What's this crap about the EU needing a 16 trillion bailout?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 9:52 am

I have to admit that I have no standing on marginal Australian dollar expenditures. It's a very obscure statistic, and I don't care. Australia's current healthcare system doesn't even interest me. There aren't that many Australians, and their system falls sort of mid-range on a lot of scales so you can't make a clear case for any particular thing they are doing that is especially right or wrong.

Percent of GDP is a god damn worthless number because some countries are richer than others! The GDP of Zimbabwe is so small that you couldn't get the kind of services that a European country gets with 5% of its GDP for 50% of GDP. Absolute dollars is also a shitty comparison point, because monetary exchange rates do not correspond to actual purchasing parity. The monetary exchange rates of poorer countries is deliberately kept low and even with the pounding the GBP has taken in the last year it still is over valued in terms of actual purchasing power compared to the Dollar or the Euro.

The comparison points are in methodology, not in financial shenanigans. You look at the outlying countries and you do or don't do what they do based on whether they are a good outlier or a bad one. The outliers are:

France has the best healthcare system in the world.
Cuba gets the best healthcare for the money and resources spent in the world.
The United States gets the worst return on its monetary and resource investment of any nation. To the point that it outspends all other nations and has a worse infant mortality rate than Cuba.
The worst medical system is in the Kingdom of Swaziland.

So obviously what you would want to do is to emulate the financial systems of Cuba and the medical systems of France. You would want to avoid the financial systems of the United States and the medical systems of Swaziland.

Looking at Australia, with its mid-range health statistics and arguing over what parts of its system are holding it back and which parts of its system are pushing it forward is fucking futile. Don't make an argument based on the placement of unexceptional nations, look at the exceptional nations and then use those as guidestars to plot your destiny.

-Username17

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 9:53 pm

Hey, my dollar amounts were done in Purchase Parity, meaning that the currency value and local inflation was accounted for :P

But that you for pointing those out, since no one would listen to me.

-Crissa

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 9:38 pm

Two quick questions:

1) How good is Spain's healthcare plan on the whole? I heard that it's so good that it makes you do backflips.

2) For countries that have government-run insurance plans alongside private systems, how long does it take before people eventually go 'fuck this' and end up dropping their private plans so much that the countries just switch to single-payer?

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 3:24 am

It depends how good the public healthcare system is in essence. In France, there is multiple tiers of insurance you can purchase ontop of the basic state system and this has been preserved for a while.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 1:33 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote: 1) How good is Spain's healthcare plan on the whole? I heard that it's so good that it makes you do backflips.

No, it's just Balrog that does that - you can't believe everything you see in Street Fighter.

Tshern · Post by **Tshern** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 10:54 am

Koumei wrote:
Lago PARANOIA wrote: 1) How good is Spain's healthcare plan on the whole? I heard that it's so good that it makes you do backflips.
No, it's just Balrog that does that - you can't believe everything you see in Street Fighter.

Vega in some countries...

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 2:47 am

I refuse to acknowledge him by that name - Mike Bison is the boxer (come on, surely we can ALL see that), Balrog is the Spanish ninja, and Lord Vega is the commissar/final boss. And the secret character with the LP LP -> LK FP is Gouki, not Akuma. He's not even super evil.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 2:57 am

Koumei wrote:Balrog is the Spanish ninja, and Lord Vega is the commissar/final boss.

Why is the one with the actually Spanish name not the Spanish character?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:43 am

Because Capcom made it, and they're not quite up to scratch on what actually exists outside their country of origin. They only hope that the games they send overseas actually make it to these exotic locations such as America and Europe.

I think I've dragged it off topic quite enough though.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 8:24 am

Capcom's writing staff basically are employed on the basis of being idiots.

Tshern · Post by **Tshern** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 10:27 am

Koumei wrote:I refuse to acknowledge him by that name - Mike Bison is the boxer (come on, surely we can ALL see that), Balrog is the Spanish ninja, and Lord Vega is the commissar/final boss. And the secret character with the LP LP -> LK FP is Gouki, not Akuma. He's not even super evil.

Not in all countries. At least the version I played on Sega Megadrive (European version probably) had Vega as the Spanish assassin, Balrog as the boxer and M. Bison as the last boss. And it really is a fact that the names were changed for some versions, some sources say because M. Bison would've been too close to Mike Tyson...

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Mar 08, 2009 2:41 pm

The version I played supposedly had the same people at the end. I don't know, I could never beat the first fight.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 2:47 pm

Oh, I'm well aware that they changed the names for the US version - and yeah, I heard it was because they'd be in lawsuit-territory for Mike Bison (given in Japan you can have WcDonalds food and, BEST SOFT DRINK EVER, Cock, and it's all good).

I really used to suck at it. As in "Couldn't possibly win even on easiest". So now, playing SSF2 and SFA2 on the SNES, 1st difficulty level, after abstaining from all forms of fighters for so long, I slide through easily. Several perfects, even. I think the guides on how to play actually helped.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 5:58 am

Capcom's writers are employed on the basis of being able to translate sprites and bytecode.

Not human readable plots.

-Crissa

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:22 am

Oh and by the way, Kaiser is part of the problem, not the solution. That is all.

-Username17

Cielingcat · Post by **Cielingcat** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 1:20 pm

But Frank! Michael Moore is a left wing loon, and we can't trust anything he says even when we hear the actual words out of Nixon's mouth!

People actually believe this.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:41 am

I have no idea about KP's merits as a healthcare provider. However, their deployment of healthcare technology is definately world leading: the NHS sends guys over there to learn from them to help with the national program for health IT.

They actually did a great job of involving clinicians in designing systems to support them (I know, what a break through, but this is the IT industry)

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 8:43 am

Kaiser is a private enterprise corporation whose existence is to make money. They make money by minimizing the amount of healthcare that they have to pay for. Some of this is achieved by aggressively treating people who have conditions that will degrade (and thus cost more to fix) without intervention. That's good.

But they also do less savory things. I have personally transported a man with a broken back by ambulance from one hospital to another. Not for better care, but for cheaper care. On behalf of Kaiser. Because they wanted him in an institution they owned rather than the trauma ward he had originally been delivered to. Because they were contracting space from the county hospital at that point, and they could do it cheaper across town in the hospital that didn't have a level 1 trauma center in it. That's bad.

Kaiser is a big group, they have some cool technology. They are legitimately better than Blue Shield. But they are not an acceptable model of healthcare. Their every action is directed by concerns that are completely orthogonal to helping people. Sometimes they help people, sometimes they leave people to die. That's not a model that should be copied. By anyone. Anywhere.

-Username17