thoughtcrumbs : january 2000

It's 10 degrees out right now

Luckily, weather.com says it's a "snowy fun day." That makes it better. Not.

Useful nohup

I just learned about the nohup unix command, which has to be one of the most useful things ever. If you log in to a remote terminal and start a process, it dies when you close the terminal. Prepend "nohup" to your command and it will run long after the invoking window has gone away. Very useful for day-long number crunches when you want to, say, disconnect your laptop from the internet.

A sidenote, à la this previous conversation about dirty unix commands: While looking for nohup, I found an FAQ that includes questions like "How do I keep track of people who are fingering me?".

Book reviews

Reviews of "A History of the World in Six Glasses" and "Consider the Lobster" over in Reading.

Speaking of national spending

David Leonhardt's article today, "What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy" is frightening and infuriating. $1.2 trillion is a conservative estimate of the cost of the Iraq war, not even taking into account soldier deaths. With the same amount of money, he asserts you could buy the following:

• A global immunization campaign
• Treatment for diabetes and heart disease for every American
  
• A doubling of cancer research
• Universal pre-school for 3- and 4-year-olds
• Reconstruction of New Orleans
• Better baggage and cargo screening (a 9/11 Commission recommendation deemed too expensive)
• Increased pressure against the Taliban in Afghanistan
• A peacekeeping force in Darfur

He concludes that the decision to send another 20,000 troops (costing $20 billion) shouldn't just be compared to other political strategies such as putting pressure on the Iraqi government. It should be compared to that and what we could have bought for the $20 billion.

Mmmm . . . C is for coverage, that's good enough for me

This evening I attended a panel at Pitt on universal health care. Panelists representing physicians, insurance companies, economists, and health policy makers discussed the benefits and drawbacks of a single (government) payer plan, rather than the current convoluted system of private, ostensibly market-driven insurance companies that only some Americans can afford. The overarching problem is that America spends more than twice that of other developed countries on healthcare, to cover a much smaller portion of its people. Inequality and discrimination are inherent to the system, leaving the least powerful citizens to pay outrageous prices or forego basic healthcare. Insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies ensure that the system won't change.

Scores of powerpoint slides were devoted to plans and costs for transitioning to universal coverage, generally pointing to the elimination of insurance administrative costs (which, if you believe their figures, account for more than 1% GDP). Several speakers called for a repeal of the Bush tax cut, and others promoted small payroll taxes that would be less than current insurance costs (leading to net gain for employees). The evening culminated in Gabe's invoking a bar graph comparing insurance coverage across all of the developed democracies, singing "One of these things is not like the other" in a Cookie Monster voice.

Later that evening, someone pointed out that he would rather see the nation focus on its energy policy before its healthcare policy. I don't agree, even though I strongly support both issues. Like most Americans, I optimistically (and naively) expect to see technology mitigate climate change before it's too late. I admit to having trouble facing a problem so dire and yet so seemingly distant. Even when I know it's not distant. Yet the uninsured (like everyone else in my family) affect me in a more immediately salient way. I worry about my little brother having an accident and my dad's inability to get sufficient allergy treatment. And about families with small children forced into emergency rooms in lieu of preventative care. I wish we all had a safety net.

While the thought of having the government dictate which treatments are covered and which aren't (particularly when it comes to birth control and other controversial medicine), I believe a single payer system really is the best way to go. It may be optimistically naive, but the simplicity will trump everything else. And I hope to see this (and energy policy) given sufficient discussion in the upcoming elections.