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[Aqizzar]

I've been thinking.  We're all pretty brainy people.  Most of us know about questionably verifiable prints of information.  And quite a few of us are trapped in grade school or slogging through a university.  Which altogether means ever encroaching deadlines, in need of words and sources.

Why not help each other out.

I'm not talking about sharing(stealing) papers or any of that other stuff the standardized welcome sheets remind you will result in expulsion.  I mean direction to good sources or writings to read up on, and maybe critiquing work for quality.

Friendly intellectual charity or a lazy appeal for someone else to do the work?  Yes.


Me, I need to write a paper comparing the medical industries in the United States and United Kingdoms.  I know a Google search would turn up a lot of information-less flamewars and personal sites, and I'm not registered with any good newspapers.

[Anfold]

You could browse through
http://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=46

No, I am not a goon, nor would I ever want to be one, but AFAIK they tend to require sources when they talk about something.

I only know of this because a friend pointed me there when I was arguing with someone about the costs of single payer health care, waiting times and the "major problems" that the rest of the civilized world has with tax funded health care.  The Obama mega threads were most helpful, but they are probably archived by now.

If you're willing to wait, I can try and find a few good non-profits that give actual, non-bullshitified numbers.  No guarantees though.

EDIT:

Got one for medicare spending in the US.  http://www.amsa.org/business/Medicare%20Report.pdf
It's from 07, but costs have only increased since then.  Looks fairly reliable as well.

Look around in this thread, if you can stand slogging through the loud and opinionated http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2971473&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

Here's something from the New England Journal of Medicine http://www.pnhp.org/publications/nejmadmin.pdf.
FYI those you can't pay for Emergency care get written off as an administrative cost in some hospitals.

Don't have time to look for you ATM, but try http://www.usaspending.gov

Looking back at the Obama megadeaths (for like 10 minutes) it looks like I was confused about where I got the old information, the centerpiece of which was a chart that showed the US spends nearly twice as much per capita on health care now than any other nation in the world, with supporting evidence that UHC would be cheaper by several orders of magnitude.

Also Gorjo MacGrymm, wtf kind of political blogs have you read that look exactly like a goddamn forum? GTFO troll???
I guess the later  Obama megathreads OP that I found useful about half a year ago would kind of look like one, but really?

[Gorjo MacGrymm]

You could browse through
http://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=46

No, I am not a goon, nor would I ever want to be one, but AFAIK they tend to require sources when they talk about something.

I dont see that at all, mostly just people flaming each other.  I think there is more "here is the proof documentation" on these forums that what I looked on at the above link.  But I didnt read the entire forum boards either, considering its more of a political blog in apperance than a forum.

[umiman]

Hehe, nice way to get people to do work for you.

[mainiac]

Hehe, nice way to get people to do work for you.

Hush.  So long as he's willing to contribute back, it's a net gain.  It takes work to refer someone to a source you know then find a new source.

[Aqizzar]

Of course I'm willing to reciprocate, as I'm sure any other contributor would.  That's why I called it a Megathread.  If anybody else has a paper in need of bullsh sources, I'd be happy to try helping.

[umiman]

I'm not exactly sure why you would be required to look at the differences in medical institutions between the UK and the US actually. They're quite similar. Just that the industry in the US is far more privatized (and far more expensive). Technologically, they are really quite similar on relative terms with maybe a few outliers here and there.

The UK has a stronger union presence than the US, leading to generally higher pay rates for unionized staff (like nurses), though it really isn't a startlingly big difference unlike other European countries like France and Germany. However, this also translates into more union disputes and worker disparity, etc. Usual union stuff.

Drug costs are marginally more expensive in the US I guess, as it isn't subsidized by the government and most individuals have to rely on pricey health insurance plans. I'm not particularly sure if the UK has a state standardized health care plan, though I know the government does intervene with medical funding and healthcare.

Drug corporations are all stupidly massive ultra multinationals anyway, so it's the same between both countries. Same goes for medical technological advances. You could argue that the US is a bit more liberal in terms of drug trials though, but that might be due to the US having a significantly higher population.

It's odd that you have to compare countries so similar in political and economic standing. If you had to compare between the US and say... Cuba, then you might have something to go with.

[mainiac]

Dude, if you think the US and UK aren't very different, you don't know too much about the respective industries.  They are the two extremes.  The US allows corporations to do whatever they want and the UK has rationing when they deem it prudent.

[Aqizzar]

Well, I had to choose a topic, and all choices were a comparison between America and something else.  Either the health care systems in the UK, Japan, or Germany, or the education system in Russia, France, or China.  The UK/US comparison comes up a lot in flamewars and it's piqued my interest.

And hey, thanks for writing my paragraph summaries for me.

[Strife26]

Here's one for the well read amongst you. How the bloody hell can I give a one and a half page description of Red Storm Rising?

It's due tommorow! Ahhhh! Does anyone have any ideas, I went crazy just trying to find twenty main events. There's too much stuff!

[Aqizzar]

You have to write a three paragraph summary of a Tom Clancy novel?  Were I a more astute cynic I could give you one right now.  Suffice to say, just read some other descriptions of it, and think about what parts are important to you to describe.

[Strife26]

I know. It's possible, but I feel that honor bound to do the book justice. The wikipedia summary came out to four pages long. I'm going to have to work from scratch here, or maybe just describe the first 100 pages.

[mainiac]

Here's one for the well read amongst you. How the bloody hell can I give a one and a half page description of Red Storm Rising?

It's due tommorow! Ahhhh! Does anyone have any ideas, I went crazy just trying to find twenty main events. There's too much stuff!

1) Muslims are inherently violent (I would say inherently terrorists, but the word meant something different back then.)  I don't care that I've spent 30 years as a priviledged member of the establishment.  Allah Akbar!

2) The soviet leadership has no clue how to do their job.  Scattered, naive, optimists pepper the political apparatus as generals or engineers to serve as a contrast to the thuggishness of those around them.  This gives us such excellent characters as: the young naive soviet officer in charge of oil and the old, naive soviet officer in charge of killing the capitalists.

3) The Soviet Union decides to invade Germany to distract people from the fact they just got butthurt by Muslims.  Oh, and they need oil.  Because if you need oil, you have to invade Germany.  (remember, this was before people had heard about invading iraq!)

4) International incidents are easy to fabricate and communists are gullible sheep who believe the germans want to murder school children for no reason.

5) US intelligence is like, really cool and connects all the dots so awesome!  The brit intelligence is sorta cool, if your a little gay or something.  Other intelligence agencies consist of traffic cops.  What losers!

6) Soviet spy ruins the entire fucking plan because he didn't want to see his friends get killed.  His friends who were willing to give their lives for the cause...

7)  Tension, tension, tension, WAR!

  Yee-haw, me an my buddies from over by ruuushia are gonna be invadin' this here iceland, y'all hear?
8a) Ahh!  Why am I surrounded by commies in Iceland?  As the brave american hero it reminds me of the time my girlfriend got killed!

9) Wham!  Bam!  Europe in flames!  The hour looks dark but the plucky defenders of democracy fight on!

10)  Meeooorr!  Wooooom!  Screeeee!  Planes!  Missiles!  HOLY FUCKING SHIT THEY JUST BLEW UP A FUCKING AIRCRAFT CARRIER OH MY FUCKING GOD!

11)  Old grizzled, naive russian general broods over death and destruction with the plan he created.  And we meet his counterpart: faceless american general with no discerning features.

12) Oh crap!  Goddamn iceland with the soviets shooting down planes and shit!  Oh, here's some americans here to help.  Quick, let's go rescue an icelandic girl from getting raped!  As an all american hero, I can be reminded of how my girlfriend got raped!

13) Apparently, the war is going to take longer then 3 weeks.  Who knew?

14) Reverse the polarity on the videotapes!

15) Yaaaar!  Motherland!

16) Hah!  Iceland is returned to american ownership!  Suck on that, commies!  The all american action hero apparently helped a lot.  Helped a lot at being a whiny bitch!

17) Sir, the soviet we captured, who just happens to speak english tells us that this war is about oil!
17a) War over oil?  Dear god!  What sort of awful evil empire is that that will start a war over oil?  So much suffering could have been averted!  (remember this... this was... it was...  Ah hell, it's just fucking hilarious.  Go ahead and laugh.)
17b) Wait, doesn't war use a lot of oil?

18) Message to the naive grizzled general managing the affairs from the naive young officer in charge of oil: So, we're like out of oil.  Oh, and weapons too apparently.
Kremlin helpful suggestion: Why not just send men to their deaths in a bunch of outdated equipment?  If that doesn't work, we could just start start using nukes.  That won't have any consequences.

19) The Americans: YeeeeeHaaaaaw!  Now that we are winning we can't possibly be stopped.

20) Faceless american general and grizzled soviet general (who is naive) make a ceasefire.  Soviet guy muses on how he's a horrible man who kills everything he touches.  The American guys says
"Well, shit, son!  Why didn't y'all just say this wasn't about oil.  Damn, y'all didn't know we love oil?"

P.S.
21) The soviets suddenly have all the food they need because communism sucks!  Delivered through the mouth of the sickly old man in charge of agriculture who's been saying that communism sucks for years but no one listened to him.

Disclaimer: I read the book like 10(?) years ago.

[inaluct]

You chose this, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU

Are you sure you don't want to change the book at the eleventh hour? I'm sure the collective literacy of this forum could do The Three Musketeers, or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, or even The Golden Bough. If you want something really awesome, Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger is kickass, and it's short.

[umiman]

I... am definitely not going to fall for Maniac's trap.

Strife26: I remember there was this site where you needed to input a few variables and it would generate the plot of basically every single Tom Clancy movie in existence. Ahh! Here we go: http://tcpgen.tripod.com/

Communists devise a scheme to take over a generic industrial compound for ransom under the watchful eye of corrupt US diplomats.  The plot twists when the Communists hijack a shipment of nuclear warheads even after their demands are met, unless a rookie CIA agent eager to prove his worth can overcome his brooding self-doubt and stop the Communists once and for all.  The movie ends with a mildly comical and/or ironic scene in which the Communists blow up or go to prison.  Another satisfying tale of political intrigue and personal redemption closes, and we all walk away from this movie a little wiser.