No one here is going to ask about the possible health concerns? I'm sure this won't do much to you over a couple of goes, but what about regular travelers, what does it actually use? Surely not actual xrays?

i was thinking about this today while i was leaving the medical school. im a simulated patient for first year med students and physician assistant students.

one of the complaints i hear alot (and im not sure if this even coming from an actual source or someones imagination) is that we do not and will not have enough to dr's to care for everyone if everyone has coverage. i think this is a flimsy argument anyway. if there is a shortage of MD's then we could and should try to do something about that.

anyhow my thought was along the lines of this:
improve and expand the community and teaching hospitals. open them up for all health professions to do their clinical training there. in all allied health fields you go through at least 2 years of clinicals, most times at a private hospital where you serve as free labor in exchange for the experience. so why not increase the number of learning facilities/community teaching hospitals? train everyone there from doctors to phsyical therapists to nurses to xray techs to lab techs the list goes on and on and on and on. and instead of these students providing free labor to private hospitals, they can provide free labor to the community? i know county hospitals already function as teaching hospitals in some capacity. i live in the largest county in texas. we have 1 county hospital. they still have dr's doing their residencies there, 15 years ago they had a nursing school and an xray school also but lost the funding for it. i dont think funding education to train more medical science professionals would be terribly controversial (i could be wrong). the community college that trains the majority of nurses here already gets tons of federal and state funds. noone is complaining.

you could have outpatient clinics, inpatient care, urgent care, emergency rooms, life flight, trauma center, mental health facilities all the things you already need but they would be funded more like colleges and alot of the labor provided by students. of course you would need licensed experienced professionals on staff. and maybe they could serve as teachers.... in my clinical experience we had 2 teachers to a group of about 10 xray students serving a hospital in a town smack in the middle of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex (HUGE).

these hospitals would provide care for the uninsured with copays on a sliding scale. funded by tuition fees, state and federal education funds, and the tax dollars that are already being spent on these county hospitals (i believe in most counties the funds come from your sales tax $$, texas is a regressive tax state so the poor are already paying the majority of the taxes from the sources that fund community health initiatives anyway)

i know these places already exist but in my experience they are limited in number and overcrowded and underfunded. i dont think most of them train anything but doctors.

in my head the idea is to pretty much attach a community health center of some size and capacity to every school that offers allied health degrees and bring new dr's to do their residencies here or even practice for a year or 2 in exchange for forgiving some student loans. a smaller college would have a smaller clinic, bigger colleges get a hospital. the care provided is affordable to everyone. and the for profit health care industry gets some competition. and as far as "i dont want to be worked on by students" well.... heres some news, if there is a college offering an allied health degree in your area and you ever go to the hospital during the daytime hours there is a really really good chance that your care is already being manned by students. students are not allowed to work with the public until they have many hours of instruction, passed a background check and drug screen, had a round of almost every vaccine imaginable and proved themselves worthy to be accepted into these now highly competitive programs. and are covered by some hefty liability insurance. and they are always supervised by a licensed professional. there is always a teacher nearby. the more critical your condition, the closer the licensed professionals are.

0:43 i used to work in special procedures, the xray part of placing stents and catheters and what nots, think angiograms... that stent he was shoving into the femoral artery... those can run around $12,000. and they have an arbitrary expiration date. are they REALLY expired? no, but you can't use them because it says theyre expired. so... in one spring cleaning inventory sweep i had to throw out $75,000 worth of angio supplies.

after that i found a guy who picks up "expired" medical supplies and ships them to cuba.

meh.
seriously, meh as far as improvement from 2.0 goes (not that the engine isn't all good and gorgeous).

And btw, global illumination was already included in the XRay engine that powered 2007's STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl (released half a year before the 1st Crysis game) - the option wasn't on by default even on the highest of the default graphics settings and was only accessible via console though, because the devs thought (rightly so) that even most hi-end pcs would struggle with it. I know this because the STALKER TweakGuide wrote about it. I'm pretty sure the second STALKER game Clear Sky had the option enabled on higher graphics settings though.

Bottom line is, overall CryEngine 3.0 will probably still be 2.0 dumbed down for the consoles Apparently we're just going to have to wait for 4.0 for ACTUAL improvements.

p.s. blankman, get crysis warhead (some 30% optimized compared to 1st game) and take a look at the TweakGuides page and/or google for custom settings .ini files - even my 2006 crappy PC could run it on high @ some ~20FPS.

hi my name is bea youre kind of cute and i have to work with you so..... i like the smell of cold piss and did you see this awesome bra i made out of surgical masks, oh hi there im just riding this xray machine like a horny pirate wench.... are you trying to caress my ass with that part? ooh ooops i mean caress the glass with that chart.. hehe... doh!

awwwwkkkkwwwwaaarrrrdddd

hahaha thats fucking epic! a friend of mine called me on sunday to ask if i had sent that secret in.

one time i was doing a kidney/bladder study on a 16 yr old boy with a hard-on and his mom would not quit asking me what EVERYTHING was. it was embarrassing. probably more so for him.

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_a7jkcMVp5Vg/SaoQ9kUB-3I/AAAAAAAAIPM/V_a0Qi8N02c/s1600-h/xray.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_a7jkcMVp5Vg/SaoQ9kUB-3I/AAAAAAAAIPM/V_a0Qi8N02c/s1600-h/xray.jpg

im an xray tech, youd be shocked to know how often this sort of thing requires medical attention... oh... stories....

This has been brought to reality thanks to xrays and other similiar tech. See http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Antikythera-mechanism-the-world-s-oldest-computer

Public hospital in Lithuania is not as bad as you might think. My doctor worked 3 low paid jobs instead of emigrating, out of patriotism and compassion. He spoke english and fixed my collapsed lung. I was in a bed there for 10 days with many xrays. Thank fuck I only have to pay "high taxes" here instead of paying a sudden lump sum of thousands of dollars which I do not have.

As the previous customer said, "shopping around" when you have a collapsed lung is ridiculous. I just told the taxi driver to go to the nearest hospital because I thought I was dying. Libertarian fantasies go too far.

We can "shop around" for mobile phones but who isn't being screwed by their mobile phone operator? Anyone want to try to get a good deal on a bank account?

I can't see why you would give someone a financial incentive NOT to treat you, while also giving someone else a financial incentive TO treat you, and then you call it a good efficient system.

living in america must suck because i can go to the doctor anytime i want in canada for free. i resently got a xray of my sinus and that would cost maybe $500 in america.