> You have fined European banks billions and let your own banks off the hook for pennies.

Correction: our government has fined European banks and handed many domestic banks billions. o.O

The punk assed bitching over the Hugo's this year, both over the original speaker and the hilarity that was Sad Puppies II shows that you're full of shit. There are maybe 4 authors that are obviously right wing and published by the big 6 in fiction.

Pre-existing condition exclusions are required because of adverse selection. Flood insurance works the same way; you've got no coverage at all until the policy has been in effect for 30 days. If your house washes away on Day 29 you're SOL.

In any case, I didn't share my story to indict the insurance companies. It was more of an indictment of the healthcare system in general. There was one unavoidable expense: the $4,500 immunoglobulin shot. Why then did the total bill come to nearly $7,000? It came to that much because treatment was routed through the most expensive delivery system (the ER) available in our healthcare system. Why is that? The rabies series is not time sensitive, waiting a few days causes no ill effects. The taxpayers ostensibly pay for it anyway so why not just have it at the County Health Department Monday through Friday?

I try to route my healthcare through my PCP, because 1) I like him, 2) It's cheaper (both for me and society) than the alternatives. Of course, we're killing the PCP providers, they're barely paid cost as it is (less than cost for medicare patients) and there's no incentives for med students to pursue primary/family medicine as a specialty. The ACA didn't do anything to address this either, a fat lot of good having insurance for the first time is going to do you when you can't find an MD that's taking new patients.

I'd like to support your tax but I fear that the climate change discussions will see a massively improved signal to noise ratio with corresponding decrease in the eye rolling ratio.

That's a valid point but you kind of missed the bigger picture. With my history and health status they shouldn't be on the hook for more than $300-$500 annually. That's the cost of an annual physical and standard blood/urine lab work. All it took was one incident to largely wipe out their earnings on me and in this case the costs really weren't inflated all that much. Despite what the other poster thinks, the immunoglobulin really is that expensive. It has a very short shelf life, production is a bitch, and there's little economy of scale because it's so rarely needed. Socialized medicine won't fix any of that....

After the deductibles and co-pays. I have a "platinum" plan through my employer; better insurance than anyone else I know and the co-pays still total up to a considerable amount. No deductibles for in-network on my plan, which makes me extremely fortunate. As a single guy I can afford the co-pays even with my modest salary but I can see how quickly they would bankrupt someone with a family, particularly if said family had one or more members with a chronic illness.

Incidentally, I was just exposed to rabies a few months ago:

Strike One: The only place to get the immunoglobulin is the ER, because it's very expensive (>$4,500) and has a short shelf-life. ER co-pay: $150
Strike Two: There's a set schedule for the vaccine, Days 0, 3, 7, and 14. You can get the vaccine from your primary, in theory, but of course my primary has a months long waiting list because we're driving PCPs out of business. Bottom line, I can't get appointments with them for Days 3 or 7, so that's two more trips to the ER. Additional co-pay total: $300
Strike Three: New York State ostensibly has a fund to pay for out of pocket expenses related to rabies exposures, but they only reimburse for the rabies vaccine and immunoglobulin. Since the ER decided to give me a tetanus shot on Day 0 NYS won't reimburse me, even though my out of pocket would have been $150 with or without this extra shot. Hooray for bureaucracy!

Totaling all this up, that stupid bat that found its way into my apartment has personally cost me $465 ($450 of ER co-pays, $15 of PCP co-pay) while my insurance company is on the hook for close to $7,000. My annual premium is about $6,000. So this one incident wiped out every penny they made on me and then some. I'm an otherwise healthy 32 year old marathon runner that ought to be subsidizing those who are less fortunate. Now imagine a family of four that were all exposed to the same scenario I was.....

...but only if Samsung proved its viability first ;)

From the corner drug store. Duh.

Any Nexus branded device running Cyanogenmod. Or any non-Nexus device that CM supports (there are literally dozens)

In which universe do you live where ads on a webpage total up to half of the bandwidth to deliver said webpage?

They don't make it easy but they don't make it all that difficult either. Buy a Nexus, Developer Edition, or one of the multitude of carrier branded phones that are rootable. Install one of the multitude of ad blocking apps that are available, AdFree being my personal favorite. Problem solved.

From the article you link to:

So, it looks like he wasn't a fan of rocketry in general, which wasn't really particularly visionary of him in retrospect.

Considering that you are apparently hallucinating praise that doesn't exist in the GP's post, I'm going to say that you may indeed be a nutbar.

On a system that isn't a tablet, I DO NOT WANT A TOUCH INTERFACE, or even a hint of it unless I get a touch sensitive monitor and explicitly turn it on (a prompt asking me if I want to would be fine, too). For desktops and laptops, Windows 7's start menu is absolute perfection.

Don't try to improve perfection. I don't want to see any trace of the formerly-known-as-metro style interfaces anywhere on a desktop OS. Don't try to sell me a Windows tablet and think that shoving a touch interface in my face on the desktop is going to get me to buy. Android is where it's at for tablets. Trying to force that crappy UI on me will make me not even consider Windows tablets even IF you make it far superior to Android.

All you've done is alienate customers with Windows 8, and you're still trying to shove that loathed (loathed isn't even the word for it) abortion of a UI in people's faces. I'm going to be buying a bunch of Windows 7 licenses while it's still available because Windows 9's isn't shaping to be much better than Windows 8. If I have to run 9, I'll be installing classic shell on it, like I do on Windows Server when I have to work on Windows servers (who the FUCK thought it was a good idea to put a tablet UI on a server OS anyhow?!)

Oh, and while you're at it bring back glass. Knock it off with that Windows '80s flat look.

Stumble/dollar is one of the best descriptions I've ever heard to rate drugs, just FYI. ;)