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Their study, which was coauthored by Carnegie Mellon researcher Lei Lai, found that men and women get very different responses when they initiate negotiations. Although it may well be true that women often hurt themselves by not trying to negotiate, this study found that women's reluctance was based on an entirely reasonable and accurate view of how they were likely to be treated if they did. Both men and women were more likely to subtly penalize women who asked for more -- the perception was that women who asked for more were "less nice".We've been telling y'all this for years now. Get it through your thick skulls.
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On the other hand, it’s true that Americans get hip replacements faster than Canadians. But there’s a funny thing about that example, which is used constantly as an argument for the superiority of private health insurance over a government-run system: the large majority of hip replacements in the United States are paid for by, um, Medicare.
That’s right: the hip-replacement gap is actually a comparison of two government health insurance systems. American Medicare has shorter waits than Canadian Medicare (yes, that’s what they call their system) because it has more lavish funding — end of story. The alleged virtues of private insurance have nothing to do with it.
The reality is when states started requiring automobile insurance, they had to create an auto insurance company to handle people that insurance companies refused to cover. Florida has had to do the same thing with homeowners’ insurance, create a state insurance company to cover people the insurance companies refuse to cover. The Federal government operates a life insurance company for the military, because the insurance companies don’t want to sell insurance to the military.
The market cannot work unless it is free. When the government or reality make it imperative that you buy something, the market loses its freedom and becomes distorted. The insurance companies are controlling the market and the healthcare industry, they aren’t free. The insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. The cost of healthcare is rising primarily as a result of the cost of insurance, not the salaries of doctors.
Is national health insurance “socialized medicine”?
No. Socialized medicine is a system in which doctors and hospitals work for the government and draw salaries from the government. Doctors in the Veterans Administration and the Armed Services are paid this way. Examples also exist in Great Britain and Spain. But in most European countries, Canada, Australia and Japan they have socialized financing, or socialized health insurance, not socialized medicine. The government pays for care that is delivered in the private (mostly not-for-profit) sector. This is similar to how Medicare works in this country. Doctors are in private practice and are paid on a fee-for-service basis from government funds. The government does not own or manage their medical practices or hospitals.
The term socialized medicine is often used to conjure images of government bureaucratic interference in medical care. That does not describe what happens in countries with national health insurance. It does describe the interference by insurance company bureaucrats in our health system.
The NHS is on the brink of collapse and cannot be saved unless Gordon Brown intervenes when he becomes prime minister to give doctors the authority to organise a recovery, the leader of Britain's 33,000 hospital consultants will claim today.
Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the British Medical Association's consultants committee, will tell Mr Brown: "Political meddling has brought the NHS to its knees. Unshackle the profession, give us back the health service, and we will rebuild it. Fail to do so and you will rightly be condemned for destroying the best piece of social capital the country has ever had."
Dr Fielden will make his plea as Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, announces the NHS's financial results for the year to March. She is expected to confirm a report in the Guardian last week that it made a surplus of about £500m.
"The excessive use of private firms to provide NHS services has been costly, disruptive and has fragmented care. The independent sector should only be used where the NHS needs it, not thrust into its midst like a carelessly placed hand grenade.
....
"We will not stand by and see the Trojan horse of the independent sector rolled in to take over the health service from within."
Results Electronic health records were used in 18% (95% confidence interval [CI], 15%-22%) of the estimated 1.8 billion ambulatory visits (95% CI, 1.7-2.0 billion) in the United States in 2003 and 2004. For 14 of the 17 quality indicators, there was no significant difference in performance between visits with vs without EHR use. Categories of these indicators included medical management of common diseases, recommended antibiotic prescribing, preventive counseling, screening tests, and avoiding potentially inappropriate medication prescribing in elderly patients. For 2 quality indicators, visits to medical practices using EHRs had significantly better performance: avoiding benzodiazepine use for patients with depression (91% vs 84%; P = .01) and avoiding routine urinalysis during general medical examinations (94% vs 91%; P = .003). For 1 quality indicator, visits to practices using EHRs had significantly worse quality: statin prescribing to patients with hypercholesterolemia (33% vs 47%; P = .01).
The early years of suicide terrorism were a simpler time, the officers explained. Suicide bombers were—at least in theory—easier to spot then. They tended to carry their bombs in nylon backpacks or duffel bags rather than in belts or vests concealed beneath their clothing, as they do now. They were also typically male, aged seventeen to twenty-three, and unmarried. Armed with these data, the authorities could simply deny work permits to Palestinians most likely to be suicide bombers, thus restricting their ability to cross the Green Line (Israel's pre-1967 border) into Israel proper from the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.
Today, though, suicide bombers are middle-aged and young, married and unmarried, and some of them have children. Some of them, too, are women, and word has it that even children are being trained for martyrdom. "There is no clear profile anymore—not for terrorists and especially not for suicide bombers," an exasperated senior officer in the Israel Defense Forces told [the author] last year.
Iraq's cabinet has approved changes to a draft oil law and sent it to parliament in a step seen as vital to curbing sectarian violence.
Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, said it was the "most important" law in the country.
"The law was approved unanimously ... it was referred to the parliament which will discuss it tomorrow," he said.
"I call on all our partners in the political process and in this national unity government to respect this deal."
Followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Thursday joined a growing chorus of Sunni, Kurdish and Shiite opposition to a draft oil law approved by Iraq's cabinet and backed by the US government.
Sadr's supporters said they would not support any law that would allow firms 'whose governments are occupying Iraq' -- a reference to the US, Britain and their coalition allies -- to sign Iraqi oil deals.
Presentation of the draft to parliament after the cabinet approved it on Tuesday was a big step towards meeting a key political target set by the US.