Archive for August 4th, 2011

Conservatives more open-minded than liberals … at least when it comes to dating

August 4, 2011

An interesting piece of irony …

According to Match.com insiders ….

… conservatives are more open-minded to dating someone outside their political circle than liberals.

This insight comes from an engineer at Match who works on their algorithm.

He notes that when they started focusing on how users actually behaved versus what they said they wanted, they found some unlikely results:

As a result, Match began “weighting” variables differently, according to how users behaved.

For example, if conservative users were actually looking at profiles of liberals, the algorithm would learn from that and recommend more liberal users to them.

Indeed, “the politics one is quite interesting. Conservatives are far more open to reaching out to someone with a different point of view than a liberal is.”

That is, when it comes to looking for love, conservatives are more open-minded than liberals.

Ken’s Take: Conservatives like to debate the issues … liberals are on the prowl for  reinforcement of their established views.

 

 

Agree?

>> Latest Posts

Bending the Medicare-Medicaid cost curves … upward (again)

August 4, 2011

Dems are adamant: “Don’t touch Medicare & Medicaid”.

And, they were equally adamant that ObamaCare would “bend the cost curve”.

Yep, the cost curve is bending …. unfortunately, in the wrong direction.

According to USA Today … Medicare, Medicaid tab keeps growing

Medicare and Medicaid spending rose 10% in the second quarter from a year earlier to a combined annual rate of almost $992 billion.

The two programs are on track to rise $90 billion in 2011 and crack the $1 trillion milestone for the first time.

The latest spending surge in federal health care is driven by more people getting more treatment, not by price increases.

Health care inflation is at its lowest level in more than a decade — a 1.7% annual rate.

Medicare and Medicaid paid a record 57.5% of patient bills for hospital, doctors, drugs and other care in the last quarter, up from 49.3% in 2005.

image

Ken’s Take:

(1) Good news for Obama: edging closer to single-payer system

(2) No surprise, costs are rising not falling …. did anybody really believe the “bending the cost curve” riff?

(3) Debt deal says that if the super-committee fails to find cuts, doctors’ reimbursement rates will be cut … good luck to Medicare-Medicaid patients trying to find an MD.

>> Latest Posts