Commenter Anonymous Reader ponders the response of prominent Complementarians to the case of social workers lying in court to take a woman’s children away:
I wonder what the usual tradcon suspects like Wilson, Piper, Grudrem, Keller, etc. would have to say about this?
I of course can’t speak for these men, but I can make an educated guess:
Wilson: “The county is in the right. Women social workers can’t be expected to understand that lying in court to destroy a family is wrong, unless they also happen to be a lawyer. Although, in a perfect world, perhaps in 1,000 years they could be punished for this.”
Piper: “So then the single mother karate kicks the evil social worker, saving the day! Keeyaa!”
Grudem: (A year of silence while he finds yet another 1,000 examples of case law showing that perjury is in fact against the law).
Keller: “The single mother should have gone into an uncontrollable rage and started breaking things around the courtroom.”
Edit: Cane Caldo suggested links to the posts explaining the educated part of the guess. For Wilson, see here and here. For Piper, see here. For Grudem, see here. For Keller, see here and here.
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Although he’s not a complimentarian, I can see Mark Driscoll responding with “HOW DARE that despicable non-custodial father who abandoned his loving wife and daughters create the conditions that led to this destructive battle between two of God’s daughters!!!!!”
AAAAARGH!!! Complementarian.
For posterity’s sake, perhaps each educated guess could be linked to the relevant post.
Pingback: An educated guess. | Reaction Times
AAAAARGH!!! Complementarian.
It’s a hard word to type – and live with, or at least with what it’s come to mean.
Who are these cuckservatives? Why are we talking about them?
Instead, those four should be talking about Dalrock and his commenters, ripping their hair out by being pwned with our logic. Hence, our visibility should be at that level.
We should not be talking about them. That is the reverse of what it should be.
That was awesome AR!
Dalrock, please. A woman does not go into an “uncontrollable rage,” she only throws a “holy tantrum.” 😉
Good morning dalrokians,
https://americandadweb.wordpress.com/2017/01/15/15jan2017/
Carry on.
Holy tantrum results in Keller wife being called “The Crystal Ball Buster”
I saw that somewhere. I’m thinking it was my mind.
Empath
Holy tantrum results in Keller wife being called “The Crystal Ball Buster”
I saw that somewhere. I’m thinking it was my mind.
I don’t care where you saw it, that’s a great term for Kathy Keller, and it’s gonna get used.
Scott – I see that you are in the market for a “complentarian” type of rooster, a sort of chicken that splits the difference between what a rooster was created to be, and the benign, unoffensive, servant leader chicken that the hen world “says” it wants. Good luck. I don’t know enough about chickens to be of help.
Complentarian? You know what I mean.
Hey Scott, just a tip: Maybe you shouldn’t be shooting the roosters because they are doing what they are supposed to, that is, using male aggression to protect the flock and fertilize eggs.
Take the kids to a good martial arts school. Get them to learn proper Fighting Stance. Not Karate stance but rather the stance boxers use, with left hand in front other hand on chin. This stance is safe and will protect not just against roosters but also against unwanted incoming strikes later in life.
Spike-
This one never squared off to me face to face to face. He waited until your back was turned. In fact this time I was doing something with my horse and he jumped up on my back and shoulders and started scratching and pecking.
My youngest little guy is 17 months old and was getting beaten down pretty badly. Scared to go outside.
Spike, if you knew anything about chickens, you’d know that some roosters are a lot more aggressive than others.
A certain saying comes to mind. One that includes the words “remain silent”.
Well shoot. It was just supposed be a funny video about something that happened to me today. With a little motivational bit at the end.
Most everybody got that brother. Thus the crack about complementarian roosters.
On behalf of Doug Wilson:
https://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/just-quick-observation.html
your opinion: How does God view women?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1038000
Help for a struggling husband
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1037928
How should I reveal my past to the person I am seeing?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1038185
@Scott @Splashman
Scott: Point taken.
Splashman: I grew up around chickens. My folks had a bantam rooster that used to attack in the manner exactly as described by Scott. I think my dad did him in when I left home. Being a bantam he was just a pest. A larger one would be a danger, particularly to young kids.
Off topic Dalrock, but I found this presentation from Stefan Molyneux that presents statistical social data in a narrative:
Blimey! The third of Marcus D’s CAF threads: I entirely agree with Xanthippe.
Holy Cow, Opus!
I thought I felt the Earth shift on its axis and wondered what it was… apparently it was Xanthippe writing something that wasn’t balls-to-the-wall stupidity.
As per usual at CAF some of the opinions expressed were myopic, although most of the advice was good (enough): as in, “He deserves to know that you aren’t a virgin, but don’t go into details unless he asks for them.”
I’m concerned that so many people act as if her slutting her way through college is no big deal, though… as if engaging in multiple sexual relationships with “bad boys” has no more bearing on her suitability as a wife and mother than if she had plagiarized on a sophomore Sociology paper. Further complicating her case is that she’s not really accepting responsibility for her actions. She says., “I know that my depression is not an excuse for my actions and the fault is mine…” but only after an entire paragraph
explaining “why” she did itrationalizing it away. Note that she attributes her leg-spreading to “depression” rather than horniness, specifically denies being rebellious, and blames the people she hung out with for leading her astray rather than admitting that she was a willing – and likely enthusiastic – participant. And of course she plays the “he was abusive” card, as if that were a mitigating factor rather than yet another red flag indicating that she’s sexually attracted to thugs (bad news indeed for the “really great guy any mother would approve of” later on).That girl is a walking red-pill cliché: a horny little college girl who willingly gave her virginity to the first “bad boy” she encountered, who stayed with him even when he gave her the pimp hand, then after (probably) being kicked to the curb she jumped into the sack with the “rebound” guy, then at some point after that she smartened up. There’s no reason to believe that there were more than those two (what’s the point of lying anonymously in a case like that?), but she’s exactly the kind of girl a man would be smart to vet very carefully (to the point of demanding a substantial dowry in his name in the Cayman Islands). This isn’t a matter of redemption, but it is a matter of risk.
I find a lot of the “advice” on CAF to be more than myopic, I find it to be utterly dismaying and poor. Of course, in that thread, the “advice” came from other carousel riders and a few white knight types. As Lyn87 said, this isn’t a matter of redemption. Yes, we are all happy that maybe the woman in that CAF thread has repented of her past sins and has maybe even stopped doing those sins. That’s very good, but it doesn’t mean that she’s wife material and it doesn’t mean that at the first sign of trouble in her marriage she won’t be tempted to find solace in a bad boy’s bed. A marriage with a woman like her is indeed fraught with risk. And having a godly man who saved himself for marriage marrying someone like her seems like something out of bizarro world. Like I said, we are entering a world were the bride gets to show her new hubby the bedroom ropes on the honeymoon, instead of discovering their conjugal love together.
Marcus D posts another gem from CAF:
Read the responses carefully, then imagine the responses if the OP had written this instead:
The CAF harpies and white-knights would be heading to her house with pitchforks and torches to finish him off just in case the SWAT team didn’t kill him.
@Hmm
It’s good that Doug Wilson can finally admit that sometimes abortionists who happen to be mothers can sometimes, maybe, be viewed as murderers. But one of his commenters directed back to his previous posts on the subject–the one about “in a 1,000 years” Dalrock lampoons in the OP–, and all Wilson retorts is to thank the commenter and reaffirm that he stands by it.
He has either changed his mind on the matter, or he lied at one time or the other, or both…and “both” is really just lying. Why doesn’t he say what changed his mind about the 1,000 year waiting period? What it looks like to me is a perpetual arrogance interspersed with episodes of cowardice. He tries to cover it with attempts at stoic wit and airy detachment; which just comes off as phony.
Cane,
When a guy with as many followers as Doug Wilson advocates using a 40-year-old comedy routine as the basis for a serious policy position (but only for women, of course – he’s all about calling men out for their sins… real or imagined), you know we’ve fallen through the looking glass.
Is there nothing that churchians won’t do to avoid holding women accountable?
@Lyn 87
I was merely commenting on Xanthippe. The OP ConfusedGirl is of course self-serving and shifting responsibility wherever she may – she’s obviously a slut. Her sins however are slight – that is – compared to an attractive and likable female acquaintance of mine who had to explain to her future husband (and I suppose myself also) exactly who she was and why she used an assumed name (murderess when hardly more than a child herself of some young children and the most hated woman in England) and so I thought Confusedgirl was laying it on a bit thick. I am reminded that the night before his marriage to the nineteen year old Sonia, Leo Tolstoy (then aged thirty-four) let her peruse his diaries which of course were full of his debaucheries. No good can come from that sort of revelation: it may look like honesty but it is closer to exhibitionism; should Confusedgirl not take Xanthippe’s good advice she will effectively turn her husband into a pre-marital cuckold . She may do better to abandon – at least for a while – thoughts of Matrimony, for usually once a slut always a slut. Jesus I seem to recall told the woman taken in adultery to go and sin no more – not to go rub your past sexual experiences in the nose of an unsuspecting man, neither did he suggest as a remedy, Matrimony.
Opus,
Only the first paragraph was meant for you directly. I, too, was astounded to find myself in agreement with Xanthippe. I have a former friend I used to call “The Stopped Clock” since he was only right twice a day, but Mizz X is more like a clock that loses a second a day: she’s only right once every 118 years.
It’s too bad I didn’t have any time to spend down south on my last trip to the UK: I would have bought you a pint.
As Lyn87 said, this isn’t a matter of redemption. Yes, we are all happy that maybe the woman in that CAF thread has repented of her past sins and has maybe even stopped doing those sins. That’s very good, but it doesn’t mean that she’s wife material and it doesn’t mean that at the first sign of trouble in her marriage she won’t be tempted to find solace in a bad boy’s bed. A marriage with a woman like her is indeed fraught with risk.
We know that women are structurally incapable of holding themselves accountable for their behavior. It therefore logically follows that, by extension, they are structurally incapable of grasping the fact that even if God forgives their sins, there are still permanent temporal consequences for their past behavior. Mizz ConfusedGirl, therefore, would break down over the notion that past sluttiness has ruined her chances to be a good wife to any devout, chaste Catholic man who has played by God’s rules and who is thus fully justified in seeking a chaste virgin for a wife (if any are available, a problematic assumption at best).
Expect a follow-up post from this girl in the Gladys Aylward mold in which she demands that God force her perfect Catholic boyfriend to wife her up.
@Opus
not to go rub your past sexual experiences in the nose of an unsuspecting man
But also not to cover them up, as is occasionally encouraged over at CAF (perhaps unsurprisingly).
A few more thoughts on Confused Girl:
I looked up what might be RCIA; it is Roman Catholic Initiation of Adults, so Confused Girl was neither born Catholic nor indeed is one at all – yet. She says she was a slut in her second year at College and so I am guessing she may now hardly be past her third – she is mute on this although she says her beau is close in age. Describing him as smart hardworking and a guy any mother it is clear that there is no sexual element to the relationship. Despite his many qualities she is not turned-on by him; he is a meal-ticket.
Her second paragraph is replete with expressions distancing herself from any agency – women of course never being responsible for their behaviour – thus: ‘she fell into a depression’ had ‘bad room mates’ had ‘lost hope ‘; she then mentions that she had gone with a man who did not respect women (i.e. had sex with her) and describes the relationship as abusive (i.e. she was just one of his plates); moved on to guy number two and the same thing happened again (well duh); In short she threw herself at the most attractive guys on campus with predictable results. Now, disappointed, she seeks to be a new-made virgin. She knows God can fix that but will her Beta orbiter notice?
@Marcus D
It is a difficult call. On the basis of what confusedgirl has to say I would have cautioned her against saying hardly anything, (she was after all a victim as she keeps insisting) but she seems so disturbed by her behaviour that I wonder what else there is that she is not mentioning (not just her real N which is obviously >2 but her weight, HB number). As her new man is Roman Catholic she perhaps needs to indicate that she is not a virgin. If that puts him off then she will know that a fuller summary was unnecessary. My own personal experience of females is that one way or another in conversation as well as from their behaviour one has a pretty good idea as to their past – she will surely already have given him a pretty good explanation as to why she seeks to be embraced into the Roman Catholic Church. That she seems to come from a single-mother household, I would – if I were her man – find far more worrying on the basis of like Mother like Daughter, and of course she is not a real Catholic either – surely her man would prefer a girl from a Catholic family – mixed marriages are not a good idea. It has to be said that some women and men are what I might describe as Denomination Tourists – always jumping form Church to Church. Perhaps I am old fashioned, but my very first girlfriend ever lived alone with her mother and despite my being crazy for said girlfriend the fact of her home life weighed on me somewhat. Even though I was fifteen (and thus far too young to marry) I knew intuitively that to some extent she was tarnished goods – that this was NOT a good sign. A girl from an intact family is the only guide one has without the need for an inquisition as to her behaviour.
Also from MarcusD’s Instructive batch of CAF links.
“How does God view women?” —- some women commented practically, I was surprised. Of course several women rose to defend the herd against the unfairness.
My wife said that some women have trouble being the Church while men get to be Christ, I don’t know if my daughter feels this way.
Finally, perhaps, on Confusedgirl asserting that she got in with a bad crowd I am reminded of something of Theodore Darlymple’s. He, formerly, a medical Doctor, worked in a prison. He met all sorts of people who told him that their downfall had come when they had got in with a bad crowd. He would then respond by saying that he had met a lot of people like that but never one who admitted to being of the bad crowd, which of course, produced a laugh.
One is known by the company one keeps, and although one may, like St Francis or St Augustine, eventually go straight and permanently so only time will tell whether Confusedgirl stays the course or relapses the moment she again feels herself once again lost and abandoned.
One is known by the company one keeps, and although one may, like St Francis or St Augustine, eventually go straight and permanently so only time will tell whether Confusedgirl stays the course or relapses the moment she again feels herself once again lost and abandoned.
Given the complete absence of negative sanction by the church today (and this goes for all denominations other than perhaps Orthodox), ConfusedGirl is going to get her ears tickled and her hamster fed until she eventually jumps back onto the carousel and soon qualifies for a rodeo rider award.
“:they are structurally incapable of grasping the fact that even if God forgives their sins, there are still permanent temporal consequences for their past behavior”
Exactly. If one truly repents of a murder, one will find divine forgiveness for that sin, but they’ll also still serve time in jail.
“I looked up what might be RCIA; it is Roman Catholic Initiation of Adults”.
IIRC, RCIA stands for “Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults.” But yes, it’s an RCC thing.
@Opus
I’ve enjoyed Dalrymple for years, article by article, then in collections bound as books. He has a way of condensing most facets of cultural decline into little bursts of humor and/or irony. Anything from this bad crowd example to the bitching and moaning of patients receiving free care and throwing never ending fits about it having less than resort quality trappings. This, he wrote, led visiting Drs. from developing nations who were training in the NHS system of hospitals to return home early rather than try and process the juxtaposition of the gratitude of many of their own destitute patients back home for what little care they received with the entitled angry and occasionally dangerous patients they were encountering.
@Empath
Is the NHS the same as Obamacare? At times the NHS is beyond dreadful and having been an outpatient on both sides of the Atlantic you will be flattered to hear that if I ever have to be so again I would far rather do so in America.
When Chuck Colson converted to Christianity shortly before being sent to prison for Watergate-related crimes, there was a lot of laughter and sarcasm directed his way, as he was seen to be faking a religious conversion to reduce the amount of time that he would have to serve in prison. As it turned out, he served Christ until he died.
Some of the girls that I knew in junior high who were from very strict Christian families turned out to be shallow sluts, while some of the ones from less righteous homes are still happily married all these decades later. The girl at CAF at least recognizes that she has hurt her chances for marrying the sort of man that she wants, and she is also determined to be truthful about her sinful past. She’s not the worst prospect for marriage — she appears to have some decent qualities. Mr. Catholic Nice Guy could probably do better, and if he is a virgin himself he should definitely hold out for a virgin, but even marrying a Catholic virgin from a good Catholic family won’t necessarily protect him from a bad marriage and an eventual divorce. That’s the awful thing about marriage these days. You can reduce your risk to a certain extent by choosing a spouse very carefully, but you can never completely eliminate the possibility that your spouse will turn out to be a bad apple.
It’s not clear whether the woman in this case started the process of becoming Catholic and then met Mr. Catholic Nice Guy, or whether she met Mr. Nice Guy and decided to become Catholic at that point. It would be better if it’s the former, but even the latter scenario sometimes works out fine. I’m not Catholic, but I’ve heard that the most gung-ho Catholics are always the converts. It is true in the case of my cousin who converted to Catholicism.
It’s very difficult to tell which women will end up destroying their own marriages to a decent guy, but one red flag that is starting to really stand out for me is a significantly stronger-than-average need for attention and compliments, over-the-top romantic gestures and carefully chosen gifts, expensive trips, etc. The guy always has to be knocking himself out to demonstrate to her that she is appreciated, or she is terribly upset. When the “honeymoon is over,” this type of woman is bitterly disappointed and often starts looking for a new honey and/or begins to complain incessantly. The type of woman who cares too much about having a swankier wedding than anyone else in her social circle is always a huge risk, but I see “romantic neediness” as a related, but separate factor. I’ve seen women who were OK with fairly modest weddings have completely unreasonable expectations for marriage. Watch out for the ones who pester you when you’re at work.
Exactly. If one truly repents of a murder, one will find divine forgiveness for that sin, but they’ll also still serve time in jail.
David sincerely repented of his sins re: Uriah and Bathsheba, but God still took his son.
“Is the NHS the same as Obamacare?”
Not really. Obamacare is legislature that forces people to purchase insurance from the private sector. To soften the blow, there are subsidies for lower income buyers, plus no more penalties for having a “previously existing condition”. Of course, there were consequences for the latter mandate, as if forced the costs up for for those without previous conditions to cover those that do. There were also other mandates that drove up premiums, which I won’t enumerate.
There are no “Obamacare” hospitals or clinics. That aspect of the medical industrial complex remained the same: mostly private sector plus some non profit orgs.
Obamacare didn’t address the stratospherically high costs of medical care in the US, so in order to keep policies “affordable” most Obamacare policies sold have huge deductibles, as high as $5000 per annum per patient, which means that policy holders still have to pay for most of their healthcare out of pocket, even though they are “insured”.
To give you an idea of how much health insurance can cost in the US, I offer my own example. My employer provided policy, which my employer pays 85% of the premiums, costs $20,000 a year to cover my family. And even with premiums that high we still have a $400 deductible and $25 copays to see the family doctor (which costs about $150 for the high deductible crowd), plus various levels of copays for prescriptions. Most Americans can now only dream about this level of coverage.
It is true that American healthcare is pretty good, but heaven help you if you have a high deductible plan.
@ PokeSalad says:
January 17, 2017 at 1:30 pm
“David sincerely repented of his sins re: Uriah and Bathsheba, but God still took his son.”
It was a lot worse than that.
2 Sam 12:10 Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’
11 “This is what the Lord says: ‘Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. 12 You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.’”
13 Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”
Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. 14 But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for[a] the Lord, the son born to you will die.”
The rape of Tamar, Absalom murdering Amnon for Tamar’s rape, Absalom’s rebellion (tens of thousands of Israelites died in that civil war), Absalom’s public humiliation of David’s concubines and Adonijah’s rebellion against Solomon (and subsequent execution) were all consequences of David’s adultery and murder. The consequences outlived David.
I forgot to mention Absalom’s death at the hand of Joab – David’s nephew – whom Solomon later executed.
@Opus
Hospitals are the biggest snare in our system. Hospitals have to give free care to low income and indigent patients who are uninsured, so they make it up by charging responsible people whatever they like. This is why insurance is so crucial, because as an individual you have no bargaining power with the hospital. They dream up a bill, and you have to pay it. The main benefit of insurance is that the insurance companies have the leverage to negotiate rates. These negotiated rates are still huge, but not a blank check. But if you are uninsured and able to pay, the hospital knows they have you as they can charge you pretty much whatever they like, all after the fact.
I had insurance. As you do not have a National Health System your taxes must be less.
Our taxes are not so much less anymore. But Trump.
Opus: “I had insurance. As you do not have a National Health System your taxes must be less.”
Do you pay $20,000 a year in NHS taxes?
Dalrock: “But if you are uninsured and able to pay, the hospital knows they have you as they can charge you pretty much whatever they like, all after the fact.”
And good luck trying to get a cost estimate in advance for even a trivial procedure. And I’m not just talking about an accurate estimate, I’m talking about a very rough estimate. Many providers will simply refuse to give you one, even for as something as simple as blood lab work.
“But if you are uninsured and able to pay, the hospital knows they have you as they can charge you pretty much whatever they like, all after the fact.”
I’ve had the opposite experience. Most doctors now give discounts for paying cash. Last time I went to the ER, the discount was 20% IIRC. Dealing with insurance is an expense of its own.
Which makes sense. Bureaucracy and middlemen drive prices up, not down. Imagine how profitable Starbucks WOULDN’T be if you had to show gov’t-mandated proof of hot coffee injury insurance to buy an iced mocha, and they had to sell it for 25 cents and seek reimbursement from third-party cubicle monkeys, and had to serve the next guy in line for free because he was drawing unemployment.
…
Opus @ 2:39 pm:
“I had insurance. As you do not have a National Health System your taxes must be less.”
$2,000 or 2.5% of gross income, whichever is higher, just for not having Obamacare. I have catastrophic, dental and vision coverage, mind, but that doesn’t count because it doesn’t cover my pregnancies, annual mammograms, HIV medication or pediatric care for the kids I don’t have. No joke.
Please, President Trump, replace Obamacare with nothing but a flying little bird. Let me live my own life.
The NHS is funded from what is known as National Insurance and also partially from taxation. I, to answer Frank K, do not pay $20,000 (or its sterling equivalent) through or indeed anything like it – that is almost an average salary over here. Dentistry Gunner Q is available on the NHS but increasingly people pay privately: I pay £18.00 for each of my half-yearly check-ups.
The interesting questions are whether your system is cheaper and whether it provides (in any event) better service. The NHS is not all bad by any means indeed it is so good we have something presumably unknown in America namely Health Tourism: this is not popular especially amongst Brexit supporters. We do not have political rows courtesy of the feminists as to Contraceptives – free from your G.P., neither do we have to endure Planned Parenthood and neither for better or worse is Abortion a hot-potato issue – and race is somewhat differently nuanced. Every one (more or less) is C of E – belief or lack of it is no bar to so describing oneself, in fact belief is a bit embarrassing so better not to mention it and whatever you do do not claim that you have found J.C. or that he has turned your life around – people will treat you as if you are suffering from some contagious and incurable disease and so we do not have to worry much about God: we have outsourced that to QE2 for she is His appointed representative. What may amaze you about the NHS (and renew your faith in England) is that the government spend (I forget the figure) but a vast sum every year on Chaplains and Pastors for their services in attending Hospitals to minister to the sick and dieing – all through our taxes of course, so should you ever find yourself in an English hospital do ensure that you receive the full spiritual sustenance which is available gratis – and from the denomination of your choice.
@Opus
I saw Daniel Hannan on TV once — he said that your children’s hospitals were excellent, but many other features of the NHS were not so great. I believe that he mentioned the waiting lists for operations as a major downside.
You are mistaken about the US not having to deal with health tourism. A relative had a very high-paying career in California as an emergency room doctor until the government made it illegal to turn away anyone having an “emergency.” Every emergency room in California is now a free clinic for the poor, and a lot of the ERs have shut down over the years. The maternity wards (which are generally private rooms these days) deliver babies for free for every foreigner who shows up. Middle-class Mexicans take full advantage in San Diego and Los Angeles.
At this point, I would rather have the NHS than Obamacare, although I realize that other people in other circumstances would disagree. It will be interesting to see what Trump hopes to do with the system.
@Original Laura
“I’m not Catholic, but I’ve heard that the most gung-ho Catholics are always the converts.”
This isn’t entirely true, even in my own experience. I can mentally list names of people that I’ve met who converted to Catholicism, and promptly (< year) abandoned it.
Here's an article on the phenomenon: http://www.pewforum.org/2009/10/28/the-zeal-of-the-convert-is-it-the-real-deal/
(Interestingly, a similar argument is often made about immigrants being more patriotic than native-born citizens.)
Laura – I find it interesting that people who endured a whole year of RCIA, after which they were baptized (if not already so), confirmed and became communicants (this usually happens during Easter Vigil Mass) would then bail out a few month later. I used to be an RCIA sponsor, and I never heard of people bailing shortly after being confirmed though I did see people bail out during RCIA itself, usually in the first months. I suppose it must be one of those “your mileage may vary” kind of things.
Slightly off topic, perhaps, but as it is perhaps relevant or of interest to this blog I wanted to explain why or at least how religion in England is so different from religion in America – no one makes movies like Single Mums need Cars – and why belief is not what religion is about – that is an optional and private matter whether one is laity or clergy: as you know England is a Theocracy with a state religion – Anglicanism. Anglicanism as my Pupil Master (a Roman Catholic – Irish) was always at pains to explain is not a Protestant religion and indeed describes itself as Catholic, although not of the Roman variety. The Head of State is anointed by God (rather than elected in a highly expensive contest between two commoners) – and of course the Head of State is not changed every four or eight years. The Church of England has not only all the prime real estate locations but the most desirable buildings built thereon – frequently of a thousand years of age; the Church also has a thousand or so years of music written especially for it. Consider the City of London – that is to say the financial district aka The Square Mile: there must be as many churches (all Wren designed) as there are skyscrapers. Perhaps they have stopped doing it now but the Bonfire Societies would burn effigies of the Bishop of Rome on Guy Fawkes Day – November the 5th – I have witnessed this.
As you may know Richard Dawkins has not recently been in the best of health and so it was only right and fitting that prayers were being said in church (at the time of his stroke) for his full recovery: mockery or inclusivity? We set the Bar very low.
@ Gunner Q says:
January 17, 2017 at 4:26 pm
“I’ve had the opposite experience. Most doctors now give discounts for paying cash. Last time I went to the ER, the discount was 20% IIRC. Dealing with insurance is an expense of its own.”
That’s why cash-only doctors are a growing trend.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/11/news/economy/cash-only-doctors/
http://surgerycenterok.com/pricing/
The trouble is no one knows what is the going rate for “X” medical service. Nor is it in the best money-making interest of either the hospitals nor the insurance companies for them to know, and certainly not for the consumers to know.
However; Gunner Q reported that his ER visit was discounted 20%. At a large private DFW hospital, whose services we used several times, the cash discount is 75%! Which gives you an idea of how much they inflate the prices which are given to insurance companies.
My inclination is to blame the concept of insurance companies generally. Their objective (to collectively fund individual healthcare) is directly opposed to the circumstances which grant them reward (to collect , but not fund, healthcare). Hospitals only get paid when they render services.
@Cane Caldo
My guess is this was negotiated upfront, before services were rendered. Is this correct? I think once services are rendered, and if they know you can pay, they will charge you the max rate.
@Dalrock
Not negotiated at all. We informed them that we would be paying cash and they replied that we would get a 75% discount.
The hospital is Medical City Arlington; which I’m willing to say to make the story a bit more real, and because I don’t live anywhere near there anymore.
@Cane
Thanks. Was this after services were rendered?
@Dalrock Some years ago, and undoubtedly to this day, if an unwed mother was placing her baby for adoption and did NOT have any sort of insurance or Medicaid, the lawyer or agency representing the adoptive parents would negotiate a price upfront with the hospital for the delivery and related services. Ten or fifteen years ago, the amount was $5000, and this amount was paid whether the birth was vaginal or C-section, and included all of the newborn nursery charges as well. In other words, the hospital assumed the risk of a complicated birth, while the attorney or agency capped their liability. I was astonished at the time, because I knew of couples who had decided not to have a second or third child because they had no insurance and the cost of a C-section with moderate complications would have wiped them out. They felt that they just couldn’t take a chance.
@Oscar
I read an article five years ago or so in which a young doctor fitted out a van with all sorts of medical equipment and supplies and did nothing but house calls for cash. Business was booming, because elderly people and children at home with nannies could be served without the family breadwinner(s) taking time off from work. His gross income was probably average range for a general practitioner, and his expenses were very low. Obviously, he had no office rent. I can’t remember if he did his own paperwork or had assistance with that. But without insurance paperwork, his paperwork burden was not too severe.
My pet peeve is that when you go to the doctor now, they will only answer questions about one problem. They want you to make a fresh appointment for each issue you have. At least that was my experience with an orthopedic doctor.
@Cane Caldo
Good idea. Done.
@Dalrock
Both before and after. The first time we went there our emergency wasn’t immediate and we filled out paperwork before we were seen. When we informed them that we did not have insurance (we’re in a medical Co-Op) we were told that there would be a discount, but not the amount of the discount. Then services were rendered, and as part of the checkout process we were informed that because we were paying cash, we got a 75% discount.
Years ago, Mrs. Caldo did payment insurance/MediCaid/MediCare filing work for doctor for a few years. She said that doctors and hospitals charge insurance companies as much as they can (e.g., If the doc used a tissue he would charge for a whole box of tissues) because on the other end the insurance companies had their own pool of employees striking through line items they would not pay. This process goes back and forth several times before a payment is agreed upon.
The tissue box example seems like the docs and hospitals are being petty and greedy. Maybe. On the other side though, the insurance people routinely deny payment for legitimate things like tests. Suppose persistent cold symptoms that make a doc suspicious and he orders blood-work to be done. The insurance company is automatically going to reject payment of that testing as unnecessary because most treatments of colds don’t require blood-work. The tissue boxes are the docs and hospitals trying to recoup those denied payments.
This same insurance-denial-testing issue is why we now have to drive from the doctor’s office to the testing clinic to get our blood-work done. When I was a kid, the doctor took blood and sent it off to be tested, and the payment was all bundled. Now docs refer patients to a facility and the whole billing process is separate because doctors got tired of being stuck with the bill for testing.
Of course fraud is rampant because the system. The importance (read: emotional investment) of medical care to modern people, coupled with the hidden costs, makes fraud irresistible to many people.
But the reality is that for the vast majority of people, and for the vast majority of the time, food is more important than medical care. Yet we know the prices for food and are generally expected to acquire and fund it ourselves. This incentivizes food producers to find less expensive and more efficient methods of production. Insurance companies don’t want those forces at work in medical care because they won’t benefit from the vast majority of people (who aren’t sick or hurt most of the time) to pay less money for more cost efficient medicine.
@Original Laura
Twenty-one years ago I was billed $8,000 (total, doctor and hospital) for my first daughter’s birth. We didn’t have insurance then. In fact it was the same hospital building which I’ve talked about, but back then under a different corporation. I think hospitals today are wiser to the realities of payment than they were in the 90s and early 00s.
This is the insurance denial thing again. If you go to the doctor to get your cough investigated, then that’s all the insurance company is willing to cover. They will deny payment on the separate issue (blood-work, wrist brace, whathaveyou) because that is not related to the cough.
@Cane Caldo
I agree that insurance is a big part of the problem, but I also think the doctors worked very hard to get an insurance based system. They hate the red tape and the cost, but even more they hate the idea of posting prices and competing on price. With Obamacare we have seen some doctors bucking the trend and posting cash prices. But these doctors are in a distinct minority, even with as bad as Obamacare has made their lives. Big Medicine sees itself as above the competitive market, and they have the political power to largely exempt themselves from the competitive market. They are a modern day guild.
@Dalrock
They did, yes, but that was a long time ago before insurance companies more fully realized their power. Medical insurance is a recent invention.
In my previous work I helped hundreds of thousands of doctors give speeches. Having read those speeches and having asked them questions out of personal interest I believe that most doctors are simply cowed by the process. In a way they are like Christian husbands in the modern church: They feel something is wrong, but assume it’s “just life” and try to make others happy and hoping for peace and maybe a ballgame. Another good comparison is that hospitals are like universities, and doctors are like professors. It’s the administration which is killing the university system. Another good comparison is unions. Most union workers are fat mustached white guys in windbreakers (pace, Steve Sailer) who just want a decent paycheck. It’s the union bosses who run the show.
For many that is true. Going back to Original Laura’s complaint about separate appointments for separate issues: Some doctors were double-billing for single visits, too, i.e., committing fraud. A patient would come in for a cough, and then ask about discomfort in the ankle. A greedy doctor would then bill the insurance company for two appointments even though the ankle treatment was only a brief conversation. Insurance companies responded by denial payment for two instances unless the doctor could prove (via paperwork) that there were two appointments.
Yes, but Big Medicine isn’t the doctors. BM is made up of hospital administrators and the leaders of medical associations. Though I will add that doctors collectively and individually do see themselves above the competitive market in the sense that they believe they are too important to have a price put on what they do. They believe they are modern priests for modern times.
Also, doctors aren’t as smart as we would like to think. Most of them are probably in the 120 IQ range, I’d guess. They’re smart enough to know their field, but not smart enough to be multidisciplinary. They’re Flesh Support Technicians. There’s so much more information known about the body now that medical practice is largely troubleshooting and research. To be a good doctor isn’t to know the body, but to know how to perform searches, cross-reference symptoms, etc. (Obviously this is not true of surgeons and other specialists.)
One side-effect of the rise of the Flesh-Tech Support is that we can import a shitload of half-assed doctors from shithole countries to staff the hospitals. Of course, they don’t care about how all of this affects Americans because 1) it’s better than where they came from, and 2) where they came from was probably some commie shithole which taught them that medicine should be “free” anyways. Let’s not forget the female doctors (from anywhere) either. They implicitly believe in giving away medicine and they’re so happy to have made it into the boys’ club that they’ll happily do whatever the leaders say.
But male, American (especially white) doctors–who are not in the leadership of hospital systems or medical associations–are generally unhappy with how medicine is funded.
Please forgive the long off-topic posts if they’re not appropriate. The modern medical mess is a hobby horse of mine. I once took advantage of my previous job and sat in on a lecture on the subject given by Newt Gingrich to a couple hundred hospital CIOs. Afterwards I got his autograph in my copy of his book on healthcare transformation.
@Cane Caldo
This is my point. Insurance wasn’t the cause, it was the effect. Price collusion and lack of transparency came first, and the move to insurance was a rational consumer response. That doctors (and not just patients) are now suffering from their own short sightedness doesn’t change this.
This isn’t much of a defense of the average doctor not being part of Big Medicine. Incidentally, I don’t dislike doctors. The ones I know do amazing work, and work like mad. But they are as a group both arrogant and clueless as to how they have created the very mess they bitch about.
This is also due to Big Medicine acting as a cartel to greatly restrict the supply of domestically trained doctors, both by restricting the number of seats available in medical school, and by efforts to make becoming credentialed as artificially difficult as possible (eg insane residency rules). Break the cartel and we won’t need to import second rate doctors to keep prices at reasonable levels. As you point out, it isn’t that being a doctor takes an exceptionally high IQ. There are large numbers of people as smart or smarter than the average doctor who would go into the field, even at lower compensation, if the huge artificial barriers erected by the AMA, etc. were reduced.
No apology required. This was a throwaway post and the discussion on topic pretty much ran its course. You are also responding to my own questions.
My personal beef with the system is that if we don’t acknowledge and address the core issue, we will eventually end up with something even worse than Obamacare. Insurance is a big part of the problem, but it is a rational reaction to the root issue, something that virtually no one talks about.
If you haven’t already, check out the Surgery Center of OK’s prices published on their website. $3,740.00 for knee arthroscopy.
http://surgerycenterok.com/?procedure_category=knee#jump
As for LASIK, which few insurance companies cover, prices start at $250.00 per eye.
https://www.lasikplus.com/cost-of-lasik
The argument that market forces don’t apply to medicine (which I’ve heard many people state) is a load of crap.
“Insurance is a big part of the problem, but it is a rational reaction to the root issue, something that virtually no one talks about.”
It wasn’t a rational reaction. As I recall, gov’t made offering insurance a more affordable alternative to pay increases for employees, so businesses went whole hog into it. “I’d be purchasing medical care anyway!”
Not unlike retirement. People aren’t putting money into the stock market because it’s a good idea… many don’t even understand what a stock market is… but they want the gov’t-sponsored matching funds and delayed taxation. Yet another bubble waiting to pop.
If gov’t policy made it a good idea then it’s not a good idea. Hell, I don’t trust anything anymore except cash in hand. I shouldn’t trust that, either, because inflation.
@Dalrock
This might be the crux of our disagreement. The lack of transparency is a result of the fact that medicine used to be a largely charitable industry funded by churches and the wealthy. The average person didn’t get prices because the average person didn’t pay for them in the first place.
Insurance came out of a post-WWII attitude that it was the responsibility of corporations to do the business of the government, and one of those things that the government decided was its business was healthcare. It was also a way that corporations could protect management’s income from federal taxation. Unions of course wanted in on that racket, and so everyone got it. Besides, socialism was just in the air of the post-WWII world.
But what you call a rational consumer response is, to me, irrational. Not only because insurance is a kind of fluke of history, but also because it’s conception is fundamentally irrational. Members pay into insurance to get access to medical treatment, but insurance companies benefit to refuse access to medical treatment. That’s a serious conflict of interest. It’s a kind of perverse trust in which whatever isn’t spent goes into the bank account of someone who doesn’t provide medical treatment, rather than contributing to the growth of the trust. It gets rationalized as a good idea under the notion that prudence should be rewarded, but over time the (perverse) incentives win out of the rationale. I don’t blame the doctors for not understanding that until it was too late. Not everyone can be a genius pizza delivery guy.
@Dalrock
Forgot to address this part
Totally agree here, if you mean the core issue is the hidden pricing. Perhaps we disagree a bit if you believe the hospitals and doctors can set prices in the absence of insurance company approval.
@Cane Caldo
I think the median IQ for doctors is probably well above 120. The prerequisites for medical school scare off most people, and lots of students who start off as “pre med” have changed their major out of the sciences by the middle of their sophomore year of college. Because of affirmative action, there is quite a large gap between the lowest scorer accepted to any given medical school and the highest scorer. But a white or Asian (Oriental) male has to have a very high MCAT score and grade point average to be a competitive candidate even for a run-of-the-mill American medical school. My guess would be that even the affirmative action candidates can’t compete with the other affirmative action candidates if they don’t have an IQ of 115 or so. The material to be learned is quite difficult, even for an intelligent person with an excellent memory. Ah, but maybe you are averaging in the graduates of foreign medical schools! Maybe you’re right.
I don’t trust non-western foreign-born doctors, because you can’t be sure of the quality of the education that was offered at the degree-granting institution AND you can’t be sure that the person with a stethoscope standing in front of you is actually the person who attended medical school. I wouldn’t be surprised if a half dozen people were “sharing” the same set of qualifications. As long as each one practices in a different country, they might make it through an entire career without getting caught at it.
Some of the worst fraud is in dentistry. Foreigners become dentists and then charge the insurance company for a mouthful of procedures that were never performed. If they think that they are about to get caught, they high-tail it back to the motherland with their ill-gotten gains and open a practice there.
@Cane Caldo
Hidden pricing, along with all of the other extraordinary measures the industry uses to avoid competition and restrict the supply of doctors. This is important because the assumption is that reducing insurance down to sane levels (something along the lines of catastrophic coverage) will bring about a free market. What isn’t discussed is a deeply entrenched system crafted to avoid meaningful competition. As Oscar noted above, there are rare exceptions* to this entrenched system that give an indication of how much cheaper a competitive system would be. It would in fact be even cheaper than that if we removed the arbitrary barriers to entry.
The problem as I see it is that the entrenched system/attitude is generally speaking denied. Doctors will fight a move to create competitive medicine as ferociously as feminists will fight reforming the abuses of the family courts, but they aren’t about to come out and advertise this upfront, in large part because they see being anticompetitive as only normal and natural. If the discussion and policy proposals doesn’t take that into account it will blindside us. It would be hard enough to fight this with our eyes open to this reality.
*There is a reason that same clinic in Oklahoma is so often brought up, and that is because it is highly unusual, almost unique in that regard.
@Dalrock
In some countries, pharmacists can prescribe most medications and to a limited extent in this country, physician assistants and nurse practitioners can handle a lot of minor problems and check-ups. I’m hoping that Trump makes some major structural changes to the system. I don’t need Dr. Kildare to get new prescriptions for medications that I will be taking for the rest of my life.
Dr. Kildare
Ha! Original Laura you date yourself. Fascinating medical industry discussion. I knew nearly nothing about it. Thanks.
Medical Insurance as a “thing” comes from WW2 Wage Controls. It started the Benefits Spiral, where (due to progressive) taxation, especially in the 90% tax era, it was always simply better for an employee to take more benefits than more direct wages. Everyone forgets about the “company car”, but that’s exactly the reason it existed.
Medicine definitely acts like a Cartel and they use mostly the Licensing system to do it. Then you start heaping on all of the other issues. Too few Medical Schools. 50% enforced Women as students. (Female doctors work less hours, less years and at a higher cost than the equivalent Male doctor.) Medicare/Medicaid rules that prevent offering most charitable services. (A far bigger driver into the Insurance Disaster than people realize.) A shift in what is needed from Medicine. (Minus the surgery aspect, a Nurse Practitioner can simply accomplish more than any doctor pre-1950s.) Female Baby Boomers surviving. (Women use much more of medical services than Men.) Required coverage for many a strange treatment, which jacks the price through the roof. (That’s politics happening.)
Obamacare’s most disastrous aspects are on the backside and what’s driven a lot of doctors out of the field. There are rules for doing records that force a lot of problems. The Electronic Medical Records is mostly a disaster, as the products just still aren’t there yet. It outright doubled the amount of Medical Codes, which has made the industry massive. People don’t realize how much of medical costs is simply down to the requirements necessary to bill Insurance. That really would do a massive amount to drive costs down.
Hidden pricing, along with all of the other extraordinary measures the industry uses to avoid competition and restrict the supply of doctors.
One of the reasons I became a provider.
When I was a fourth year I applied for internships where there were about 20% applicants nationwide than there were positions available in the national match. I was very close to “guaranteed” to match because of my contractual obligation to the army. They can’ say they guarantee it, but they game algorithm and everyone knows it.
Of that 20%, many will reapply the next year, and the next and so on. So the out of whack ratio of applicants to slots gets worse every year.
Once you get past the hurdle of the artificial internship bottleneck, (as long as it is APA accredited) you are golden. You are now a part of an artificially low supply profession. This is on purpose. I don’t really worry about being employed. I have the luxury of choosing which place to go next.
Should read “20% MORE” and “game the match algorithm”
Foreigners feigning qualifications: I have come across more than one foreign-born lawyer who I felt certain was nowhere close to being what he claimed to be. It wasn’t just the lack of the understanding of basic concepts but the not-having the expected lawyer-like response – as if they had never previously walked into a law-office or as if they were acting the part. Then there was the client (also foreign) who was impersonating someone else – but I suppose that is unlikely to happen in medicine.
When I sat Law exams (in England) there was no ID check as to who was sitting the exams: I do not now doubt that some – perhaps disbarred lawyers – were, for a generous sum, sitting the examinations in place of the named candidate. Those were the days: sitting in Ally Pally (Alexandra Palace) with pigeons circling above ones head, pen in hand, as one devoted the next three hours to Tort or Crime or whatever.
These people are not to be regarded as cheats but merely as undocumented or exam-fluid and if you have the calling, well, you are already half-way there.
Oh, on the topic of “ability”, the level of Doctor ranges from 120-130 on the IQ scale. For the White, Male population, around 20% is the pool capable from the mental aspect. There’s still issues of Interpersonal ability & Constitution to get beyond, but it’s not exactly the hardest task in the world. Frankly, YouTube is littered with people with more vast knowledge of trivial minutia than is required for Medicine. It’s just a different world than people normally are used to.
Granted, knowing far more about the world than I really appreciate to know, I find its far too often packed with fools & idiots, but I’m also sitting at +5 SD on a good day, which means most fields are packed with them. And I’m very happy to see the start of a real attack on the current application of the “Scientific Method”. Medical Research’s (and most Research in general) main problem is the people that do the research. Their heads are clearly in the wrong frame of mind when they’re approaching study. (Side point: I can read journal articles, which is its own skill, so a lot of that is much easier for me to notice.)
I’ve mentioned this before around here, but here’s a freebie that I figured out in passing from some other work. “Autism”, in the modern understanding, is a congenital inflammatory disorder, mostly of the nervous system. The children are basically born under severe stress, which is why Vaccines hit them like trucks. A Vaccine radically taxes the Stress Response, Immune and 1-Carbon Metabolism. This is why parents first notice the problem around then. (It’s also why some really odd treatments over the years actually have “cured” the problem in some children.) A spectrum-autism child simply doesn’t have the stress capacity to recover.
The classic Autism is a genetic brain deformity. That’s why they survived. But the Vaccines created the spectrum because those children used to be called something different. They were the children with a “weak constitution”. Which was actually quite accurate. The spectrum children, pre-1950, would have died from young childhood diseases.
There are roughly predictive effects for when children will have Autism (age of parents, diet of the mother, stress-system state [homo-cysteine levels being a big one] and a few other variant aspects), but the thing that really bugs me is the treatment approach. If we can’t fix it with a pill, no one really seems to care to try to understand the situation. The crux of another major problem in modern medicine.
Here’s a story I meant to share earlier but couldn’t find.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/health/a-different-kind-of-doctors-office-patients-pay-directly-keeping-insurance/2262388
“Dr. Trinette Moss runs her family practice a little differently than most physicians.
Instead of taking insurance, she prefers cash, check or credit card.
Billing at her office works like this: Patients between 18 and 49 years old pay $60 a month. The fee covers unlimited office visits, urgent care services and an annual physical. It costs $15 a month to add a child.
…
Moss isn’t the only physician who likes the concept. Since Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the number of practices like hers has jumped from about 20 to more than 400 nationwide, according to the Direct Primary Care Coalition.”
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