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Readers' Comments
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Submitted by: Anonymous
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Submitted by: pbarnrob
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Submitted by: EarlBowden
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Submitted by: Anonymous
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Submitted by: Anonymous
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Submitted by: Anonymous
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Submitted by: Anonymous
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Submitted by: Anonymous
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Submitted by: Anonymous
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Submitted by: AndrewG
VOTERS SUPRESSION:
I cannot believe these folks are citizens of the USA.
What is the supreme court doing about this disgraceful situation?
Where is the outrage of what is against our rights.
Everything is wrong with this picture. McDowell or what whatever, is about to run for governor and also governs the process to actually suppress the vote. This man will make himself governor also and no one does anything about it.
What a travesty of power.
IS ANYONE WITH SENSE PAYING ATTENTION.
PEOPLE LIKE THESE WHO ARE PART OF TRYING TO BRING OUR NATION TO ITS KNESS MUST BE KICKED OUT OF OFFICE EXPEDITIOUSLY.
Totally Disgraceful!!!!
I'd encourage serious commenters on this (or any) subject to use a name other than 'Anonymous' to tag their remarks.
Anonymous commenters in online forums are all too easy to dismiss, as hiding behind their anonymity, so they can say any foolish thing without a tag for 'taking to task' or serious discussion.
If you've got something to say in all seriousness, put a name on it! *Please!* Whether the rest of us agree or disagree, we can make the beginning of a conversation.
That said, I've found that online courses I've attempted (long past secondary level) have been problematic for me. Perhaps it's time pressures, or family demands (two of three daughters, adults, still at home, plus wife) but it can be quite difficult to complete a segment in reasonable time.
Government is not the problem; honesty and real education is the problem, and government CAN be part of the solution. Many things have been tried in classrooms (and out) over many years; somewhere, there must be results-oriented data on this, without the hype and salesmanship these flacks bring to the table. If your schools didn't educate you, AND you didn't learn on your own, you will be MUCH easier to sell these snake-oil 'solutions'.
Moths pollinate more plant than bees? Really? And where did your understanding of this come from? If moths do more pollinating, then business people would be raising moths and not bees.
Nationally recognized standard? Yes ,made up by of DOCTORS of course,not the government.The government only gets involved with charges when it is medicare or medicaid. and insurance companies negotiate prices. They do not tell you how many office visits to charge for.All you cronies get together and decide to screw patients by charging them two copays for two visits. So do not shift the blame on someone else.You can blame the CEO s and yes I do believe that was the start of medical care rising but since so many of you are validating billing for two visits your as guilty and crooked as they are. You should be ashamed of yourselves. You are suppose to heal not hurt people by padding your bills.People are sick when they come to you and when they get your dramatically inflated bills they sure dont feel any better. You give me pills for high blood pressure and then you make it go higher with your bill.When I am in your office I would like to be able to trust you not have to concern myself with being billed ala cart. What ever happened to do no harm? Shame on you all.
stop blaming the government.
Require a law to justify their billing? Your kidding,right? The rich make laws for the rich not people like us.Wealthy congressmen wealthy doctors. Need i say more?
Like your response.Couldnt have said it better myself.
you are full of it.Most patients do not take advantage of a doctor but the other way around.The md tricked her by asking a question which should have been part of this routine visit. If i go in for a check up and i just want a refill on my rx that takes one minute to write i should not be billed an extra $100 bucks for it just so you can drive a mercedes and live in a 4 bathroom house and send your kids to private school and belong to a country club You dont deserve to be a doctor because you have no compassion for anyone.Go crawl under the rock you came from,doc. By the way i am not a car i am a person. If you want to charge like a machanic why dont you be one?
If I went into a doctor's office and asked for an extra hour's worth of medical advice for free, then I'd understand the hesitation. But on the other hand:
My employer asks this of me all the time. Not just my employer. Ask anyone in the military. Ask any scientist. Ask any engineer. Ask any software developer. These people are simply expected to put in more than the 40 hours a week they are paid for. Meeting all your goals? Have some more goals to meet! If you want to keep your job, you'll put in the extra time.
But that aside, the thing that really irks me is the "Price" assigned to the extra medical advice. Maybe some people ask doctors for an extra hour worth of advice, but two out of the last three times I went to a doctor's office, I spoke to the doctor and physician's assistant COMBINED for less than 5 minutes. The third time, I spoke to the doctor for 30 minutes. The bill for each of the three visits? $300. Now for 30 minutes of doctoring, that works out to a modest $600 per hour. Even if the facility charges 200% overhead (which is outrageously high) that's enough for the doc to be earning a cool million per year. But for 5 minutes? Well, that works out to a solid $3600/hour. And I guarantee that doctor isn't pulling in seven figures - so where is that money going?
Now I know that other things go on; there's facilities maintenance, billing specialists, receptionists, and so on. But these don't add up. Other organizations manage the same amount of administrative overhead tasks on much smaller margins.
No one's saying that doctors shouldn't bill for their time. What we're saying is that they aren't billing for their time. The billing is capricious and amoral, and is done in a way to maximize profit within the bounds of an increasingly complicated landscape of healthcare regulation. People shouldn't become doctors for the money (and most I know haven't), just like people don't become scientists for the money, or join the military for the money. But it seems that some people in the healthcare industry can't see that if they aren't being paid enough to own a yacht and a private marina lease, that their services aren't being valued.
And at least my mechanic calls me with a quote for the proposed services first.
What about discharging the loan in bankruptcy when Chase doubles my interest rate, does some shifty swap that tacks on $17k, tells me to pay $1k a month, refuses to explain why my $50k in student loans became $90k, then $100k, throws me into default and files a lawsuit for $170k.
Is this why Congress blocked the bill that would have given me bankruptcy protection back?
Am I food for massive banks?
THIS IS WHY I HAVE A BS IN ENGINEERING AND AM HOMELESS!?
They bailed these banks out and ultimately, it will be my generation paying the $15 trillion dollar bill, along with their war spending, while I can't discharge my private student loan that the bank illegally destroyed everything with.
How much were those Senators paid off to look away?
They should have just shot me.
How do I explain this mess to Australia and Canada while I beg them to let me immigrate?
Was this congress before Elizabeth Warren?!
I also work at a treatment facility as well and have for over a decade. What this article isn't telling everyone is that there are federal guidelines, and in many cases state guidelines as well which are even MORE stringent, that regulate heavy metal content of sewage sludge by having ceiling limits on the concentration allowable in the sludge before it can be used as a "fertilizer." Any facility which MIGHT have put out a product containing levels of heavy metals over this limit have bigger issues facing them, such as federal prosecution. This is NOT the norm for 99% of treatment plants. Guess what??? The operators who run these facilities also live in the same communities as YOU do. We have a vested interest in keeping our environment clean just as you. My kids play in the lake we discharge to...I don't want them swimming in unsafe waters anymore than you want your kids swimming in unsafe waters. Treatment plants are just a convenient target for the fear mongers peddling THEIR crap.
Would you please show Citizen Koch on PBS
"I know the public school system is in the toilet..." suggests that you have been bludgeoned into believing the so-called school reform talk that our public schools are in shambles, so privatization is the way to improve them. Nothing could be further from the truth. When we disaggregate the testing data demographically, our high performing students do as well as the vaunted European countries. For evidence that our schools are not as bad as the media, the pols, and privatizers claim refer to the recent book by Dr. Diane Ravitch, Reign of Error.
guns don't kill people, people kill people!!!!!!!!!!!!
you know what the hell is going on
u r stupid
Thanks to the parents who commented on their positive experiences with online courses. There is no doubt that online learning can work well for certain kids with motivated and competent parents, but when it is taken to a mass marketing level for children of all different ages, abilities and home situations that idea starts to fall apart.
Cory, here is the archived link: http://web.archive.org/web/20090505134840/http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/money/sexy/marketing.html
Would it be possible to get a link to the CBC article about age compression? I've been trying to find it, but I fear it might be missing.
Obamacare is extortion. True entitlements are the cost plus contracts given to security firms, the over 800 military bases around the world, the trillions for current wars, the passes given to agribusiness, banking, defense industry folks and a billion other off the books black ops accounts that we know nothing about.
The folks that run the system - and that's certainly not Obama - have the goal to destroy this country via social engineering, slow kill methods ( GMOs, Chem trails, Vaccinations, etc.) the destruction of the family unit, and last, but not least, anyone who dares claim that the Bible is the world of Yahuah.
the New World Order scientific totalitarian dictatorship that is morphing in front of your I pads is hell bent. And that's where they will end up. Those who can read the times and seasons will have to decide who to serve. Who will you choose? the Beast? or the Messiah, Yahushua?
Instead of hurting our seniors and economy "privatizing" and cutting Social Security and Medicare and starving the poor cutting foodstamps in the richest country in the world. Why doesn't Boehner want to discuss the obvious solution which has worked so well in California; raising taxes on the corporations and rich which are at the lowest levels in 60 years, close the Romney offshore tax shelters and reign in our stupid, profiteering military adventures. Many corporations pay no tax at all now after 30 years of the failed Republican Trickle Down scam which caused a horrible recession and has concentrated our wealth like Mexico.The Affordable Care Act is a good start to stop the private corporation (HMO's, Pharmaceuticals, medical device people) which are gouging and making a profit of the sick and elderly unlike more civilized countries which don't consume 1/5 their GDP on a private sector, profit driven healthcare rip-off. Could it be that these Republican extremists are being sponsored and funded by the corporations they are supporting over the interests of the American people? Now McConnell is arguing for "Citizens United II" in the Supreme Court virtually unlimited direct contributions to the candidate of corporate choice. Welcome to Plutocracy, Corporatism and Fascism! Wake up America!
“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” Thomas Jefferson
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. Louis Brandeis
great ideas with a great concept and with such a great writer. A written perfectly and fall and summer was very much easy to understand.
Time for people to start using their Buycott app.
As a long time activist for low income people, for years I have been trying to point out the Big Biz connections to poverty. I am also concerned about mega-non-profits and foundations who use similar models for their infrastructure and where "donations" are really just a Cayman Islands for the rich, $millions in government contracts are awarded, but little trickles down to the "services" they are supposed to provide.
A couple years ago we exposed Chase Bank, a contractor for EBT card in our state (WA) because, besides the $12 Million they received for those cards, they were secretly extracting an $.80 cent "charge" from every transaction as well. This added another $10 Million to their pockets, taken directly from the most vulnerable and the poorest in our state. Our local station, KING TV did a report about this. It embarrassed the state into stopping those fees, but the very thought these well-compensated CEOs felt entitled to those fees is beyond disgusting ...
I am sending this around to those other activists I know and thank-you again for this in-depth report!
Sincerely
Cat Sullivan
Board member of POWER http://www.mamapower.org
BTW, the wealth of the very few has exploded exponentially over the past 30 years and has skyrocketed since the 2008 engineered by the rich economic fiasco.
The same ones who lobby for their own laws which exclude us from sharing in prosperity as our infrastructure falls apart and much of the US slips into 3rd world conditions.
Then they send ignorant meatballs to Congress with their funding and proclaim the rest of us lazy.
Sadly, many feel guilty and/or turn their frustration on their fellow strugglers.
What a scam. They have people convinced we should cut rather than prop up SSI and Medicare after giving us a Heritage Foundation Romney-implemented thing called Obamacare.
Does it matter that Michelle Obama was cranking in $350,000 per annum while working in the heart of the Medical Insurance Complex in Chicago before taking a Washington, D.C. pay cut?
You tell me.