11Blade's comments

Clearly the cracks are starting to show.

If the drivers create the value/provide the service and Uber is facilitating that by taking a share, it has to make sense for the value-creator/service provider to continue the relationship. If Uber erodes that margin, the drivers will leave.

Eventually Uber has to change to benefit their service providers and act a little more ethically. The drivers know of their underhanded ways with dealing with Lyft and eventually the public will.

I am an immigrant, I drove a black car in NYC(many years ago), my cousin drives one now. He is none too happy with the UberX situation right now.

Uber should consider the plight of the drivers and not their 100X VC overlords. Nobody ever got rich driving a cab, why victimize the drivers?

"Because we can?"

"We are making the market more efficient"

"Frictionless"

It is just at the expense of the drivers. That's your friction point.

Hard working people just want a fair shot, not to be exploited.

Instead of a billion-dollar pay day, why not just a little human decency.

This article is a bit misleading. An outpatient surgery center has the luxury of "skimming" the easy uncomplicated same-day surgeries while leaving the hospitals to do the heavy lifting. It is not a hospital

Surgery centers do not have the cost of carry of a pharmacy(24/7), a fully functioning diagnostic lab(24/7), an emergency room(24/7), 200-1000 beds, ICU,CCU, radiology department(24/7) etc and an infrastructure that is impressively expensive.

Its very very very easy to offer these surgeries at a cheaper price than a hospital but when you need a complicated surgery or an emergency that surgery center will not be there for you.

I like the idea of pricing transparency but it should be hand in hand with outcome and quality statistics and comparisons should be fair.

I did not see Oklahoma surgery center compare themselves to other surgery centers which are likely very close in price.

One last thing. In healthcare - price is not everything (its an important issue) but as we drive down the price, we must not sacrifice but rather improve outcome measurement and quality.

This really has very little to do with the AMA.

This is hospitals vs outpatient centers(who can do the easy stuff much cheaper than hospitals can)

It is misleading. It is a surgery center. They do not do complicated abdominal surgeries that require post-op hospitalization.

If you concentrate of endoscopy, elective orthopedic surgeries, and outpatient surgery, the infection rates will be much lower.

compare that to colon and pancreatic surgery or complicated thoracic/lung/heart surgery.

I give them credit though for cutting their infection rate from 0.3% to 0.001%

11Blade (yes. a scalpel)

Medicare posts their fee schedule for every single CPT code.

The 1076 for the procedure and 300 for the visit were the full billable charges for those codes.

If the insurance had covered them at their contracted rate, the provider would have received probably about 250 for the procedure and 50-120 for the office visit.

Because it fell within your deductible, the initial bill to insurance would have been denied payment and sent back with "patient responsibility" and the 1376.00 would then be your problem. Since you don't have a contract with your provider he tries to get the whole thing.

This is where you can discount it with negotiation.

I am a medical provider, I believe that transparency will help the situation. I also believe that prices should be within a 5-10% window of each provider instead of a price variance of 100-400% depending on secretive contracts.

Unfortunately even providers have been trained to game the system to maximise profit and productivity. It is common to hear surgeons talk about complicated patients and tell them to see a university guy because "frankly its not worth the time and effort" when they can get low hanging easy fruit that pays better/unit-time with less liability.

I'd like to hear what the poster thinks he should have paid for his office visit and 5 minute procedure.

There are plenty of observational anecdotes of what works and what does not work.

In order to make the best of your sleep cycle, it requires excellent sleep hygiene.

1. regularity is important. Going to bed and waking up at the same times weekday and weekend is very helpful.

2. sleep environment is important. simulating night time including shades, turning off message beeps, comfort, slightly cool temperatures make a big difference

3. eating - avoiding eating at least 3-4 hours prior to bedtime. Your blood sugar levels are easily disturbed and play a large part in your sleep cycle as glucocorticoids are active in sleep cycle.

The amount you sleep has a lot to do with your daily stress level, physical activity and damage your body takes.

hydrate like crazy, let your body perform its reparative miracles at night including memory consolidation.

I have noticed that people who have constant low-level death-by-a-thousand-cuts stress have many problems sleeping and getting quality sleep than those who have short bursts of high level stress. We are victims of our always-on world.

As another poster pointed out - Sleep is worth experimenting. Physical activity/exercise during the day helps.

Its a leap, but perhaps the appeal to hackers is the same as journalists, transparency and sunlight are the enemy to those that which to oppress, control and dominate.

Perhaps hackers are the few technorati that can effect transparent information sharing without journalists and editors being threatened and murdered.

just a thought

Something many take for granted here in the U.S. is constantly under attack from corrupt governments and powerful organizations(cartels, financial conglomerates and multinationals) in the developed and developing world. I would dare say that even our own press is somewhat more bridled now then ever.

My respects for a man who walked tall despite the threats to his family and life.

There is one thing that is overlooked here. There is as much pathology at the managerial level as is at the subordinate level. We can all say we have shitty bosses. Lets face it, there are shitty workers among us too.

It is easy to complain about managers, but "craving credit" and "silent treatment" happen asymmetrically because the average worker is an order of magnitude different than his cube mate.

Going from a concrete project/goal focused position with expectations to managing those people is a much harder proposition.

I hated managing people. As a manager, you expect the same things from your crew as you would yourself. Instead you hear every excuse, tragedy and jealous rant for attention, rather than just getting the work done.

You try to "nurture" and "empathize" but in the end, workers run the whole gamut from narcissist to kaamchor to subservient drone.

Human life is sacred. It is a noble statement. I don't think there is anything wrong with your belief (about spitting in death's eye), except life isn't measured well as a binary option (dead or alive). (dead better than life)

In many circumstances death is by far better than life.

You need to factor in the quality of life. Its really what's important.

Take diseases like Alzheimers and neurodegenerative diseases. If I can't take care of my activities of daily living, and do not mentate - why on earth would I want to spend another day on this earth.

We can keep people alive for a terminally long time with tube feedings, rectal tubes and catheters and IV medications. Doesn't make living better than death. It also doesn't not mean that one decided to go quietly into the night.

Suffering is suffering, sometimes its better to stop suffering.