Brits: And by "better food" you mean...?

Reuters: "Organic food not healthier, study finds."Click on the story to show/hide the source

I have to apologize up front, because I post this mostly to be sarcastic about how of all people Brits are the ones to say that difference between good and bad food is negligible. According to this Reuters' story found on Yahoo! News, British researchers have concluded that organically grown food have no significant health benefits over its conventionally grown analogs. What the story failed to mention is that the research only included Brits in Britain.
It's understandable how Brits don't see the difference. They can eat and digest deep fried tree bark and consider it good enough - not being particularly keen on flavor, texture and all that rubbish.
Lesser species, on the other hand, get all kinds of indigestion, cancer, kidney, liver, and immune system deficiencies from eating heavily treated and overly processed "traditional" food.
Hope that wasn't too mean.
Cheerio!
Pea Soup

The "Conservative" Label

This morning on one of the morning news shows I heard a report that, in response to one of Faux News' shock jock's statement that the President is a racist, the President's spokesman said that the cable channel is deliberately trying to create controversies to attract conservative viewers.
Although I understand and agree with the core of this statement, I disagree with the used terminology. In my book, a conservative is someone who has traditional values like solid moral core, close family ties, respect for elders, and good work ethic. The audience Faux's shock jocks appeal to are either far right radicals, antisocial loons, or less than bright individuals, incapable of forming their own opinion or distinguishing truth from fabrication and news reporting from agenda-driven spin. This audience has no values and ideas of their own and can hate or love anyone and anything, depending on what the current shock-jock agenda is. These are not conservatives, they just believe they are, because in their mind listening to Faux makes them that. They can worship someone today and call for his or hers death tomorrow if that's what Faux is telling them is right. Those are the same people that read newspapers like "Weekly World News" and believe the stories there are true. Much like Faux's "Fair and balanced", the Weekly World News' slogan "The world's only reliable newspaper" is the complete opposite of what it actually is...
You know what the shock jocks are going to say before you even tune in - republicans are good and decent, democrats are stupid and corrupted, liberals are evil crybabies and if you disagree with the shock jocks (it does not matter on what) you are a communist. It does not matter what the situation is or even what are the true affiliations of the people involved, the shock jocks slap whatever label they want to anyone and anything they want and always spin the facts to support their current agenda. They loudly support causes they don't really care for like abortion prohibition and exclusive heterosexual marriage only to persuade the true supporters of those causes to vote for who- and whatever Faux tells them when the time comes. That's why there are so many ridiculous contradictions in what the shock jocks say today and what they have said in the past. Sometimes they even do it in the same sentence. It's hard to be consistent when you bend the truth all the time. What Faux is doing is not journalism but propaganda. Which would have been alright if they were honest about it instead of calling it names like "news", "truth", "what's right", and "fair and balanced".

So please, everyone, stop insulting the the meaning of the term "conservative" by labeling antisocial self-righteous radicals with it. Call them what they are: loony ego-maniacs, bent on defying all laws and decency, if they are not getting their way 100% of the time.

(un-)Socialized Medicine

My dentist ditched me!!
Yesterday, I had a 4pm appointment. It was only my 3-rd appointment with this dentist - they've signed me as a patient just a week ago.
I left work 20 minutes before the appointment - the drive takes only 15min. - I drive this route every day - the clinic is right next door to my home. Traffic was horrible - there were couple of accidents, police cars, trying to get through slowed the traffic even more. Long story - short, I was 10 minutes late for my appointment.
Do you remember that Seinfeld episode where the doctor's receptionist was annoyingly cheerful and clicked with her tongue after each sentence? Minus the tongue click, that was exactly how the receptionist looked like, when she told me that "You were the last appointment and they don't wait more than 10 minutes for their last appointment." The problem is that they did not wait 10 minutes. I was 10 minutes late but "they" were already out of sight. If "they" have waited 10 minutes I wouldn't have missed them.
I couldn't call from my car - everyone around me was on their toes because of the accidents, the police cars, and the hectic traffic, so I couldn't get distracted digging trough my pockets for the number, the cellphone, etc.
So let's review what all that means:
1. The dentist's work time is Monday-Friday 9-5. This means that I have to miss work if I want to get an appointment. The dentist won't get out of his way to accommodate my needs. And if I'm few minutes late, even though its the end of the day and he has no other appointments after me, he can just ditch me, rendering my taking time off from work and intensely hectic drive to get there in time absolutely pointless. Paying good money for his services did not seem to matter. Apparently they didn't particularly need my business at this time. Let's hope this is a sign that the recession is over.
2. Wasn't that supposed to happen if we had the "government ran socialized" health care? Well, I have a message for the ones who insist what we have now is good and worth paying good money: Just because it's not ran by the government it does not make it good. This dentist self-righteously ignored my expense of time and money from missed time at work, and my need of care. Ironically, not big government but my dentist got between me and my dentist. If not even a recession can make him more cooperative, what does that say about the efficiency of the current system. I ended up missing work and risking my life driving as fast as I can trough heavy traffic just to get ignored and belittled by my employee, the dentist.
3. In this situation I can only do 1 of 3 things:
A. Swallow my self-esteem and call back to schedule another appointment with the same dentist;
B. Get a different dentist, even though dentist shopping annoys the crap out of me;
C. Quit going to the dentist, which I am not comfortable doing.

A, B or C - My only real choices appear to be humiliation, irritation, or tooth decay.

So my question is: How government health care could possibly make this worst if already is what the opponents so passionately warn it will become?

My personal experience is that I'm already getting crapy service and the only difference between what we have now and a centralized health care system is the price tag. Well, if it's going to suck anyway, I'd rather pay less.

Why the insurance-based health care system doesn't work

This is not the usual gripe about how difficult it is to get health coverage in this country. This is just analysis why health care is not a good business application for the insurance business model.



Since I've worked at my current job, many of my co-workers got in serious health trouble - one got stroke, another hearth attack, my boss' wife had to have serious hearth surgery, another co-worker ran for the bus and his body got in shock from the sudden vigorous oxygen demand after years of inactivity. Another co-worker - a sweet older lady got a chronic deteriorating condition which caused her to leave work and move in with her sister. Those are just a few examples I came up with without trying to remember everyone at work that needed medical care during my 1 year with this company. The complete list will be at least three times longer and that's a conservative estimate.

Let's look at this 1 year period from the business perspective of the health insurance company. Our employer health plan's premium costs $113 per month. That is the full cost. With about 90 insured (probably way less) this amounts to $122,040 per year. That's the insurance company's income from our company.

Now let's see how much money we needed to pay for health care: A stroke, couple of hearth surgeries, couple of hearth attacks, 2 or 3 ambulance calls and emergency room admittances, a motorcycle accident with surgeries, physical therapy... Let's stop here - I think I made my point - this alone is way over 200,000 conservatively and it does not include smaller things like me going to the doctor the other day with some abdominal pain, which turned out to be nothing, but the services I got have exceeded $400. Furthermore, being a business, the insurance company have to pay taxes, salaries, buy office supplies, etc. etc.

Annual 5 and 6-figure losses on regular basis is not the definition of profitable business, is it? In order to turn profit, the insurance company has to either sell more policies to healthy people, or increase the premium of the currently insured which would make it less competitive. Which means that the best way for a health insurance company to turn profit is to have as many healthy and as little sick people insured as possible. This way the premiums can stay lower, the insured have their health care needs covered, and the company still makes healthy profit. That is exactly what the companies are trying to do and should do, if the primary goal is to sell insurance. Unfortunately, the primary goal is financing health care which is the ultimate loss in the insurance business model.

Beyond my personal observations, if we think in categories, the need for health care is not like the need for property protection. With property, accidents are the only cause of the need for insurance while with humans - our natural construction and the way we function is the primary cause of us getting sick. That's how we are made, and unlike property, our sicknesses are almost never accidental, but either pre-programmed or bound to happen. If cars were insured like people, things like serpentine belts and battery replacement would have been covered by insurance. Instead, as we all know, car insurance only covers damages from accidents, i.e. things you could have not seen coming.

The insurance business model is based on avoiding the risk. With property is relatively easy - younger people and sport cars are a higher risk understandably - teens are inexperienced and impulsive, and nobody buys a roadster to cruise at 55MPH. With human health everyone is a risk and unlike with cars, once someone gets cancer or diabetes they can't just get rid of it to make themselves a better insurance customer.

Health care is just not a feasible venture for the insurance business model, because it is inevitable, not accidental. If we must apply a well-known business model to health care financing, let's use credit unions and mutual funds, although the real question is: Can't we come up with something better?