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Baffling neurological illness affects growing number of young adults

theguardian.com

121–127 of 127 posts

Re: Baffling neurological illness affects growing number of young adults

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's a nitpicking argument which depends on your definitions. From what i understand, what you call "communism" i call "State capitalism" and what you call "democratic socialism" i call "liberal capitalism". Under all these systems, there's privileges: people who have more and people who have less, while communism is usually defined as a stateless/classless society (including by marxists). > Wouldn't it be mor…

> But capitalism as a social structure incentivizes not to care because there's no (immediate) profit involved in respecting your environment Ok. So what are the viable political/economic alternatives?

Anarcho egoism ♡

Re: Baffling neurological illness affects growing number of young adults

#122
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The joke is that it's gotten so progressive that no one gets better I don't think that's the reason. Public health systems in Canada/France/Belgium have (had?) a very good reputation because they were in fact really good until the neoliberal turn on the 80s/90s. When you have health workers running the show with a fair budget, wait times are low and results are good, and everyone is happy. Now introduce some manage…

Honest question: what social security hole are we talking about here? What kind of fraud? The gross majority of the social charges of a large company depend on employee wages. Having worked for a few CAC40 companies, knowing the makeup of their workforce, and looking at their public financial data, the numbers seem square. On the other hand, every day I see small businesses with significant undeclared revenue and obv…

About unpaid dues (fraude aux cotisations), the highest financial authority (Cour des Comptes) estimated between 6.8 and 25 billion euros fraud annually in 2014, depending on the evaluation method. [0] Then there's dues exemptions. A study estimated 57 billion euros were exempted in 2015, 57% of which was compensated by the State's budget. [1]

We could also mention tax evasion and other schemes, which affect the ability of the national budget to compensate frauds. Despite arguments about the exact number, most agree big corporations pay less taxes than the small on average [2]. It's interesting to note the evolution over time of subsidiaries of CAC40 companies in fiscal paradises. [3]

Overall, there's plenty of fraud and "legal" exemptions on all levels. Quite enough to close the social security deficit.

> Personally I can't wait for France to adopt a fiscal data module like the Belgian HoReCa black-box

I think that's happening. The law is clear that accounting software has to be certified since a few years (which has been a major hurdle for FLOSS projects). Personally, i'm not so much interested in such measures as most of the fraud is committed by the very wealthy and such measures could affect smaller businesses and common people in some ways: need to invest in more expensive accounting equipment/software, more difficulty for undocumented people to find honest jobs (though they'll still be able to work for big industrial groups who are famous for exploiting them).

[0] https://www.ccomptes.fr/system/files/2019-11/20191202-synthe...

[1] https://www.cairn.info/revue-de-l-ires-2015-4-page-3.htm

[2] https://www.liberation.fr/politiques/2017/02/24/les-entrepri...

[3] https://www.capital.fr/entreprises-marches/les-entreprises-d...

Re: Baffling neurological illness affects growing number of young adults

#123
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's a nitpicking argument which depends on your definitions. From what i understand, what you call "communism" i call "State capitalism" and what you call "democratic socialism" i call "liberal capitalism". Under all these systems, there's privileges: people who have more and people who have less, while communism is usually defined as a stateless/classless society (including by marxists). > Wouldn't it be mor…

Ah yes. The old “Nobody has ever tried Communism (or socialism)” argument.

I'm not saying nobody has done it. I'm saying those actual examples (eg. 1936 revolutionary Spain, until the stalinist then franquist takeovers) are not what people refer to when they talk about "communism" as a scapegoat. Unless of course "communism" refers to dictatorship of the proletariat, which surprisingly both leninists and capitalists agree about.

Re: Baffling neurological illness affects growing number of young adults

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's a nitpicking argument which depends on your definitions. From what i understand, what you call "communism" i call "State capitalism" and what you call "democratic socialism" i call "liberal capitalism". Under all these systems, there's privileges: people who have more and people who have less, while communism is usually defined as a stateless/classless society (including by marxists). > Wouldn't it be mor…

> But capitalism as a social structure incentivizes not to care because there's no (immediate) profit involved in respecting your environment Ok. So what are the viable political/economic alternatives?

Self-determination and self-organization on a wide scale. There's much less incentives to affect your environment and community negatively when decisions are taken collectively, than when decisions are taken by a minority reaping benefits but not suffering from negative consequences (pollution, bad working conditions, etc).

If anything, the COVID crisis has shown that health workers care and will go to great lengths of creativity to counteract the bureaucracy and lack of resources (remember the trashbag suits? the homesewn masks?). Now imagine if these people were in charge of organizing healthcare instead of managers? I can only imagine much better outcomes for everyone involved. And the same is true across most (all?) industries and areas of life.

Re: Baffling neurological illness affects growing number of young adults

#125
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said hospitals. I said clinics. Research is not something the private sector wants to do in this domain, because it's not profitable. If all you saw was endoscopies and sports health, you weren't looking. There are tons of generalist clinics.

What kind of community clinic would see this? The "whistleblower" in this article is a member of the health authority. You expect a generalist seeing rich people for their arthritis to be diving into this?

That's exactly the point. Private healthcare is not interested in this case at all, nor in any cases like it. It's not profitable.

Also the whistleblower isn't a member of the health authority. He's an employee of Vitalité Network which has a contact with the health authority but is also allowed to operate privately under some provisions.

Re: Baffling neurological illness affects growing number of young adults

#126
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of community clinic would see this? The "whistleblower" in this article is a member of the health authority. You expect a generalist seeing rich people for their arthritis to be diving into this?

That's exactly the point. Private healthcare is not interested in this case at all, nor in any cases like it. It's not profitable. Also the whistleblower isn't a member of the health authority. He's an employee of Vitalité Network which has a contact with the health authority but is also allowed to operate privately under some provisions.

Huh? Your logic makes zero sense. Why would a private GP even have the connections to the Health Authority? You claim it's because there is no "profit", I say because "that's not their job".

Re: Baffling neurological illness affects growing number of young adults

#127
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the point. Private healthcare is not interested in this case at all, nor in any cases like it. It's not profitable. Also the whistleblower isn't a member of the health authority. He's an employee of Vitalité Network which has a contact with the health authority but is also allowed to operate privately under some provisions.

Huh? Your logic makes zero sense. Why would a private GP even have the connections to the Health Authority? You claim it's because there is no "profit", I say because "that's not their job".

You seem not to understand the Canadian health system. Privately owned clinics are allowed to enter in contract with the provincial government and be paid by the public insurance system for services provided. This is the framework under which the doctor was operating.

Doctors of all stripes are allowed to open their own practice take on cases privately. There is simply no profit in opening a private practice to deal with difficult to diagnose cases affecting generally poor people requiring dozens of experts to investigating over multiple years. That's why no doctors decided to set up a private practice to deal with these patients - there is no profit motive. Too much work, and too little pay.

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