[ExI] government corruption

[painlord2k at libero.it]

Il 27/02/2009 9.34, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto:
> 2009/2/27 painlord2k at libero.it<painlord2k at libero.it>:
>
>> It is obviously a public hospital, and it continue to be open and
>> working. The administrators tell how difficult is to find
>> qualified workers and how hard is their job.
>>
>> This reinforce my point; a private hospital could never do the
>> same thing and continue do be open. Or they could do the same
>> things at much lower costs.
>
> Actually there are many examples of private hospitals and nursing
> homes which have major problems and try to cover them up, until
> something terrible happens and there is an investigation.

In this, I can assure, there is no difference from a public hospital.
If you screw up, you try to cover it wherever you work.
Usually, your life is not threatened by your errors, only by the public
discovering your errors.

> Sometimes they close down, sometimes they sack the offending parties
> and carry on. It is quite common for nursing homes in particular to
> be closed down because they don't meet standards on random
> (government) inspections.

There are other parties involved that have the motives and power to
inspect a nursing home, apart from the government?
Was any government's Nursing Home or Hospital closed, their employees
all dismissed, because they failed to comply with standard regulations?


> Interestingly, this regulation of private operators by the
> government is demanded by the paying public, who don't derive a lot
> of comfort from the idea that if their operation is screwed up they
> can always go somewhere else.

Again, the "paying public" demand the same regulation only for "private
operators" or for "all operators"? The fact that there are only "private
operators" or the controllers of the public operators are other public
operators disinclined to rock the boat is not prove of anything against
the private.

I worked in an hospital in the past, so they trained us to fire security
(what to do, what don't). To teach us there actual, public official,
fire-fighters. When the lesson ended, they tell us clear and plain that
would be useless to tell them that the Hospital was not in comply with
the security rules. They knew it; they had the hospital clean up the
bigger problems, but to fix them all would be impossible and they could
not cause a major public hospital to close.

> As for efficiency, medical care in the US costs about twice as much
> as in any comparable country, with outcomes such as infant mortality
> and life expectancy near the bottom of the OECD list.

In many countries the infant born and died would not be born, so they
would not count on. So, if people abort a child with a severe pathology
it don't count as infant mortality, where if they don't and it die after
a few weeks it count.  Also, the US population is very diverse, so it is
to expect to have very diverse life expectancies. People with very
different IQ is to be expect to have different life expectancies. EU or
Japan were, until a few years ago, very homogeneous. You can not compare 
one with the other without looking at the differences.

> This infuriates supporters of private health care, who advance
> various arguments to explain what they see as an anomaly, eg. that
> Americans are less healthy to begin with, or that the problem is
> that the system is only partially privatised.

The fact they could be infuriated don't prove that the explanations are 
wrong. Usually they are not.
Statistics can be read in many ways, usually wrong ways, if you don't 
understand how they are computed.
Like the linking of pirate activity and global warmings.

Follow an short article I suppose is interesting for the discussion.

http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/2009/02/our-incomplete-healthcare-wish.html

> Our incomplete healthcare wish
>
> Healthcare Just a quick observation about the healthcare debate that
> will soon heat up in the wake of President Obama's speech to
> Congress...
>
> The politicians getting all the attention are missing three-fourths
> of the healthcare issue. (Might that be intentional?) Healthcare is a
> four-legged stool, but they're only talking about one of those four
> legs: "Health care costs too much; we must make it affordable for all
> Americans."
>
>
> Remember six months ago, when almost all of us were wishing for the
> price of gasoline to drop? Well, it dropped — but I haven't seen any
> dancing in the streets as a result. Reason: A global depression is
> what made it drop.
>
> Lesson: Let's be careful what we wish for.
>
> Now we get a do-over regarding what we're wishing for. This time it's
> health care. And, based on the lesson we learned the hard way on
> gasoline prices, I'd like to submit a "clarification" of our wish
> regarding healthcare. Why? Because, as I said, the current mantra is
> about cost, cost, cost -- and in my judgment, cost is one-fourth of
> the issue. The other three legs of the four-legged healthcare stool
> are quality, availability, and innovation.
>
> So, here's a comparison: First is our current wish, as the
> politicians have constrained it. Second is how I'd amend our wish.
>
> 1. Our healthcare wish, as it stands: "Healthcare should be
> affordable for all Americans."
>
>
> 2. How I would amend our healthcare wish: "Healthcare should be: (a)
> affordable for all Americans, with... (b) no increase in waiting
> lines, and... (c) no decrease in the quality of care, and... (d) no
> decrease in the pace of innovation."
>
>
> We got burned on our gasoline wish. Fool me once, shame on you; fool
> me twice, shame on me.

Mirco