So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Harp]

I've often expressed how much I utterly despise the American system of health care, and it's got a lot in common with the way education is overpriced and extortionately financed in this country. Consider a system under which it's required by law that certain tests be fully covered by health insurance -- but hospitals routinely find ways to circumvent that law. A test required to be covered as a "routine screening" instantly becomes a "diagnostic screening," not subject to that law, the moment anything out of the ordinary is observed -- even though the test was ordered by the primary-care provider as a "routine screening" and was treated as such from the moment the patient walked into the facility until the moment she walked out.

Women in the audience here will know exactly what test I'm talking about, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been rooked out of hundreds of dollars she doesn't have by this nasty and very common piece of dirty ex-post-facto. Death to the "health-care-industrial complex."

God, isn't this the truth. My sister picked up some prescriptions for me yesterday at CVS, and the medication
slips list the retail prices, attenuated by Blue Cross federal employees plan cover to a much more modest and
reasonable cost. I have used both private and VA hospital care, the former covered by Blue Cross, and it is a
wonder how civil hospitals legally bill insurance companies.

 

[Trenchfriend]

We have now a three-class health care system in old Germany, crystalizing out.

1. private patients, emergency patients
2. statutory health insured patients with enough cash for non-covered service
3. statutory health insured with no money for extra service

The last are getting only the medicine standard, frozen in 1995, which was already very dated, back then. The second can afford modern blood tests or other efficient medicine from the 2000s, etc..
But if you're an emergency patient in Germany, you're getting nearly excellent medicine, including an complete (!) blood test.
But you can get a complete blood test, when you're going blood donation, too.

But despite all, there's still one big basic problem in german healtcare. Bureaucracy crap, killing quality!
And I think, german hospitals were never top-notch, not before the cliff of 2003 and surely not before 1990, too. Arrogant, mass-processing, bad maintained (to big), understaffed. The bigger, the worse.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I've often expressed how much I utterly despise the American system of health care, and it's got a lot in common with the way education is overpriced and extortionately financed in this country. Consider a system under which it's required by law that certain tests be fully covered by health insurance -- but hospitals routinely find ways to circumvent that law. A test required to be covered as a "routine screening" instantly becomes a "diagnostic screening," not subject to that law, the moment anything out of the ordinary is observed -- even though the test was ordered by the primary-care provider as a "routine screening" and was treated as such from the moment the patient walked into the facility until the moment she walked out.

Women in the audience here will know exactly what test I'm talking about, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been rooked out of hundreds of dollars she doesn't have by this nasty and very common piece of dirty ex-post-facto. Death to the "health-care-industrial complex."

Not healthcare related, but...I'm guessing you heard about our self-inflicted mess with our whacked electricity grid and the winter storm we went through down here in Texas a few weeks ago. It exposed all manner of political cronyism, corporate greed and gouging of the populace for what should otherwise be considered everyday necessities. I was ready to vote you dictator and let the chips fall where they may.

 

[Hercule]

At the very least, no changing of core curriculum or major requirements after a student is enrolled. Changing the damned rules in the middle of the game is flat out dishonest.

Hear hear. Try being the first to get a degree in a "new" program. My doctoral program had been in place for a decade and had enrolled dozens of students almost all of whom gave up after a few years, before I became the first to get the degree. I swore they were making it up as they went. It was very telling that toward the end I was stopped on the sidewalk by a new faculty member who proceeded to apologize to me that I had gotten caught in the middle of department politics. That shouldn't happen. But don't get me started on academe.

 

[Harp]

Hear hear. Try being the first to get a degree in a "new" program. My doctoral program had been in place for a decade and had enrolled dozens of students almost all of whom gave up after a few years, before I became the first to get the degree. I swore they were making it up as they went. It was very telling that toward the end I was stopped on the sidewalk by a new faculty member who proceeded to apologize to me that I had gotten caught in the middle of department politics. That shouldn't happen. But don't get me started on academe.

May I inquire as to your degree field?

 

[Hercule]

May I inquire as to your degree field?

DMA in historical performance.

 

[Harp]

DMA in historical performance.

Distance learning seems here to stay. I never enjoyed lectures, and often played truant,
but a doctoral visual distance program is something I might look into.

 

[tonyb]

Not healthcare related, but...I'm guessing you heard about our self-inflicted mess with our whacked electricity grid and the winter storm we went through down here in Texas a few weeks ago. It exposed all manner of political cronyism, corporate greed and gouging of the populace for what should otherwise be considered everyday necessities. I was ready to vote you dictator and let the chips fall where they may.

I’m guessing nothing of consequence will change on account of that. Hope I’m wrong.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I’m guessing nothing of consequence will change on account of that. Hope I’m wrong.

I'm afraid you're probably correct. A few of the politically-appointed board members resigned, but I don't expect any meaningful reform. A similar, though less drastic, event happened in 2011, and the same conversations were had. Nothing changed. I don't expect it to this time either. Our legislature and governor are too macho to let a little thing like death and total collapse of the electricity grid kill their trailblazing and anti-regulatory pioneer spirit. They're viewing sticking consumers with $20,000 electric bills as evidence the system worked. Such is a feature, not a bug.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
In the most recent issue of the Atlantic a fellow named Shadi Hamid offers that the decline in religious affiliation (church membership and attendance have been on a downward trajectory) is a factor in the social and political polarization we’ve witnessed in recent times. Social and political perspectives have become our religions, central to our individual and group identities, and, like all religion, they aren’t subject to reason.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The past five years or so have really crystallized that, and you can see the seeds of it going back to the very start of the postwar era, with the whole Us Versus Them perspective of the Cold War.

I've always insisted that economics, the "dismal science," is not in fact a science at all -- it's a religion, with its own body of scripture, its own priests and seminaries, and its own incessant sectarianism. And it can be just as cultish and extreme in its fundamentalism as any religious belief.

 

[Harp]

The past five years or so have really crystallized that, and you can see the seeds of it going back to the very start of the postwar era, with the whole Us Versus Them perspective of the Cold War.

I've always insisted that economics, the "dismal science," is not in fact a science at all -- it's a religion, with its own body of scripture, its own priests and seminaries, and its own incessant sectarianism. And it can be just as cultish and extreme in its fundamentalism as any religious belief.

Yalta produced a pyrrhic with Red Army Western Front domination and the Allies caught inside the Ardennes.
Stalin played his cards well, clearly holding tactical and strategic vantage. Eastern Europe capture with an
Iron Curtain felled across the continent. Forty-four years later in 1989 the Soviet Union collapsed.
A GDP standing at $2500B; approximately half that of the United States $4862B, with per capita $8,700
against an American $19,800 tally.

Economics is a science with formulaic maxims, its laws and strictures proven, its adherents showing
objective and subjective persuasion securely bound by a relentless truth. Orthodox observance versus agnosticism,
cognizant of human and temporal nature. Capitalism vanquished communism.

As Bernard Baruch sagely observed: "All of life is a speculation."

 

[BobHufford]

It's official on dictionary.com. Ugh ...

 

[Harp]

I should have worn a green tie today. Irish poet scoundrel in residence didn't show the flag,
failed to bring soda bread with raisins, scones, Bailey's Irish Cream.

As I explained, a pat of butter inside the left pocket, sea salt tossed over the heart and left shoulder,
all to ward off errant leprechaun thievery of my soul to carry hock hellish trade to Lucifer for gold.
And Lucifer carries the AK-47. Then a bit of Gaelic bade for good measure, all in me best brogue.

 

[GHT]

Can't say that I have heard of a soul stealing leprechaun before, but I do know of a heart stealing Coleen. The maiden name of my missus is Murphy.

 

[Edward]

Distance learning seems here to stay. I never enjoyed lectures, and often played truant,
but a doctoral visual distance program is something I might look into.

At my institution we've been running a postgraduate law programme via the internet since 2003; the delivery tech has come a long way since the early days, when half the students were on dial-up and we used to send them text-based 'lectures' on a CD in the post, and all tutorials were via online, text-chat! This experience came in very handy indeed when the Covid pandemic hit and we had to shift online with everything.

The online experience has really been part of university life for a good two decades now (25 odd years if you include increasing use of email to communicate with students). What covid has done, however, is push many to look again at how they take it beyond a way of providing reading lists and lecture slides into incorporating it more with regular teaching - the much trumpeted "blended learning" model. Great way of getting more coverage to the students than classroom time can allow, even if the 'flipped classroom' model fetishised by non-teaching senior management has been proven to be of no significant advantage to learners otherwise.

It's official on dictionary.com. Ugh ...

View attachment 318990

Frankly, the world already went to hell when people started to accept "normalcy" instead of the real word 'normality'. "Come friendly bombs..."

Can't say that I have heard of a soul stealing leprechaun before, but I do know of a heart stealing Coleen. The maiden name of my missus is Murphy.

Fun fact: 99% of "ancient Irish St Patrick's Day traditions" are 100% inventions of a diaspora several generations from Ireland removed. It is, of course, possible they they belong to this St Patty person they also celebrate in the US on 17th March - whoever she is.

 

[Tiki Tom]

At my institution we've been running a postgraduate law programme via the internet since 2003;

My wife got her Masters Degree completely on line and across an ocean. This was, maybe, ten years ago. Even then, she was impressed by how rigorous, challenging, and multifaceted it was. My big mistake was that me, myself, and I did not give her enough credit. I failed to hire a marching band when she graduated... and I still occasionally hear about it.

Frankly, the world already went to hell when people started to accept "normalcy" instead of the real word 'normality'. "Come friendly bombs..."

My favorite made-up word is “truthiness”, as in “Although his story had a certain amount of truthiness to it, I was quite certain it was BS.” The fine line between sounding convincing and plausible (half true?) and actually being true.

Fun fact: 99% of "ancient Irish St Patrick's Day traditions" are 100% inventions of a diaspora several generations from Ireland removed. It is, of course, possible they they belong to this St Patty person they also celebrate in the US on 17th March - whoever she is.

Supposably Halloween falls roughly into the same category: brought from Ireland but not really from Ireland (or only loosely so.) I have some Irish Catholic friends in the U.S. who are married to other Irish Catholics and claim that both sides are nothing but Irish Catholic going back to when they got off the boat some 100+ years ago. Not sure that I believe it, but why shouldn’t I? I might be jealous of their strong sense of rootedness (is that another made up word?)

 

[Harp]

Can't say that I have heard of a soul stealing leprechaun before, but I do know of a heart stealing Coleen. The maiden name of my missus is Murphy.

In Chicago, leprechauns; especially here on the south side of town run wild. And they vote in city elections too.
And colleens can steal a man's heart. And, me granfar so informed, Irish girls are thieves and so fetchingly lovely &
wonderous they can also raise the dead.
I've learned through tried and true experience that colleens have hereditary disposition that prove genetic
immune from Irish charm. All other girls succumb to it, but never colleens.

 

[Harp]

At my institution we've been running a postgraduate law programme via the internet since 2003; the delivery tech has come a long way since the early days, when half the students were on dial-up and we used to send them text-based 'lectures' on a CD in the post, and all tutorials were via online, text-chat! This experience came in very handy indeed when the Covid pandemic hit and we had to shift online with everything..

A Doctorate in Judicial Science? In the States, the Juris Doctor is equivalent to the Bacihelor of Law,
with various specialty Master degrees such as taxation tossed in the sheepskin fold. I'd enjoy an online SJD program.

 

[tonyb]

Gotta wonder what effect online schooling will have on the mating rituals of juvenalus americanus.