Cui bono? Health scammers 20 Aug 2009 An old legal principle in assigning guilt is the one that goes by the latinate title cui bono? Who benefits? As Deep Throat said, “follow the money”. So, ask yourself: who benefits from a broken American healthcare system, in which even those who are insured are prevented from receiving effective care? Now ask yourself, who gets funding from those who benefit? Now ask yourself, who is running the present lying scare campaign to prevent a sensible health system, one that is barely going to match those in Europe, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Mexico? The answers are: the health industry, and in particular the health insurance industry. Scammers, running a massive scam on a population who will respond to the right hot button terms and dog whistles put out there by those who take that industry’s money. The link above will allow you to find out who gets that money. Or at any rate, what publicly elected American officials do. It won’t tell you how much money the media pundits get, nor the astroturf companies and organisers get. In Australia we had a scandal a while back in which we found out that talk radio hosts Alan Jones and John Laws, who basically divided the Sydney market between them, were taking graft under the counter to give good press to industries they had previously slammed, especially the banks. It didn’t stop them, of course, but at least we knew who the lying bastards were. You Americans, you need to know this too. Australian stuff Politics
General Science Sociology and science 26 Apr 2008 I have an uncanny ability to offend those who I shouldn’t be offending, with bad jokes. In a recent post I put in a Tom Lehrer video where he mocks sociology. Having had philosophy mocked by my friends and contacts over the years (you study what? Your navel?), I guess… Read More
Evolution The Place of Science in Society 24 Jan 2009 It came as an email. Then it was on the Seed Bloggers Forum. Now it’s on my frigging Facebook – they really want me to answer this: In his first speech as President-elect last November, Barack Obama reminded us of the promise of “a world connected by our own science… Read More
Academe Time to re-evaluate higher education 2 May 201122 Jun 2018 When my grandfather was a boy of 14, he started a career as a fireman that led to him being the chief of the Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade in the 1930s. While he did this he gained an engineer’s certificate, but he was working, earning and building a career. He… Read More
One constant is the rest of the world’s fascination with what happens in the United States. Canadians in particular are very affected by this phenomenon. If the Americans do something, it must be the right thing to do, or at the very least, the rest of the world needs to pay attention. Many Canadians can’t see any difference between Canada and the United States and believe that “Americans are just like us. ” When the most powerful country in the world can’t or won’t provide heath care to its citizens, Canadians in particular should question their admiration for all things American.
A while back, the previous Australian federal government were talking about adopting American “best practice” in health insurance. The response was sustained screaming from anyone who had experience of it. Unfortunately the Australian experience is that if we can’t adopt the worst of the US, we’ll adopt the worst of the UK, which is where we are now…
When the most powerful country in the world can’t or won’t provide heath care to its citizens That’s not really the right way to put it, since a close look at the numbers shows that we do, in fact, provide health care to our citizens. Contrary to what some people might think, Americans are not coldhearted money-grubbing monsters, and a large amount of free and discounted health care is given out everyday despite the fact that we are not set up to do that very well. The problem is not ‘can’t and won’t’ but the fact that we are not set up to do what we actually do, and on top of that the ‘can and will’ is so thoroughly hodge-podge and ad hoc that it can literally be the case that someone uninsured will get great care one day or in one place and little if any care another day or in another place; it varies from day to day, from hospital to hospital, from practitioner to practitioner, from state to state; and the system of access is so patchwork that there’s no system to it — even having insurance doesn’t guarantee you’ll be able to navigate it to your benefit — and everyone who can pay ends up paying out the nose because of the endless inefficiencies of it. Which, of course, raises John’s question of who benefits from this utterly nonsensical way of doing things. Alas, it’s almost the very character of the American way: excellent ideals passionately and ingeniously pursued in the ways obviously least suited to attain them. It’s a vicious cycle, in some ways: people are very aware of how bad it is, so aware that they are extremely afraid of making it worse. Which allows others to use scare tactics to maintain the status quo.