I'm in the Twin Cities too. Check out KickAss VPS. They're served out of the Verispace colo center in Edina. I pay $25/month for an Ubuntu server with root access. Never had any problems.

Exactly. I think this commentary sums it up best: http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-cant-believe-the-tv-they-make-me-watch,10893/

Ahem. That's the preamble, and not an enforcable article of the Constitution.

Because it's not the government that provides us with that "wonderful developer world lifestyle". It's private enterprise like Amazon.

This is so moronic I don't know where to begin. How long have you worked in Healthcare IT? It's completely inaccurate to say that insurance companies are making ridiculous profits, and even if they were, who cares? Are you referring to any particular company? If so, which one? Are all types of health insurance companies making enormous profits, because I can tell you a lot of TPAs are losing business fast. Do you have any citations at all? All but the largest of insurance companies are struggling with compliance and investing in the American economy isn't the go-to solution. Try "investing in the Indian economy." Fixed that for you. I'm not making it up. It's not my personal theory. I work in the industry and see Americans lose their jobs every day due to cost pressures resulting from ill-conceived regulation. I don't disagree that the new code system will be beneficial, but the government took a disruptive approach in rolling it out.

Astoundingly inaccurate. The thing that people don't understand is that ICD-10 is not really an IT problem but an administration problem. Insurance companies must entirely redesign their benefit plans around the new code systems AND maintain payment neutrality at the same time, AND support dual code sets. Their adjudication platform vendors will be charging them massive amounts to upgrade and convert, not to mention their own resources. And when things go to hell, IT will be blamed because managers assumed that a one-to-one crosswalk was all that needed to be implemented. The cost of the conversion will be enormous for EVERYONE, and I predict the compliance deadline will be extended as a result.

So. Much. Anger. Does it ever get tiring being a liberal? It seems the amount of hateful anger necessary would just drain a person. Anyway, we conservatives see through terms like "reich-wing." It's a way for liberals to attack those with whom the disagree without actually going to the trouble of making a cogent argument. "Racist/poor-hating is as racist/poor-hating does" Here we see the main fallacy with liberal logic. They often redefine concepts in order to villify their opponents. For example, opposition to affirmative-action policies is most certainly "racism" to the liberal mind. No, racism is believing that someone is inherently inferior based soley on their race. Nothing more. From the proposition, "If someone is racist, they will oppose this policy" liberals immediately derive the reverse- "If someone opposes this policy, they are a racist." This assumption cannot be made, as any student of propositional logic will tell you. So no doubt your next response will be a stream of obscenities, or STFU's or whatever. Maybe you'll become so angry your head will explode. Who knows. I'm done with this thread.