Getting out of Bankruptcy
Micah, at Catallarchy, has figured out how the US can avoid bankruptcy.
Ok, I almost titled this: Today’s Chuckle but the problem is real and the solution speaks volumes about why we have the problem in the first place.
Capitalism
Sleeping with Zombies
Trish Wilson says “the whole idea” of these things “makes my skin crawl.”
Yep.
The Mantra, Punters, Givers, Formatters and Mentors
If you have owned a computer or used one at work chances are you have had a chance to talk to ‘tech support’ and your experience may have been good or bad.
This Salon article is well worth the second or two to click through to the premium content and depending on your past experience with tech support you will either laugh or scream as you relive past experiences.
You will not, though, look forward to your next call. Your support might have been outsourced to a company that gets paid by the call and where technician training might go like this:
Beyond a cursory overview of the computers we were in charge of healing, the closest thing to a troubleshooting tool we were taught was The Mantra. When class ended, which varied wildly depending on Chad’s interest and mental status, we were all encouraged to say The Mantra out loud. We repeated it over and over, the words seating themselves deep in the folds of our brains until the breakup of class began to feel more and more like the end of a cult meeting.
The Mantra is simply, “We don’t support that.”……Without The Mantra we’d waste precious time trying to answer questions beyond the scope of our expertise. Never mind that the scope of our expertise was largely limited to reciting The Mantra and logging calls. The important thing was that we understood our mission was to answer questions that fell within the limited margins outlined in the computer’s warranty. Beyond that we didn’t have to do anything.
Of course, over some period of time companies who choose to save a penny now by providing this type of service to their customers should find themselves out of business.
Via Dan Gilmour.
Plan B
For the FDA it appears that ‘B’ stands for babies. Why else would the FDA ignore the 23-4 vote of its scientific advisory panel and continue to withhold the morning after drug ‘Plan B’ from the over the counter retail market?
Well, perhaps babies and, as Mark Kleiman suggests, politics:
I’m prepared to bet that the FDA will eventually do the right thing. But how many unwanted pregnancies, leading to how many abortions, will result from this obviously political decision?
Yep, politics, and one more example of why such decisions should not be in the hands of political hacks.
Mark also says:
Once again, we can expect a deafening silence from the libertarians, whose sincerity about personal liberty I keep doing my level best not to doubt.
I don’t know if there will be a deafening silence or not. However, I suspect that most real libertarians not only would object to this decision but also argue that the FDA should not have any say in the matter at all, that it should not even exist as a government function.
The Medical Care Market
As Kevin Drum notes the US medical care market is not a free one:
The United States really doesn’t have a free market in healthcare at all; in fact, it’s just a bizarre melange of jury rigged policies that seem to provide the worst of all worlds. We don’t get the universal coverage and bargaining power of a single-payer system, but we also don’t have the competitiveness and price pressure of a true free market system.
Kevin then goes on to ask:
So what, then, is the big problem with simply trying to rationalize the system?
By which he means implement a federal single payer system or more specifically universal health care. And he then argues:
In fact, if the system were well designed � never a betting proposition, I admit � overall costs might even be a little less.
Well, he is right if congress is going to design it you don’t want to bet on it being rational or anywhere close to efficient.
I had actually thought for an irrational moment that when he suggested “simply trying to rationalize the system” that he might have really meant what he was saying and been about to suggest beginning to move down the long road to a free market for medical care. Oh well.