Thog's Science Masterclass #6

[realthog]

Jason Roberson writes in yesterday's Dallas Morning News:  

Texas once again led the nation with the highest percentage of residents without health insurance, a U.S. Census Bureau report showed Tuesday . . . 

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

Seems logical. ER won't check your breast for tumours, which means you get cancer. Neither will ER offer you chemotherapy or a lumpectomy when those become necessary, so you die. And this way you're no longer counted as one of the uninsured.

So that nice Mr Goodman's absolutely right! Whoopee! Let's all party!

(By the way, anyone got a bridge to sell? The one I bought on eBay a few weeks ago has never arrived and they won't answer my e-mails . . .)

Comments

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I read this story, and my first response was that the son of a poxied trull needed to have his head stove in. Then I reflected on my father's saying 'if you put a fool in a mortar and poun' him, him come out same fool'. That means that violent means of education wouldn't work. I suspect the only remedy is to remove the idiot's income, infect him with trichinosis, and point him in the direction of an emergency room.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's sort of my feeling. It'd be good if he were bankrupted and then discovered he had some sort of chronic but non-fatal disease which merely involved him being unable to earn his living for a year. Then he might -- just might -- learn a little human compassion.

But then Repugs like Reagan never did, even though they pretended to, and conned the majority of the US public into thinking they did . . .

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Human compassion? But I thought he was the kind of chap I could have a beer with.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"But I thought he was the kind of chap I could have a beer with."

A beer to be supped wi' a lang spoon . . .

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Och, yer aifter sayin' he's a de'il?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Crivvens, laddie, but ye've hit the nail right on the thumb.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Ouch!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"But I thought he was the kind of chap I could have a beer with."

More seriously, that was the great Reaghan con-trick. Later Rove/Buce/Darth showed how successful it could be: large chuinks of America were so stupid as to think that this favoured son of riches would countenance the notion of having a beer with them down the trailer park. How delusional can people be? -- or, rather, how powerful are the populiat media in indoctrinating the public with delusions?

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Very popular. The thing is that humans tend to believe what they perceive, since there is no evolutionary reason for them not to. Some miserable wits have realized this and take it as their license to manipulate and deceive and feel superior, when, in fact, humans are not the sheep they claim to be, but they are manipulable, and they can be easy to panic when you know a couple of tricks. They are cheap tricks, though, and knowing them should not make a person as smug as it makes these fools.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"The thing is that humans tend to believe what they perceive, since there is no evolutionary reason for them not to."

In fact, there's a vety good evolutionary reason for us to believe what we're told/perceive. Human societies couldn't work without the transfer of information from humans to others, and it's the fact that we can form such extended societies that's one of the advantages differentiating us from most of the rest of the animal kingdom. (Let's not go digressing into red herrings about ants.)

One could say, and sometimes I do, that the rogue's cynical exploitation of the evolutionary survival factor of belief in imparted information is a crime against the species.

Treason, as Ann Coulter might call it. Except, of course, that she applies the term instead to anyone who vomits at the thought of . . . well, Ann Coulter, for a start. Mere traitors to the species she approves.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

One could say, and sometimes I do, that the rogue's cynical exploitation of the evolutionary survival factor of belief in imparted information is a crime against the species.

There are times that I wish it were prosecuted as such. Then I remember that I am a fiction writer, and tend to retract that thought.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

The big difference is that you and I stick FICTION on the cover . . .

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

It's very easy to fool people if you know what they want to be fooled with. The best lies are the lies people want to hear. Reagan presented himself as just folks, and told people that the problems of the world were really simple, black and white.

We're seeing this now in the narrative of plucky Georgia being bullied by the evil Russian bear (which is a tissue of falsehoods through and through). And people fall for it.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"The best lies are the lies people want to hear."

How very, very perceptive of you, as usual . . . :-)

"We're seeing this now in the narrative of plucky Georgia being bullied by the evil Russian bear . . . And people fall for it."

I'm not sure people are entirely falling for it. However much the White House blustered, Putin's accusation that the whole affair had been hatched there to benefit McCain seems not to have been rejected elsewhere with the usual vehemence. Whether his accusation is true or not (I wouldn't know) is beside the point; it seems to be being accepted as of status "within the bounds of plausibility".

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I'm that perceptive, but fifty-two years of living on this mudball has taught me a thing or two.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Child!

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Ancient!