Posted on 07/30/2010 4:00:02 AM PDT by mattstat
Away back in March, I predicted that if Obamacare passed, we citizens would eventually foot the bill for homeopathic treatments. This evidence for this forecast was inductive, in two parts.
The first was that rumors were had that homeopathic language was written into the bill (yes, in more ways than one). These vague insinuations could not then be pinned down, mostly because the bill was so long that our betters in Congress never bothered to read it to explain it to us.
The Senate had also previously meddled with the NIH to force it to pay attention to complimentary treatments. Complimentary in the sense of rarely efficacious and sometimes harmful. It created the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and gave it loads of our money to dispense. Which—can you guess?—it did.
Because government has broached these subjects before, and because certain of our betters are inclined towards the idea, it is likely that the bureaucrats in charge of writing the rules and regulations originating from the new law will include avenues for complementary treatments—like acupuncture, chiropractic, and homeopathy.
Our second piece of evidence was that other countries with socialized medicine, upon creating their own small panels of experts to decide the medical fates of their countries—this is, after all, the definition of socialism—included mandatory payments for homeopathy.
From a purely financial point of view, this might not be as insane as it first sounds. As...
(Excerpt) Read more at wmbriggs.com ...
Collecting and using rainwater in my state was entirely illegal in my state until this month, when the law changed to “graciously” allow private citizens to collect 200 gallons above ground, 2500 below ground, for personal use.
After that though, it’s anyone guess. One day, we may all end up being fleeing water felons. That isn’t a joke. They’re already attempting to outlaws the home growing of personal food for bogus public safety reasons. Mine isn’t the only state to outlaw rainwater collection, but It’s the only one I know of that modified the law in bureaucratic benevolence to allow us some of the water that falls from the sky, FROM GOD, not from the water authority. It’s getting worse out there each and every single day.
More on the water at the link (Goes to SHTFplan.com article:
“It’s Not a Right: Government Outlaws Rainwater Collection”
P.S. Glenn Beck also talked about the food production bill on his show. (Just as a point of reference). I dunno how far it’s made it through yet. I believe it’s passed the House, working through the Senate.
I suspect about half of all visits to physicians are unnecessary, the years of medical training providing little more than an placebo effect. A smart homeopath can act as a filter and direct really sick people to a conventional physician and placate the rest. It is kinda cost effective, as you pointed out.
Personally I think economic warfare is being conducted on michigan (with the help of willing dupes) as a means of evacuating the state. I think water is the reason.
After all, we sit in the middle of a huge portion of the world’s fresh water and our usage of it is nearly impossible to control.
I would just like to add, that I didn’t read the article until after my knee jerk post, so it was a little off topic. However, the same underlying concept, i think is there. We’re being strong armed into paying for worthless things to just grown government bureaucracy.
Can you tell me more about Michigna. I know about the white flight of decades past, from Detroit, but I’m not that well informed about anything else. I only know of the unions there. Thanks in advance.
Years ago, in college, in one of my Statistics classes, i had a professor who used to be a statistician for a major drug company. He would speak at length about how numbers were manipulated and that many meds (he referred often to anti-depressants and the like), had almost NO effect beyond that of a placebo, and how the stats were manipulated in order to get the drugs passed.
He was highly critical of drug companies use of statistics, not against pharmacueticals in general, but the ones regarding mental health, as that is where his expertise was based. It was a very eye opening experience to me. I don’t view western medicine as anything other than really good at saving lives during trauma (I have had 5 years of education in the Medical field by the way). I believe that the taxpayer should not foot the bill for medical expenses, but that if it has to, it shouldn’t cover unhealthy lifestyles beyond a point (the point that that person paid into the system).
I don’t believe that the government should dictate how people live their lives, but I don’t think it should subsidize unhealthy behavior either. We’d all be better off if government was out of Healthcare entirely. I just am not in agreement with ME paying for medical treatment of smokers, Fast Food Feed baggers, and the like. Let each pay for himself (or have benevolent donors help, which I would, with say, the elderly), and let man be responsible for his own actions.
It’s an age old war, starting from before the beginning of the Earth, that we will be held accountable for our actions (and to be frank, Will need a Saviour), but there is a liar that gets people to believe that people do not reap what they sow and can do as they please. As much as it sounds like Obama, it’s not, but they seem to be cut from the same cloth. —David
Medical trial protocols are designed to erect barriers that prevent wishful thinking, placebo effects and manipulation from affecting outcomes. I'm sure there are ways of overcoming those barriers, if you approach the problem with the correct amount of intellectual dishonesty.
I agree. My professor’s main take on that very issue was describing tactics used by statisticians/researchers to throw out as many of the “Outliers” (not true outliers in many cases), and the small fudging of the data from there.
Who would want to get rid of statistical significance? Except the relativists among us, but they don’t accomplish much...
The problem with outliers is that they challenge the assumption of normality (i.e., conforming to a Gaussian distribution). Since most problems are outliers, occur outside of the normal envelope, ignoring them or rejecting them, guarantees that you will ignore most problems. It’s like proving all odd numbers greater than 1 are prime:
3 - check
5 - check
7 - check
9 - experimental error
11 - check
13 - check
15 - experimental error
17 - check
19 - check
! out of funding...
Based on observational studies, we can state that within the bounds of experimental error all odd numbers greater than 1 are prime at the 95 percent confidence level. We are requesting funding to explore the issue in more detail.
ML/NJ
LOL, wow, you nailed that. :)
“Medical trial protocols are designed to erect barriers that prevent wishful thinking, placebo effects and manipulation from affecting outcomes.”
You wish.
If the pharmas aren't using valid statistics to peddle their stuff, I doubt that the homeopaths are either, human nature being what it is.
It's not like homeopathic schools only draw their students from a band of angels, nor are their patients that much more statistically educated.
The only solution is better education for all, not replacing one union of gatekeepers with another.
LOLOL! Never saw that before.
Lonesome Everywhere,
There are other-—superior-—ways of doing and viewing statistics than in searching for “statistical significance.” SS is so easy to achieve, and data can be manipulated so easily so as to achieve is, that it is a poor measure of evidence.
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