Disqus - Latest Comments for benmoore

Re: Ben's Place

benmoore — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:27:10 -0000

I'm not sure government health insurance programs are more cost-effective, even if they spend less on their insured.

Sometimes they're cheaper because they pay less to providers (incenting some providers to not take medicare or medicaid patients). Sometimes they're cheaper because they don't do a lot of oversite (increasing levels of fraud relative to private insurance). They also cover fewer expensive procedures like transplants, angioplasties (colonoscopies in Canada). They also ration more expensive procedures by making people wait longer for them, for example cancer surgeries in Canada.

Average life expectancy in US goes up significantly if you remove traffic deaths and murder. IMO, if we want to live as long as Canadians, we should drive less and shoot less before we consider going single payer.

Re: Ben's Place

benmoore — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:12:31 -0000

I cannot verify that she states it that explicitly. I should've written "implied" instead of "inferred". Thank you for the correction ;)

Re: Ben's Place

benmoore — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 10:43:50 -0000

Agreed. I don't quite understand the Ayers play by conservatives.

I saw Klein speak about her book, and remember her quoting Friedman talking about how change occurs at crisis points. She then twisted the reference to infer that Friedman advocated crises that furthered his agenda. Completely false, but the audience ate it up.

Re: Redesign

benmoore — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:43:57 -0000

The redesign is nice. I'd see how long you can go without adding color - maybe it'll grow on you. I like the use of fonts for differentiation and styling.. maybe they're enough? Be bold with your fonts.

However, I would work on your vertical rhythm - http://alistapart.com/artic... - the two columns on the right need some tlc.

These are nice b&w sites:
http://subtraction.com/
http://iolanguage.com/
http://www.rikcatindustries...
http://www.corporateriskwat...
http://www.modula.fi/

my 2 cents

Re: Ben's Place

benmoore — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:20:18 -0000

My favorite commenter! Welcome back. This quote is from a dem publication criticizing their own. IMO, being in bed with the teachers union has slowed progress of public education. Clinton did a nice job by bringing in charter schools to introduce a little competition. However, I agree with what I think your point is: both dems and reps have failed to make meaningful positive change in public education.

IMO, having 5% of ed dollars come from the fed isn't worth it. Federal dept of ed, NCLB, etc. should be shut down. There's no reason states can't handle education, especially since 95% of dollars are from state and local gov anyway. MN's economy is the size of Norway. Somehow Norway can manage their public ed system.

Re: Ben's Place

benmoore — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:04:26 -0000

A drug company selling a cholesterol pill doesn't have an incentive for us to get healthy via another treatment (another pill, exercise, diet, whatever), but you could argue that about any medical treatment. Would you claim that doctors want us to get sick so they get more office visits and get paid more?

Individuals like you and me have strong incentives to eat healthy and exercise -- longer life, more enjoyable life, pleasurable activity, lowers healthcare costs, etc..

As for people who are already overweight and unhealthy, would you suggest that government limit access to drugs that might help them feel better? How would you make sure with government that people got healthier with diet and exercise?

Re: Ben's Place

benmoore — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:17:13 -0000

First off, I mostly just thought the quote was funny. But if I had to pick one trait that is most objectionable to me, I like "universalist" least. I took it to mean: someone who won't claim to prefer one thing over another, or someone who claims to like everything. Transpose that onto his politics, and we have a candidate running in which we don't really know where he stands, what his cores beliefs, values, and principles are. He seems to say, "They're all important!" That's too easy, and doesn't reflect how things will happen in reality. He'll have to prioritize.

But don't all politicians claim that every issue is very important to them?