politics

Hospitals giveth, Hospitals taketh.

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According to Alan A., the nurse generally handles three or four patients at a time. That would mean Sloan-Kettering is billing more than $1,200 an hour for that nurse. When I asked Paul Nelson, Sloan-Kettering’s director of financial planning, about the $414-per-hour charge, he explained that 15% of these charges is meant to cover overhead and indirect expenses, 20% is meant to be profit that will cover discounts for Medicare or Medicaid patients, and 65% covers direct expenses. That would still leave the nurse’s time being valued at about $800 an hour (65% of $1,200), again assuming that just three patients were billed for the same hour at $414 each. Pressed on that, Nelson conceded that the profit is higher and is meant to cover other hospital costs like research and capital equipment.

I don’t know any nurses who get paid US$800 an hour. Hell, I don’t know any nurses who get paid even US$50 an hour. An acquaintance works 12 hour shifts at a nursing home and at the end of the day gets paid about US$10 an hour by her own reckoning. She gets yelled at, bit on, pissed on. Her employer constantly threatens her with unemployment to obtain free labor. She doesn’t have any satisfaction about her job or herself at the end of the day.

I’ve gotten paid the same amount per hour washing dishes and I’ve gotten the satisfaction of hearing people say “these are the cleanest dishes I’ve ever seen at a restaurant.”

In Mexico we’ve got some price controls implemented so the most egregious overcharging doesn’t happen… but then again, most people would prefer spending more money than they can than to go to a state hospital managed by the IMSS, where mothers give birth on the bathroom floor and you can spend 12 hours sitting in the waiting room before a general practice doctor will even bother to tell you to go home.

I’m now wondering how long until the IMSS is dismembered and the pieces sold. Millions will instantly be unable to afford any kind of emergency healthcare and most types of outpatient care; the same thing that’s happened in the US will happen in Mexico. It will happen by design too.

You can go to the hospital, but you can never leave it behind. The sticker shock at the bills will prevent any kind of health recovery, not matter how many drugs they pump into you.

Then again, it’s by design. A hospital without consumers makes no profit.

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us | TIME.com.

Wait, what?

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Reached through sober analysis, Stern’s conclusion that “John F. Kennedy and his administration, without question, bore a substantial share of the responsibility for the onset of the Cuban missile crisis” would have shocked the American people in 1962, for the simple reason that Kennedy’s administration had misled them about the military imbalance between the superpowers and had concealed its campaign of threats, assassination plots, and sabotage designed to overthrow the government in Cuba—an effort well known to Soviet and Cuban officials.

The Real Cuban Missile Crisis – Benjamin Schwarz – The Atlantic.

It seems Kennedy was guilty of more than just a little marital slip-ups.

He voted his own party out of office

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Pero la venganza de Felipe Calderón fue descomunal. Cerró todas las vías legales e ilegales posibles para que llegara financiamiento a la señora Vázquez Mota —precipitando su derrota—, a la que también mandó al hospital.

La fea enfermedad del poder que, según acapulqueños, ya también coquetea al presidente Peña Nieto. Al tiempo.

El Universal – Opinion – Un déspota en Los Pinos.

Vazquez Mota had to go to the hospital? Nice going there, asshole.

Of immigration and race

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In a way, this reminds me of the immigration situation in America with Mexicans marching, protesting America’s immigration laws. But what they don’t want to ever talk about is Mexico’s immigration laws and how they treat their illegal immigrants. In Mexico, being an illegal is a felony and hiring an illegal is a felony. Also, in Mexico, the law states that if you have a choice, you should always hire the natural born Mexican before the foreigner, even if they aren’t illegal

Mexico also has an illegal immigration problem with other Central American countries, but they way they treat their illegals, which are the same “race” of people is magnitudes worse than the treatment they themselves receive in the U.S.

OP’s post sort of reminds me of this, in the way that everyone is so busy criticizing the great evil that they don’t even look at how they are treating the people themselves. Arabs treat the Palestinians badly similarly to (but on a much greater scale) to how Mexico treats its Latino illegal immigrants.

nitesmoke comments on IAmA a Palestinian refugee from Lebanon and I wish the Arab world gets as little as 10% of the criticism Israel gets for treating Palestinians. AMA..

So true. The original IAmA article is plenty interesting too.

I wouldn’t still be able to vote… yet.

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Most people associate such exhaustive money-laundering with drug cartels. But it’s now standard practice at firms like Eli Lilly, Google, Microsoft, Pfizer, and Facebook. The only difference is that when drug dealers do it, the government shows up with Kevlar and automatic weapons instead of a refund check.

via The 10 Most Corrupt Tax Loopholes – Page 1 – News – Minneapolis – City Pages.

I need to set myself up as a Delaware corporation, then sell my mind to that so my body can license it. Then maybe I could set a subsidiary of myself up in Mexico so I could travel unhindered by the TSA or the Border Patrol even if I carry a kilo of whiter-than-snow pure cocaine.

It’d be for R&D purposes, obviously.

“All I Need Is a Real Job”

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"Everyone Only Wants Temps" | Mother Jones.

The future of all workers in the United States is exceedingly dim. Either you become a contractor or a temp, no matter what the job might be.

This is something most immigrants realize soon after getting here, no matter where they’re from. For them, the American Dream turns from being one of gaining full citizenship, to one of getting enough money to buy oneself a business back in the country of origin.

In the race to undo the gains earned by the union movements of the past two centuries, this country certainly tries to be Number 1.

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