High cost is really just a symptom of the actual fundamental problem.

The actual fundamental problem with health care is that new breakthroughs make it possible to live longer/better, but that they involve very expensive technology. This leaves us with money on one side of the scale and our lives (or the quality of our lives) on the other, and as individuals, we choose our lives or quality of lives every time. When you're facing terminal cancer, how much does the treatment have to cost before you say 'Nah, that's just too much money.'? A million dollars? A billion? If the treatment is available, you don't care what it costs, and advances in technology are constantly making new treatment available.

The problem is, to make health care economical, you have to convince people to draw the line somewhere and let themselves die. Pretty tough argument to make.

Only the absurdly rich come to the US for care, and they come here for absurdly expensive care that most Americans don't have access to. You're only making an argument that the very best care in the US is better than the very best care in these other countries while ignoring the fact that 99% of Americans don't care, because they aren't able to buy the very best care anyway. The average citizens in these nations do better than the average citizens in our own, and from a public policy perspective, that means a whole lot more than 'but the Prime Minister of X flies his private jet to the US when he needs surgery!'.

It ought to be illegal to even SEE nude pictures of underage children. Everybody involved should be in jail! If we don't keep the children safe, how will they ever grow up to enjoy the dystopic world we're building for them by keeping them safe?

Agreed. Instead, why not plug it in and leave it on for a while so that it can self-cremate?

So we all know where to pee.

The cost is the primary reason I don't have a Tivo anymore. When we bumped up to HD, the HD Tivo was something like $800, so we just went with TWC's DVR. I'm on the verge of going back to Tivo, though, because the box from TW is probably about the most useless pile of electronics you can possibly assemble and still legally refer to as a DVR. It sometimes just fails to record, and probably 4 out of 5 times, fast-forwarding or rewinding will desync the audio. Tivo was expensive, but it never had rookie problems like that.

Yeah, but what if you include a union with Microsoft-loving slashdot readers who actually ARE lawyers and who RTFA? NOW how big is the set?

The problem is that given two options, A and B, where option A provides huge profits within your lifetime and magnificent catastrophe for future generations, and where option B provides marginal profits within your lifetime and ever-increasing profits for generations to come, any capitalist would choose option A. You have to focus on something other than your own profit (or risk of loss) to pursue option B.

Ditto. I think nuclear power makes tons of sense.

And I think I'm an environmentalist anyway. I mean, I like the environment and all. I don't have a card or pay dues or anything.

Shoot it to the moon. Moon's free now.

Totally biased source. NASA just wants to convince us that the Earth is doomed so that we'll put more money into colonizing Mars. How can you not see right through these lies?

Not to mention buying their goods. Very, very often I run into the argument that corporations deserve a break because they are the ones putting bread on our tables. There seems to be very little recognition that people do the work and people buy the products. The relationship is mutual, but workers and consumers can actually exist without corporations, and the reverse isn't true.

Man, I remember how the military hated Clinton for BRAC back in the 90s. I totally understand where they were coming from, because a military base is a massive economic and cultural driver. But it just goes to show that when people say they want smaller government, what they really mean is they want spending cuts for everyone else and tax cuts for themselves. Most fiscal conservatives aren't nearly as noble as their own rhetoric leads them to believe.

Or beyond that, why do we even have organs? I always felt that an intelligent designer would have just created us as walking, talking bags of magical life made from life cubes or something. Whenever I ask creationists why I have an appendix or a gall bladder or why, out of all the temperatures in the universe, I can only live within a tiny range of them, or out of the entire EM spectrum, I can only see a tiny sliver of it, or why leukemia exists, the only answer I get is 'God made it that way'. Seriously? All powerful? All knowing? That's why people have to poop? God wanted them to?

Hey, what if we pour acid in our eyes and stare at the sun?

No, seriously... it's a better idea.