Science, Technology & Health: January 2014 Archives
So net neutrality is over, at least for now. What is net neutrality anyway? It's simple to explain, but the implications are murky. Short explanation: net neutrality means that your internet service provider has to treat all your internet data the same. ISPs can't throttle some kinds of data, or charge you extra for other data, or block data from competitors.
On the surface net neutrality sounds good, right? However, it also prevents ISPs from experimenting with new business models and pricing structures. For example, at peak times Netflix accounts for something like 30% of internet traffic in America. Netflix makes a ton of money from this, but they don't pay anything for the bandwidth. ISP subscribers pay for all that capacity as a part of their monthly service fees. This is fine if you use Netflix, but if you don't (as I don't) then you're paying for someone else's Netflix bandwidth. Why shouldn't Netflix kick in some money to pay for the bandwidth their subscribers are using?
Ok, so now you're convinced that net neutrality is bad! Those big internet content companies should pay for the bandwidth they use! Right?
Well, what happens when your ISP signs a contract with Netflix? Netflix pays some money to your ISP to get super-fast data to your livingroom during peak TV-watching hours, and maybe your internet bill goes down. However, Amazon doesn't want to pay for access, or maybe they're just outbid by Netflix. So if you prefer Amazon Prime's movie selection to Netflix, you either can't get it at all or your bandwidth is throttled. Lame! (Not to mention start-up companies that won't be able to afford to buy access.)
It's not really clear if net neutrality is all-good, but the internet has managed to thrive with the philosophy in place. I can understand some theoretical advantages to removing net neutrality, but considering how good things have been for the past 20 years I'm not willing to take the risk.
Absolutely amazing to see the confluence of all these technologies more than 45 years ago. The video is quite long, but you can skip around to see early incarnations of technology that is now ubiquitous.
"The Mother of All Demos is a name given retrospectively to Douglas Engelbart's December 9, 1968, demonstration of experimental computer technologies that are now commonplace. The live demonstration featured the introduction of the computer mouse, video conferencing, teleconferencing, hypertext, word processing, hypermedia, object addressing and dynamic file linking, bootstrapping, and a collaborative real-time editor."
Here's an Orwellian use of the word "demand". Does Sebelius remember that the law requires people to buy this product? The "demand" is entirely on the government side.
"The numbers show that there is a very strong national demand for affordable healthcare made possible by the Affordable Care Act," said U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
79% of Obamacare enrollees are received subsidies from taxpayers. I hope that's not sustainable.
Most of the people who bought coverage on the exchanges this fall got subsidies to help them afford the premiums. That's in contrast to the first month of the program, when less than one-third of buyers were subsidized. People earning up to four times the poverty rate--as much as $96,000 a year for a family of four--can get help buying coverage.
As 2014 dawns there are fewer people with health insurance thanks to Obamacare. Considering that the goal of Obamacare was to increase coverage even with increased costs, this is a sad state of affairs -- because costs have certainly gone up. Americans are unquestionably worse off as a group thanks to Obamacare, and only two questions remain: how bad will it get? and when will it end?
America deserves better.
The White House used a Sunday morning statement to admit that only 1.1 million people have used the federal Obamacare website to sign up for the president's healthcare network by Christmas Day.News reports and advocacy websites say roughly 1 million people have enrolled with health-benefit companies via state websites, including 400,000 in California and 157,000 in New York, by the Dec. 24 deadline, which allows coverage starting Jan. 1.
The 2 million federal and state signups are roughly two-thirds the planned goal of 3.3 million enrollments by Dec. 31. They're also only one-third of the 7 million customers sought by March 31.
The total reported signups are at least 3 million fewer than the 5 million people whose health-insurance policies were cancelled prior to Christmas by President Barack Obama's ambitious tax-and-healthcare scheme.
The minus-3-million score is only partially offset by the extension of Medicaid coverage to perhaps 2 million other people, few of whom earn enough to afford commercial insurance.
Of critical note, the administration is using a deceptive definition for the word "enrolled": it is not known how many of the "enrolled" participants have actually paid for their plans.
