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February 26, 2008
ideas
I recently overheard some older gentlemen speak about Medicare. Again, the issue was what gets covered and what is not and basically, how does one get the most out of Medicare.
I've been thinking about healthcare and personal responsibility. Is there a way to manage Healthcare cost on an individual level? Is it possible to motivate people to first, see the healthcare cost and second, figure out ways to reduce it themselves.
Along these same lines, my thoughts have also lead to the idea of insurance and role that insurance has grown over the years. People tend to have this view of insurance companies that Scrooge is in a large executive suite twirling his moustache, figuring out ways to cut people's insurance off. And, we do see stories like the breast cancer patient that was cut off. However, Health Net is a public company. One person did not do the deed by themselves but a group of people decided to do this and another group of people carried it out.
Stories like this makes me wonder if the issue here isn't greed but apathy of the group. Insurance has come a long way from risk management of a small group to a huge conglomerate where risk is precisely calculated and made very cheap by large quantities.
But, is there a way to balance the risk but keep the empathy? Empathy can be easily put back into insurance. Make it about our families, friends, and communities. I believe that people can be motivated to see the true healthcare costs and therefore, make cost-effective and difficult decisions if motivated by having to face their own families and communities.
With that in mind, I wanted to walk up to these men and ask them who pays for Medicare. They did but so do I and millions of us who are pretty much guaranteed to not have access to the program that we have so well paid for or we will be paying much much more than they ever did. But, that's alright, we can stay apathetic and learn how to shove our mess to the next generation.
Posted by azileretsis at 05:34 PM | Comments (0)
too many
Is it possible to have too many email addresses? You've got one for each school that you go to, foo@foo.edu, one for work, foo@foo.com, one for personal, foo@yahoo.com, one for spam, foo@hotmail.com, and one that you protect, foo@personal.com. With all these email boxes and the spam that they collect, it's amazing that communication occurs at all. In attempts to curtail how many in-boxes I have to check, I've funneled most emails to central locations but even those central locations are growing in quantity. Again, the technology that supposed to make our lives simpler has entrapped us again.
Posted by azileretsis at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2008
will work for gas
Oil prices are moving up again. Now, how to get a second job to pay for more gas money...
Posted by azileretsis at 09:17 PM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2008
relaxing
Economist is what I read. If anyone would like to get me a subscription....
It's very expensive but Economist is a good read. I like it because I get most of my daily news online. When I sit down to read the news, I want to read something with a little more depth. In addition, I want to get news that isn't immediately on my radar screens. I also like the editorial cartoonist.
Posted by azileretsis at 09:42 PM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2008
known by
Do you ever watch CNN's most popular stories or Yahoo's most popular pictures? Here is what I've learned recently. As a country, we care more about what Berkeley citizens care about the war rather than the soldiers currently dying in the war (I couldn't find the article at all on CNN). We care more about what is happening with the Spears rather than Chad's deteriorating living conditions. Also, we like to look at cute animals and beautiful models and strange or unpredictable human conditions like Kyle.
CNN feels that they can predict the election results by polling their viewers. I'm not sure that's a good idea.
A sweet story about a man and a woman and a disease.
Posted by azileretsis at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2008
wanderings
I came across the Richter Scales video among my wanderings this morning. I know the feeling.
I also wanted to blog about a comment one of my professor recently made about Wikipedia. Most professors seem to not think it is a valid source since it's created by open contributions. Wikipedia, itself, states its shortcomings. However, if teachers think that it is a worse resource than anything else on the web is a mistake. All websites are changeable and its sources are far from guaranteed. However, last time I asked a reference librarian for an encyclopedia, he asked me why I didn't look it up online. With a sigh, I had to explain that my professor would not like that all my sources were online especially when it came to basic knowledge.
Advantages of Wikipedia is that it is managed by a community. Wrong information generally gets removed quickly or updated. From my experiences in print media, that is not always true.
Transient sources is something we have to live with now. However, I wouldn't trade it for the world. I love having this kind of knowledge at my fingertips.
Posted by azileretsis at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)