The issue isn't secrecy OR expansiveness, or even both. The problem comes when you add fast track to those two.

Fast track is intended to strengthen the US negotiator's hand in trade deals. Here's how it works. By granting the President "fast track", Congress agrees to vote on the treaty exactly as negotiated by the President within sixty days, only forty-five of which the bill is in the hands of the relevant committee.

Fast track developed in the Cold War era. The idea was for situations like this. Suppose we we are discreetly negotiating with the Kingdom of Wakanda for access to their vibranium reserves. But we're worried about the Soviets getting wind of this, so we keep everything on the DL and rush like hell to get the deal through Congress before they can stick their oar in and queer the deal.

And for a relatively simple quid-pro quo type deal negotiated on the side in a bi-lateral world where you're with the commies or not, this procedure makes sense. But not for a massive, complex, multi-lateral accord that will govern the economic relations between twelve nations, and which took ten years to draft. How the hell is Congress supposed to examine something like that in forty-five days?

I am not impressed by the media narrative.

You will have to do better than that.

That's why I specifically picked media outlets from the "free market" Right. So how about the Wold Health Organization?

How about the Kaiser Foundation? They know a little about health care.

Have you ever wondered why you don't see people from Denmark or Germany or Sweden or Singapore flying over to the US for the superior health care? In fact, you know those stories about all the tens of thousands of Canadians running to the US for health care? It turned out to not be true.

For that matter, have you ever wondered why you don't see those populations fighting to flee their Socialist hellholes and coming to the US as political refugees?

I already know what Tim Cook wants to do with my DNA.

Sure, pick the places that sort of work okay.

You don't think the US has the know-how to do something better than Germany or New Zealand or Israel or Singapore?

What I hear from Canadian patients inspires no envy what so ever.

You should update what you hear. Canada's health care system is ranked 7 spots higher than that of the United States, even before the ACA was implemented.

Even Forbes magazine, no socialist propaganda sheet, ranks Canada's health care system higher. And Bloomberg ranks it twenty-three spots higher in terms of efficiency.

http://thepatientfactor.com/ca...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/da...

http://www.bloomberg.com/visua...

I can vouch for this, living in one of those regions that GP says "who gives a fuck about that". Which is about as much as I care for his comment. Region blocking is ridiculous, but just because the EU wants to spend (more) money to make a(nother) useless law it can't enforce doesn't mean I think they're on the right track. It's the idiots with the distribution network who let themselves be bullied into going along with these schemes that need to wake up and realize they are literally shutting themselves out of markets and profits.

This could be fun, actually.

Mine failed and I ended up in orbit.

There's nothing wrong with drafting a treaty in secret, it's often necessary. But you can't make it so hard to examine the treaty and debate it during the ratification process.

That's because ratifying treaties puts more restrictions on Americans in the future than anything else Congress can do. Treaties pre-empt local law and pre-existing federal law. Congress can pass contradictory laws in the future but those would be considered unilateral abrogations under international law and undermine US demands that other countries live up to *their* treaty obligations.

So if there is something dodgy in a ratified treaty for practical purposes you're stuck with it. Anything which hinders the Senate's ability to examine and debate the treaty in detail undermines the Senate's constitutional role. It is not an exaggeration to call something like that a step toward tyranny.

Pad abort, that sounds like when your girlfriend tells you you're going to have to wait a few days...

Americans really do seem to see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires". Everybody wants to defend their right to access things for money, even if practically nobody actually has that money, because they will some day soon. They're willing to do anything to preserve their rights once they get rich, including things that will actually cost them a lot of money right now.

I honestly don't know if a single payer plan would be best for America. But the majority of the arguments I hear against it are laughable. The country got to be rich and powerful by innovation and thought, but it seems simultaneously dominated by superstitious thinking.

Well, that's BYOD, not Google's fault. If your provisioning the devices you plan accordingly.

Yeah this will have about as much impact as the banning of involuntary cookies had...

This is trivial, given that there are only a couple of federated diagnostic testing services in her area.

Looks like a bacterial infection of some kind, although they also checked for Pappilomavirus, two other STDs, and a fungal yeast infection, BVAB2, and strep.

87481 SureSwab ®, Vaginosis/Vaginitis Plus
87481 SureSwab ®, Bacterial Vaginosis/Vaginitis

87491 SureSwab ®, Vaginosis/Vaginitis Plus
87491 SureSwab ®, CT/NG, T. vaginalis
87491 Chlamydia/Neisseria gonorrhoeae, T. vaginalis, Qualitative, TMA and HSV 1/2 DNA, Real-Time PCR, Pap Vial
87491 Chlamydia/N. gonorrhoeae and T. vaginalis RNA, Qualitative, TMA, Pap Vial

87798 SureSwab ®, Trichomonas vaginalis RNA, Qualitative, TMA
87798 SureSwab ®, Vaginosis/Vaginitis Plus
87798 SureSwab ®, CT/NG, T. vaginalis
87798 Trichomonas vaginalis RNA, Qualitative, TMA, PAP Vial
87798 Chlamydia/N. gonorrhoeae and T. vaginalis RNA, Qualitative, TMA, Pap Vial
87798 Chlamydia/Neisseria gonorrhoeae, T. vaginalis, Qualitative, TMA and HSV 1/2 DNA, Real-Time PCR, Pap Vial

MEDICAL DIAGNOSTIC LABORATORIES, L.L.C.
105 Chlamydia trachomatis
127 Group B Streptococcus (GBS)
164 Bacterial Vaginosis Associated Bacteria 2 (BVAB2)

These are probably not test codes that she should have published, given their sensitive nature.

I do agree with her assertion that medical billing is kind of terrible.

On the other hand, they intentionally make billing and coding as difficult as possible so that the doctors office has to correctly code it to the insurance companies liking before they are obligated to pay. Usually a medical office will try a couple of times, and then give up if they don't hit pay dirt, and just send the bill to the patient, and let them argue with the insurance company long enough to damage their credit for non-payment, or pay it out of pocket to save their credit.

HMOs are absolutely the worst for this, followed by PPOs.

I would have much preferred a single payer system, like Richard Nixon wanted (he was the first president to propose a national health care system), rather than the TARP III bailout for the insurance companies which we ended up getting with the ACA.

On the other hand, we find that various mooks make spurious brutality claims, the vast majority of which are complete bullshit.