Diamonds are for the near future

This month's Wired has an article on synthetic diamond manufacture which has launched discussion about the soon-to-be-plummetting price of authentic carbon-crystal jewelry. I was talking it over with nellorat and she said that if I was ever going to get her a wedding ring, I'd better move quickly while it was still possible to waste two months' salary on one. I pointed out that if the cheaper of the two methods described in the article (the Apollo Diamond method, which promises to make diamonds for $5 a carat) takes off, I could buy her a diamond bigger than her hand on my current salary.

Now I'm picturing a diamond wheelbarrow.

(Wired link courtesy of TNH's makinglight.)

A tiny number

Avedon linked to an article at the Financial Times about the possible savings if the US switched to a "single-payer" health insurance system.

A single-payer system--which is similar to what Canada has--means that all health insurance is provided by a single entity, in this case the government. The current system in the US, where everyone provides for their own health insurance, is a bureaucratic nightmare, because medical care providers have to submit reimbursement claims to hundreds of different organizations each of which has its own way of doing things. Under a single-payer system, there's one set of forms for all people. (Think of how time-consuming it is to file your taxes. Maybe it's managable; maybe it's tough. Now imagine that you have to file a different tax form for every single transaction you make in your life. That's what the current US health-care system is like for the care providers.)

The FT refers to an upcoming article in the New England Journal of Medicine that estimates that the US could save $200 BILLION per year by switching to a single-payer system. That's about 20% of the total cost of all health care in the US, and about 2% of the GDP of the United States. That's appalling.