Good morning.
- The Pope in the Holy Land brought more than $40 worth of CDs as gifts.
- Kids and faith … our family did this too, we brought our kids to church in the absence of my belief for almost a decade.
- Maps and China.
- Speaking of maps … what goes perfectly with cartography, uhm, shoes?
- Color me unsurprised.
- Another nail in the old journalism coffin.
- A paschal flower.
- Reading Wright(ly).
- Predictions, projections from the White House … and their unfolding.
- Health care and cost confusion.
- Is bio-hacking a bigger threat than the flu?
- Central planning, it worked so well for the Soviet economy that our “bright boys” in the Administration think they want to give it a go. Well, at the same time … a look at government belt tightening (or the reverse).
- On the Mid-Pentecostal feast.
- Hmmm. I didn’t see it once too … over there.
- If the narrative that the “tide of democracy” is going to overtake the world is still alive … I’ve a question. Do you think the common person has more or less influence in the government and expressed authority today or 100 years ago? Less free or more free today than in 1809?
- The conservative liberal entitlement debate, 2009 edition.
- Tests.
- Martyrs counted.
- A plea that Mr Obama mature a little.
- A Christian praises the neo-atheists.
Kids and faith … our family did this too, we brought our kids to church in the absence of my belief for almost a decade.
We might end up taking our (hypothetical) kids to a Humanistic Jewish type place, to try to get the good (community, education about heritage, values) without the bad (dogma, nonsense, narrow-mindedness.) But it drives me nuts when people who aren’t religious mindlessly assume that religion is good for kids, just because they absorbed the propaganda without thinking.
It’s one thing to go to a liberal, open-minded kind of place. But taking your kids to an Orthodox synagogue or a Catholic mass regularly is playing with fire.
Is bio-hacking a bigger threat than the flu?
Hard to say because the flu is a pretty big threat. (Not the swine flu and certainly not this year, but eventually.) In the long run though, I can’t see how we’ll avoid massive casualties from biological war. It’s just going to be too damn easy.
And don’t forget about bio-hacking the flu. That’s obvious low-hanging fruit to terrorists & governments.
A plea that Mr Obama mature a little.
LOL. The poster attributes immature beliefs to Obama despite there being no evidence he holds those beliefs and then asks him to mature? Equating “not expanding the nuclear stockpile” to “unilaterally disarming” was a particularly nice touch, reminiscent of the recent equating of the “6% increase in military spending” to “slashing military spending” by the right.
JA,
When we having our first child, we were “unchurched”, not attending any services anywhere. We sought out and visited a number of local churches and settled on one largely on the basis of the open friendliness of the community. It turned to be an Episcopalian church. But I don’t think you need to demonize the Catholic a priori without personal experience. My sister-in-law for example has two disadvantaged children, smaller parish organizations don’t have programs for them, the catholic church does. Parish communities very substantially and develop their own sense of community. I’d be surprised if you don’t find healthy open Catholic communities don’t exist in significant numbers. Just because we didn’t find one in a 4 mile radius of our house isn’t telling.
I’ve known, liked, and respected many Catholic people in my life. Especially in America (where it’s more liberal in practice) the Church has done a lot of good. But I don’t want some believer to convince my child that he or she is going to hell because they masturbate or that I am because I’m an atheist, etc.
You could do a lot worse, of course. Better Catholic than Pentacostal or Southern Baptist, etc.
“Health care and cost confusion. ”
The confusion here is mixing up costs with prices. In the US we are used to menu type prices. In much of the world, though, prices are derived by haggling and bargaining. Even in the US, many prices are likewise set this way. There is no price for a three bedroom house, each three bedroom house for sale will have its own price that likely will not be the price it ends up selling for.
Cost is much less confusing. In the case of the hospital, there’s the average cost and the marginal cost. The average cost is the sum of all the hospital’s expenses (say for the maternity ward only) divided by the number of babies born. The marginal cost is simply how much the hospital would have to spend if one more woman had a baby that day.
The average cost is probably not too far from the $36K figure quoted for having a baby there with no insurance. The marginal cost is probably much, much lower. Why? Because a hospital has a lot of fixed costs. Property, plant and equipment are very expensive and must be maintained whether you have lots of beds filled or a few. The $17K figure probably represents an attempt to increase babies being born at the hospital by offering the insurance company a lower price to send patients there. They aren’t going to offer a price as low as their marginal cost because many people will simply choose a hospital that is close by.
In other words, say the marginal cost is only $2500 and 100 people a month have a baby at the hospital. If the insurance company was only going to send new people there, it would make sense to offer them a price of $2600, say. But out of the 100 people, maybe 30 will already have that type of insurance. If you made the price $2600 then you gain that $100 net for new patients but loose $14,400 ($17K – $2.6K) for the 30 patients who would have come anyway. That’s $432,000 which means you need 166 new patients to break even. The insurance company probably couldn’t deliever that many patients and even if they did the $2500 marginal cost is untrustworthy. You’d have to more than double capacity which probably means more property, plant, staff etc. unless you were really, really, really underutilized.
this isn’t confusing so much as hidden. Unless you’re the hospital’s accountant, you probably won’t have access to the data needed to learn the cost.