391–400 of 590 posts
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You can have a fleet of specialized self-driving taxis for people with disabilities. They can have articulated ramps or other special accommodations.
You could have trams and trains with level boarding which helps people who don't have disabilities too, costs less, takes less space in the city, makes less noise, needs less maintenance, and moves more people.
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Another variation of this are GLP 1 drugs. Obesity costs USA $1.75T ( https://milkeninstitute.org/content-hub/news-releases/econom... , grossed up for inflation) Number of people that are obese: 100M Annual economic impact from obesity per person: $17,500 per year GLP-1 "For All": $6,000 per year (assuming multiple vendors, and some will be over vs under) Savings: $11,500 per year per person. Economic impact: Around…
Could US gov just buy out one the patents and make it free for all?
Actually, you don't need to do everybody all at once. Target the biggest (no pun intended) opportunities first.
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Yes, they're empty, but it's also a catch 22 because it takes urbanization, frequent bus services, and a lot of time for people to adjust to it. Anyone who spent enough time in Europe can tell you about how efficient, convenient, and efficient a bus network can get. Also, most people go to work, so buses tend to be very busy in the morning and at shift changes etc. It's not magic though, there are a lot of places whe…
We solved that several generations ago with cars.
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Even when it's not the insurer, it's at least a hospital. Many a doctor around me that used to have a private practice sold to one of the hospital chains, as they promised more money than by owning, solely due to superior collective action advantages. A large insurer can bully a private practice into cutting costs, but a hospital network that handles 40% of ERs in the metro area? The insurance company can lose. So ev…
On top of that the ACA prevents new physician owned hospitals from being established and placed restrictions on expansions of existing ones
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need#History
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And congratulations to any of today's lucky ten thousand who are just learning of the Principal-Agent Problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
I'm convinced that a great majority of problems in the US these days fundamentally boils down to principal agent problems. The 2008 financial crisis is a great example. Once banks no longer kept mortgages on their own books, it just became a matter of time until that was going to blow up. The incentives change.
To me, a great majority of problems in the US fundamentally boils down to people looking for markets and money where there aren’t any. Great examples include rising healthcare costs (what is the right price to pay for saving a child’s life, for example? Culturally, it’s basically unlimited!) whereas rising legal costs are NOT seen as a crisis (suing other people over BS grievances, unlike saving lives, is not compulsory); infrastructure investment (cars don’t make financial sense everywhere and everything all the time, but they’re REALLY cozy, so we will spend exorbitant amounts of money on infrastructure for them compared to everything else); the obesity crisis (eating feels GOOD, even if it costs EXORBITANT amounts of money); worsening education outcomes; lack of growth of alternatives to single family homes…
I think that the authors solution, outsourcing production is not quite right, they gloss over other issues. >In a large country like the US, some variation in bus design is inevitable due to differences in conditions like weather and topography. But Silverberg said that many customizations are cosmetic, reflecting agency preferences or color schemes but not affecting vehicle performance. This is kind of absurd, I hav…
It definitely depends. The traditional yellow school buses here (Canada) use diesel, so they need things like glow plugs [0] and block heaters [1] to be able to run in the winter. But even that only helps so much, so when the nighttime lows are below –40°C, they cancel the busses since they know that they won't run.
Most of the city busses here use natural gas, and they're considerably more reliable in the cold weather but if they're parked for too long on a really cold day (even while running), the brakes will freeze up and they won't be able to move [2].
Similarly, the busses need a fairly powerful heating system, since it's tricky to heat a large space when it's really cold and the front door is open half the time. But conversely, most of the busses have no A/C.
Adding glow plugs, and block heaters, and brake dryers shouldn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but a more reliable natural gas bus might be double the price of an unreliable diesel one.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_plug
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_heater
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_brake_(road_vehicle)#Disad...
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Insurance profit is limited to a percentage of what they pay out. So the more they pay, the more money they make.
Also the largest insurers increasingly own the doctors you’re seeing too. Also the pharmacy you get your drugs from. Also the entity that negotiates prices between pharma companies and your insurer. More healthcare consumption = better, across the board
"Federal funding typically covers 80% of bus purchases, with agencies responsible for the remainder." Well, there is your answer. The one making the purchase isn't the one primarily paying for the purchase. This makes them less sensitive to pricing. Kinda like how expensive healthcare is since it is paid for by insurance. Or how you don't care how much you put on your plate or what you choose to eat at an all you can…
The problem is that literally nobody can tell me how much anything is going to cost until I get the bill in a month. Not even because they don't want to tell me. Nobody at the desk even knows what my price is going to be because it's all numberwang.
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It's not that pushing buses onto surface streets makes it worse for cars. It's that it makes it worse for buses, which then leads people to take cars instead, which makes things even worse.
1. Priority bus lanes are solving that problem. 2. If getting through downtown by bus is slow, getting through it by car isn't any faster. Anyways, Seattle's transit problem isn't bad downtown bus service, it's godawful spoke-and-last-mile coverage, which eviscerates ridership, makes the overall network less efficient, and forms a negative-feedback-loop that blocks transit improvements. Nobody likes sitting around fo…
If the buses and cars are on the same roads, going the same speed, the car will get you to your destination faster, and everyone will go by car. Buses only get ridership if they have dedicated lanes where they can go faster than regular car traffic:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22143...
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Preventative care is free because it saves a tremendous amount of money for the insurance company and physical and emotional hardship for yourself by catching bad things early.
It's usually cheaper to die