Comment Re:One way to get more registered voters (Score 1) 1088
The reasons you choose an OS seem like they would be a teensy bit different than the reasons you'd choose a system of government.
Yes. Rural areas should not be held hostage by urban ones just because they happen to have more votes. This is the entire point of the US Senate and Electoral College.
So by your reasoning if there was a national (winner-take-all) vote for president, people who live in rural areas should have 1.5 votes (or some number >1.0). Your reasoning seems to be that they are a minority so they should have disproportionate power since they are otherwise vulnerable to the tyranny of the majority. If that is the case, why just use being rural as a minority status worthy of having ones vote count more than others? How about we also give 1.5 votes to the disabled? African Americans? LGBT people? Left-handed people? People with type AB-negative blood? Gingers?
So if you were from Iowa and Iowa's popular vote was different from the national popular vote, your vote counts even less. How would this make someone from Iowa, or any state adopting this, feel like their vote counts more?
It would only make their vote count less if you think that every American's vote counts equally now. But that isn't the case. My vote as a California voter holds less weight than the vote from a resident of Delaware or Iowa. This measure would make the Iowa or Delaware votes equal to mine.
So the question is really would you prefer that every American have the same say in electing the president or should some get more say. If you feel the former is true, support electoral college reform. If you agree with the later support the status quo.
Honestly, I love my fucking job, and would still do it, even if I won the lottery. Just would work less than 50 hours a week, instead of 80.
Exactly. I would soooo be a hobbydoc if I won the lottery. I would still do 10-15 hours a week at the ER because its fun (for the most part), but I would open a private general practice out of my house. I would see people who don't otherwise have access to care and see them the way I want to: 60 minute visits over a cup of tea, maybe even sitting in the garden if its a nice day. And I would even make a house call when its really needed. I wouldn't take money or insurance (in fact I wouldn't see insured people unless we get universal access and everyone is insured). Though I would take a pie or some fried chicken, or a bird feeder, or a nice plant for my garden.
I may just jizz in my pants thinking about that.
I seriously doubt that by the time I would be done with my fellowship that there will be an over abundance of cardiologists.
Well, you'd be wrong. There is a strong and increasing trend for medical students to avoid primary care. The lifestyle and affluent specialties are ballooning. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/health/11doctors.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
You can't seriously believe that there aren't scads of premeds thinking exactly what you are? And unless cardiology practices some serious birth control like Anesthesia did, there will be a glut. Though if they do practice serious birth control to avoid a glut, a cards fellowship will be harder to come by than an ENT spot.
I'm not in it for seven figures, six figures is the goal.
Good. You'll probably make well over 100,000 by the time you graduate. However as I said, that's not a ton if you are entering it for the money (given that you'll first spend 8 years going into debt unless you've got rich parents) followed by 5 years making around minimum wage (you'll make a small salary as a resident, but because of the hours you work it ends up being for crap hourly.) And with debts in the 200-300k range common, you won't break even with your friends who entered a career after undergrad till you are a decade out from finishing your training.
Plus, I'd rather be private practice than in the cath lab. It's also a disease that is pretty much supported by our lifestyle here in the US and abroad in first world countries.
Ah, that's almost cute in its naivete. If you spend a day in the cath lab (now) doing procedures you'll make $5000. If you spend the day in clinic (which is I think what you mean by 'private practice') you will be lucky to clear $1000. The whole reason that people enter fields like cardiology to make money is that they are procedure heavy. Seeing grandma in clinic gets you squat (except the chance that grandma might need a cath or a pacer from you.)
As an example from my own practice, if I spend 60 minutes with you assessing and diagnosing your abdominal pain, doing a big work-up, and admitting you to the hospital for appendicitis, I make less than if I pull a bean out of a toddlers nose. Procedures are the cash cow of medicine and you will be a pretty poor cardiologist indeed if you keep the attitude that you'd rather be in clinic than the cath lab.
Of course those figures are today, and the well will be drier when you come out. Insurers and the government are seriously putting the clamps on high ticket procedure-monkeys. For example, CA just recently enacted a rule that says hospital based physicians can't bill HMO patients the balance of what their insurer doesn't pay for. So if you do a cath at a hospital in CA and bill Ms Smith's HMO $2000, they can pay you $500 and your only real recourse is a lawsuit against the insurer. And that's just one example. Making money from procedures is going to be far less guaranteed than it is now.
I see little evidence to suggest that I won't be making bank by the time I'm out. Thanks for the condescending "sport" though.
Well as Carl Sagan said: "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." This is especially the case when you don't seem to have looked at the abundance of evidence out there suggesting you're projected income will be significantly less than you seem to think. But at least you were a nice young man and demonstrated that my use of 'Sport' was in fact, appropriate.
People are more likely to do something when they have a higher risk to be effected.
Not always. Sometimes people take a defeatist attitude. It depends on how you frame that risk to the patient and how the patient sees it. A good example of such defeatism (and general adolescent 'fuck you' attitude) is kids with CF who start smoking.
Ok, then when was separation of Church and State added to the constitution? I can't find it in there anywhere.
Actually you are right in one way. It wasn't added, it was there from the beginning in Article 1 of the Bill of Rights. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
The phrase 'separation of church and state' was originally coined by Jefferson referring as establishing a 'wall of separation' between church and state.
What you may be referring to is the issue that there are two things implied by separation of church and state: 1) freedom of religion and 2) the secularity of government. However given that the founders and the SCOTUS on numerous occasions has interpreted Article 1 to mean both those concepts, I feel pretty safe in stating yes, its in there.
Life is a healthy respect for mother nature laced with greed.