Dick Margulis said to Teresa Trujillo > I don't know that this is on-topic for the group, but it's not like > we're burning up bandwidth with anything else. In any case, here's the > link, for those who were puzzled by Teresa's cryptic post: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/14/opinion/14herbert.htm > > As it's the Times, you may be required to obtain a free login ID. Or > not. One can never tell with the Times.
(Didn't need to sign up for this one.) Can't argue with the main points, especially about the de-emphasis on math, and about the damage being done by No Child Left Behind. Definitely, you can't get a serious debate on issues during an election campaign - which might explain why the US campaign has basically been going for two years... Other observations in that article might be questionable. For example, nobody ever thinks that there's another way to look at health insurance costs - to wit: If you woke up and found yourself in 1995, would you regard it as the medical dark ages? Or would you (knowing what would be the state of the overall art in 2008) think that the available health care in 1995 was pretty decent overall? That 99.993 percent of the useful stuff that could be used to diagnose or treat anything that you would be likely to suffer in 2008 would already have been pretty much mainstream in 1995? Let's say that you had the option to buy a full-pop comprehensive medical policy for available 2008 medical diagnostic-and-treatment care, OR a budget policy that would cover you for only those tests and treatments that were available to patients in 1995 - what's your choice? Why? Just like computer stuff, medical stuff arrives esoteric and expensive, then filters down to the mainstream, becoming cheaper and more commoditized as time passes. Rich people can always get the best of treatment and the best of insurance, because they have more absolute dollars to throw at health-care concerns. They can afford to get the cutting-edge tests and treatments that are barely out of the development labs. Let them. Instead of demanding that your insurance cover the early-adopter whiz-bangs that the rich can afford, why not opt to pay for a package of stuff that was fairly standard practice a dozen years ago (in 1995 for the current example)? Of course, _some_ medical things have appeared since 1995 and yet managed to spread into general use so quickly that they're more efficient than the 1995 equivalent, so by all means adopt those exceptions without in any way detracting from the general principle of living within the medical means of a dozen years ago. There's also the concern that it often takes ten or fifteen years for the whoopses to become apparent - when some new whiz-bang treatment turns out to be less effective than originally thought, or to have nasty side-effects that weren't noticed in the trials and the early roll-out. Let the rich be the guinea-pigs for high prices, then adopt what shakes out, once the window of "tried and true" has caught up. I've been arguing, fruitlessly, that that should be the approach for our socialized medical system in Canada, to keep it from further collapse - it's already staggering badly. The same principle translates readily to personal and employer-mediated medical insurance in the USofA. Chances are, you heard this here first. :-) - Kevin The information contained in this electronic mail transmission may be privileged and confidential, and therefore, protected from disclosure. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and deleting it from your computer without copying or disclosing it. ______________________________________________ ComponentOne® Doc-To-Help® 2008 delivers streamlined authoring features, including new end-user features, all within the brand new Microsoft Office 2007 style interface. Download your FREE trial! http://www.techcommpros.com/componentone/ Interactive 3D Documentation Parts catalogs, animated instructions, and more. www.i3deverywhere.com _______________________________________________ Technical Communication Professionals Post a message to the list: email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, unsubscribe, archives, account options, list info: http://techcommpros.com/mailman/listinfo/tcp_techcommpros.com Subscribe (email): send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe (email): send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Need help? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] Get the TCP whole experience! http://www.techcommpros.com
