That's a great idea, however I think they'd have enough conflict with the pro-lifers then to have to deal with all the public outcry against forced organ donation...they need to take it one step at a time :winkwink:

Exactly. When the lottery started paying for the schools everything was great then they moved more and more money elsewhere. The problem was this area became one of the most popular places in the nation to relocate to so we we went through a population explosion which meant the schools needed more money. So now that the lottery money was going elsewhere they went back to their favorite fall back, property taxes. The crazy thing was several years ago there was a measure passed that limited the amount of property tax the state could put on your house (mean they capped the dollar per thousand tax rate at a certain number.) So within two years of that measure being passed suddenly every house started going up in value. If the state couldn't increase the percentage they could get, they will just raise the value of your house and get it that way.

We can start with them.

Based on 2008 stats, the average cost per year of a prisoner in an American prison is $76,100 so for minimum 20 years, assuming the cost stays the same, that's 1.5M give or take (and could be more, the longer the sentence and what kind of age / health the offender is in).

I understand your point, that things are gone about differently when seeking the death penalty, but yes for this to work there would have to be no change in current legal process; in brief, a death penalty case should NOT differ from a regular case and trial.

Additionally, that aside, you must also calculate the cost of reduced crime (obviously I don't know, but I'd think if thousands upon thousands of criminals started being put to quick death, a lot of people might think twice about committing a crime to begin with). Less crime = less legal and police costs, less people in prisons to have to pay for, less prisons needing to be built, etc...

My personal opinion on that is, my chances of that happening by "being in the wrong place at the wrong time" are less than the chances of having a fatal accident, being murdered, etc... so if it happens, it's truly "my time to go". Also, if I was convicted wrongly and given a life sentence, depending on my individual jail experience today and in the future, I might wish that I was simply killed as opposed to suffering for 20-30 years then being set free, having missed a large chunk of my life/youth.

Please allow me to educate you.

There are two things you should know about studies like this:

1 - Many studies like this don't compensate for the money saved by avoiding extra costs due to longer lifespans. And if they don't, they're entirely worthless.

2 - The line "translates the adverse health effects (of smoking) into dollar terms, the universal language of decision makers" from the article indicates that, like many studies, this study also gives an arbitrary "economic value" to years of life gained. The typical value of a year? $10k-$50k, depending on the study in question. That's not actual money, though. It's not "the monetary gains of an extra year of life", but the "intrinsic value" of living.

Every single study that doesn't fuck up these two things arrives at the same conclusion: if people quit smoking, it gives short-term economic benefits but long-term economic costs which outweigh the benefits, at least on a financial level.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/337/15/1052 <- I already posted this before, but it seems as if people aren't getting the message.

This chart sums it up pretty well:

http://i31.tinypic.com/sgisjp.jpg

At any given age, smokers are individually more expensive than non-smokers. However, because they tend to die younger, as a group they are less expensive overall - simply because relatively few will make it to 80, and the older you get, the more health care you will need, on average.

This is not a theoretical argument, it's a cold, hard fact. I've posted links to two studies published in peer-reviewed journals in this thread which conclude exactly the same thing.

I know people on GFY generally speaking aren't exactly big on academics, but personally, I tend to trust scientific studies a whole lot more than I do the anecdotes of random people on message boards.

Sure if it were widespread you may actually end up reducing crime in the long run and ultimately that could save a lot of money. I guess I envision a different end to things. I could see a situation where someone is convicted of a crime, sentenced to death and killed then we find out that the person actually was innocent. Their family sues the state that put this person to death and wins a multi-million dollar settlement. This could open up a whole new can of worms

Sadly, there is no easy answer. We can either deal with massive overcrowding and costs or deal with the possible issues that come from a rapid death penalty.



For sure, if you are just sitting in your house watching TV the cops aren't going to kick your door in and drag you away just because they need someone to arrest. Most of the people who eventually were found innocent of the crime were originally caught because they had existing criminal records that made them suspects. So one thing for sure that could happen is that it may encourage people to not get yourself involved in petty crime of any sort. If you end up a criminal that could get you in a line-up for a different crime you didn't commit and then you could be wrongly ID'd.

So if I read that correctly it is saying that the average cost per person is higher for smokers, but when you group smokers into one group and non-smokers into another it shows that the non-smokers end up costing more total dollars.

Is that correct?

If so couldn't that simply be because there are more non-smokers than smokers? Sure all of the smokers combined cost less than all of the non-smokers combined, but what is the difference in population size?

Good point and example; I suppose the only solution there is to give the Court final authority where they are not liable and thus, cannot be sued in any way for wrongful death. Of course that would open up the question of "If you give them x power, why not also let them do y." and then you get stuck at "Where is the line drawn"?

As you mentioned though, with new techniques such as DNA testing becoming cheaper and more widely used and they fact they'd still have a traditional trial, I'd think it going forward you won't have as many wrongful convictions as in the past...

The graph shows what it would be like if the entire male population did or didn't smoke.

Average cost per person if the person is alive is higher for smokers. But smokers die younger. So, at later ages (70+), smokers start becoming a lot cheaper simply because most of them are dead.

In the graph, the peaks are where the average life expectancy is. If nobody smoked, health care costs would be lower for people aged up to ~73, but at that point, since the smokers' life expectancy has already peaked, a population consisting entirely of non-smokers suddenly becomes much more expensive.

Oh so that's why the Republicans are against public health care! They'd have to stop being themselves if we want any chance of it ever working out!

There is a reason it's called the party of old fat white men...

It all makes sense now! Thanks for the enlightenment!

As my dad used to always tell me, you can prove either side of any argument with statistics.

Cold hard facts [as you like to describe them] do not include "if."

I believe you have proven the validity of my dad's observation.

You can't prove either side. What you can do is manipulate statistics to appear like they support any position.

And that's where peer review comes in. It's intended to weed out misleading arguments and manipulated statistics.

You can write an article with misleading statistics, but you won't get it published in any reputable journal.

Actually, cold hard facts most certainly can include conditionals. In fact, since the hardest facts are mathematical and logical ones, and conditionals are a part of formal logic, you statement literally couldn't be any further from the truth.

But that's beside the point here, since the graph isn't the article.

It's merely an illustration that shows how, given both current health care expenses and current life expectancies for smokers and non-smokers, a group of smokers would end up costing less in the long run.

I agree. I think one of the changes the system would have to make is to allow DNA evidence every time. The way it is now sometimes that evidence is not allowed into the case. If they allow it every time I think you are correct the number of wrongful convictions will drop dramatically. Most of the people they are finding innocent now through DNA have been in jail for a long and were convicted long before DNA was something regularly used.

Hey, he has a graph that he found on the internets. He is obviously right. The only thing that could be more compelling is if he found a pie chart.

There is a lot of stupidity in this thread but this takes the cake for most idiotic statement of the thread. It would solve the problem in the sense that no one would go through the horrors (and massive expense) of med school and residency all to end up in forced servitude to a government bureaucracy................... not to mention that is completely outside of the realm of the government's authority to force someone to do such a thing.

A truly ridiculous comment. Even by GFY standards that is fucking retarded. :error

Although I think it is a dumb idea, you should attack him on the merits of his statement and not try to make him look dumb by making yourself look dumb:

1) The government could enforce this. They can attach whatever requirements they want to a professional license. Making someone donate their services as part of a requirement for licensing would be no different than requiring continuing education. Unconventional? Yes. Unenforceable? No way.

2) There are professionals that do things similar to this every day. Guess what kind of people they are? They are the types that people consider to be the slimiest of slimy: lawyers. What's it called? Pro bono. In fact, many of the larger firms require a set number of annual pro bono hours per associate or partner.

3) If you think doctors are not generous, think again. My surgery last year was done without insurance. I started paying off the surgeon and he made the bill disappear after my second payment. Why? He chose to reward my responsibility. That was a spontaneous act of generosity on his part. So don't think just because they spend all of that money on medical school and other expenses that they are suddenly not interested in helping out where they can.

Regarding doctors, if it were more financially attractive to be a GP than a specialist, you'd see more GPs than specialists. GPs would be far more valuable in regards to lowcost and/or pro-bono than specialists. Bring your kids to "free knee clinic day"? eh.

I like the original post that started this thread. Unfortunately, it requires Americans in general to become responsible for their own actions. That blows it right out of the realm of the possible.

Gee thanks. I really appreciate the tip on GFY debate etiquette. Being somewhat new here I was not aware of the various requirements for posting so thanks for filling me in on that. :thumbsup

I live in a populated area in a new house on a sub-divided lot that is across the street from an apartment complex that is primarily Latino. Not low-income folks, but they are not comfortably in the middle class, either.

There is a low-cost pediatric clinic in there that is ran by a nurse practitioner. She shares her space in one of the apartments with a Latino officer that runs a police substation out of one of the apartments. It is only open one day a week (Tuesdays) for a few hours.

She does things based on the ability of the parent(s) to pay. The suggested donation is $35 but some patients give as little as a dollar or two. The medications that are dispensed are provided by other clinics. The money raised just about pays the cost of the part time nurse/admin person and the lady that runs it may make $10 a week on a good week.

The apartment complex donated the space recently served her with an eviction notice. It made no sense because the police sub-station is staying there and they are not expanding. It made no sense. It also wasn't because it was a burden to the community. My house faces the street that patients (or anybody entering that complex) has to go down. I didn't even know about this place until I originally read a "good deed" article in the local paper.

About 8 weeks after I first that there was a clinic, I heard that she got eviction papers. I started pleading with the business community to donate space to this clinic. There is a ton of under utilized commercial space in my city. I also got local activists involved in the hunt. The pitch was to donate space that cannot be rented to this clinic and enjoy the tax write off.

Nobody stepped up. There is still a ton of empty office spaces.

Until things like that change, there is not much hope. There are medical professionals out there that want to help. The problem is that they need help themselves in order to offer this help.

This was a nurse practitioner that was doing this. The cost of becoming an NP or even a PA is a lot cheaper than becoming a doctor. You do not even need a GP to pull off these clinics. Sure, they're needed for more complex cases, but some of the NP's/PA's seem to know more about health than some doctors.

I went off an a tangent and apologize for that. I am super tired and just got riled up while thinking about what happened in my own neighborhood.

That's exactly it - it was the mother with the real problem...and was transferring it to the daughter. There was always a littany of excuses, but usually it revolved around how *she* was treated as a kid.

I put up with it for a year and a half, then got out of the relationship (it wasn't the sole reason).

Sarcasm aside - its civility and respect.

Goes for any board...

Most of you are too young to remember this but before health care doctors lived in the same neighbor as their patients.We had the adults doctor on one corner and a block and half away was the kids doctor.

So how much beer would I still be allowed to drink exactly?

Maybe in your neighborhood. Not everyone lived in small towns.

Huge difference between the government mandating it and your boss mandating it. :2 cents:

The source of the graph is given two lines above it, and is an article in the New England Journal of Medicine.

That probably doesn't mean anything to you, but it's one of the most prominent medical journals in the world, as well as the one with the single highest impact factor.

Simply put: the source I cited is one of the most credible ones in the world.

Facts mean nothing to most people. If they have an opinion, it is a fact to them and nothing you can say will change their mind.

One word: God.

Money is only a part of it, actually.

What's more important is that it lacks prestige, often lacks challenge, and still takes a lot of time and requires lots of responsibility.

GPs spend lots of time just diagnosing various forms of crotch rot, telling people to take some rest and listening to old people who are merely lonely. But they still have to be alert all the time because with every patient, there's a chance that something's really wrong, and they still get woken up at 4 in the morning for what may or may not be actual emergencies.

The best way to make the job of GPs more attractive would probably be to have more nurse practitioners. They can do 95% of what GPs can do, allowing GPs to focus on the things they're actually needed for instead of the other stuff.

I love the people that order king sized fries, 3 hamburgers a cheese burger and big mac THEN they say "Ohhhh I better take a diet coke, I'm on a diet you know" :thumbsup

Civility and respect are indeed the hallmark traits of the discourse on GFY..... I think we can all agree on that. :upsidedow

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

My friend used to work in a movie theatre when we were seventeen. He always had stories like that. Can I please get an extra large coke, extra butter, two chocolate bars....... oh and a small diet coke

yep I lived in the small town of Brooklyn NY. lol

So you think every neighborhood had their own doctors living in them?