There wasn't a nursing shortage back when the county ran the hospital in my area. But you know the laws of supply and demand: corporations have to manufacture scarcity to drive up KPIs
> The nursing shortage could be solved by hiring more.
At least in Germany, there are massive amounts of open job postings for nursing and other care staff. The problem is that the wages are way too low, as the county/city-owned clinics have to adhere to the budget rule of maximum efficiency and minimum taxpayer subsidies (which led to massive outsourcing and other cost saving efforts in Munich [1]) and private-owned clinics are under financial pressure from their owners (you gotta make those 18% EBIT [2] somehow), while at the same time the amount of money that the public health insurances pay for procedures (fixed rates across the country) is not enough to cover these costs.
Do you shelter your money into "tax havens" ? If so, why do you cheat the system this way (note: I didn't ask the question "is this legal", so please don't bake that affirmation into your response).
Yes I do! After I got sick and tired of the nonsense games my local tax authority was playing, I moved out of the country and took all of my assets with me.
I did not mind paying the taxes, I did however mind the authorities trying to defraud me into paying non existent tax liabilities. They've since been forced to stop doing that.
they should be sued based on the number of breached records, period. let their insurance company dictate what hash algorithm to use. Damages would be automatically awarded to plaintiffs based on what data was breached. Just like a car accident: you destroyed my rear bumper, tail light, and window, the damages were $3200. Pay up.
People act differently when they know they're being watched. The government does not have the right to alter my behavior that way.
Next reason is that their laws aren't enforced equally. This tech is more likely to be used for small time crooks (and disproportionately, minorities) than used to stop CEOs or Epstein's, or cops that strangle handcuffed suspects of nonviolent offenses
This means you can steal packages from FedEx and UPS or Amazon deliveries from porches to your heart's content (not USPS because they are covered by federal law) and almost certainly never have to spend more than a day or two in jail if you're caught.
The $950 limit was proposed because Californians thought it was "not fair" to be charged with a felony for stealing an iPhone.
In this particular case here, Bezos makes his money back because the article indicated that the stolen items were being sold on Amazon! He'll get paid either way.
I heard about that. Local news interviewed a 7-11 owner who said he's toast because they're so low-margin to begin with, and shoplifting is already high. Maybe one good thing that could come from this: stores move to either online-pickup only, or browse large posters/catalogs in the store and scan what you want, then pick up from the cashier. Products are located in a warehouse divided from customers and they pack your bags for you. 0 shoplifting loss (yes employees could steal), but the benefit for me is more efficient shopping.
> Steal from the richest man in the world: FBI is on the case with military-grade weapons, tactics and surveillance.
Steal from the richest man in the world * that avoids paying taxes * : FBI is on the case with military-grade weapons, tactics and surveillance * paid by taxpayers *.
> the physicians who treat garden-variety diseases can be trained much less expensively.
So, how do you make sure that only garden variety patients see the medical assistant, while seriously sick ones or those who have only telltale signs of a 1-10k illness see the real doctor? If those rare ones don't get to the doc they die.
Seeing a GP isn't necessarily a guarantee that you will get diagnosed properly. Most PAs know their limits and will consult with a doctor if they're not comfortable. Doctors complain about malpractice insurance, but the rates are high for a reason. I was misdiagnosed when I had cancer, my wife was mis-prescribed when doing fertility treatments. Hell, being rich doesn't help; look at Bill Paxton and Neil Armstrong.
> Seeing a GP isn't necessarily a guarantee that you will get diagnosed properly.
so, because even the best make mistakes, that's a good reason to let under-trained (relative to an MD) people with even less skill make mistakes? Not following your logic here.
Seeing a PA for relatively normal issues frees up doctors for more serious cases. A triage system if you will. Doctors don't like this because it will hurt them financially. They want people to think of PAs as second rate, and that doctors are infallible.
In my case, my doctor felt that because colorectal cancer (at the time) was relatively unusual for my age demo, that he didn't really need to consider it. Instead of doing an actual DRE, or a fecal occult blood test, he simply dismissed it out of hand (pun intended) as internal hemorrhoids. A year later, I was having a full resection, chemo, radiation treatment, and a permanent colostomy. Thanks!
It is already happening. NYU Langone has been pushing hard on people to 'see' the doctors online for small stuff like allergies and fever. I wouldn't be surprised if this practice eventually extends to replacing doctors with a semi-automated (human-computer based) system .
For what is worth, a physician assistant can diagnose quickly (and they can be assisted with a ML/rule-based diagnosis system that is trained on something like "Pocket Medicine: The Massachusetts General Hospital", which is what most doctors in training use as a handbook) and escalate the difficult ones to the specialist doctors.
> your neighborhood doctor is likely a scam artist.
I don't blame a Dr for trying to charge 7x the actual value of their time if 6/7 people don't pay them at all (the case in ERs). They're employing the same practice as insurance companies. But when a Dr does it he's a scam artist?
honest question: can you point me to any US politician that has stood up to a corporation or corporate interest with laws that effectively say, "No, you can't have what you want, the people need <this> instead." and - most importantly - got those laws passed? I can't think of one. I think obamacare came close (which became one of the most hardfought wins ever), and yet the health insurance lobby still came out ahead. I dare say that no congress shall ever pass a law that harms a corporation (a de facto constitutional amendment).
What does that have to do with carbon control ? ICE auto industry, coal industry, oil and gas, etc, would all be "harmed" if US lawmakers passed anything that had a material impact on CO2 emissions. It would require multiple layers of alternative realities for that to ever happen, in my (admittedly cynical) opinion. I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm saying we should give up/not try. I _want_ us to solve global warming. I just can't picture it happening (at least for the redress method I listed above).
I don't know if this is the kind of answer you were looking for, but Elizabeth Warren was very successful in her efforts to get the CFPB off the ground, much to the displeasure of the financial sector: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Financial_Protection_.... It's true that under the Trump administration the bureau's behavior is being...modified...but it was quite a success when running as originally intended by Warren.
Furthermore, both Warren and Bernie Sanders seem to have genuine convictions w.r.t. climate change, health care, social inequality, etc. Whether or not their particular points of view are desirable is open for debate, but their multi-decade commitments to these issues are beyond question. They seem to have non-trivial support in the electorate as well - I encourage you to check them out, especially if you're feeling cynical or anxious about the future.
ok, they created a bureau, not a "rip consumers off and your executives go to jail (viz. wells fargo, HSBC...)" law.
Great convictions are a start. but in order for them to actually pass legislation, they need other congress members to vote for them. and that's where the dirty tricks start (I wont vote for your X unless you vote for my Y, etc).
I guess I'm contradicting myself a bit, because I said "name one" without acknowledging that it takes a majority in congress to pass anything. So yes, Warren and Sanders have the courage to face corporate interests. Thank you. I just yearn for the day where shareholders of XYZ get a 30% haircut because laws were passed that reigned in their company's behavior.
This is a misunderstanding how how government works. You need to have some kind of institution in order to get anything enforced. Building up institutions full of competent people with a mandate to craft and enforce carefully designed regulations and respond to changing circumstances is the way to attack these kinds of big problems.
(Of course, institutions can only be so effective when their leadership is unlawfully replaced with incompetent industry hacks by the next administration; the only way to tackle that is with higher-level political action: court fights, impeachment, and ultimately elections.)
Just laws on the books doesn’t accomplish anything. There are already plenty of laws against ripping off consumers, but corporatist ideologues in control of the US Supreme Court have spent the last several decades watering down the potential liability via increasingly tendentious reinterpretations.
you misunderstand how enforcement works. It's done via law enforcement agencies that exist already. It doesn't need a special new "bureau" for each type of rule. If you don't believe me that there are law enforcement agencies, I can show you how to summon them very easily.
Now, the question is, why don't these agencies enforce the same laws against corporations? That's the premise of my initial comment, which you also misunderstood.
There are many different organizations within the US federal government (not to mention state governments) which deal in one way or another with regulation and enforcement.
Many of the ones commonly considered to be “law enforcement agencies” per se are listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_law_enforcement_in_the... but there are many other federal agencies which might also be considered “law enforcement” under a broader interpretation of that term.
Different agencies have different focus, different mandate, different institutional powers, etc.
Arguably the functions established for the CFPB to perform could be undertaken by some other institution. But the point of the legislation and its implementation (which Warren and others worked very carefully on) was creating a semi-autonomous institution solely focused on consumer financial protection.
During the Obama years the CFPB was pretty effective, despite unified and extreme opposition from GOP politicians. (Its effectiveness explains why some folks were eager to see it defanged.)
Even with cigarettes, a product that kills its consumer even when used exactly as designed, congress wont' ban them because that would negatively impact a corporation. But you seem to think that corporations don't need to abide by clear-cut rules. they need some kind of "bureau" so that there can be a constant back-and-forth, give-and-take, so that we don't impact that poor, tender corporation. Why is that required, but we don't need a "domestic violence bureau" ? Clear-cut laws seem to work fine for poor people. Why won't they work for corporations?
> corporations don't need to abide by clear-cut rules
This is a straw man. Nobody thinks this.
> but we don't need a "domestic violence bureau"
There are several federal institutions which deal with domestic violence (alongside additional state and local ones). For example the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, and has the mandate to “understand, respond to, and prevent” domestic violence.
The FBI can also investigate specific domestic violence crimes, but my impression is that it is not their highest priority.
Domestic violence is a huge problem and is famously underreported, underinvestigated, and underprosecuted. Probably not the best example you might pick; arguably having additional government agencies with the power to do something about domestic violence might make a positive difference. (Disclaimer: I know very little about this subject.)
you keep backpedaling about bureaus, ignoring how 99% of the law in this nation is enforced. we can't have a conversation if you do contortions by reading the most implausible interpretation of everything I say.
Federal agencies enforce crimes that cross state boundaries. With rate exceptions, domestic violence cases do not. Agencies exist to enforce the laws of Congress. That if their entire reason for existing.
OTOH, most corporate crimes do cross state boundaries and thus are within the jurisdiction of both state and federal authorities.
With respect to cigarettes, the product itself doesn't kill people. There are people that live for decades smoking multiple times a day. The secondary effects kill many people, but there isn't a sufficiently strong correlation to ban cigarettes outright.
