New Study Shows Transparency Can Lower Health Care Costs

found online by Raymond

 

High Cost of Health Care

From Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson:

The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) released a study on Tuesday that shows greater price transparency in health care prices leads to lower costs for the consumer.

In an interview with Steve Scaffidi on 620 WTMJ, study author Will Flanders explained what other states have done to increase health care cost transparency.

“So we do have some states that are kind of leading the way on price transparency,” Flanders said. “What these states have done is they’ve set up an all payers database where you can actually see the average cost of someone with your insurance has had for a particular procedure.”

Using data from the Center for Disease Control, the study found that states that have this level of price transparency report a reduction in the number of people that say they can’t afford their health care.

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The Real Public Charges

found online by Raymond

 

Lowest Paid, Hardest Workers, Keeping Country Running

From Blue in the Bluegrass:

The hardest-working and most economy-supporting people in this country have the lowest-paid jobs. Those would be the jobs the rest of us literally can’t live unless somebody else does them: the lettuce-pickers and all the other food crop harvesters, the toilet cleaners and the garbage collectors, the diaper-changing, vomit-mopping-up caretakers of our infants and our elderly.

They are the ones who keep this country running. They are the ones whose hard-earned taxes repugs are giving to the real public charges: the oxygen-wasting idle rich.

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The Cruel Message of Calvinism

found online by Raymond

 

 
From Linda at The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

It was the 1970s. Hippies were everywhere. Stores carried posters and signs with slogans like: “Keep On Truckin’,” “Peace,” and “Smile God Loves You.” One week our sweet Sunday school teacher had a warning for us kids. She told us not to believe the signs that said “Smile God Loves You” because they weren’t true. God did not love everybody. I didn’t think much about this warning at the time. I was already learning not to question the things I heard in church. As the years went by and I transitioned from a curious child into a quiet teenager, I grew frustrated with church. Those early lessons about kind and helpful Jesus didn’t mesh with the grown-up sermons about a righteous, angry God. The punishment doled out by God at the Tower of Babel seemed like a prank compared to burning unbelievers in Hell forever. I didn’t understand what we were supposed to do for Jesus. I knew that He had died for us wicked humans, but there was something crucial I was missing. Why did all these people spend every Sunday listening to the preacher talk about it? What was the point? Our preacher spent a lot of time and energy ranting about all these other preachers who had everything wrong. There was a long list of these false preachers. He also had a long list of behaviors that would not help you get into Heaven: praying, tithing, getting baptized, helping the poor, caring for the sick, winning souls, going to church, volunteering in church, building the church, studying the Bible, serving your community, and on and on and on. I got tense just listening to him talk about all the ways you could waste your time trying to be a good person. It was like listening to a song with an overly long introduction. I kept waiting for the tension to break and for him to finally say what we should do to get into Heaven, but he never did.

It occurred to me that church was vastly different from school. In school, you learned about a new subject, studied it, took tests on it, then you moved on to the next level. You repeated this process from first grade to second grade to third grade and so on. By the time you got to middle school, you didn’t keep going over the same topics you learned in grade school; you were expected to have them memorized so they could form the foundation of more advanced subjects. Not so in church. In church you went every Sunday, year after year, to hear the same lecture about how horrible you are and how you deserve to burn in Hell and how Jesus would save you from Hell if only . . . something. What that something was, I couldn’t quite grasp. I wondered if I was dumb. Obviously, every other person in church understood it, so why didn’t I?

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Ayn Rand on Pollution

found online by Raymond

 

Libertarians and Pollution

From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

To my knowledge, Rand didn’t spend much time specifically on the issue of pollution. But given that her political philosophy is grounded in the principle of individual rights, it logically follows that she would believe that anti-pollution laws have their place in a free, industrial society.

And she did have a few things to say explicitly on pollution and the government’s role:

As far as the issue of actual pollution is concerned, it is primarily a scientific, not a political, problem. In regard to the political principle involved: if a man creates a physical danger or harm to others, which extends beyond the line of his own property, such as unsanitary conditions or even loud noise, and if this is proved, the law can and does hold him responsible.

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Journalism’s Euphemism Succubus Strikes Again

found online by Raymond

 

High School Students, Social Media, and a Racist Video

From driftglass:

I would like to imagine that a heated, principles debate over the importance of precision and accuracy in journalism took place in the newsroom of my local, dying newspaper when they decided to run with this headline:

Racially charged video from Auburn emerges on social media

Because the video in question is not “racially charged” or “racially tinged” or “controversial” or any of the other soft-language euphemisms that America’s most timorous profession seems to roll out every day in order to protect the delicate sensibilities of their fence-straddling Centrist subscribers and/or to avoid pissing off their racist Republican subscribers.

Because that’s what this video is.

Racist.

Period. This is an observable fact —

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Epstein’s Death Should Generate Investigations, Not Conspiracy Theories

found online by Raymond

 
From Marc Steiner at The Real News Network:

From the interview with Jeet Heer, National-Affairs Correspondent at The Nation:

JEET HEER: I think one thing to keep in mind is this most recent time, why did he end up in jail? It was because of diligent investigation by Julie Brown of The Miami Herald, who did this terrific reporting that really revived the case and made clear that the original 2008 deal was just unconscionable. There was something very fishy going on there.

A man was found guilty of multiple counts of child molestation and got this deal where he’s basically under house arrest. He has to spend the nights at the local jail, but during the daytime, he can go into his office. So, she revived the case through investigation and I think that’s what we need. We need investigation. It’s too important of a case to be left to conspiracy theorists. It should actually be handled by people who know how to investigate, which includes journalists, which includes law enforcement, and which includes Congress.

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Hypocritical Evangelicals Suddenly Triggered By Trump’s Profanity

found online by Raymond

 

Evangelicals Pray to Their God

From News Corpse:

What’s more, while fainting at the sound of obscenities, these willfully blind believers have shown no concern for the caging of children, the blatant racism, the prideful boasting, the infantile and wrathful name-calling, the love letters exchanged with murderous dictators, the flagrant disrespect for the law, the determination to befoul the planet, the obsession with terminating healthcare for millions, and the ignorance of nearly everything, including the bible.

Early on Trump pretended to be a devout Christian solely for political gain. Never mind that his entire life has been a monument to lust, greed, and the rest of the seven deadly sins. When he was asked by Republican “Word Doctor” Frank Luntz, if he had ever asked God for forgiveness, Trump replied that he didn’t need to because he has never done anything wrong. No, really! He said that

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9/11 Rescuers and Their Continuing Struggle

found online by Raymond

 

Police officer Mike Brennan, September 11, 2001

From Karen G. guest of Infidel753:
Asbestos in the World Trade Center — How First Responders Suffered from Exposure

When the towers of the World Trade Center came down they rained all kinds of harmful substances on the surrounding area. Many people were negatively affected by asbestos and other materials from the buildings, but none more so than the first responders. Some have died from related diseases and others are still sick. And they are still fighting for compensation and benefits.

Asbestos and 9/11

When skyscrapers like the World Trade Center towers are built, hundreds of different kinds of materials are used. Many are toxic when disturbed and inhaled and the tragedy of 9/11 sent more than 400 of these into the surrounding air. Among the damaging substances released into the air that day were cement and glass dust, PCBs, dioxin, lead, and asbestos.

Asbestos is a particularly insidious material. Inhaling its tiny fibers can lead to serious illnesses that are fatal.<>/p
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Separating Families is Wrong, America. Stop It.

found online by Raymond

 

From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

This should be the final straw for us, America.

Compassionate human beings should not tolerate this.

People who claim to be pro-life should be brought to tears.

Those espousing family values should be fully incensed.

Anyone with children of their own who they love should be sick to their stomachs.

Men and women of every faith should be unequivocally condemning this.

People of conscience and morality should be unable to sleep.

Good people ought to be fully heartbroken.

This is a sharp line in the sand and we all are make our choice in this moment.

There is no neutral middle ground here, no hedging or justifying or entertaining of both sides.

There is no valid human opinion that makes this OK.

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