Hits and Misses
Steve Lands
burg: A positive view of the government shutdown.
Internet tool is being used to diagnose mental health problems. But is it necessary? Can’t we just look at the chat room comments and tell who is crazy?
Health Care Policy and Reform Insights | NCPA
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“and the more desperate for relief you claim they are, the less deserving you reveal them to be.”
Landsburg ftw.
Landsburg appears to have abandoned reason in favor of promoting Republican policies without evidence to back them up.
Landsburg is a respected academic Economist. I’m sure he has evidence backing him up.
People with evidence should provide it, not just expect people to believe them like some kind of monarch.
“Internet tool is being used to diagnose mental health problems. But is it necessary? Can’t we just look at the chat room comments and tell who is crazy?”
This has problems written all over it. How accurate can these things be? Can we even strictly define “mental health problems”? This could ruin people’s lives.
Exactly. We trust our lines of code to correctly interpret things, but nothing beats face-to-face interaction when you want to learn about someone.
“Steve Landsburg: A positive view of the government shutdown.”
I can’t follow Landsburg’s reasoning here. Either he has none and is just trying to justify his support of the government shutdown, or he doesn’t explain it at all.
He posits:
Pain for furloughed workers = overpaid workers
However, he provides no evidence that this must be the case. He merely says that their pain must be a sign that they are being overpaid. It could be several other sources which he doesn’t even both to refute.
Maybe the point is that appropriately qualified workers are able to find approximately commensurate work and salary, but people that are overpaid now have to suffer significant losses if they transition to another position, thus the outrage at losing their current, cushy job.
But they’ve been furloughed, not fired. The only option available to them is to wait and burn through their savings until their job lets them work again. They could find another position, but with how difficult that market is right now, I don’t blame them for staying.
It seems he is positing a well-functioning job market, which we assuredly don’t have right now.
“Competition matters: the price of policies offered in rating areas with 10 or more participating insurers are about one-third lower than those for the same policies in areas with only one issuer.”
Unfortunately, we’ll see less and less competition as ObamaCare consolidates power in the hands of a few.
“Telemedicine” – This looks like a great choice for young/healthy individuals who don’t require in-depth screenings by a doctor.
Near ‘instant’ access to a doctor would be priceless.
“Unless your argument addresses the question of why it’s useful to have these people at their desks, it comes down to an argument for transferring money willy-nilly to a certain class of people…”
I would like to see more discussion of essential/non-essential government workers/programs. Weren’t 93% of EPA workers deemed non-essential…?