What's that? You don't want to pay me a reasonable wage?

Considering many of these jobs are in places where programmers don't get paid much, or there's not much of a demand for them, it looks like Cobol programmers do get paid quite a bit more.

I did a quick search on Glassdoor, in some very non-tech places... Programmers in Jefferson City, MO make $45-65K.. Cobol programmers make $88K. That's probably very good for Jefferson City cost of living.

I've met thousands of people in my career.. I can't remember everyone's name, but (some) humans tend to be much better at remembering faces. There have been many people I recognized on LinkedIn thanks to their picture...

The coffee shop interview meet-up point that someone else brought up is also a great reason to have the photo there.

And for how long? Current administration doesn't like to keep things stable. Furthermore, how long will they disallow insurance companies from considering past medical issues? Obama was going the right way with ACA, but I can't just assume anything will stay the same to force private enterprises to be fair.

Who knows where things will go... Maybe Sanders wins and they go even further towards the Canadian model. Those are the dangers of living in a democracy :).

The thing is, though, that most people like a lot about the ACA... in fact, pretty much everything except for the mandatory coverage. So, it's going to be hard to roll those things back and not face a lot of backlash. The current administration tried pretty hard, and couldn't do it... as we all get used to its protection further and further, it's more likely to stay in place.

Who knows. However, the fact is that as things stand now, you wouldn't go bankrupt.

Because most insurance have lifetime caps. I would have easily hit that by now.

Not true. It's been illegal since 2010 to have lifetime caps.

Well, except for orthodontics. But, dentists aren't covered in Canada, either.

I'd hazard a guess that it is French laws causing the problem in Quebec. They probably require all medical staff to speak French, so yeah, there will be less available.

What part of Canada do you live in? Toronto is similarly bad, especially in the fast growing suburbs. Markham's hospitals are painfully overcrowded, with doctors frequently doing 48 or 72 hour shifts. The anesthesiologist that was inserting an epidural into my wife's spine had a 15 minute nap after being awake for 24 hours straight. They were diverting other pregnant moms in labour to hospitals an hour away. Screw that free health care, I was thinking to myself back then.. I'd rather pay.

The problem probably is that you go to an emergency room, when there actually is no emergency.
I guess your baby example with odd heart rhythm would be treated quickly if you simply would go to a children's doctor and not to the emergency room of a hospital.

That was not all the same thing, obviously, my father didn't go to the emergency room to get a hip replacement :).

The baby's pediatrician heard a funny sound in the heartbeat and was concerned that there's a problem with her heart and that a specialist should examine her right away. The said's specialist first available appointment was 4 months out. That, as you can imagine if you are a parent, were very stressful four months. It was most certainly *not* treated quickly. It wasn't even diagnosed quickly, past the "there's something wrong with her heart".

How about just plain old stage 3 cancer that prevents you from continuing working? Can you play out two scenarios: a) gainfully employed Canadian b) gainfully employed American with insurance that provides coverage but no additional disability insurance. Assume diagnosis, radiation, then 3 month until disability due to surgery, follow up chemo and 2 years for recovery involving therapy.

There's all kinds of way it plays out. If you don't have enough savings to pay for health insurance yourself and you also know that you work at a place that doesn't provide disability insurance, then you probably have already bought your own, which kicks in. If you're married, your spouse's plan probably covers you. If you're totally screwed, with no money and no plans, there are federal plans that can help, like social security disability insurance, and medicaid.

It takes a bit more planning to be prepared, but there are certainly plenty of options. Even in Canada, you should be looking at disability insurance, as what you get from the government is far from enough. They pay your medical bills, but you still have to pay almost everything else with no income.

My wife had cancer twice, she was in for surgery the next week both times with radiation and chemo starting as soon as she was recovered enough from the surgery. This is the basis for my praise of the medical system here. I would surely be bankrupt by now if I were in the US.

First, I'm sorry about your wife. I hope she recovered and is cancer free now.

Now, what makes you say that you'd be bankrupt in US? There is also short term and long term disability insurance here that you'd get at work, and even if you just wanted to quit altogether and not work, you could still buy health insurance on your own and be covered. You'd have to pay it out of your own pocket, but it would hardly bankrupt you, unless you had no savings at all... which lower taxes in all the previous years of work should've helped build up. And if they haven't, there's Medicaid to help.

Again, not to say that the US system is perfect, far from it, but the blanket statement that every severe illness leads to bankruptcy is about as accurate as the statements about Canadian system being a complete failure.

I agree that the CEO sounds like a shitty human being, and this is bad business. But i think the counterpoint is. they don't really care, and it doesn't matter to them how much we huff and puff; they'll still sell that drug.

How about that whole epi-pen story, when they raised their prices? The visibility and the exposure that all the alternatives and generics must be causing some long-term damage.

Now to be fair list downsides of US system, where you are seen immediately but go bankrupt if it is anything serious and long-term.

To be completely fair, it is true that it can happen and does happen, but it is far from common.

A friend of mine had a baby with a severe birth defect that required full time day and night nurses, frequent surgeries, and monthly visits to the ER.. and she quit her job to focus on the kid and Medicaid, the government health care program, paid for all of it.

Chances that you get screwed royally are non-zero, unlike in Canada, and that does suck. But it's far from common even if you do have something serious and long-term.

Are you sure? Friends have a super premium health care policy and yet when they wanted to see a doctor about some cognitive issue it took months to get an appointment. Their primary care physician is thinking about going to pay to play mode, where you pay him a retainer amount each month for the right to make an appointment. Ah concierge doctors, the new way to squeeze in america.

I'm sure about my experience and those I know near me. I certainly can't claim to represent all of US experiences. One thing I've learned is that experiences wildly differ from state to state, here, in just about everything.

However, there's definitely wild differences in plans, too... one will let you see anyone you want, while other will require that primare care physician to refer you to someone. If you have the latter, it's quite possibly that the experience sucks.

Canadian here. Most people love our health care system and will fight to keep it. Yes there are some downsides, like some longer waits. Yet people who really need it do get care immediately. It's not really as bad as the vocal minority make it sound.

As someone who's lived in both places, I can tell you that the biggest downside of Canadian system over US is all the times where you'd really like to get care right away, but you're not going to die if you don't. *That's* the stuff that really sucks in Canada.

Emergency room visits where you're not bleeding out on the floor, or finding an obstetrician when you get pregnant that's not an hour away, finding a specialist to listen to your baby's heart when it sounds a little off, father needing a hip replacement... With all of those, I've had bad experiences in Canada.

In US, if I need a doctor, I can almost always find one the next day, or next week if it's a really unique case. It absolutely sucks having to deal with insurance, costs, and so on, don't get me wrong.... but it is nice to know that I can see someone quickly when I need help.

Both sides need improvement, and Canadian system is a much better starting point... but it's not all roses up there either :(.

Ok, maybe you have a point. It's not a particularly solid argument. I obviously can't say if it's just my bias or not, but the first time I've heard of LineageOS is in the responses to my post, while the "over my dead body" reaction to smart speakers accounts for a huge number of any threads that mention it.

I certainly got the impression that there's an unreasonable level of paranoia about these devices that doesn't come out in phone conversations. There seems to be quite a large number of happy iPhone users on here that probably don't have any LineageOS-like options available, and aren't complaining about the possibility of their phones spying on them every time a story about the new iPhone comes out? Or am I wrong?

It'sa fiduciary requirement though.

There is no fiduciary requirement to "make as much money as possible". There is a requirement to advance the interests of the company, which is often represented as making money, but it is quite easy to argue that it's not in the best interest in the company to charge 400% more for a critical medicine, because it will paint the company in a very bad light, harming its future.

What does the most egregious stalking device get? A special prize? What difference (Senator) does it make who does it best?

I think you missed my point. *I* don't think either device is stalking me. The point is that most people also don't think their phone is stalking them, even though it's an order of magnitude more likely for it to be doing some illegal monitoring of your activities than the wifi-only static microphone in one of your rooms. Yet, this microphone is a feared privacy intrusion device (at least on Slashdot), while the one in your pocket that also listens to "ok, google", "hey, siri", "bixby", or even combinations of those, is ok.

So, the question is -- why is that? It's not a question of let's compare which is worse, but why is it that this particular device incites so much anger around here, while others that do the same do not.