On 03/03/2014 02:04 PM, Pamela McCorduck wrote:
Perhaps the vision I hope for exists in the U.S. private sector. I’ll be in Silicon Valley next month to inquire. I deeply hope it does.
I don't think you'll find it in Silicon Valley. I'd be more inclined to hunt for it in, say, Oakland. It's not that it doesn't exist in the valley. It's a signal-to-noise thing. Finding innovation in the ocean of buzzword nonsense can be difficult.
As for healthcare.gov, I do believe that’s a red herring in this argument. The Germans began socializing medicine under Bismarck in the 1880s. THAT was innovation. Obamacare is an overdue, unwieldy compromise among the private insurers, the medical community, and the Congress. Yes, I find it shocking and immoral that insurance companies until Obamacare were allowed to deny coverage to anyone with a pre-existing condition, and throw a pesky customer off their roles if that customer got too sick. If that makes me a socialist, so be it. Almost as bad, I know very well that I’ve been subsidizing the poor with my opaque hospital bills, but I have no idea to what extent and how. I’d really like to know that. But I do agree with you that if people are sick and dying, then our economy is sick and dying.
Well, I probably should have said "ACA" rather than healthcare.gov. Sorry. I think the _law_ is an innovation, albeit a very complicated piece, because it is a compromise... it walked a convoluted fine line between socialism and capitalism. None of the parts are innovative, but the composite is.
My larger point, of course, was that the things we call "innovative" are never _actually_ beautiful... they are only called "beautiful" in a post-hoc rationalization.
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