btw2.net

The part worth noodling on:

…The U.S. health-care system has two distinct parts — financing and delivery. The financing system is how we pay for health-care services. It is composed of employer-based insurance, the individual insurance market, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, the veterans health system and other programs. Today, the private part — employer-based coverage and individual insurance — accounts for just under 55 percent of all payments for health care, while government contributes about 45 percent.

The delivery system consists of about 850,000 doctors, 5,000 acute-care hospitals, 39,000 pharmacies and 8,100 home health agencies, as well as hospices, surgical centers, radiological centers, laboratories and other outlets that provide the actual health-care services Americans need.

To the extent that any health insurance scheme involves spreading among members of society the financial risk of getting sick, all insurance “socializes” the risk. This is, of course, not what people mean when they level charges of “socialized medicine.” This term is never used in reference to police protection, fire departments or highways — all of which are provided by government.

Properly speaking, socialism is when the state owns or controls the means of production. Thus “socialized medicine” is when the doctors are state employees; when the hospitals, drugstores, home health agencies and other facilities are owned and controlled by the government.

Only one part of the U.S. system really is socialized medicine: the veterans’ health-care system, which is wholly owned and operated by the federal government. Veterans love the system and vigorously oppose any suggestions of dismantling it and integrating them into civilian health care. By many measures, this bastion of socialized medicine may constitute the highest-quality and most efficient part of American health care….

It is absurd to call an expansion of government payments for health care in the existing private delivery system socialized medicine. Politics may be full of hype, exaggeration or partisan bickering, but there should be no place for overt deception. A serious debate about whether and how to reform the American health-care system requires that we eliminate comments whose only purpose is to mischaracterize and misinform….

‘Socialized Medicine’ Quackery
By Ezekiel J. Emanuel, The Washington Post, October 8, 2007
Ezekiel J. Emanuel, an oncologist and
the author of “No Margin, No Mission: Health Care Organizations and the Quest for Ethical Excellence,”
chairs the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health.
The views expressed here are his own.

This morning I run across a list of tools for job hunting 2.0

70+ Tools For Job Hunting 2.0
Mashable, July 21, 2007 — 04:19 AM PDT, by Sean P. Aune 

Job search has evolved over recent years, with hundreds of companies piling in to the space. We’ve picked out more than 70 that should help job seekers get ahead….

One of the comments to it is from the CEO of JibberJobber.com

…Sean, this is a very interesting space… I entered it last year after I had been laid off as GM of a software company, thought I would find a job quickly and easily, and found that the job search was totally different than what I thought it would be. 

I found a gap between real tools that were available to me (many of the sites you mention here are just some of the 40,000+ job boards out there), and what career experts advised. I designed JibberJobber.com as an empowering tool to fill that gap.

Here’s the thing, though. The job search is supposedly something that we do every three to five years… even if we don’t change companies we’ll change roles or titles. We ALWAYS need to do things like network, have a plan, have an elevator pitch, work on our personal brand, etc.

My site is a job search tool, but it’s also a long-term career management tool - something to help you prepare for that next job transition. I encourage you to check out JibberJobber for addition to this list :)…

Jason Alba

CEO - JibberJobber.com

:: self-serve career management ::

The next blog entry I read

…This analysis, they just didn’t focus enough on letting people interact. 

But does this mean something greater about citizen journalism (or artisan journalism, as I call it)?

1. Maybe we don’t need a theoretically benevolent corporation — like Backfence — to set up a context in which we journal our thoughts. The blogosphere and other rich social contexts already exist, and none of these smaller worlds have offered a very strong value proposition.
2. Maybe the models used are flawed. I am not sure that just because I live in a specific zip code that I am hyper obsessed with what goes on there. Yes, we have to act ‘locally’, but ‘local’ increasingly is coming to mean within your immediate social network, not the 20 blocks that rectangulate you.
3. Maybe these sites unknowingly or unwittingly owe too much to the old school media forms, and as a result don’t represent the break with old media that people are after.

I am still all over new media, and ‘hyperlocal’, but I believe it has to be ’socoloco’: socially local….

Backfence Is Dead: What About Hyperlocal?

by Stowe Boyd, July 20, 2007

Socially local? Here we’ve celebrating the world wide web and now we go local?

Well, yeah, that seems to be the territory the pre-webbers keep trying to hang onto.
Some would say they muck it up.
I’m thinking you just need to filter the gunk out.
And places like mashable can help. Their tag line is “Social Networking News”

But you are a member already… right?

[now, the wierd part, I set iTunes to play Arlo’s Gutherie’s Alice’s Restaurant.
mind warp time! yet, strangely appropriate flashback.]

My immediate focus has been on telemedicine and related activity to let specialty care come to the older patient. Rather than the patient moving away from their social support to where the speciality care is. I realize this is an evolving focus, there are many elements to it. One is the range of tools to assist the aging patient, another is the range of tools to assist the specialist help from a distance. The goal is three-fold: 1) allow the aging person, to the extent possible, live where they choose, 2) deliver appropriate care to that person at 3) reduced social and economic cost. Much is made of economic cost, but we need to include the indirect economic cost known as social cost - aid given by family and friends and the uplift in spirits that it can provide that often reduces the direct economic cost.

Betting on the future of eldercare technologies
By Dawn Kawamoto, Staff Writer, CNET News.com, July 16, 2007

As the son of an elderly parent, Majd Alwan understands how complicated issues related to care for the elderly can be, and appreciates the urgency surrounding attempts to address many of these issues. 

Long interested in robotics and the use of technology to improve society and reduce health care costs, Alwan, whose mother, at age 84, lives in Damascus, Syria, was appointed director of the Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST) in May.

Washington, D.C.-based CAST, which is part of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, is a coalition of technology companies, eldercare providers and universities that collaborate to develop new technologies to make health care better for elderly people….

Q: What is the purpose of CAST?
Alwan: The end game is to prove that technologies would allow seniors to have a better aging experience in a place they call home. For example, the technologies would allow them to age in a place of choice, whether it’s their home or an apartment within a continued retirement community or an assisted-living facility. We have to acknowledge that transition to some form of long-term care setting may, at the end of the day, be inevitable. Technology can play a role in all of these settings, but the end goal is the aging experience. And at the other end, the reduction of cost to whoever is going to bear the cost….

Well, I think digital divides are cause and effect.

Much of the world today requires abstract thinking to sort out.

The tools tend to be digital.

So those unused to digital tools are at a double disadvantage.

They have to learn the tools,

they have to learn the abstract framework those tools are built for.

Very confusing!

It takes patience - the learner and those helping learn.

It takes motivation - the learner and those helping learn.

I can’t use digital tools like a blog to motivate a learner,

but maybe I can help a helper sort out what might help the learner.

Digital Divide Network - knowledge to help everyone succeed in the digital age

With the age related digital divide, the opportunity for bridging it will come to the younger digital adept.
The trick will be taking the adaptibility they’ve learned and using it in creative ways to bridge to their parents, grandparents and others slower to adapt to life’s changes - bridging to those resistent even to attempt to learn and adapt.


Live Well on Less than you think, Fred Brock,
The New York Times Guide to Achieving Your Financial Freedom

QUICK: NAME AN AD CAMPAIGN that’s specifically geared to single adults in their 40s or beyond.

Not easy. Amid the increasing emphasis on serving Baby Boomers, marketers seem to be behind the curve in addressing the growing number of their single brethren.

Half of all U.S. households are now headed by unmarried adults, 43% of all singles are 45 or older (one quarter are Baby Boomers), and nearly two-thirds of single women are 35 or older.…

Packaged Facts: Marketers Missing the Boat on Mature Singles

by Karlene Lukovitz, Marketing Daily

“city officials determined that the area lacked modern office space — a primary reason why Dowagiac struggled to attract new businesses. In fact, many of the medical practices in the city were in old houses that had been converted into offices, making it difficult to attract doctors to the area.”

Caring for the community
June 1, 2007 12:00 PM , Sandy Gower, American City & County

Dowagiac, Mich., officials began an economic development project three years ago to create a vibrant downtown and help businesses grow in the rural community. The city’s primary challenge was to determine how to best serve its year-round population of approximately 11,500 working-class people with low to modest incomes as well as seasonal residents from the Chicago area who flock to nearby lakes in the summer….

n4a and Partners for Livable Communities-Aging in Place Initiative

found this site today

National Association of Area Agencies on Aging

Published online -
A Blueprint for Action: Developing a Livable Community for All Ages

also, from a March 2006 report:

• aging, health and human services;
• land use, housing and transportation;
• public safety, workforce and economic development;
• recreation, education/lifelong learning; and
• volunteerism/civic engagement policies and programs.