sorry for hitting a nerve, was most definitely a joke. (take some shots too turd, i have thick skin)

but since you are a big fan despite being healthy; what makes the croissant so good? big fan of a nice lox bagel but something like that never sounded good to me at all

All I know for sure is a March Madness trip lined up with friends. I don't really care about basketball these days but meh Vegas. Of course I'll be there.

I'd like to get in another trip between now and then, just haven't arranged it yet.

It's really buttery and flaky, like a good croissant you'd get in France.

Appreciate all the time you spend to entertain us with your trip reports.

I know the smart thing for me would be to continue to live vicariously through your TRs and just stick to poker on my Vegas trips. But if I had a 5k trip roll, what games and stakes would you advise on for video poker? Better to stick to .25$ credits and play 3/5/10 machines or go .50 or $1 credits and play single line game or maybe 3 line game? With just 5k stay away from spin or ultimate X all together?

Not enough info. How long is your trip? How much are you willing to donk off to VP?

In general, you're not going to find decent paytables on the strip at all, certainly not for 25c.

Then, you need to decide the game- slow and steady like JOB or a roller coaster like TDB? Personally I think JOB is like watching paint dry and I'm there for fun- I would never play it. Short of hitting a royal I literally don't care if I make a hand or not.

Single line vs multiline is another decision point- multiline decreases variance for same coin in. More hits more often, at a smaller % of your overall bet.

Lastly, the variants of the game basically all add to the variance (and for some, the fun).

As an example, 5k for single line 1$ credit should be plenty, you'll probably die of boredom before you busto that. I've had many trips in the past where I played mostly 5 line, 1$ credit and didn't play as much where 5k was enough.

You know, every time you guys ask Leon a run of the mill VP question you’re taking away time he could be meeting with patients...











:P

Nate-stop it, we’ll have another one of the MD’s in here telling us how hard life is

Fake doctors running rampant itt

Not sure if you've got your heart set on TDB, but my main game is 7/5 bonus UX, and you'd have to run REALLY bad to dump $5K over a few days on quarters. My worst session ever at that denom was around -1500.

But like Leon said, you'll only find the short pay version on the strip, so not sure how much that affects your variance.

Shame me for playing JoB Leon.

Beverage request on the machine is pretty sweet.

At least you didn’t really torture yourself by seeing what you would have gotten, if you drew for kickers


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In super double double that IS a kicker for 1600 and it's 3200 in super double double super triple play.

facepalm.jpg

Yes, please do.

I'm exasperated by government bureaucracy & disgusted to see it takeover the healthcare industry which I just have a hard time seeing any good come from. I'd love to hear more on your perspective from the inside.

PS. I always make my doctors appointment the very first one in the day yet I still end up waiting, I suppose emergencies happen even before the very first appointment pushing everything back.

PSS… Love your trip reports, thank you for taking the time share & continued good luck

I'm a Libertarian. To me, we have strayed so far from what the founding fathers originally intended with the Constitution- to protect the PEOPLE from a tyrannical government. In my ideal world, the government does the bare minimum to maintain a functional society, then leaves us the hell alone. So let's start there.

I cannot think of a single thing government can do as well as private industry. Additionally, I do not believe government is some altruistic force that will do right for the people, while private industry is some evil, heartless enterprise that only looks out for itself. The fact is, BOTH are heartless enterprises. So the less government in health care, the better.

However, the main issue with the American health care system is we want the best, we want it now, and we want it for free. That's simply not possible. One of my mentors once said "cheap, fast, good. You can pick two". That pretty much sums it up. Everyone wants the best of the best, but they balk at the price. Or they aren't willing to wait. Etc. Basically no one is willing to practice preventative self-care which would fix 99% of chronic disease (heart dz, diabetes, obesity). Eating right and exercising would eliminate virtually all of these problems, but most people aren't willing to take accountability. So we've set up a system of false expectations all around and no one is willing to budge an inch.

The fact is we've ALWAYS been paying for it, we just don't realize it. Employer-provided health insurance is a relatively new thing and was a way to sweeten the pot for employees. But SOMEONE was paying that cost- in this case, the employers. They've had enough and I don't blame them. Government-funded health care simply means "citizen funded health care"- our tax dollars will go up and we pay more, and have the inefficient government waste the money to boot. Or we cut funding to hospitals, doctors, etc and stifle innovation. That's a good one.

I don't see a solution bc the quite frankly the big players in the game make the rules. Theoretically if insurance companies were non-profit and functioned as originally intended (a theoretical pot of money to which we all contribute and pool risk/resources), we'd probably be able to cover a ton of people. But who's got the money, and therefore can buy the politicians? The insurance companies.

Honestly I think medicine as we know it will be dead in this country in a generation. Hopefully I'll have banked enough to retire by then and then I'm out. I can't see things changing for the better- already by most metrics we have the worst health and worst health care of any developed nation.

I don't want to derail your great thread, but I found this interesting:

Wondering what you mean by that. Obviously, people will still need health care, so not in that sense, but do you see a radical change coming? More like the rest of the developed world, or something else?

Please feel free to ignore this and end the derail, too.

Outside of the health care discussion, thanks again for the great stories.

I love Vegas but that’s one of the reasons I would never live in the US. Living in a small country makes you really appreciate free and excellent healthcare with practically 0 waiting time.


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lol, you're my brother from another mother, you've pretty much mirrored my take in almost every regard, even down to the phrase:

"cheap, fast, good. You can pick two"

which I just used this morning with someone and have repeated for years to potential clients ( I was a home builder and would use that phrase to explain the process and attempt to manage expectations)

I would say government is heartless and business is to a degree but at least in order for a business to survive and thrive, it MUST attend to the needs of others first and foremost and do it as good or better than their competition. Fail to do that and their demise is inevitable.

Whereas the government just grows and grows and grows without any real pressure to control spending. Why the hell are we funding a post office that runs a multi-billion dollar deficit annually which as far as I can tell, doesn't currently do much more than deliver junk mail?

Sad thing is our perspective on these issues appear to be an outlier, while the masses are clamoring for more government intervention daily, without seemingly any understanding of how poorly government does things and how underfunded they are to address their current obligations which has lead to the massive amount of debt the government already holds, which, in my estimation, will eventually cause a crash of epic proportions.

Its depressing to think about; I don't think there is any way to fix things even if a miracle were to occur and the nation at large was willing to make the kind of changes and sacrifices necessary. Sadly, we in the US dont seem to be willing to fix anything until its broken and even then, there is resistance to change. I'm sure you see it all the time with patients who only get serious (for a while) about diet and exercise after they've had their first heart attack.

If I could be king/dictator of the US for a day, month or year, the first thing I'd do is mount on the wall of every government agency a mission statement that read:

"We seek our our demise due to lack of necessity"

Then term limits, etc, etc, etc

Hopefully a technological miracle, Hail Mary comes out of no where to cut off the reckoning I fear is headed our way.

I'll shut up, sorry folks for the diversion.

A lot to unpack here. First off everything the US government is not destroyed. People like to over generalize on this point. https://www.theacsi.org/news-and-res...nt-report-2017

Secondly, if the government did the "bare minimum" as you put it, we'd have no minimum wage, children working in factories, and raw waste coming out of factories. That is just for starters. In your mind, a country with fewer laws and regulations would be a libertarian utopia. But in reality it would be a society nobody would want to live in and actually a complete nightmare. If left unchecked, some people will do ANYTHING to make a dollar, whether it hurts or kills people. So that's why the libertarian ideal is and always will be, a complete failure. You act as if people will automatically look out for the other guy. Maybe YOU would. But that is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of how most people act in a pure capitalistic society. So that is the exact reason we do need laws. So capitalism doesnt ruin our society.

To your next point about preventive self care. To a point, I'll agree with you. America is full of fat slobs when compared to other first world countries. However, this does not address the fact that no matter how healthy you are, you will get older. Being healthy is great, but eventually just about everyone is going to get sick or have some sort of health issue no matter how healthy you are. So while you somewhat make a point, you really arent addressing the issue of paying for healthcare.

You said "Theoretically if insurance companies were non-profit and functioned as originally intended (a theoretical pot of money to which we all contribute and pool risk/resources), we'd probably be able to cover a ton of people"

That is exactly what a government run health care system is. So you're saying a system like that would work?

You also said "Government-funded health care simply means "citizen funded health care"- our tax dollars will go up and we pay more, and have the inefficient government waste the money to boot."

This is 100% incorrect. Take Canada for example. Their system is run by province. The government owns the hospitals and pays the workers. If you live in Ontario and make less than $20k a year, your healthcare tax is ZERO. It maxes out at ***$900*** a year if you make more than $200k a year. In some cases it's also funded partially by corp taxes and lottery revenue.

Ask ANY other 1st world country about their government run health care system. Sure, they arent perfect. But saying that there is no other better solution out there than what the USA has is just being willfully ignorant or just refusing to face the fact that something run by the government DOES work. Even you say we have the worst system in the 1st world.

What in the hell is wrong with people like you being so against something that we can witness working far better that our system in most other 1st world countries??????

I agree with that for the most part, except for things like the FDA. I trade stocks, so I've seen enough scams, incompetence, and downright crooks in the medical industry to know that it could never police itself.

Or in the current political climate, expect it to be paid for by "someone else", the mythical pool of multi-trillionaires that shouldn't mind their money being confiscated.

There are always outfits like Medi-Share, a religion based cost sharing system. Even my employer's health insurance is just cost sharing. We pay Blue Cross a buttload of money to administer it, but the pool of money is just from the employer and employees.

Well, I'll be dead by then so I guess it doesn't matter much in my case. Ironically, so will most of the Senators, so good luck getting any decent legislation passed.

That's another thing - make Congress submit to any health care legislation that's passed, unlike with Obamacare, and I bet you get a better bill.

"I would say government is heartless and business is to a degree but at least in order for a business to survive and thrive, it MUST attend to the needs of others first and foremost and do it as good or better than their competition. Fail to do that and their demise is inevitable."

This is 100% incorrect. The entire purpose of a corporation is to make money for it's shareholders. That is it's only goal. It is not beholden to "attend to the needs of other first". This is completely laughable. If you work at a company, your job, no matter if you are the CEO or the guy who cleans toilets, is to help make shareholders money. That's it. You dont look out for your customers or even have to do a better job than the competition (at least in the short term).

If what you were saying were correct, why do insurance companies turn down coverage for people they insure?

A privatized postal system leads to people in the backwoods being charged $5 to mail a letter, because it's not cost-effective to service them. Often those people may not have internet access either (because Comcast won't run a line out there, due to $), so I guess they'd be driving to post offices/UPS stores in the future to drop off their outgoing mail. Or dial-up I suppose if they have that.

The government has decided that having a mail service that serves everyone equally is beneficial to the country and I have a hard time seeing the other side of that. It's also why governments bail out airlines, fund roads, etc. The mobility benefits society as a whole.

Not saying there's not things we could do without, but the whole slash and burn/toll road/use tax everything/libertarian crowd .. yeah, I don't think so.

Leon please just go play some video poker somewhere and save this thread

or at least wonka

AIDS.


Look at em come out of the woodworks.

But not before you got your 3 paragraphs in.

Yes, I meant a radical change. Not sure what it'll be, but from the ground it looks like a bunch of administrators and "payors" siphoning money of a system where some bare minimum of care is delivered by mid-level providers. There'll probably be an expansion of "boutique or concierge" services where premium care will be delivered at premium prices, for those who can afford it.

In the interest of not derailing this thread I can't address most of your points. Suffice to say I think you have severely misunderstood what I said. For instance- I said that both government and private business are fundamentally heartless. However, I ALSO said government is inefficient, which I don't think you can refute. You then said, "That is exactly what a government run health care system is. So you're saying a system like that would work?" in response to my comment "Theoretically if insurance companies were non-profit and functioned as originally intended (a theoretical pot of money to which we all contribute and pool risk/resources), we'd probably be able to cover a ton of people".

That conveniently ignores the part where I said government is wasteful and inefficient. In other words, the pot of money available is being cut into in either case- either by insurance companies taking money, or government wasting it. Either is bad.

Your last paragraph is what really tells the tale. Where, exactly, did I say I was so against OTHER systems, as opposed to our own broken one? The majority of what I wrote was actually against our current system. I am against a government run system, that's true. I'm not convinced any other country has it figured out either, nor that a system that works well for one country would work here. But I didn't realize something was "the hell wrong with me" simply bc I don't hold your opinion. All I do is work in healthcare and take care of patients. But yeah, I'm the enemy. And misinformed too, obv.

From here on out I'll do my best to restore this to a thread about VP.