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Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, do you think that if enough people want to peacefully live without government interference at all (e.g. without a government) they don't deserve to do so and they don't deserve, for example, to be sold a piece of land to completely secede from state?
eli5 your posts are marked dead, so no one will be able to read them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
eli5 your posts are marked dead, so no one will be able to read them.
wow, what does "marked dead" means? First time I see someone mentioning it on HN.
tl;dr He probably got flagged for being a day old account (and being argumentative). I try not to say anything too controversial on here since I do not want to meet the same fate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "That's like saying that Comcast/Time Warner are a "union for Internet users"." Comcast and Time Warner are most comparable to hospital chains in the medical context (or perhaps insurers, depending on what parameters you choose for the comparison). > "If the AMA were "little more than a union for doctors", doctors would have a lot more respect for it, instead of the great contempt that they currently do." Many rank…
> The AMA's members are physicians, and other medical personnel; you may look at the AMA as a union, lobbying group, or a professional association, but it is certainly not advocating for the interests of the insurers.[1] Explicitly, certainly not. But in some ways they do end up empowering insurers (whether intentionally or corruption of their original intent). (And by the way, I didn't mean that this was the case ei…
[1] http://www.policymic.com/articles/41531/union-of-the-snake-h...
This article is for real? Am I missing something? Sure, people want a diagnosis and other services from an unregulated, anonymous doctor with a reputation built by what? Amazon-like reviews? Come on!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, do you think that if enough people want to peacefully live without government interference at all (e.g. without a government) they don't deserve to do so and they don't deserve, for example, to be sold a piece of land to completely secede from state?
That's a very loaded (but easy) question. In the United States, we fought an entire war over the question of whether or not a state had the authority to secede from the federal government (the Union). The seceding states lost that fight. It would be very hard to argue that individuals have that right when the states do not. You may wish that it were different, but the fact is that individuals do not have this right,…
So wars decide what is right and what is wrong?
> The AMA, which is little more than a union for doctors, doesn’t allow any policy changes that threaten to increase competition and reduce their monopoly profits That's like saying that Comcast/Time Warner are a "union for Internet users". If the AMA were "little more than a union for doctors", doctors would have a lot more respect for it, instead of the great contempt that they currently do. If anything, you could…
As far as I'm concerned, students have a right to a high quality education because without one their future will be a trainwreck. Just because they're largely minors doesn't, to me, mean that their parents have the right to deny them a future in favor of whatever their personal reasons may be. Yes, this is an infringement on the 'rights' of parents, but I don't think parents have the right to treat children like property in the first place.
And yes, there are some parents who do a great job homeschooling; I'm sure of it. I've just never met them, and I was extensively involved in local homeschooling programs back in my home town, so I interacted with dozens of homeschooling families, hundreds of homeschooled kids, and visited some of the organized conventions and programs that involved thousands more. Too many of these people simply aren't qualified to teach a child from the beginning up to college age, even if they may have the legal freedom to do it.
As it relates to the article's premise: I also think individuals have a right to reasonable health because it is integral to their future. A nation full of sick people is going to be a nation with low productivity and a high tax burden from running things like emergency rooms. It is in our best interest to offer everyone affordable access to some basic minimum level of health care, and to do so in the cheapest possible manner. The author seems to believe that a comparison shopping website for doctors will deliver affordable health care to everyone, but I think he ignores a few essential issues that could make it impossible for such a website to deliver good results:
a) Even now, many people who need health care do not have regular access to the internet. This is in part due to the huge stretches of rural America, but it is also due to the fact that we have a huge homeless population and a huge low-income population, both of whom may not even be able to afford the equipment necessary to get on the internet. You certainly aren't going to propose giving them free equipment and internet access so they can go buy health care on a website.
b) It is arguably impossible to comparison shop for essential health care. You don't have the time to waste on it and you are emotionally/mentally compromised by the stress of your impending doom. To a degree, this is correct - you should be prioritizing your own well-being. It should be the responsibility of everyone else in the system to try and keep costs for this essential care to a minimum; instead, a profit-driven health system tries to maximize profit off this essential care, and deny claims to as many dying people as possible. Introducing more profit motive into this system does not seem like it will fix anything.
c) Medical practice over the internet without licenses is simply a recipe for disaster. I am willing to accept that a licensed doctor could perhaps perform a subset of their duties over the internet; I occasionally email my doctor instead of visiting them in person when I need minor adjustments to medicine doses, and that is fine - both sides are fully informed and no corners are being cut. However, if you're not even going to license them to verify that they meet the basest standards of medical competence, you'd be mad to also let them practice without ever seeing a patient in person. It's just a bad idea. We have enough issues with malpractice and patients being sold treatments they don't need as things are; removing licensing and medical standards will make this worse as both of those problems can be increased by a profit motive.
d) Comparison shopping for long-term health care seems nearly impossible since in many cases, if you discover the care you are getting is suboptimal, it is too late to switch - whether because of pre-existing conditions, or because the care is ongoing and transferring to another provider would put you at risk. You can't trivially ask to have your dying father moved to an intensive care unit across town just to save a couple thousand dollars, even if you CAN do it.
It seems incredibly irresponsible for a doctor to prescribe things based on an internet conversation without a physical exam. You can't auscultate (listen to with a stethoscope), visually inspect, run labs, do basic imaging, etc. over an anonymous internet forum, which are basic facilities that anybody should expect a doctor in the US to utilize. It is plainly evident, once you become involved in clinical encounters, that you discover things on exam that the patient didn't know about, forgot to tell you, or wouldn't be able to find themselves. These findings are often critical for diagnosis. Telling the patient to take a certain drug without that data is dangerous and irresponsible.
You could certainly offer general "advice", but this will never be a substitute for seeing a doctor. Perhaps interfaces with video and sound are able to up the bandwidth of internet medicine but currently there is still too wide of a gap between that and actually laying hands on the patient.
I was not surprised to find that this is exactly what the linked document of related policies by state medical boards states for New York (http://www.fsmb.org/pdf/InternetPrescribing-law&policylangua...):
Section 80.63 of the controlled substance regulations requires a practitioner to physically examine a patient prior to initially prescribing a controlled substance. Issuing a prescription for a controlled substance solely on the basis of a questionnaire or other medical history submitted to a practitioner over the Internet does not meet the requirement of a physical examination or establish a legitimate practitioner-patient relationship and is not a valid prescription.
I cannot find anything controversial about that. I am all for forums linking doctors to talk to more patients, even for payment, but keep the "MD" out of the name because this is not a true substitute for seeing a doctor.
I'm bothered that this article seems to believe that the rise in homeschooling (in large part by unqualified parents using low-quality textbooks and ill-considered strategies) is another example of people 'opting out' of some particular brand of oppression by the State, and that doing so will increase supply, or something? As far as I'm concerned, students have a right to a high quality education because without one…
So the issue is that the parents are forcing a decision on the child, in violation of the child's rights? What if the child wants to be homeschooled?