Looking for a mid-size domestic car recommendation

If they were making the cars domestic consumers really wanted they would
still have over 50% of the domestic market. GM management sucks. Period.
I don't care how many cars they make. They can't sell most of them without
rebates.

 

I see you can't bring yourself to admit when you are wrong,
easier to just try to change the subject. The
fact is you are still wrong. Toyota and Honda build good cars as
well and they too offer rebates. They too are loosing share to
other some newer manufactures as well. The fact remains every
manufacture is selling more cars
in an ever expanding US market.


mike hunt

 

Geoff, why is someone in a bordertown, like yours, so interested in the
Canadian medical system? I'll bet that you're crossing into Windsor to get
your less expensive prescription medication! Shame! ;-)

 

Basic yes... which is usually able to be provided through medicare/caid.
Plus there are several free clinics all over, especially metro areas. My
stepmother is a pharmacist at one in Detroit. They have doctors and nurses
there and dispense meds for free or low cost in some cases (low cost like
$1). The only argument I say to that... not really an argument, but a
thought really, is even if basic was provided what is to prevent someone
from not caring enough to go see a doctor to find out they have the TB or
syphillis and still able to spread it to your wife, child, or daughter?
This is a country that has many lazy people, many people with too much
'pride' to go to a free clinic, or just too stubborn to ask for help. Just
a thought. Not bunking ya.

 

I will say problem #1 with drug costs is the unregulated increase in prices
for drugs. Sure it costs millions and millions to come up with a drug and
get it approved by the FDA... but they get 7 years to make their money back
on it... most big hit drugs they make their R&D money back within the first
year. Its not til a generic comes out that the price can drop. But that is
7 years down the road. Next time you go to the pharmacy to get your top of
the line drug.. ask what the cash cost is for a customer. Most are
astonishing. Granted this is a free market economy, but drugs shouldn't be
able to be hiked that much. Also doctors keep charging more and more
because they want to be paid more. Not that I am saying a doctor doesn't
deserve a decent paycheck, he does, especially the guy that is supposed to
be removing the lump on your kidney/liver/pancreas/ovary/testicle and you
want him to make sure he does it right. But there is a limit to making good
money and causing your patients to go broke. Of course... I will stop there
and say this... a big portion of what they charge (the doctors) is to pay
for the outrageous insurance premiums they must carry to protect themselves
from malpractice... cause its amazing how much they have to pay. Its not
just the doctor that left the scalpel in your abdomen on accident. Its the
doctor that didn't order one test and you got sick from the thing that test
would have tested for and now you sue him for millions of dollars. Its the
reckless abandon that people in the U.S. (and I believe spreading across
Europe) to sue someone for anything. There are many diseases and almost as
many tests to check for them. It shouldn't be required for a doctor to HAVE
to order all those tests in fear that he might miss one and you become sick
and sue him. The legal system is the first step for reform, and then slowly
reform the medical society. If anyone wants some good reading on such
issues... check out

"The Death of Common Sense" by Philip K. Howard
&
"The Collapse of Common Good" by Philip K. Howard

Both are very good books, definately a slight eye opener for some and
solidation of ideas for others.

 

Simple solution to that. You've still got capital punishment laws on
the books right? ;-) Seriously though.

Sometimes I wonder how much it would have cost to have tested the
western population for AIDS & then quarantined the infected persons in
the 1980's.

I mean we "quarantine" paranoid schizophrenic's and violent rapists to
protect society from their "illness" why do we not do the same for all
ailments than can have such a widespread devastating effect?

I read somewhere that 80% of all new British AIDS cases result from
"trips" to Africa. Remember what the US & Europe did when China, Hong
Kong Toronto & Singapore had a SARS outbreak? How far did SARS
spread into the US and Europe?

Just a thought.....

 

Interesting question for the group. Since the 1950's when Mercedes
copied the US car designs have any other marque's or markets copied US
design?

I love the Caddy SedanDeVille DTS & DHS but the styling???? Who the
hell was in charge of that fiasco???

 

Seems like maybe a year ago that I heard a radio report that said that
the a law had just been passed in Canada (can't recall if it was federal
or for a particular province) requiring that clinics be maintained with
licensed nurses to administer certain drugs (heroine?) by needle to
addicts off the street so that they did not get certain diseases from
dirty needles, etc. What idiots people are becoming!

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")

 

I don't trust bulk statistics thrown out like that. There are too many
examples of groups with a vested interest in having the results come out
a certain way intentionally mishandling the numbers.

For example, statistics are often cited on how certain ethnic groups or
nationalities are predicted to be the voting majority (vs. "white"
Americans) in the U.S. by such and such a year in the near future. The
eye opener comes when you find out that the people putting the
statistics together count an individual who meets, say, two (or three)
of the criteria for being put into a certain group as two (or three)
people in that minority and not one, whereas each individual who meets
the criteria for the group that they want to intentionally undercount
(i.e. caucasians) are counted as one person. The people publishing the
results have a vested interest in cionvincing politicians and others to
cater to certain favored groups. It's one thing to report the truth of
what the reality is, but it is not acceptable to skew the results like
that to trick the public.

Similarly, they re-classified certain sets of symptoms and diseases as
AIDS (broadened the definition) to inflate the growth rate of AIDS cases
from year to year. Again - the rates of AIDS new AIDS cases were
changing, and indeed, maybe the criteria shoudl have been broadened, but
it is not right to report shifts in the numbers like that without making
it clear that the criteria were changed in teh numbers being compared -
IOW, if the criteria changed, then when statistical rate changes are
reported, they either need to be adjusted or normalized for the effects
of the change in criteria, or, at minimum, it needs to be stated that
the criteria changed from one statistic to the next so that people know
that they are not an apples to apples comparison - but that information
is **NEVER** disclosed when the numbers are thrown out to the public.

I am not saying that such sleight of hand techniques are the case with
the 100k hospital-caused deaths per year statistic increasing to 200k,
but knowing the politics of those pushing the "our medical system is
awful and therefore we need to go to socialized medicine" agenda, I am
very skeptical of the numbers that they throw out. What were the
criteria? Did the criteria change? Did reporting methods and accuracy
change to falsely skew the numbers (either over-reporting or
under-reporting on either end of the study? etc., etc....

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")

 

B I N G O ! ! ! !

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")

 

Oh my gosh - the ACLU would have claimed that that was a violation of
someone's rights and it never would have been allowed. So instead,
millions suffer all in the name of protecting what then were falsely
claimed as "the rights" of a few.

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")

 

Healthcare is administered provincially Bill. Your recollection is close
though - a couple of provinces have decided that it's better to provide
clean needles to addicts, rather than have them sharing needles (and
diseases!) in shooting galleries. It's not a law, just a practice.

 

The report I heard siad that the places were staffed with nurses to
administer the drugs - not just handing out clean needles - that much I
do remember. I thought it was a legislated requirement (provincial or
federal?), but maybe I heard wrong - in any case, law or no law,
taxpayer money was being payed out to provide the "service" for those
places that implemented the practice.

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")

 

I think that the government's logic is that some incompetent & deluded
nurse would "lower the number of addicts" just like we hear
occasionally happening in hospitals around the world.

After all Euthanasia is "illegal" But only if it's caught right?

Gov't implements law allowing someone to become disgusted & frustrated
with the system & then gov't washes their hands of the results when
the inevitable results occur.

 

Cute!

Actually, I'm just an inquisitive guy.

--Geoff

 

Although the plan sounds like a waste, the US war on drugs hasn't gone all
to well either.

 

Hospitals certainly have a financial interest in disputing the numbers and
the financial strength to do their own analysis. But to my knowledge they
have not done so. Therefore, presumably the nunmbers are accurate.

 

What you fail to understand is the tort system is part of the solution.
When businesses are sued, or realize that they might be sued, they tend to
get better.... more efficient and safer. That has not happened in the
medical profession. Over 100k patients are being killed every year in
hospitals due to medical mistakes and the trend is apparently getting worse
according to the newest figures. Arguably the system needs more lawsuits,
not fewer, to encourage the hospitals to clean up their act and to become
more efficient. That, my friend, is capitalism without the need of
government regulation.

 

I can hear the screams of logic being tortured from here!

--Geoff

 

I think that you did.

Remember the old oil filter commercial "Pay a little now or a lot later"?
The principle applies here. Pay a little now to provide clean needles and
constant availability of rehab services. Or, pay a lot later to treat them
and those they've infected when they have big, expensive diseases like
Syphillis and AIDS.

It's a strategy known as "harm minimalization". The Netherlands example
shows us it can be very effective at minimizing societal costs of drug
abuse. It doesn't sit well with those who think drug abuse will cease to
happen if they just make enough pious moral denouncements of drug addicts.

-DS