking of the canal zone with any banal explantions, on the grounds
that such an audacious theft spoke for itself, and any window-dressing
would only diminish his legacy.

Or words to that effect- I don't care enough to look it up.


"took it"? (the Canal)
we BUILT IT (at our cost)and paid Panama for it.
The French started it,quit,and we completed it,with much loss of life.
It gave great benefit to Panama.
Then Carter gave it back to them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...e_Panama_Canal


Pay attention, now. Canal ZONE. TR wouldn't try to build unless US had
control of the land, and therefore guaranteed access to the waterway
(and more importantly, it could be denied to the unfriendlies.)

Damn good thinking.
and it turned out very good for Panama,too.
We DID pay Panama for the Zone. got a good deal for it,too.
We did not just "take it".



Until Carter gave it back to a tinpot dictator, of course.


yes.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

Jim Yanik wrote:

Comrade Obama sends HIS kids to private schools.

And George the II sent HIS kids to Hockaday, a rather pricey private school in
Dallas.

ISTR that Comrade Obama attended private schools himself.

And George the II attended The Kincaid School in Houston and Philips in Andover.

Isn't Harvard a private school?

So is Yale.

-- Doug

harry wrote:

So, you sell your bit of paper for 100 times as much? Then the money
you recieve for it is essentially worth 100 times less. It's only
worth more if someone somewhere has worked, created value. That['s
one reason why we have had our recent disaster. This something for
nothing mentality. We're just going to have to get back to the
industrial age where work counts. The gov. in the UK has accepted
this and intends to support manufacturing and design.

You can't be that naive. He didn't sell a piece of paper. He sold a share of
an ongoing business. People are working in the business to create wealth, or at
least, trying to. -- Doug

"HeyBub" wrote:

Well, then, liberals and progressives don't have that modicum. To them,
wealth is like a pie of fixed dimensions with unequal slices. In the
interests of "fairness," the size of the slices must be adjusted.

While I know for a fact there are liberals that have that view, you are painting
with far too broad a brush. I also know for a fact that there are lots of
liberals that have an excellent understanding of economics.

I know for a fact that there are lots of conservatives that understand economics
about as well as my dog. Ignorance is uniformly distributed across the
political spectrum. -- Doug

On 5/27/2010 11:00 PM harry spake thus:

On May 28, 1:26�am, David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 5/25/2010 12:13 PM harry spake thus:

On the box in the UK the other night, his film about capitalism in
America which I'd heard of but not seen before.
Hah. �I couldn't fault the man. �He was so exactly correct.

I agree.

Let the flames rise higher and higher! (Here in this newsgroup, I mean.)

It has to be said lots of his discourse applied to the UK as well.

Well, of course: capitalism isn't confined to the Untied Snakes of
America. It's a worldwide disease.


--
The fashion in killing has an insouciant, flirty style this spring,
with the flaunting of well-defined muscle, wrapped in flags.

- Comment from an article on Antiwar.com (http://antiwar.com)

harry wrote:

So, you sell your bit of paper for 100 times as much? Then the money
you recieve for it is essentially worth 100 times less. It's only
worth more if someone somewhere has worked, created value.

Giggle

That['s
one reason why we have had our recent disaster. This something for
nothing mentality. We're just going to have to get back to the
industrial age where work counts. The gov. in the UK has accepted
this and intends to support manufacturing and design.

If the UK is subsidizing manufacturing, then it has failed - and failed
miserably - to pay attention to one of its foremost economists, Adam Smith.
In 1776, Smith wrote a treatise entitled "An Inquiry Into The Nature and
Causes of The Wealth of Nations" in which he proved (and proved
conclusively) that nations should do what they do best and the governments
of these nations should NOT interfere with the expertise of competing
nations.

Specifically, if China can manufacture something and sell it to Britons
cheaper than Britons can manufacture an indentical product, the government
of the UK should stay out of the way and not: a) subsidize domestic
manufacturers or b) impose tariffs on Chinese products. By following these
two simple rules the citizens of both nations prosper.

Violating either of these rules benefits a small number of people (locals
producing the product at issue) and penalizes magnitudes more citizens who
have to pay more for the product.

Of course, Adam Smith was a Scotsman...

harry wrote:

I visited a VETS hospital whilst in America (Des Moines). It was
intistinguishable from an NHS (UK) hospital. (I have spent thirty
years in the NHS)

Exactly my point.

Don Klipstein wrote:

The overall big problem is a big set of a lot of problems, and none
of the individual problems alone is an impressive percentage of the
total.

The case is the same for USA excessive energy consumption.


Somewhere between straw-man and canard. We often hear: "The U.S. has 5% of
the world's population yet we consume 25% of the world's energy!"

What's left out of the equation is the U.S. is responsible for 25% of the
planet's Gross Domestic Product.

I leave it to common sense for the reader to detect what is the cause and
what is the effect.

On May 29, 3:26�pm, "HeyBub" wrote:
harry wrote:

So, you sell your bit of paper for 100 times as much? �Then the money
you recieve for it is essentially worth 100 times less. � It's only
worth more if someone somewhere has worked, created value.

Giggle

That['s
one reason why we have had our recent disaster. �This something for
nothing mentality. �We're just going to have to get back to the
industrial age where work counts. � The gov. in the UK has accepted
this and intends to support manufacturing and design.

If the UK is subsidizing manufacturing, then it has failed - and failed
miserably - to pay attention to one of its foremost economists, Adam Smith.
In 1776, Smith wrote a treatise entitled "An Inquiry Into The Nature and
Causes of The Wealth of Nations" in which he proved (and proved
conclusively) that nations should do what they do best and the governments
of these nations should NOT interfere with the expertise of competing
nations.

Specifically, if China can manufacture something and sell it to Britons
cheaper than Britons can manufacture an indentical product, the government
of the UK should stay out of the way and not: a) subsidize domestic
manufacturers or b) impose tariffs on Chinese products. By following these
two simple rules the citizens of both nations prosper.

Violating either of these rules benefits a small number of people (locals
producing the product at issue) and penalizes magnitudes more citizens who
have to pay more for the product.

Of course, Adam Smith was a Scotsman...

No, the idea is not to subsidise manufacturing. The idea is what we
do best. Innovation. The banking/commerce wheeze being such a
failure. We still do a lot of manufacturing in the UK.
The problem is the Chinese slave workforce. And the fact they hold
don't allow their currency to float. These sort of things never went
on in Smith's day.
They are bent on destroying the West. They don't care how many
Chinese have to die to achieve this. Given this, protectionism might
help until they desist.

Scots was he? Probably died of alcohol poisoning.

On 5/28/2010 4:25 PM, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In ,
wrote:



Either you are a valid positive, because your system has been exposed to TB
(at
one time you have had the living TB bacteria in your system) or you are a
false
positive (most common cause is have had a BCG inoculation but there are also
some medically significant causes). Best advice is that it should be
explored
by a competent doc.
I am 56 years old, and the false positive has been around since I
took the initial test for school at 5. I was worked up then, again in
college when I was tested again having forgot about the positive, and
again when went nursing school in '82 (see above) and then yearly up to
around the mid-90s or so when OSHA finally got around to figuring out
they were probably causing more cancers than finding real TB cases and
stopped it for healthcare workers. (I only faintly glow at night any
more).

If the false positive reading can be ruled-out
(eliminated
as the reason), consideration should be given to providing you with a limited
course of anti-tuberculosis drugs to minimize the risk of the latent TB
infection activating some time in the future. Of course, there are all sorts
of
valid medical reasons for not taking that course of meds, and a doc who is
familiar with your details and all of this should be your guide. If you are
unsure about your usual doc, request a consultation with an infectious
disease
specialist.
This has been suggested but as I was clear better than 30 years (at
the time) I thought the risk/reward on this was substantially more risk
than reward. Especially prophylactically.
BTW: just to throw another interesting thing out, I also have
documented false positives to the VDRL and at least one other screening
test.
The VDRL caused all sorts of heck when I got married until my
pediatician got involved.
It is better to have failed your VDRL than to have never loved at
all. (g).

You have immunologic anomalies that would fascinate immunologists and infectious
disease wonks. They should pay you for the privilege of studying you! :-)

Actually, the risk of serious side effects from 6 or so months of anti-TB
prophylaxis increases with age. In your mid-20s, the risk would have been
negligible. At this time, not severe, but not negligible either. Certainly
sounds as though you have had your false + tuberculin status well reviewed and
followed in the past. I agree with you; at this point, a chest x-ray/year on
account of the tuberculin status probably exceeds the risk/benefit ratio.