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But life had other plans

danlebrero.com

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Re: But life had other plans

#181

Post by burrows »

nautilius wrote: post #167
burrows wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the word “free” mean here? I assume the clinical professionals are paid and the researchers were paid and the pharma venders are paid, so that money is coming from somewhere. Is it that someone other than you pays for it?

It's pretty clear what 'free' means here, the person getting the treatment is not billed for the treatment. In that way, a society organizes that no one has the existential threat (financially or medically) of prohibitively high cost. It's so obvious that I don't understand how people still see it as this elevating 'gotcha' moment. It's the same when you drink free beer, breath free air, enjoy free time, etc: obvious…

> It's pretty clear what 'free' means here, the person getting the treatment is not billed for the treatment.

Actually I think that’s a pretty good example of what confuses me about this usage of “free”. Usually when I call something “free” I am making a claim about who pays for the thing, but as you pointed out, in this case it has something to do with who is billed by the service provider.

> In that way, a society organizes that no one has the existential threat (financially or medically) of prohibitively high cost.

IMO, no current Earth society comes close to that criteria. For example, if someone has a currently untreatable disease, then isn’t that just saying the cost of treatment is prohibitively high? ie, the cost of hiring scientists, renting lab space, running trials, etc.

Re: But life had other plans

#182

Post by edumucelli »

samhw wrote: post #137
gassius wrote: post #122

Life finds a way. My wife had generalized tonic-clonic seizure for an entire year (non previous seizure history) without any cause being detected by multiple MRIs. She was taking increasing doses of Levetiracetam that somehow controlled the scope of the seizures but not avoid them completely. After a year of this, we go for another ER visit after the latest one and she ask, somehow randomly, to have a pregnancy test,…

Jesus, this is heartbreaking. I'm so sorry. I haven't gone through anything quite like that, but after friends' deaths and suchlike, I always loved this passage from Slaughterhouse-Five: > The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and fu…

Somehow it has a similar content of this one published in "Facts of the Faith", 1919:

--- Death is nothing at all, I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we still are. Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way which you always used, put no difference in your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we shared together. Let my name ever be the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well.

Re: But life had other plans

#183

Post by burrows »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #174
burrows wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, you give the government money (taxes) and then the government pays the clinics for your medical care (with the tax money). But doesn’t that mean you’re still paying for your own medical care with the government acting as a middle-man? So then it’s not free.

You are missing the key feature: solidarity. It is not paying for your own medical care it is paying a small proportion of everyone's medical care . And in fact for a proportion of the population it is in fact free or nearly so because they have never paid any income tax or the cost was so high that the taxes they did pay plus the proceeds of selling very possession they had and selling their children into servitude…

> And in fact for a proportion of the population it is in fact free or nearly so because they have never paid any income tax or the cost was so high that the taxes they did pay plus the proceeds of selling very possession they had and selling their children into servitude still wasn't enough to pay for it.

Okay, so if the person receiving the service doesn’t pay taxes, then they do not pay for the service. And for everyone else that does pay taxes, it is a cost with no attendant service.

> we all understand the point of taxation and redistribution (at least in Europe we do)

What is the point?

> what exactly was the point you were repeatedly failing to make clear?

I don’t have some huge point. I’m just confused by this usage of “free”. There are other usages that I find confusing as well.

A child tells his friends that everything on Amazon is free, meanwhile his parents silently pay for his purchases.

Someone steals a car and tells her friends that she has a new free car.

Re: But life had other plans

#184

Post by nautilius »

burrows wrote: post #181
nautilius wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty clear what 'free' means here, the person getting the treatment is not billed for the treatment. In that way, a society organizes that no one has the existential threat (financially or medically) of prohibitively high cost. It's so obvious that I don't understand how people still see it as this elevating 'gotcha' moment. It's the same when you drink free beer, breath free air, enjoy free time, etc: obvious…

> It's pretty clear what 'free' means here, the person getting the treatment is not billed for the treatment. Actually I think that’s a pretty good example of what confuses me about this usage of “free”. Usually when I call something “free” I am making a claim about who pays for the thing, but as you pointed out, in this case it has something to do with who is billed by the service provider. > In that way, a society…

> in this case it has something to do with who is billed by the service provider.

What else could it even be? You started your gotcha with the truism that it's not free, so, yeah, nothing is free, and the whole discussion is meaningless. You're arguing in bad faith, but that just makes your argument meaningless.

> no current Earth society comes close to that criteria. For example, if someone has a currently untreatable disease

Your counterargument is that there exist diseases that cannot be treated anywhere?

Let me give you an example of something treatable: Endemic (flea-borne_) typhus. In Europe, the given example is "British POWs in Germany at the end of World War I when they described conditions in Germany." [1] In the US, instead Typhus shows up in the reports of the LA Medical Association as a regular occurence (among homeless, mostly). [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemic_typhus [2] https://www.ladocs.org/news-events/news/lac-dph-health-alert...

Re: But life had other plans

#185

Post by ivolimmen »

Wow, love to read stuff like this.

My third kid also had given us a nice surprise. My wife was pregnant; we knew that. We had an appointment with the doctor for the first check-up. We came in and the doctor did not see a baby on the echo. We were not really badly shook up as we lost our first but we where not enjoying it either. Next day I am at work and I get a phone call from my wife. The hospital rang. The blood that was examined before we wend for the check-up had bad values and indicated a possible tumour (but not the bad kind). I raced home, we wend to the doctor. Before actually going into surgery he wanted to do an internal echo just to make sure where it was and how big it was.

There she was. We where pregnant.

Re: But life had other plans

#186

Post by burrows »

rayiner wrote: post #179
burrows wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the compelling reasons not to get a DNA test as a man (when a woman is claiming, “You are the biological father of this baby.”)? Is it expensive or illegal or will your friends shame you or the woman will be angry?

What are compelling reasons to get one? Worst case scenario, you have baby.

I do not want to invest significant resources into progeny that is not my own. Doing a paternity test reduces the possibility of this.

Re: But life had other plans

#188

Post by usefulcat »

gwbas1c wrote: post #173
MandieD wrote: post #77

In my late 30's, with the only indication that we were fertile at all having been an ectopic pregnancy many years before, we gave up. We had wanted kids, but our lives were good, with nieces and nephews we love. A few months before my 40th birthday - and the pandemic - SURPRISE! We are currently the proud but exhausted old parents of an increasingly rambunctious toddler.

You aren't that old. I know someone who had twins in his mid 40s. My cousin also had multiple pregnancies in her 40s. I also had my last a few months before my 40th birthday. BTW: "Oopsies" are common. If you're 100% done, consider surgical birth control.

> BTW: "Oopsies" are common. If you're 100% done, consider surgical birth control.

Yes. Not a doctor, but according to my wife, if you previously had difficulties getting pregnant, it may be easier to get pregnant again after the first birth.

Re: But life had other plans

#189

Post by vincentmarle »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #166
john1633 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, if it's truly his child, why would his wife be opposed to verifying that? Not to mention that it can likely be done without her knowledge.

Suggesting that not only do you not trust your wife but you also don’t trust her so much so that you get a paternity test without her knowledge shows a huge lack of faith in the relationship, and I would caution against this. Please remember the original circumstance is that a woman ends up pregnant on an imperfect birth control; there’s no reason or contextual evidence for any sort of cheating behavior. Assuming you…

Like OP said: trust but verify. Speaking from experience, lol.

Re: But life had other plans

#190

Post by cycomanic »

agent008t wrote: post #143
samhw wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really matter whose child it is? You seem to be writing this as if she might give birth to a goblin or something like that. I can't see what's "speaking practically" and "putting the morality aside" here, because there's not really any practical difference.

It's a question of trust, for starters?

So what is the test that the husband should undergo? I mean why only think about the faithfulness of the wife?
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