They've outsourced drug use, too?

Actually, it is all about maintenance. The safest airplane design in the world does not matter if the plane is improperly maintained. Unfortunately, in a competitive market, the first cost to be cut is maintenance. In a corporate environment, it is the obvious target for improving the bottom line without any short term effects. That is why nuclear power is expensive. Fuel costs are not the major cost factor. Regulatory requirements are. Until there is a way to safely handle radioactive material, this environment will never go away, good design or not.

If this is your solution :

Reduce the costs to what was proportional to the 1963 prices by removing all of the cruft that marxists having injected into the system and insurance would only be needed for catastrophic care - just like it was back in the day.

I think you seriously need to think of whether that is workable or not. I wasn't around in 1963 to make an evaluation and I doubt that you were either. You would have to be about sixty five to really have any experience on health care back then. Times have changed since then and systems have become more complex. Smoking was not considered to be carcinogenic and asbestos was still allowed in building materials. I don't think you or I wants to go back to 1963 health treatments.

Yes, I do know doctors, too. So, don't try to throw that one at me. Health care is getting expensive because it is getting more complicated to treat older people and there are proportionally more older people than younger people than there were in 1963. Should we simply stop treating older people because they use more medical resources? Your solution will not solve this problem except to remove treatment of the elderly from the health care system. It will work but is not the system I want in place.

Before you make any assumptions about who I am and how fucked in the head you think I am, can you offer a workable system beyond the overworn argument of "Let the free market decide?" The free market system that is in place is about twice as expensive as the socialist systems of other countries. It isn't delivering a cost effective solution to treating people's medical needs. The Canadian system, as does the hybrid mix in the UK deliver affordable health care to everyone. The UK system allows you to choose what you will pay for and the Canadian system allows that for cosmetic procedures.

Both those systems also have bureaucratic nonsense but they still seem to function and deliver affordable health care. I agree that streamlining the bureaucracy will help to lower cost but if it is the sole cause, why is it that other socialized systems are working under the same constraints?

In any case, there is a big difference between being able to choose to pay and being able to pay. The issue in the US is that about 10% of the population lacks health insurance and therefore, coverage. If you don't have coverage, your choice is to pay whatever is necessary to fix it, or have a broken leg. Is there a bit of a moral hazard here where the care provider can effectively choose whatever price they want because those in distressed situations do not have much of an option to shop around? What is the free market price to save your life? It is everything you have. I'll believe that a private system is workable when you can tell me how a private system will resist the temptation to gouge the patient.

So, no system is perfect. Socialized medicine delivers cheaper care to more people. Privatized medicine delivers better care to less people. What's your solution?

Considering that the US system relies on private insurance to ration out care, I am not sure what you mean. With respect to a private insurer covering a weird condition, the private insurer is under the same rationing constraints as a socialized system. In either case, you are screwed because it is an expensive condition that falls outside the standard parameters of treatment. The difference between the Canadian system and the American system is that the rationing is meted out by the insurer in the USA and by the government in Canada. The private insurer has a vested interest in making a profit for its shareholders, the government has a vested interested in making a healthy taxpayer.

Note that insurance does not have the same feedback loops as other free market systems. You pay until you have a problem. When you have a problem, the insurer has no interest in fulfilling their end of the deal because their objective is to get payments from those who do not have problems. Ever try to get coverage once you have a recurring condition? We can get all idealistic about how deregulation will make a more efficient health care system but this is not practical in reality. When you break a leg, do you compare prices and services at different hospitals?

You've hit the nail on the head. The US system offers the best care for those with the best ability to pay. Canada offers a relatively even level of care to everybody. As such, those who can afford to do so will get better care in the USA while those who can't get better care in Canada. For the individual, which is better depends on where you stand in the economic ladder.

For the country, it comes down to cost. The US system is expensive and not very effective on an aggregate basis. The Canadian system does not address more expensive treatments or procedures as well as the US system. That being said, you have almost no control over accidents or genetics. The cost to an uncovered individual is backruptcy or death. Because coverage is automatic in Canada, risk of bankruptcy and/or death is mitigated. The cost to the nation is about half that of the USA. For the average joe, which by definition, is most of us, the Canadian system works better.

I'm not trying to be smug about this. The USA is unique in having primarily private healthcare. Most developed nations have socialized healthcare and have not been bankrupted by it yet. Unregulated markets seem to have done a better job of that.

ICANN haz DNSnumber?

Fuel and power are not easily swapped because of the energy density required for fuels. It is really difficult to get a battery with the same energy/weight ratio as a consumable fuel like gasoline. It is a bit of a misconception that biofuel crops are pushing out food crops because there was, and probably still is, an oversupply of food crops in the USA. Farmers in the midwest were being paid not to grow corn. If there was a shortage of food in this world, agricultural subsidies would not be the political hot potato that it is now.

As for nuclear, it is great for baseload and has the advantage of reducing waste to a point source. However, while it is not expensive to operate, it is very expensive to build because of very stringent permitting requirements. As a base load generator, it also cannot follow the demand curve. For that, you need to have a dam or a natural gas turbine. What this means is while nuclear has some good characteristics, it is not the energy panacea that many people believe it to be.

Sound advice. The requirements you listed are pretty universal throughout the job market, no matter what the industry. However, the issue here is that employers are looking seemless transition from school to work. This is a somewhat unreasonable desire because the people who have the characteristics you list probably could find work without additional education. That leaves everybody else. If you ran a school, could you practically train everyone for all the junior level opportunities offered? Probably not, as the job market is too diverse.

We could argue about the educational process but for me it boils down to the tortoise/hare race. Educating students on technical specifics works well in the short run but has limited shelf life. Educating on generalities lasts a life time. It is up to the student to transfer the generalities to specifics. Those who do that, do well. Ever wonder why those with degrees form the minority of the workforce but run the majority of companies? The degree must be adding value somewhere.

Nuclear facilities fall into the "must run" category and get curtailed only when there are no other options. If there is a surplus of power during a particular time period, the nuke plant traders may pay somebody to take the energy because that has less consequences than curtailing the output. Other suppliers that have more flexible generation (natural gas turbines or windmills) will just shut down until the surplus goes away.

but the arguments are circular.

What is not mentioned in that article is that binary systems can also be air cooled. The down side of air cooling is that it doesn't work very well in the summertime, when there is higher demand for electricity.

The limiting factor is the resource, not the cooling.