Should web content be subsidized?

TierneyLab addresses an old question, and comes up with an old solution. Here is my response:

John, you have a good idea but you aren't thinking big enough.

Instead of having the government run a micropayment system to charge consumers, take all the money that the government wastes (the 40-50% of our federal budget that is siphoned off to the military) and establish it as a fund for artists and reporters. You can slice up the pie based on the number of hits each author/artist receives. In this way, society still has its free information, and the contributors have a guaranteed incentive to generate fresh content.

How To Create 10,000,000 Jobs

President Obama, here's a little back-of-the-envelope calculation for you:

~1~ Monthly wage for a security guard = $2,000.

~2~ Cost/month of our wars in Iraq+Afghanistan =
$20,000,000,000. (Yes, that many zeroes.)

~3~ Number of security guards this could employ instead =
$20,000,000,000/$2,000 = 10,000,000.

Economy crisis, solved.

Health Care or Don't Care?

A friend of mine at lab - socially liberal, fiscally conservative - has been trying to decide his views on the public health care option. He wrote this and forwarded it to all his friends. -SS

This is the link to an extremely interesting, and disturbing interview by Bill Moyers of Wendell Potter, a former CEO of Cigna, one of the largest insurance companies in the country. I highly recommend watching it to become much more informed about the issue, whether you are a democrat or republican.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/watch.html

(SS: here's a snippet...)

I personally was a bit on the fence for the public option. For those of you who don't know me, I am socially liberal, but fiscally conservative. Government waste and bureaucracy are huge problems in our country, and we can't just create programs simply because they would be nice to have. On the other hand, health insurance companies have an insane amount of bureaucracy, and the system they have is designed to make people give up and just accept whatever they are told.

This interview is not some rhetoric from a democrat or republican congressman spewing party dogma. This is a former chief executive from the insurance industry, who knows the ins and outs of the business. It is very informative. If you don't have the time to watch the 30 minute interview, let me highlight a few points.

1. The insurance companies are terrified of a public option above all other things. It will remove their oligopoly.

2. The insurance companies are proposing to eliminate pre-existing conditions denials of coverage because they don't like them. They are the ones who created the pre-existing condition denials. No one is forcing them to do that. Why haven't they eliminated them before? According to Wendell Potter, they won't. Once the reform talk is over, they'll continue their current practice.

3. The companies want status quo. They are making lots of money currently and will do whatever it take to kill any legislation.

4. He outlines the methods in which the companies eliminate insurance for those that they aren't making a profit off of.

5. In the 1980's, 95% of premiums went to pay for care. Now that % is down in the eighty percentiles. The rest is either insurance bureaucracy or profit.

6. Wall Street gives insurance companies better rankings the less they spend on their members.

7. One of the media statements the insurance lobby has put forth is that "you don't want a government bureaucrat coming between you and your doctor." Well, right now you have a Wall Street bureaucrat doing just that.

8. The insurance companies want everyone to have insurance. Not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because it means more premiums for them.

There are many other points that come across. If you can spare the time, I implore you to watch this.

What's in our wallet?

This is the budget President Bush requested from Congress for 2009 (from Wikipedia; the legend reads clockwise). I unable to find an accurate pie chart of actual 2009 Congressional appropriations, since these tend to 'omit' the war on terror.

Since America runs a deficit, the money for this will come from Americans who are just entering the workforce. It is obvious to me that our generation cannot afford to pay for all this and survive. My question for you is, what do we really need in this budget? What would you cut?

We are all radiologists

Convo with labmates J & B, one of whom is headed to med school:

SS: So J, what kind of doctor are you gonna be?

J: I don't know yet. Maybe a pediatrician.

SS: Are there any specialties that let you enjoy life? Y'know, go golfing every once in a while?

B: Radiologists. Those guys have the life.

J: Yeah, but radiologists can be outsourced.

SS: Surgeons can be outsourced, too. Pretty soon they'll have robots doing that job, and ours.

B: True. We are all radiologists.