Because those who are worried about that particular thing are just plain ignorant about the current state. If you think it doesn’t happen right now you need to go and find out more about the AMA. They have been doing this for years.

Can you, or anyone, give a good reason why limiting the number of doctors (I am not saying anyone should be admitted into a medical school, just that there is a lot of smart people who can’t make it in because of the caps) is a good thing for anyone except the doctors themselves?

There are several scenarios here: the government could (1) raise the cost of their insurance by shifting costs from one group to another (in the absence of demand signals!) (2) or conversely, tempt employers to cancel private options by undercutting prices with taxpayer-subsidized insurance, (in the absence of cost signals!) (3) reduce coverage for seniors in Medicare in order to pay for young uninsured people, (4) reduce the quality of medical care by trying to control doctors’ salaries by fiat, thereby driving doctors out of the market, or (5) introduce market distortions by trying to mandate the mix of specialties in which doctors are allowed to train, and so on.

Or… none of them could happen. You seem to be sure that at least one of those scenarios will actually happen. And that they are necessarily bad. What is wrong with doctors not making soooo much money for example? Or why would they be driven out of the market? Physicists, for example, do not make that much money; can you really say that they have been driven out of the market? Point 5 is related to my response above. For some reason you seem to think that there are no market distortions in the medical field right now. AMA is a huge distortion. Obama is not proposing limiting the number of doctors, he is proposing making family-care doctors more available.

I come from a country where public medical schools are essentially free for the medical students. Schools do have a yearly quota, but that is due to availability of physical space, not to drive doctor’s salaries up by controlling the supply. Specialties are also effectively free, and actually the government pays you a stipend (like a graduate student sort of thing) if you join their medical training program: We pay for your education, but when you are done you have to work for some years (the number depends on the specialty) in an economically-hit community. During this time they keep receiving the government’s stipend, which is not a lot but it’s enough for them to start a family if they want. You don’t have to take the government’s money though. If you can/want to pay out of your pocket that is fine. And you don’t have to do that community time.

Here’s food for thought: Law Bar Associations usually recommend a certain number of pro-bono hours although there is no penalty for falling short. Would it be so bad if the AMA implemented pro-bono medical work and makes it mandatory? Maybe 3-5 days/year/doctor in a community clinic? I am not talking about extremely expensive procedures necessarily but those are also welcome.

http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/Fourier/RouseBall/RB_Fourier.html

Well, since you’ve been unable to produce any evidence to support your thin argumentation on health care, I suppose you consider your retreat a “success”. You remind me of the French army.

BBB

I expected that you would go this route.

There is no functional difference between the terms equivalence and equilibrium. What you are arguing is about a particular contextual use of the terms. Are you saying that terms on opposite side of an equation are out of balance? Too bad you still can’t figure that out. Since you chose this direction it shows me that you are incapable of actually learning anything and that you are just a tool, as stated before.

In any case, I have successfully diverted you away from the focus of this thread and have demonstrated that you are in no way capable of having a reasonable opinion on the subject matter.

However, I know at some point the owners of this blog will be forced to intervene and stop comments, so until that happens I am more than happy to continue this back and forth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKhnmUdmz74

That’s it? You’re confused about the difference between equivalence and equilibrium?

Let me see if I can cure just a little bit of confusion today.

Look, fundamentally, “equilibrium” means a balance of fluxes. The word itself comes from the Latin and means “equal balance” or “equal scales” — like when a beam balance comes to rest, the net forces and moments on the balance are zero, which allows us to infer something about the quantities of matter on either side of the scale. Apparently you are misled by this paradigm, because the act of measurement has come a long way since the time of Caesar. We now know how to measure many things happening very fast. In mechanical systems, for example, we can very easily measure pressure changes happening over a fraction of a millisecond [and probably can do orders of magnitude better if we try hard -- I'm not sure what the current state of the art is]. In radiative systems, well, friends of mine measure the tracks of elementary particles with femtosecond lifetimes. Measurement does not require any sort of equilibrium.

Mechanical equilibrium occurs when net momentum fluxes are zero and the system is in steady state. Chemical equilibrium, ditto for net flux of chemical species. Radiative equilibrium, ditto for net flux of electromagnetic radiation. You might as well start with the Wikipedia article on thermodynamic equilibrium if you want to learn more. These are all idealizations. (For the most part, thermodynamics itself isn’t correct except in the thermodynamic limit ‘N goes to infinity’.) This all has nothing to do with equivalence relations except in the trivial sense that equivalent outputs from a calibrated measurement device can be trusted to measure equivalent physical parameters. That equivalence has nothing to do with whether the object or system being measured is in any kind of equilibrium. In fact, if EVERYTHING was in equilibrium, there would be no point in measuring temperature, would there?

I mean, this is a really trivial point. The fact that measuring a pound of sugar and a pound of flour on a kitchen scale gives the same number has nothing to do with whether the sugar and the flour are in equilibrium. I’m starting to think you’re toying with me, writing outrageously stupid things to see if you can get a rise out of me. But I’ll refrain from any further flaming, because I really suspect you may just be honestly ignorant.

Seether/Fake It

Heh. I know you are, but what am I?…. But seriously, you’re circling the drain of juvenile irrelevance. Get a grip. I’m sensing some doubt on your part, but cowardice, too, about directly accusing me of lying about myself. My advice is for you to knock it off before you embarrass yourself. And do a little research.

BBB

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j2DHUw8SZg

as far as this comment is concerned:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muP9eH2p2PI

Since that statement indicates to me that you are very nearly capable of correcting your incorrect understanding of everything, let me repeat:

You can not perform a measurement or make an observation if there is not some sort of equilibrium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeroth_law_of_thermodynamics

Under the zeroeth article itself you can find:

“It is often claimed, for instance by Max Planck in his influential textbook on thermodynamics, that the Zeroth law implies that we can define a “temperature function” or more informally, that we can “construct a thermometer.” ”

There is actually a good link for the philosophy of the zeroeth law on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_thermal_and_statistical_physics

it contains this statement:

“Hence thermal equilibrium between systems is an equivalence relation, and this is the substance of the zeroth law of thermodynamics. According to Max Planck, who wrote an influential textbook on thermodynamics, and many other authors, this empirical principle shows that we can define the “temperature function” central to our everyday conception of heat. ”

that leads you to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_relation

There is a great statement there that you should read:

“An ubiquitous equivalence relation is the equality (”=”) relation between elements of any set. ”

Another great wiki article is this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_law

This article contains a good quote:

“One particularly important physical result concerning conservation laws is Noether’s Theorem, which states that there is a one-to-one correspondence between conservation laws and differentiable symmetries of physical systems. For example, the conservation of energy follows from the time-invariance of physical systems, and the fact that physical systems behave the same regardless of how they are oriented in space gives rise to the conservation of angular momentum.”

(Note: it says one-to-one!!!)

It is very important now to review what is meant by “temperature function”, or more specifically “function”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_(mathematics)

From here we get:

“In mathematics a function is a relation between a given set of elements (the domain) and another set of elements (the range), which associates each element in the domain with exactly one element in the range. The elements so related can be any kind of thing (words, objects, qualities) but are typically mathematical quantities, such as real numbers.”

and

“In pure mathematics, functions are defined using set theory, and there are theorems that show the existence of uncountably many different functions, most of which cannot be expressed with a formula or algorithm.”

From here it should be very clear that for someone to perform a measurement or make an observation, one must first define a function that is expressible by some formula or algorithm that utilizes the equivalence principle. Without the ability to do such, one can not make an observation or take a measurement, since any attempt to do so would be meaningless (and any device that one tried to construct would most likely output random numbers).

Combined with the fact that there are empirically verified symmetries in the universe, we are thus able, and in some way guaranteed, to be able to observe the world around us; specifically, there are invariable scalar quantities that are measurable by all observers.

Thus in essence:
You can not perform a measurement or make an observation if there is not some sort of equilibrium.

I’m trying to imagine you being a little less unhinged… but it’s just not coming to me….

Of course I enjoy helping people. I’m helping to bring you to enlightenment, but your ego keeps getting in the way. “Snatch the pebble from my hand, Grasshopper”.

Let’s return to the notion of equilibrium for a moment. Meditate on this: there is no equilibrium. “Equilibrium”, like “steady flow”, like “isolated systems”, is just a model we use to try to make sense of the things we see around us. Physical systems can be approximately in equilibrium, but it is more usually the case that they are changing their state of motion due to an imbalance of forces. Equilibrium is only one paradigm among many. For example, the equilibrium paradigm is not very useful for modeling oscillatory systems, where energy flows back and forth between two modes of storage (in the idealized paradigm). Equilibrium is not a useful paradigm for understanding systems that are characterized by growth, be it the inflationary universe or inflation in an economy.

In the meantime I’ll leave you with the famous quote from Robert Heinlein:

“Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house. ”

Now, it could be that you have some mathematical skills, but for some reason you are just choosing not to display them in this thread. Humility is a good thing. But I suspect that advancing any argument about health care will require something more, oh, analytical. Just tossing insults back and forth is fun, but something of a diversion, don’t you think? But if that’s all you can do, I’ll play along until a serious commenter drops by.

BBB

Math skills are nice, but all that means is that you get to be a tool in a toolbox. At some point in your life, if your lucky, you might stop and wonder what you can do to help the people around you. If your really lucky you might actually find a way to do it. Your existence in the universe, and all your skills don’t amount to a hill of beans except in the present.

So the question I ask you is whether you want to be a tool for the rest of your life?