Someone said that I said, or implied, that smoking would be safe without the industrial adulterants etc. I never said that...not do I believe that anything is or can be entirely safe.
Overdosing on the finest purest spring water can kill you.
The idea is to minimize the risk of smoking, and the way to do that is by eliminating, by law, any and all un-tested non-tobacco ingredients...and certainly the ones (pesticides, chlorine, burn accelerants, etc) that are off-the-charts deadly.
Then it would be nice if state and Federal attorneys, and private liability lawyers and so forth, went after those responsible for maximizing the risks of tobacco use to the point that health damage was virtually inevitable.
Others ought know, or remember, that a typical cigarette does not necessarily contain tobacco. It may well be Fake Tobacco, concocted out of all sorts of waste cellulose materials...none of it likely organic---pesticide-free or chlorine-free.
Therefore, to call the manufacturers of those ersatz concoctions by the name of the plant products they pretend to be selling is...well...a display of profound lack of knowledge about the topic, or a display of complicity with the perpetrators of this mass human experimentation and mass poisoning.
A lot of this is explained, with references galore, at http://fauxbacco.blogspot.com and at Bill Drake's http://ktc.com/~bdrake
I take issue with none of the factual points in your article. But has anyone looked at the "EOB" sent by your insurance company; the document which lists your recent claims, the amount the doctor nominally charges, the amount the insurer paid, and your copay (if any)? The long and short of it is that the insurers' clout of having a large piece of the doctors' business gives them the power to negotiate a much lower rate than the individual (you or I) would pay on your own; at a savings which greatly outweighs the additional overhead the insurers charge.
For example: my most recent doctor's office visit. The doctor's nominal charge for a visit: $265. My insurer's negotiated payment in full: $150 (including my copay). So, if the insurer has an 80% medical loss ratio as described in the article, that $150 represents 80% of my total insurance premiums relating to this visit; making my total cost related to this visit $187.50 paid to my insurer, a $77.50 savings over the $265 I would have had to pay directly to the doctor had I made the same visit without insurance.
To look at it another way; had the insurance company a medical loss ratio of 90%, as would be required in the legislation discussed, but paid the doctor's nominal $265, my total costs would have been $294.44, $106.94 more than they actually were with an 80% loss ratio. Please, I can't afford that much "consumer protection". And with a limit set on how low the medical loss ratio could be, the insurer would have no incentive to negotiate lower rates with doctors to pass on to the public; quite the opposite, since their net income would be limited to 11% of the payments to doctors, be they high or low. Of course, this is no mathematical coincidence; if the savings negotiated by an insurer did not outweigh their additional overhead, there would be no financial reason to buy the insurance in the first place. In this light, medical loss ratio is seen as an obvious red herring for the consumer, as it does not reflect this savings.
It's possible to argue, as some do, that it's wrong for insurers to use their clout to demand lower rates from doctors. But by the same token, it's just as wrong for doctors to use their power to demand higher rates from individuals, who don't have the clout to bargain. For all their consternation, few if any doctors truly suffer financially as a result of insurance's reduced payment rates, by any realistic objective standards.
American doctors make quite a bit more money than Canadian doctors, for instance; not only in absolute dollars, but relative to average national income, average national industrial wage, etc. (at no loss in quality of medical treatment). So it would seem that the difference in total medical costs per capita between the two countries is hardly due to the lower medical loss ratio of private insurers (relative to the Canadian provincial health plans) adding an unnecessary amount to the cost of the actual medical treatments. Ironically, were insurers to negotiate rates of payments to doctors comparable to those customary in Canada, even if their overhead, administrative expenses, salaries, profits, etc. were unchanged their medical loss ratios would then in fact drop to unheard of lows rather than rise; meanwhile the total per capita health care costs of the American public, insurance overhead included, would be nearly cut in half. That would hardly be called an objectionable outcome.
So, despite the accuracy of the facts reported in this article, it falls short of obeying a critical rule: follow the money. All of it. Then do the math, all of it; make sure the 25 cent savings you've discovered doesn't end up costing you a dollar.
I would find the innuendo and suggestions about Ian Plimer and his connections to mining companies more compelling if at least one respondent attacked his science with credibility and not his capitalistic leanings.
I found out about e-cigs a few days ago when my sister told me she was going to see if her insurance would cover what turned out to be Nicotrol. I thought, Oh my god, there is a cigarette with no smoke finally!!! Well, imagine my shock when a few days later, after I'd found out about e-cigs via the internet, she tells me her insurance did cover the $500 cost for the device and I believe it was 168 individual capsules good for 1 use. Now, why is it that all I can find is that the FDA cautions & is trying to ban importation and nothing about the potential here to eliminate cigarettes and its associated 2nd-hand smoke for good. Don't get me wrong, I AM concerned about anything coming out of China due to lack of regulation, but I am doing my research online as well. I've been smoking for over 30 years, quit twice easily when weightlifting religiously. I discovered it was the inhaling more than the nicotine that I crave and I had no real craving problems. So that said, all of the tobacco companies and other private businesses ought to be jumping on this idea of creating a "cigarette" that is nontoxic that delivers a controlled nicotine dose. Personally, I'm buying one next week when I get paid. I have 4 beautiful devoted cats in my home who are 13 and 14 years old that constantly inhale my addiction, my home stinks, I stink. How can anything I inhale regularly in these devices be any worse than what I inhale 3x over from a cigarette both directly from the cigarette and then constantly in my home? It infuriates me that everyone is being cautioned and steered away from this much safer alternative rather than being given good reliable assessments of which are safe & which are not, that there are no attempts at seriously regulating content from each company importing, and that no one seems to be pointing out that if you are going to smoke, better to take in a few chemicals, exhale none, than to inhale and exhale 100s of carcinogens. That is not EVEN touching on tar. While I don't really know anything about studies on tar, all I have to do is look in my ashtray, stick it in the dishwasher and see how it doesn't come off. Connect that to my lungs and I personally can see tar being the biggest problem. So, I'm off to feed my inhalation needs while not exercising regularly and am, of course, hoping I'll just move on over to the 0 nicotine cartridges.
Plimer did not retreat from the debate with Monbiot. Plimer challenged Monbiot to a debate to which Monbiot realized he was no match. The 'conditions' (questions) which Monbiot came up with were a ploy to scuttle the debate. Who has ever heard of putting conditions on a debate? You get up and debate if you back yourself or you try and wriggle out of it if you don't (without lossing face).
I suggest you read:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/11/why-monbiot-ran
This is just 1 site which explains the full story.
Someone said that I said, or implied, that smoking would be safe without the industrial adulterants etc. I never said that...not do I believe that anything is or can be entirely safe.
Overdosing on the finest purest spring water can kill you.
The idea is to minimize the risk of smoking, and the way to do that is by eliminating, by law, any and all un-tested non-tobacco ingredients...and certainly the ones (pesticides, chlorine, burn accelerants, etc) that are off-the-charts deadly.
Then it would be nice if state and Federal attorneys, and private liability lawyers and so forth, went after those responsible for maximizing the risks of tobacco use to the point that health damage was virtually inevitable.
Others ought know, or remember, that a typical cigarette does not necessarily contain tobacco. It may well be Fake Tobacco, concocted out of all sorts of waste cellulose materials...none of it likely organic---pesticide-free or chlorine-free.
Therefore, to call the manufacturers of those ersatz concoctions by the name of the plant products they pretend to be selling is...well...a display of profound lack of knowledge about the topic, or a display of complicity with the perpetrators of this mass human experimentation and mass poisoning.
A lot of this is explained, with references galore, at http://fauxbacco.blogspot.com and at Bill Drake's http://ktc.com/~bdrake
I found out about e-cigs a few days ago when my sister told me she was going to see if her insurance would cover what turned out to be Nicotrol. I thought, Oh my god, there is a cigarette with no smoke finally!!! Well, imagine my shock when a few days later, after I'd found out about e-cigs via the internet, she tells me her insurance did cover the $500 cost for the device and I believe it was 168 individual capsules good for 1 use. Now, why is it that all I can find is that the FDA cautions & is trying to ban importation and nothing about the potential here to eliminate cigarettes and its associated 2nd-hand smoke for good. Don't get me wrong, I AM concerned about anything coming out of China due to lack of regulation, but I am doing my research online as well. I've been smoking for over 30 years, quit twice easily when weightlifting religiously. I discovered it was the inhaling more than the nicotine that I crave and I had no real craving problems. So that said, all of the tobacco companies and other private businesses ought to be jumping on this idea of creating a "cigarette" that is nontoxic that delivers a controlled nicotine dose. Personally, I'm buying one next week when I get paid. I have 4 beautiful devoted cats in my home who are 13 and 14 years old that constantly inhale my addiction, my home stinks, I stink. How can anything I inhale regularly in these devices be any worse than what I inhale 3x over from a cigarette both directly from the cigarette and then constantly in my home? It infuriates me that everyone is being cautioned and steered away from this much safer alternative rather than being given good reliable assessments of which are safe & which are not, that there are no attempts at seriously regulating content from each company importing, and that no one seems to be pointing out that if you are going to smoke, better to take in a few chemicals, exhale none, than to inhale and exhale 100s of carcinogens. That is not EVEN touching on tar. While I don't really know anything about studies on tar, all I have to do is look in my ashtray, stick it in the dishwasher and see how it doesn't come off. Connect that to my lungs and I personally can see tar being the biggest problem. So, I'm off to feed my inhalation needs while not exercising regularly and am, of course, hoping I'll just move on over to the 0 nicotine cartridges.
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