They don't seem to chase any real "Bad Guys" with anything less than a SWAT team.  If they are just going to be "Justice by Points" doing a FINE job of harassing the average citizen unlikely to fight back, do they need deluxe cars?

The real thing about this, is that when someone dies because they are denied preventative care, the final despearte trips to the emergency room that nobody but the hospital can pay for often cost more than if it was treated properly.  Like one Dr. Checkup a year, at a subsidized rate, and again based on ability to afford simple necessary surgeries from the appendix to tumors.  It's cheaper to treat than to ignore until it's several agonizing emergency room visits and a death.

How 'bout using the threat of "Breaking their monopoly" if they don't mind their own house?

 

After all, why should the "Word" on medicine be legally at the sole control of a for-profit monopoly?  That's the worst parts of Communism and Capitalism at the same time.

 

I say, if they defeat or otherwise subvert and destroy "Universal Health Care" they should lose their monopoly.  We should go back to the days of anyone being able to claim to be a "Doctor" and do what they want as long as they can keep patients seeing them.  It's not a "utopian" solution, but it's a horrible one, but better than now.

 

Frankly, there are tons of "Doctors" who either never made it completely through school/residency or ones that had "Accidents" and ended up stripped of liscense or simply unable to afford insurance.  All this training, talent, going to waste.  The people denied care due to finances kills far more than those of the occasional incompetent, though the insurance/hospital monopolies are actually more tempted to cover for a deadly quack than kick him out, for fear of admitting there is a problem.

 

So, I'd make it so medicine was free.  I'd just make a few conditions.

1.  The "American Medical Association" could still use it's association badge like a "Guild" symbol and sue anyone using it falsely.

2.  Having said that, I'd strip them of using the "Cadecus" symbol.  That symbol would go to charity hospitals exclusively.

3.  I'd do a reasonable "Tort Reform" that would put a "Own Risk" contract binding to help the more poorer doctors.  They could still be sued if they for instance did brain surgery with no ability to do so and lobotomized a patient, but minor infections, complications, etc. that can happen in any case wouldn't be an instant cash cow.  No cash cow, no insurance, Doctor wears patched robes =  no lawyer would touch them with a 100 foot pole.

 

Think about it, in all it's macabre splendor;

Right next to "The Hospital", "Al's Garage and Gun-Shop" has converted to "Al's Cheep Surgery" where a few formerly "AMA" fallen doctors hang out and fix up motorbikes in their spare time, not that they can drive them anymore due to DUIs.  Just don't go there on a saturday night or sunday morning.  Make that the whole weekend, due to their drinking problem.  But outside that they work hard to maybe someday re-join their former guild and it's amazing how they can work around the limited budget for medical tools with the garage tools.

The renissance faire has a Jester dummy who has teeth blacked out so only a few show. He holds pliers and a sign.  "We now practice ye olde Medival Dentistry!!!"

 

Borders has "Home Surgery" kits complete with torniquet and one-use sterile saws, needles and gauze and lots of sutures with colorful (and waterproof!) "How-To" guides:-)

 

The internet is full of tons of "Home Surgery DIY" sites.  The more popular ones, including the AMA's proto DIY front that tries to get people to go to doctors instead, are trying to get shut down the ones that offer deadly, false advice, some having literally been made by Satanists hoping to do a 3rd hand "Human Sacrifice".  Their critics say they just want to force people to pay their subscription fees and order the "Fancy" tools from their suppliers, and since the AMA's suppliers still charge a premium many find weight to those allegations...

In a "Tent City" becoming a proper shanty/slum as it builds through and around abandoned and partly demolished buildings, there's a popular and competent but still unliscensed dentist who got his start in the former "Walled City of Kowloon" who has a rather prosperous full plywood shanty that's actually clean and nice inside.  He proudly opens up an ornate carved sandalwood box and arranges on the window his hobby, his collection of miniature ivory carvings he made himself.  He feels at home again.  Next door his younger brother took a few years of medical schools in their travels and read everything he could about medicine and he's a fairly competent general practicioner, able to remove a bullet or help heal a knife wound and is truly an artist at splintering a broken bone with trash.  He's also a popular abortionist.  Their extended family runs a sushi bar, but insist they get their fish entirely from the muddy stream that flows from the "New Shanty City" and NO fetuses or cats are in or on the menu.

 

Now, in case you missed the obvious, I'm being very macabre and sarcastic.  However, in a way, this is what the big companies have done to the average American worker over the decades.  They've made us poor to make themselves richer.  Now that way too many people are falling through the cracks, they notice and complain.

 

The reality is that Insurance companies and Hospital Monopolies should be crushed mercilessly by "Anti-Trust" laws and other regulators.  The American worker should be able to afford a few trips to the doctor now and again, at the very least a yearly check up and an anticipated 2-4 times a lifetime "emergency/needed operation".  And Doctors should "Run the Show".  Without the AMA, the Insurance companies or the Hospital business monopolies to marginalize or ruin them, they should indeed be able to handle the trust they still have but could lose at any time if this current trend continues.

I'm totally for a "Space Elevator". 

 

 

We'd have a rush of people building "O'Neil Space Stations" to ease congestion on earth and "Escape".  That isn't my goal, btw, rather it's "SeaSteading" but frankly a space elevator base would best be built on a massive floating platform in the Pacific at the equator line, therefore it's something that would help the 'SeaSteading" community take shape.

My Grandfather, a Great Depression survivor, had rabbit all the time.  He died plenty rich enough to avoid eating it, but he got a taste for it.

 

One thing I've really noticed is that since he died and most of the remaining "Depression Survivors" did as well, there's been a ton more rabbits visible.  He did keep traps in his house, and IMO instead of hunting (shooting a gun in a city at them = bad idea) just trapped 'em when he couldn't hunt 'em.  Another thing I've noticed is that they are more colorful.  It used to be, there were nothing but tiny super-efficient jack-rabbit types available.  Now, they've obviously bred with those colorful "Docile" ones people bought as pets in the 90s and let run around their yards because they were docile and didn't run for the hills if ever let go!  So much the better, probably more meat.

 

I'm personally uneager to kill "Cute little bunnies" but I do agree this is something to consider.  If you or a neighbor starts raising rabbits, you'll have plenty of meat.  Fur, too.  My mom once had a wonderful patchwork coat of rabbit fur that lasted many years.

 

The thing to do is keep it local.  If we buy "Big Ag" commercial meat, we'll run into the same "Factory Farm" PETA bait nightmares.  Accountants and businessmen should never be allowed animal husbandry.  On the other hand, one or two "Rabbit Farmers" per suburban 1/2 mile could supplement the meat supply at very little personal cost with no unnecessary cruelty.  A nice 'competition' strategy to avoid the "Pneumatic Dictatorship" I think the corporations are trying to set up.

Most "Farmer's Markets" are organized by local cities and pay rent on space, so a centralized "Reader" could be quite manageable.  Just write people a recipt for what they buy, then ring it up at the central register, then have the accountant sort out who sold what and write checks.

Having said that, I think a farmer's market is a band-aid solution.  It should be the norm, not the exception, for "Local farms feeding local people."  I'm for calling for tariffs on imported food, first from another state, then moreso from another country.  If you have tomatoes sometimes flown here from 1000 miles away but sell for a profit for half of what Judd the farmer could justify selling them for, that's "Kosher as Ham on Rye"...

 

Make it more expensive to get stuff outside the market, and break up the "Big Ag" trusts, the grocers will start taking things from local farmers, not shutting them out.

God's law is for man to "Choose Life". While something like a cop who kills a serial killer who's trying to kill him, or running away to kill another day might be forgivable, killing a helpless human being no matter how evil is murder. Counting the laws and appeals involved, it's cheaper for life in prison, along with the likelihood that innocents are executed...



"It seems to me that his only crime is poverty, but he's yours and I don't want to hear any more about this."



So, it is wrong to harvest organs from condemned, again as wrong as it is to kill them. A society that thinks this is right becomes like China, where executions are performed on demand and the 'guilty' sentenced to die are increasingly done so because of profit motives for 'organ tourists'.



And, really, do you want the "Parts" of a horrible killer? Most are wretched junkies or black people that end up being 'convicted' due to poverty. And once in a while, pure evil manages to get caught alive to be executed. Want to have the BTK killer's heart? (assuming the next step will be life imprisonment cases) There's this neat movie; "Body Parts" on that subject. Really, a lot we don't know about how nerves affect the body, how much of 'us' is in our parts.

Most food animals we eat now, if we encountered them hunting we'd shoot 'em to put them out of their misery.





What's needed desperately is a system of labelling that has strict guidelines and offers a spectrum from "Factory Farm" to "True open range" with a few gradients in between. Just like is needed for "Standard Big Ag" to "Hippie Joe's Organic Garden".



A strict range of labels would provide the market niche that the latter, the extremely holistic/organic providers need. This should have strong penalties to prevent the big companies from just slapping an "organic" generic label, raising the price, but selling it at half "Hippie Joe's" minimum price and putting him out of business. If a range of labels is implemented so consumers can choose, then slowly the market will shift from "Big Ag" standard to the middle of the road with the extreme "Organic" end entering a renaissance. Big Ag will then simply shift to having grocery stores accept local produce again and importing luxury/out of season goods.

I just hope Good keeps out ads like this. I really like this magazine, not so much as a "Liberal/Leftist" source but a true intellectual/thinker's source of which so-called 'left' thought is associated with. Needing ads, I'll plug my websites (warped comics) to provide a few bucks.