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The new, temporary FBI Director Andrew G. McCabe says that employees loved Comey:
Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe Thursday rejected assertions by the White House that FBI employees had lost faith in James Comey and that the bureau's probe into Russian election meddling was one of its most minor concerns. "I hold Director Comey in the absolute highest regard. I have the highest respect for his considerable abilities and his integrity," McCabe told members of the Senate intelligence committee. He said Comey, who was fired by President Donald Trump on Tuesday, enjoyed "broad support within the FBI and still does to this day." He added, "The majority, the vast majority of FBI employees enjoyed a deep, positive connection to Director Comey."
Furthermore, he will inform the Senate of any interference with the Russia investigation:
Acting FBI director Andrew McCabe vowed Thursday that he would tell the Senate Intelligence Committee if the White House tried to interfere with the bureau's probe of possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election — though he asserted that there had "been no effort to impede our investigation to date."
Meanwhile, President Trump has undermined the White House's messaging on Comey's firing, saying that he planned to fire "showboat" and "grandstander" James Comey regardless of any recommendation from Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Deputy Attorney General Ron Rosenstein. The President also insists that he is not under FBI investigation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday May 12 2017, @06:34PM (11 children)
And everyone knows it to be an expensive lie ... regular and preventative healthcare saves both money and lives. Even Insurance companies agree.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Friday May 12 2017, @09:30PM (10 children)
regular and preventative healthcare saves both money and lives. Even Insurance companies agree.
Which is why those insurance companies routinely don't pay for it. Here's a news flash. If you pay someone to find expensive, billable problems, they will find those problems. There are a few sorts of preventative care that has a pretty good track record, like immunizations and prenatal care. That's the care with the highest payoff - a full human life, if you prevent some rather common and preventable sorts of diseases and illnesses. For the rest, I think the insurance companies have a pretty good idea of what it's really worth. Thus, I don't buy the claim that this sort of care saves money.
Then we go to the alleged saving of lives. There is no indication that such health care will save your life. It will allow you to live a bit longer and a bit healthier which we have decided is worth a significant amount. But you will die of something in rather short order no matter how much modern regular and preventative health care is shoveled at you.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 12 2017, @09:53PM (7 children)
Catching a cancer at stage 1 is a lot cheaper than at stage 3, and you don't catch it at stage 1 if you're not looking.
BUT
Why would I pay to help you catch your cancer now, when there's a pretty good chance you're gonna change employers before it turns into a stage 3? I can pocket your premiums now, and let your expense be someone else's problem...
Employer-driven healthcare, and the rate at which people do change jobs in the XXIst century, make the case for preventative care harder in a competitive market.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 12 2017, @10:06PM (6 children)
Catching a cancer at stage 1 is a lot cheaper than at stage 3, and you don't catch it at stage 1 if you're not looking.
So what? There are two contrary factors here. First, you have the opportunity to "catch" many other illnesses than just the stage 3 cancer. Those cost money to treat as well. And second, you'll still die of something, it'll just cost more than before to get to that point.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 12 2017, @10:21PM (5 children)
Treating diseases you might not have noticed will typically be outpatient, a.k.a. cheap. And you're back to work paying premiums fast.
Treating heavy stuff is exponentially more expensive, and you may not work for a while.
Dead people pay no premiums (their replacement does, but that carries administrative costs).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 13 2017, @11:58AM (4 children)
Treating diseases you might not have noticed will typically be outpatient, a.k.a. cheap. And you're back to work paying premiums fast. Treating heavy stuff is exponentially more expensive, and you may not work for a while.
You ignore both the cost of such testing and its risks. For example, what would be the point of a mammogram (which involves exposure to x rays as does some of the follow on testing for false positives) of young women, if the testing eventually causes more breast cancer cases than it finds?
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Monday May 15 2017, @02:08PM (3 children)
Mammograms use ultrasound AFAIK; x-ray wouldn't be as useful and MR is a little pointless given that ultrasound works perfectly well, is safer (than both x-ray and MR, the latter of which can be dangerous in the case of unknown embedded ferrous metal), requires less training to use (than both) and is a lot more cost-effective. That said, there are arguments against blanket testing sections of the public for breast/prostate cancer. I won't bore you with the details but the role of over-diagnosis/over-treatment is important. For conditions like abdominal aortic aneurysm it's a different ballgame, though.
Ultimately the earlier you catch anything that requires ongoing care (e.g. hypertension, cancer (radio/chemotherapy courses, ongoing surveillance diagnostics)), the better the outcome for the patient and the cheaper it is to treat.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 16 2017, @02:06AM (2 children)
Mammograms use ultrasound AFAIK
From here [cancer.gov]:
A mammogram is an x-ray picture of the breast.
Mammograms can be used to check for breast cancer in women who have no signs or symptoms of the disease. This type of mammogram is called a screening mammogram. Screening mammograms usually involve two or more x-ray pictures, or images, of each breast. The x-ray images often make it possible to detect tumors that cannot be felt. Screening mammograms can also find microcalcifications (tiny deposits of calcium) that sometimes indicate the presence of breast cancer.
There's also the matter of the 13% false positive rate in the population of women mentioned.
Ultimately the earlier you catch anything that requires ongoing care (e.g. hypertension, cancer (radio/chemotherapy courses, ongoing surveillance diagnostics)), the better the outcome for the patient and the cheaper it is to treat.
Not if the patient would die before the issue requires ongoing care!
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:42PM (1 child)
You live and learn. Thinking about it, I know what the machines look like that perform those tests and they *can't* be ultrasound; in my defence, I'm clerical not medical! But yes, false positive is definitely one of the risks, along with over-diagnosis.
In general, letting people die because it's expensive to treat them is probably not good for the long-term economic health of the country. You could make the modest proposal that retirees should be left to succumb to whatever it is they've developed as they're no longer producing anything to benefit the economy, but that's unlikely to gain much traction.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 19 2017, @04:37AM
In general, letting people die because it's expensive to treat them is probably not good for the long-term economic health of the country.
What sort of economic health is a permanently bankrupt country going to have again? I'd have to say that you have it exactly opposite. We don't have endless resources to throw at health care.
You could make the modest proposal that retirees should be left to succumb to whatever it is they've developed as they're no longer producing anything to benefit the economy, but that's unlikely to gain much traction.
No matter how much we spend on health care, there comes a point where the above "modest proposal" happens.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday May 13 2017, @12:40AM (1 child)
There is no indication that such health care will save your life. It will allow you to live a bit longer [...]
You're saying that nobody dies due to lack of access to medical care, because medical care, at best, can allow a patient to live longer. It does not confer immortality, so it does not save lives. Next time I hear of someone's life being saved, I shall challenge the speaker: check back in 9000 years, because that person will probably be dead, along with you and me.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 13 2017, @11:52AM
You're saying that nobody dies due to lack of access to medical care, because medical care, at best, can allow a patient to live longer. It does not confer immortality, so it does not save lives. Next time I hear of someone's life being saved, I shall challenge the speaker: check back in 9000 years, because that person will probably be dead, along with you and me.
It's worth noting here that there are certain types of preventative care that may actually shorten peoples' lives. For example, mammograms [cnn.com] in women under the age of 40.
The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, looked at 117,738 women younger than age 40 with no family history of breast cancer. Women between ages 35 and 39 underwent the highest number of mammograms, yet for every 10,000 women screened in this age group, 1,266 would be called back for additional tests and imaging and 16 cancers would be found. That number more than doubles to 43 cancers detected per 10,000 women ages 45-49, and continues to increase with age.
So 10,000 women between 35 and 39 exposed to X rays annually, almost 13% were called back for additional tests and imaging (more x rays), and only 16 cancers found. Meanwhile those mammograms and any other x ray exposure would in turn contribute to the risk of developing breast cancer at a later age and we also have some risk from medical mistakes (chance of infections and injuries from any needles used in these tests). How many women's lives and how much cost justifies saving 16 lives per 10,000 women?
This isn't merely hypothetical risk since the story states that 30% of US women in their 30s undergo such tests. We're seeing a huge cost with moderate risk for little benefit and it affects a huge number of women. Should insurance be paying for this?
This is my point. There has been this huge, unwarranted assumption that "regular and preventative" health care works, much less that it works well enough to justify insurance companies paying for it in order to save on payout costs. I've already allowed that there are situations where this is true. But we see here the contrary. We have a fairly young group and a common, often lethal ailment, breast cancer - which normally would be an ideal situation for preventative care, yet we still don't have enough benefit to justify the risks inflicted on the patient or the cost that would be (and probably often is) shifted to an insurer.
As to the observation that everyone dies in a rather short period of time, it's a demonstration that current health care only has so much value. It can only extend our lives a fairly short amount. So no matter how much wealth we burn on preventative care, we're only going to get at best a fixed amount of benefit. Preventative care has diminishing returns past certain basics and it doesn't take long to get to the point where you're killing more people than you are saving due to the risks of the tests you are performing versus their slight benefit.