“The basic takeaway from the analysis was that there is variation in quality from hospital to hospital, but that variation it is not correlated with for-profit status.” Maybe For-Profit Hospitals Aren't So Bad, Harvard.edu Blog
US healthcare spending is almost twice that of the other developed countries. Pharmaceuticals and medical goods (e.g., medical supplies and devices) are a relatively small part of that difference. If we knocked off, say, $200 a year in drugs and medical goods, we'd hardly make a dent in overall US healthcare spending – which is approaching a per capita average of $10,000 a year.
Americans aren't just skimping on preventative care and treatment; in order to pay their medical bills, they're cutting back on food, clothing, and basic household items.
First we've got to get a handle on what the US actually spends on healthcare. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (National Health Expenditures 2016 Highlights - CMS.gov), US healthcare spending reached $3.3 trillion in 2016, or $10,348 per person. That represents 17.9% of the gross domestic product (GDP). For comparison, the “Comparable Rich Country” average for healthcare spending was $5169 per person in 2016 (10-12% of GDP, depending on the specific country).
Problems are problems because they conflict with desired outcomes. Exploring a problem space may start with the desired outcome (universal but affordable health care!) or with a "problem-alert": the sense that something is wrong. Part of exploring a problem space is refining, clarifying, or figuring out what the desired outcome is. Part of that process is refining, clarifying, or figuring out what the actual problem is.
Up-front costs impede the adoption of sustainable practices and technologies. So we need to create incentives for farmers to make that initial investment. Want more farmers to adopt no-till cultivation? Allow farmers to deduct the entire cost of expensive no-till planters in the first year of purchase.
…By virtue of their antipathy to Trump, making Democrats into vocal deficit hawks and free traders so that even if they win back Congress or the Whitehouse, it would be hard to change their tune.
In the case of corn-soybean farmers in Michigan, winter cover crops can delay or complicate spring planting; land that is not tilled for years might be invaded by difficult-to-control weeds; reducing fertilizer, insecticide, and herbicide use may sacrifice crop yield and boost the risk of herbicide-resistant insects and weeds. These are real concerns in a low-margin business.
“…Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes understood that great revelations create great enemies. He once warned: “You never need think you can overturn any old falsehood without a terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population that dwells under it.”
“When inequality loses its association with hope and instead becomes interpreted as a signal of a rigged society, higher inequality relates to lower well-being” (Buttrick, N. R., S. J. Heintzelman, et al., 2017).
More land for agriculture means less land for grasslands, wetlands, and forests. Looking at the Big Picture, "sparing" the wild things is better than "sharing" with them. Of course, there will always be exceptions, but that's the general rule.
There are things I care about… I want the biosphere to survive, relatively intact. I want every human to have a home… The list goes on. There's no way to justify the list. No first principles that can withstand scrutiny.
... Averaged across the above groups, 24% of Republicans surveyed by Pew considered economic inequality to be a "very big" problem, compared to 62% of the Democrats surveyed.
...ideologues tend to exaggerate societal problems, the better to justify their Big Solution. Big Solutions need to be justified when they require painful sacrifice (the darkness before the dawn), as they often do. That pain had better be worth it. Hence: Big Solutions need Big Problems.
Point is, no one has an emotional reaction to inequality without a sense of what it speaks to. Inequality is a concept for God's sake. It's not at the same level of concreteness as, say, a snake slithering in the grass.
The above game is an example of what I call an "Act of God" study design, in which researchers (playing God) randomly dole out good and bad fortune to study participants, typically in the form of monetary payments.
Here’s the thing: yeah, what with pesticides, fertilizer run-off, and habitat encroachment, farmers haven't done birds any favors - but that's not the whole story of declining bird populations. Nature will not simply revert back to some pristine state if we give back what we took: sorry - the habitat is yours now - multiply and prosper!
If 80% of wild plants depend on insects for pollination, the decline of insects spells trouble for just about all birds, not just the insect-eating ones. So what can we do?
For the most part, these are longstanding Republican complaints against the Democratic Party. What's changed over the years is the intensity of feeling that accompanies the complaints...
Prone to anxiety? The machinery will tilt towards the threat potential in its representations, systematically reviewing the possibilities. Confident and optimistic? The machinery will tilt towards images of success and triumph, but not dwell on them because no preparation is required for what may come. We already know we can handle whatever is thrown our way, and it will be good.