Michael B. Duff

links for 2010-02-27

Posted in Links by Michael Duff on February 27, 2010

links for 2010-02-25

Posted in Links by Michael Duff on February 25, 2010

links for 2010-02-24

Posted in Links by Michael Duff on February 24, 2010

links for 2010-02-23

Posted in Links by Michael Duff on February 23, 2010

links for 2010-02-22

Posted in Links by Michael Duff on February 22, 2010
  • Damn this is funny. I wasn't expecting to like it but I couldn't stop laughing.
  • QOTD skahammer: "I knew I should have taken that chance to go into economic doomsaying before it was cool."
    (tags: economics)
  • Gingrich: If President Obama and Congress are serious about reducing health care costs, then the more than $600 billion a year in unnecessary care should be at the top of the list. Congress must give states the incentive to reform their civil justice systems so that lawyers will think twice before suing doctors for frivolous cases. There is a place for health courts that address only medical malpractice cases, and a need for caps on damages for “pain and suffering” that have nothing to do with lost wages or actual damages. Doctors who incorporate best medical practices should be protected from lawsuits altogether.

    These reforms would allow doctors to stop playing defense, and make it possible for patients and taxpayers to better afford health care.

  • Bill Frist: Medicare and private insurance companies should reimburse providers not for each discrete service they provide but for managing a patient’s condition over an entire episode of care. In my own field, transplantation, for example, a payer should not separately reimburse 56 different nurses, doctors, pharmacies, imaging centers and hospitals. Instead, it should pay a heart transplant team a fixed sum (adjusted for risk) based on the diagnosis of “heart failure requiring transplantation.” The disbursement of that payment would then be made at the local level, where value can be most accurately determined, and waste most likely eliminated.
  • The issue sold Monday morning is a 1938 edition of Action Comics No. 1, widely considered the Holy Grail of comic books. It features Superman lifting a car on its cover and originally cost 10 cents.
  • Money quote: "You don't have to be white to be white, you just have to be rich."
  • "People are busy, and they get really mad at things, and they say, 'I'm going to go home and do something,'" Petersen says. "And then they figure out how long it's going to take to change the checking account and change all the [electronic] payments. And I can either spend an hour with my kids or an hour doing that, and I don't know about them, but when I do that trade-off, I'll just stay with the bank I have."
  • "First I would request to close my accounts, to get their attention, and it did. I sat in a chair explained the situation to a young, professional banker, the reason for my unhappiness and pointed out the various qualities of my atom. He sympathized, and sincerely showed frustration over my account-closed situation, but could do nothing, except take it to a higher power, like a Cardinal of Disputes. I felt optimistic in the review of my case. I gave them til the following Monday to resolve the issue with my atoms’ credit card. I also gave the young banker another option, instead of closing my account, just cut the high credit limit they have given me back to my original credit amount, thus improving my utilization of balance verses available balance. Didn’t seem to take the Cardinal very long to decide…no. Back in the car and back to the Wells Fargo, I closed the accounts."

links for 2010-02-21

Posted in Links by Michael Duff on February 21, 2010

links for 2010-02-20

Posted in Links by Michael Duff on February 20, 2010

links for 2010-02-19

Posted in Links by Michael Duff on February 19, 2010

Roger Ebert, on Death

Posted in Uncategorized by Michael Duff on February 19, 2010

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear, he writes in a journal entry titled “Go Gently into That Good Night.” I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris. — Roger Ebert, from his Esquire Interview

links for 2010-02-18

Posted in Links by Michael Duff on February 18, 2010