"Selling wearable consumer electronics one-on-one to individual consumers is kind of a tough business.... By embedding them into the health care system, you can reach a mass market."
Says an analyst of wearable devices, quoted in a NYT article titled "Google Glass to Be Covered by Vision Care Insurer VSP." It's not just devices integrated into eyeglasses. It's also "computers that people can ingest, tattoo on their
skin or embed in a tooth."
Well, great, because if people come at me looking like that lady wearing Google Glass at the link, I'm not going to want to talk to her. I hope I won't be accused of discriminating against the differently abled.
Now, it's going to be part of health-care, this augmentation by device. And we're all supposed to pool our money — build up the pool — while people tap it for their playthings.
Come on! This is so much worse than covering birth control. With birth control, you're staving off other costs that would take more out of the shared money pool. I know some opponents of the birth-control-coverage requirements of Obamacare think women ought to pay their own expenses if they choose to indulge in the kind of sexual pleasures that can result in pregnancy, but at least it's arguably bottom-line cost effective, and the group doesn't have the power to require women to avert pregnancy. Free birth control is an incentive to do something that saves the group money.
But what's with these tricky new computers becoming part of the health insurance system? You've got manufacturers scheming, marketing. And I'm predicting that they are leveraging male disaffection with the insurance system that seems to be making men pay for stuff for women. Here's something for the guys. They love their computers. The photo at the link is of a weird lady wearing Google Glass, but that's a trick to throw you off.
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"Free birth control is an incentive to do something that saves the group money."
Which is the evil of socialism. It makes the "group" feel it has the right to involve itself in others' behaviors. It is the Road to Serfdom.
I was just looking at Google Glass this morning. I wanted something that could run my apps hands-free while driving.
The trouble is that all of the promo material is directed at assholes. It's all about people who ride bikes through traffic, do "extreme" things, and love themselves. It's all about showing everyone else how much better your life is because you have money.
Ugh.
Google Glass is conspicuous consumption. Unlike the iPhone, which whatever its detractors say (and I'm one of them) was at least a technological step forward, Glass is a wearable camera with a few smart phone functions. I'm sure it'll become useful down the road but I don't see much use for it other than filming what I see. And that's a bit creepy.
they are leveraging male disaffection with the insurance system that seems to be making men pay for stuff for women. Here's something for the guys.
Next thing you know there'll be demands for recreational drugs to become part of the healthcare system or something.
What did I say at the start of the ACA? Too many companies will be lobbying to get their products included in the mandatory coverage. Combine with lobbying from the people paying for it not to have their rates go nuts, and the long-range financial viability of the plan is nothing.
Skyler beat me to it.
But for those who would say "the group" is central to insurance, I would emphatically say this is not insurance.
This is car "insurance" that pays for oil changes. This is homeowners insurance that pays to paint your house.
the group doesn't have the power to require women to avert pregnancy
The "group" could go a long ways towards requiring women to avert pregnancy by requiring any woman who is getting any form of public assistance to have that under-the-skin, six-month birth control technology implanted. If you can't afford to support yourself (and your existing children, if any) you have no business conceiving more children that other people have to pay for. If you object to the birth control, fine, you don't have to have it implanted; and you also can do without public assistance.
That would largely end the situation where ghetto women have nine children by nine different men, all while on assistance.
Oh yes and don't forget to drug test welfare recipients too. Who was that guy who suggested that?
"Free birth control is an incentive to do something that saves the group money" is that red meat, or do you really believe that women cannot afford birth control?
I agree with Inga.
Kicking low status people isn't right. If we're going to drug test for welfare, we should drug test for tax credits. Or government pensions, Social Security, Medicare, or anything else that comes from tax dollars. Make educated middle class people stand in line to pee in a cup. See how long that lasts.
Being low class means being treated differently by everyone. It's OK to threaten low class people for actions that a higher class person would get away with. Rather than jail, a middle class person goes to rehab. If a delivery driver cuts someone off in traffic, his job is threatened where a doctor or lawyer gets away.
People really, really like kicking anyone who is lower down the ladder. We'll impose standards on the poor that we'd never live up to ourselves, and we're OK with using legal force to enforce them.
There was a time when pace makers were "tricky new computers". I'm not taking the side of all of these new devices, but some will prove to be useful in saving lives.
The Glass computing device, which costs $1,500 for suckers invited to buy the current version, will retail for several hundred dollars less than that later this year when Google introduces the consumer version. The titanium frames are $225. VSP will reimburse members based on their prescription plan, with an average reimbursement of $120, plus the cost of buying prescription lenses, but it will not subsidize the computer portion of Glass.
So at least at the start, it's just the lenses that are being subsidized.
I guess the Camel has to get its nose under the tent.
Some schmooze-weasels with connections with the regime will make shitloads of money from this. The rest of us will not.
Wheel of torture says: "Bastinado for the schmooze-weasels! Bankruptcy for the rest of you!"
It's not for suckers now. People who buy now are getting full fashion value. It's cool now because the plebes don't have it yet. In a year or two it won't be cool anymore because fat men with neckbeards will be wearing it.
Totally worth a few hundred extra to show off to women at the bar.
"the group doesn't have the power to require women to avert pregnancy" -- beg to differ. Where there is a "group," there is power defined by the group. Obvious examples exist in the US, China, India, and if I cared enough to look I'm pretty sure there are more.
This is car "insurance" that pays for oil changes. This is homeowners insurance that pays to paint your house.
Yes. We have group negotiated prices that are hidden from conusmers carrying a card from our chosen syndicate.
Our syndicate hires guns to go beat up service providers to take a lower payment. The service provider shifts the actual cost to other customers that don't have a syndicate working for them.
"Kicking low status people isn't right."
How does requiring someone to be able to at least possibly afford children before they have them equate to kicking them? You really shouldn't have [pets, cars, cell phones, kids] if you can't afford them. To do otherwise is abusive.
Where does the idea come from that children are a community responsibility? Oh wait...it takes a village.
mrs. e,
No one had a pace maker installed just for the heck of it, or because it was cool to have one.
Unknown-
Why is it the business of government to decide who has children?
Don't you see the problem there?
Uncle Sugar goes to shoveling out money, the predators and scavengers gather around.
and "free" lawn mowers.
You do realize that VSP is a private company and has nothing to do with ACA.
Inga said...
"Oh yes and don't forget to drug test welfare recipients too."
Agreed, this sounds like a bad idea.
You do realize that VSP is a private company and has nothing to do with ACA.
Bingo! VSP decided on its own accord to subsidize google glass; the government didn't come in and say, "Google glass is a human right!"
John Lynch said...
I was just looking at Google Glass this morning. I wanted something that could run my apps hands-free while driving.
This will not end well.
Inga said...
Oh yes and don't forget to drug test welfare recipients too. Who was that guy who suggested that?
You take the kings shilling.................
What did I say at the start of the ACA? Too many companies will be lobbying to get their products included in the mandatory coverage. Combine with lobbying from the people paying for it not to have their rates go nuts, and the long-range financial viability of the plan is nothing.
Pointing out the obvious, but that is what Crony Capitalism is all about, something that this Administration, following several famous ones in the 1930s, seems esp. enamored with.
"Why is it the business of government to decide who has children?"
Why is it the business of government to pay for children?
What is "child protective services," and why is the government running it?
"Free birth control is an incentive to do something that saves the group money."
Except it doesn't save the group money in the long run. We need to have children. The economy grows with population. Sure it saves money in the short term, but in the long term it costs more because there is no productivity.
That is strange considering VSP won't even cover regular thin lens eyeglasses.
Since VSP. Is so freaking tight on regular coverage, they must be being heavily subsidized by Google for this. Perhaps it is just a promotion in disguise.
Birth control isn't free.
I'm waiting for the travel industry to make the case that vacations are a preventive health measure so I can get medicare to pay for a cruise.
"Free birth control is an incentive to do something that saves the group money."
Let's follow that reasoning; what is it that 'saves the group money'? Why does that 'save the group money'? Wouldn't there also be other things that 'save the group money'?
Since birth control is now 'free', isn't it the woman's fault for getting pregnant? There is now no excuse for not using birth control...and if she's too stupid to do that, just get an abortion. That's free, right? Save us - the group - money in the long run. And if she is such a stupid 'c' that she has the baby, perhaps we should consider some kind of euthanasia - to save us money, of course, 'cos babies are expensive.
But to the point in question, while it is a minority that 'benefit' of instant Glass information today, once the majority (those with disposable income) have such devices, it then becomes a 'right' because a certain segment are deprived and are at a disadvantage - just like having the internets. Soooo deprived of their human rights.
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