Universal / National Health Care Insurance

Big assumption people would follow those prescriptions. People can barely get through a course of antibiotics. Or that doctors, especially GPs, have the expertise to prescribe the right exercises or classes, or the time to figure it out. There's a reason nutritionists and personal trainers exist.

There's an awful lot to be said for the benefits of correctly performed resistance work and stretching.

An awful lot of physical pain can be reduced down to poor posture, muscular imbalances or movement patterns.

At the very least, make sure there are nutritionists and personal trainers within the health care system so GPs can make the appropriate referrals and your health insurance will actually cover them, and teach doctors to at least try the most minimally invasive methods first.

The last time I told a doctor I wanted to try treating my hypertension with diet and exercise the only response I got was "how's that working out so far? "

If that clinic wasn't willing to write exactly what you want on a sick note for the right price, I'd never go back there.

And why do you suppose the US would be immune to that sort of thing?

Are you in favor of nationalizing care in Germany, Canada, etc. too, or is this a US-specific thing? If so, based on what? If not, why are the many countries with other systems doing more like the UK in terms of life expectancies and health outcomes than the US?

As single-payer proponents are so fond of pointing out, everyone uses health care. Less than half the country votes (either for reasons of age, citizenship, or apathy. The seems like a particularly bad reason to nationalize anything at all in the health field.

Yeah but you have to show evidence for that, so far all you've done is make assertions. Plus, our system of government is different enough that nationalizing care would be dangerous. Imagine a US NHS during a government shutdown, which as I understand it, can't happen in the same way over there. Doctors as federal employees would be furloughed and forbidden from working, even without pay. If you don't believe that's a real risk, may I introduce you to the Republican Party? By the time our governmental system was altered to the point one should be comfortable with government running health care, we'd be the UK in all but name. If you want to take us back over, that's another conversation, and definitely a precursor: you have to establish the existence of unicorns before determining whether they fart rainbows or merely poop them.

Public health programs -- at the state level -- do have footholds in schools. There's every reason to think they'd lose them if health care was nationalized. See below.

I'm going to take your word that everything in those papers is true, and that the methodologies are sound (context: the first page of the second paper is garbled on Sci Hub, and the first paper is too long. I read only the section introductions, all the causal evidence sections or associative evidence when that's all that was there, conclusions, and summaries.) They still don't prove your point at all for multiple reasons.
1. Most importantly, neither paper establishes a causal link between government takeover of health care and increased health education. Maybe that happened in the UK, but the papers show nothing of the sort in any country.

2. There were several health metrics that showed only weak or even contradictory correlation with education.

3. This topic was originally about costs, and the NHS is almost no cheaper than would be expected for a country of its AIC@PPP anymore (and strongly trending over time back to the line). The only time it was on a different trajectory entirely was 1980-2005, via the cuts and rationing and attempted privatization you were decrying. Maybe you're getting better health outcomes -- though as the first ~half of the first paper points out, better health outcomes are extremely dependent on contexts in which people live, from the family and neighborhood level and up -- but you're not really saving money anymore.

4. The federal government has approximately no control over primary education curricula or length of compulsory schooling (contrast: Denmark, where two of its national education reforms in 1958 and 1975 cited by the first paper were on the subject of length of compulsory education, and bracketed the implementation of government health care there in 1970). It's all left to the states. What incentives do states have to improve health education when the feds are paying for health care? There's somewhat more for higher education, but it's largely though student loans, and nondiscrimination policy in exchange for funding.

5. The federal government is Constitutionally incapable of forcing the states to pay for health care instead, where there'd be an obvious incentive alignment. See the brouhaha over Medicaid expansion.

In short, either you don't understand the structural limitations on the US government to do what you want, or your proposal "the government should take over health care" is a bait and switch for "the entire structure of government and the Constitution should be changed so that the government can take over health care without fucking it up." Frankly, I'm nervous enough about government taking over insurance, but the stats show the costs probably won't blow up, at least after the first couple years. But your pie in the sky descriptions about how great things will be under nationalized health care make me wonder if I'm missing some equally grave concern about nationalized health insurance too. Like, now I'm wondering if the public health programs in schools that exist currently are in jeopardy under even a Medicare for All system, with no Medicaid to incentivize the states as described above. Maybe not; there's probably something that can be done like tying state hospital funding to public health programs in schools, but that's only effective as long as there are state hospitals. If they're all national, there's nothing to tie to.

Nutritionists are covered for at least a few appointments here, at least on any of the plans I've had. Though I haven't researched it extensively, as they haven't been a deciding factor in health plan choice, so maybe my plans aren't representative.

My doctor was concerned about my blood pressure a few years ago. "There's medication, but you should just eat less salt," he said. I don't know if my anecdote is any more representative than yours. There are conservative and interventionist doctors in every system.

After I dropped 100 pounds post bariatric surgery I was lifting weights and jogging 5/6 days a week. My b/p was fucking awesome. In May, I feel whilst jogging and tore the ligament in my right thumb. Post surgery I wasn't able to lift and had to cut back on the jogging. My weight is up slightly, but more concerning my b/p has been creeping up. Hopefully, now that I"m getting back to my routine things will stabilize.

Are you on any blood pressure meds? I'd be surprised if it was just the weight causing hypertension.

Let me be clear on a couple of things. I do not have hypertension. I did before I lost the weight. I am not on medication. I was before I lost the weight. My b/p is creeping up toward pre-hypertension levels. It probably wasn't '"Just the weight". My diet is much better and alcohol is completely gone.

Well, as long as your doctor is in agreement, you do you. I mean, do whatever you want, but I hope you are consulting with a provider regularly. Everyone should be.

Thanks for the condescending lecture. Three years post op I’ve been on time with every follow up. Any further advice?

I'd ask your doctor about the feasibility of surgically removing the stick up your ass, but hey.

In the immortal words of Ten Lubak: blow me

The sexual tension is palpable

But not palatable.

I hope it lasts.

I'm not sure how true that is anymore, given how much training teachers go through in their off time and the fact that school nowadays seems to end mid to late-June and start up in mid-August.

But you're right that taxpayers are cheap as fuck and that you get what you pay for, as evidenced by Dayton continuing to be hired out of desperation.

Looking at the service provided, children need year round care and education. Schools are basically daycare. I know there is a difference, but in reality kids do not just vanish for two days out of the week and during the summer and breaks. They still need some form of supervision, and I think society can start handling the reality that should be coupled with some form of continual education. I think we have enough out of work people our communities could deal with establishing something to care for the kids since we have made it so the mass of society has a hard time living on one income. It would help take some of the burden off of single parents, and off of coupledf parents who both need to maintain full time jobs.

I also get this means school needs to become more than just education, or daycare needs to step up and become something more than it is covering a wider age group of kids. I also think certain things should be taken off of the teachers plate. There is no excuse for having teachers buy their own supplies. You could do like corporate america and have a standard supply of the basics and requisitions for the rest which go through a wholesale distributor. Also, if teachers are going to be handling 10+ kids you need to have an assistant who is on the career progression for educators. Both need to be full time employees with the proper income and benefits.

There also needs to be some standards like class size and expectations of student performance. If you cannot get your standard classroom of kids to 90 percent making D or better then you have to move onto a job you can do. If you cannot perform to some set standard that all other teachers perform at then you should not be a teacher, and tough shit for those who really want to be. I do not get to do IT work just because i really fucking like to work with computers. If I cannot do the job then I have to go find something else to do.

I get our education system needs work everywhere, but it is time to start saying school needs to be an all year thing, and I do not have any sympathy for a whiny teacher who does not want to work all year. If things need to change on the employer side like salary needing to be a living salary then OK. But you are going to have to do a bit better than just saying that because my family has money, and I have a bunch of teachers in there. I know high school tenured teachers pulling in over 100k, and there is no fucking purpose for that. They are always a waste of resources because they are the laziest shits on the planet cruising to retirement with no chance of being fired and little expected of them. They have the same lesson plans every damned year, and they are not continuing education. I have seen enough teachers to know there is a huge chunk of lazy bad apples who could not make it in the corporate world, but they get paid more and have more job security than any of the worst employees I have seen in a right to work state.

I am going to keep ranting on this shit. In the non teaching world no one gives you time off to go improve your knowledge. I was earning 25k a year in the bronx in my first IT job. I was an MCSE and had network engineering certs. My boss comes to me and says we are rolling out notes 5, and I am going to be tech lead on the rollout and employee support. I have no experience with lotus at all, and the system works a lot different than the email and knowledge databases I have some familiarity with using. Do I get a training class? No. Do I get to take some time off to pay for my own schooling? No. Are there better people for this who are already employed at the company who could do this? Yup. Did I say no? Not if I wanted to ever be promoted again. I am still expected to perform all the duties that took up my time yesterday.

You know, I did that shit. I did not complain I need a summer off to continue my education. I only had 2 weeks of vacation to let my stress off. They even put my department to work after hours on call with no extra pay. We had a pager that was passed around so someone could restart a server in the middle of the night if it went down, and you did not get any extra money for being available for that time. We had work that we took home with projects we all were responsible for. I had 300 children, aka users, to worry about every day to help out when they wanted to know how to copy and paste something, or how to synch up their mail with their laptop.

There is a reason I have little to no respect for whiny teachers, and I know what is expected in the real world for your pay, and teaching would be a fucking breeze. Most bteachers would never get anywhere in the real world because they are lazy complainers. I went places because i did not complain when I had to upgrade my knowledge. I just fucking did it and added to my resume. When the tech bubble burst and the whiners were being weeded out, I had experience and knowledge. I know what it means to have to perform. I never got any of the awesome opportunities and experiences I had by saying i need to add to my education and need some time off. I ran a number of slow ass people over and made them look like shit because they were too stressed to do something.

Of course, i did have a high tech career along with a second career doing paintball while also doing some amazing gaming, video editing, and costuming. Go whine to your plants about how hard it is being a teacher.

Y'know what the real shitty rant is?
UA on outrage culture.

Wait… what?



For the non-wonks this is the GOP House Conference Chair. The person that replaced Liz Cheney.

Sounds about on par with ... other Republican Congresswomen on the news lately.

Deliberate stupidity or utter cynicism? Hard to tell.

No, not really. Nothing but deliberate stupidity explains a line like that.

How can stupidity be deliberate? Stupidity just is.

Er, yeah. Mixed up my adjectives, I did.

Saw that earlier.

I dunno. I think stupidity can be willful, thus deliberate.

No stupid is as stupid does.

I think you mean willful ignorance.