The issue is At&t. I think they deserve a court case. There are actual consumer discriminations here.
Even though Apple has said "available late summer" it's not there service, it's there hardware- and the fact that all the other countries around the world have MMS with the iPhone, and many other phones on At&t have MMS capabilities and support, shows that discrimination, either to the device or the end user.
So what if a real "iPhone Killer" was released, I mean something just utterly amazing, and At&t happened to win the exclusivity bid. Would At&t still deny features and services to end users to spare their fragile network?
It is purely this reason why I am fed up with At&t
The following is a copy of an email I received from their customer service after I placed a call and inquiry:
Dear Mr. Ø,
Thank you for taking the time to e-mail AT&T regarding MMS and tethering
with the iPhone 3G S. My name is Deborah Valdez and I am happy to help
you with your inquiry and I'm sorry I was unable to reach you by phone
this afternoon to provide you with additional information.
Mr. Ø, please contact AT&T Customer Care by dialing 611 from
your AT&T Wireless phone, or 1-800-331-0500 from any phone so we may
assist you. Our hours are Mon - Fri 7:00 am to 10:00 pm, Sat 9:00 am to
7:00 pm and we are closed on Sunday.
We regret to hear you may wish to cancel your service, however, service
may be cancelled at any time and a declining Early Termination Fee (ETF)
may apply if the service is cancelled while still under contract. The
ETF of $175 is reduced by $5.00 for each full month completed towards
the service agreement and at this time your ETF would be $140. As
cancellation requests cannot be processed via email, if you wish to
cancel your service, please contact AT&T Customer Care at the number(s)
provided above.
Apparently there still is no update on the matter-
(Click on the "Messages" icon to view the marketing on SMS/MMS.)
Unless the consumer "digs around" they aren't going to see the disclaimer you posted. Again, it's AT&Ts fault that this isn't available yet, but Apple's marketing seem to have designed their web content to avoid drawing any attention to the limitation.
That webpage serves more than just the US. I think it was designed to be universal. In my opinion, it doesn't take a lot of digging to find the disclaimer unless the person still doesn't own a mouse with a scroll wheel. Either way it is there, and it is legible, I hardly see any case against Apple at all.
The feature is available on iPhone OS, the problem is AT&T. Apple should be able to wash its hands clean of this one, if it ever gets to trial. People have right to complain.
American companies always delay technologies that are available worldwide by 2-5 years. We are still paying ridiculous prices for for 1.5MBps internet, while in places like Japan, South Korea and even South Africa have access to 100MBps for less than our miserly service. It is all about greed. We Americans invented internet, yet other countries are inter-stellar away in service. We invented cellular phone, no American company is serious about cellular technology except Apple.
American corporations will pay the CEOs millions of dollars, rather than hire new employees to accomplish work. Greed is the culprit.
It's also an urban legend (as repeated by at least one poster to this thread) that medical malpractice suits have any significant impact on healthcare costs. Study after study has shown that this is false and, in fact, that the single greatest determinant of malpractice insurance rate increases are insurance company losses in financial markets, that they cover by jacking up insurance rates where they can.
Can you provide a reference to further qualify that statement?
Insurance companies make very little money, and often lose money, selling insurance and paying claims. They make money based on the fact that you pay your premium some finite amount of time before they need to use it to pay claims, and they can invest that money during that time. So yeah, if they can't make enough money off investments to cover claims liabilities and expenses, they have to raise premiums because they are required to hold enough money in reserves to pay future claims.
But I'd like to see the studies you are refering to that state investment performance, and not claims expenses, are the single biggest contributor to insurance rates. Keep in mind, that for every malpractice suit that results in a payment to the patient, there are many more that either never make it to court or are won by the defendant. And in all of those cases the insurance company pays the legal bills to defend the doctor. So if these studies are only looking at the actual malpractice awards, they are missing a pretty big chunk of expenses that affect the premium rates.
As a note of reference, from memory from some numbers I've seen in the past. For every dollar a premium a large P&C insurance company takes in, about 25-30 cents goes toward expenses (processing, legal, systems, etc) and about 65-70 cents goes towards paying claims. And some companies actually pay out more in claims and expenses than they take in for premium payments. So that leaves about 5% profit margin plus whatever investment return they can get on that dollar between the time they get it to the time they pay it out. So claims is by far the biggest contributor to insurance premiums.
However, I do agree with your first statement that malpratice suits have a relatively small impact on medical costs. I believe the awards plus the insurance premiums together account for less than 10% of the US's medical costs. So there are bigger fish to fry than either the lawsuits or the insurance companies.
BTW: Many insurance companies lost billions of dollars over the last couple of years due to investment performance. But they didn't raise rates to compensate. In fact, insurance has been a soft market the last several years and rates have been dropping, not raising to offset investment losses.
There's another study out there, that I don't have time to look for right now, that looked at malpractice insurance rates, malpractice settlements and awards, and investment losses by insurance companies and showed that there was no relationship between insurance rates and settlements/awards, but a direct relationship between the money they lost in bad investments and rate hikes. This study looked at the industry over many years.
Which doesn't refute your argument. Yes, they base their rates on losses. It's just that those losses are not from "frivolous" (or even "non-frivolous") awards and settlements. The losses are from bad investment decisions by the insurance companies. Well, that's fine, that's how they do business.
But when they promote a brazen fiction to the public about how rates are going up because of "outlandish" malpractice awards, they are quite simply lying.
EDIT: And since you've gotten me started on the subject of tort reform, I will say this. The law allows people to sue for damages as a way of discouraging behavior that while perhaps not criminally illegal, is at least highly undesirable. This include doctors cutting off the wrong leg and companies manufacturing unsafe products that cause harm to consumers. Of course these companies and doctors (or insurance companies) don't want to have to pay damages for their misconduct, so of course they keep up a steady PR campaign to convince us that "the system is out of control". But there's a really good reason that punitive damages are allowed in these suits (which are often much higher than "real" damages), and an even better reason why there ought not be limits on these damages.
Punitive damages exist so that companies don't just consider harm to the public a cost of doing business. Sure, a death here and there might result in a certain cost due to real damages being awarded, but that cost is quantifiable. So, without punitive damages, or with caps on damages, companies are able to sit back and basically say, "Well, we know that the baby carriage is inherently unsafe, and our engineers tell us that that it will cause 1 death per 500 infants using it. But, if we factor out profits against the possible losses from law suits, we still come out ahead. And, since it'll take us a year to make it safe and cost just as much, and we need good results this quarter, let's just ship it anyway." So causing death and injury becomes just another cost of doing business.
(Many will object that this portrayal of corporate executives is too harsh, that they are not all evil. I would agree that most of them are not. (Some of them probably are, or become so.) They don't necessarily discuss the matter in the terms I outlined. They make all sorts of rationalizations and convince themselves that they aren't really putting the public at risk, and go home and play with their kids at the end of the day. But the end result, regardless, will be as I portrayed it.)
The only way to make causing harm something other than a manageable business cost is to introduce a degree of uncertainty into the equation. With unlimited punitive damages, shipping the unsafe product is always a gamble. It might work out, but it might also put them out of business. They do have a responsibility to the shareholders, so, in most cases, it's not a gamble that's worth taking. So called "tort reform" takes away this degree of uncertainty and encourages companies to engage in business practices that cause public harm.
And no, I'm not a lawyer, nor have I ever sued anyone, and I hope I never need to.
Can you provide a reference to further qualify that statement?
Insurance companies make very little money, and often lose money, selling insurance and paying claims. They make money based on the fact that you pay your premium some finite amount of time before they need to use it to pay claims, and they can invest that money during that time. So yeah, if they can't make enough money off investments to cover claims liabilities and expenses, they have to raise premiums because they are required to hold enough money in reserves to pay future claims.
But I'd like to see the studies you are refering to that state investment performance, and not claims expenses, are the single biggest contributor to insurance rates. Keep in mind, that for every malpractice suit that results in a payment to the patient, there are many more that either never make it to court or are won by the defendant. And in all of those cases the insurance company pays the legal bills to defend the doctor. So if these studies are only looking at the actual malpractice awards, they are missing a pretty big chunk of expenses that affect the premium rates.
As a note of reference, from memory from some numbers I've seen in the past. For every dollar a premium a large P&C insurance company takes in, about 25-30 cents goes toward expenses (processing, legal, systems, etc) and about 65-70 cents goes towards paying claims. And some companies actually pay out more in claims and expenses than they take in for premium payments. So that leaves about 5% profit margin plus whatever investment return they can get on that dollar between the time they get it to the time they pay it out. So claims is by far the biggest contributor to insurance premiums.
However, I do agree with your first statement that malpratice suits have a relatively small impact on medical costs. I believe the awards plus the insurance premiums together account for less than 10% of the US's medical costs. So there are bigger fish to fry than either the lawsuits or the insurance companies.
BTW: Many insurance companies lost billions of dollars over the last couple of years due to investment performance. But they didn't raise rates to compensate. In fact, insurance has been a soft market the last several years and rates have been dropping, not raising to offset investment losses.
Wow! Exactly what planet do you live on? I do not know of a single insurance company, regardless of product line, which has not raised it's rates and payouts due to the current economic conditions. And while I'm at it, did you ever notice that it is fairly common for the largest building in any US city to be the headquarters of an insurance company? 5% profit margin? REALLY? Most large US carriers have long term hedge positions that pay out more than that.
I have friends and other business associates that work in that industry. Trust me when I say they are not hurting at all.
Dont mean to get all technical, but this image shows a iPhone sending a MMS to a fictitious 415 area code (SF). and all the way at the bottom, in very small small font "MMS support from AT&T coming in late summer"
Dont mean to get all technical, but this image shows a iPhone sending a MMS to a fictitious 415 area code (SF). and all the way at the bottom, in very small small font "MMS support from AT&T coming in late summer"
Well, you are paying for each month. You're not getting a discount even though they're not providing one of the advertised features.
Nobody I know of has to pay for the 3.0 OSX update on the iPhone. The touch is a different story but should not qualify to be included in this suit since there is no AT&T agreement and no such marketing that I am aware of.
You ARE NOT being charged for MMS! The plans you get don't even include SMS texting for christ sakes! Can you not read what you're getting when you buy it?
SMS and MMS are NOT the same thing! SMS is for texting, MMS is for sending multimedia messages. That would be like saying a text ichat is the same as a video ichat, both represent chatting so they must be the same!
I'm pretty sure that if I buy the $20 unlimited messaging package and I own a motorola razor I can send mms messages. If I buy the $20 unlimited messaging package and I own an iPhone I cannot send mms messages.
I'd say it's pretty clear that I AM paying for mms and not getting it.
We all knew that it would be a while before att turned it on, so I see no need to bitch, but if you pay for unlimited messaging you are paying for mms, and if you are not able to use mms, then you are paying for something you are not getting.
Wow! Exactly what planet do you live on? I do not know of a single insurance company, regardless of product line, which has not raised it's rates and payouts due to the current economic conditions. And while I'm at it, did you ever notice that it is fairly common for the largest building in any US city to be the headquarters of an insurance company? 5% profit margin? REALLY? Most large US carriers have long term hedge positions that pay out more than that.
I have friends and other business associates that work in that industry. Trust me when I say they are not hurting at all.
If you'd bother to read, the 5% was on insurance operations, not net profits. Most larger carriers have combined ratios in the mid-90's, give or take. Check with your friends in the industry, that means 95 cents of ever dollar of premium they take in is paid out in claims and expenses. And that drives rates more than investment returns, which was the point being discussed.
Insurance companies will have large swings in profits/losses due to the market. Sometimes they make loads of cash, sometimes they lose loads of cash. But their insurance operations (and the combined ratio) are relatively level. That's the service they provide. In exchange for predictable premium payments, they take on the risk of huge swings in injuries, lawsuits, etc as well as market swings which could bankrupt a company if they had a pay out a settlement right when their investments had tanked. (Just like the unfortunate folks who are forced to sell their house in the current real estate meltdown.)
The commercial market (vs personal lines for your auto, homeowners, etc), which includes medical malpractice insurance, is currently in a soft market (but appears to be nearing the end of the soft market). That means rates have been dropped due to competition for market share.
...the market in general remains relatively soft?as both general liability and workers? compensation policies posted average declines in premiums.
?If the gloom of the global recession has a silver lining for risk managers, it is the competitive insurance market,? said Daniel H. Kugler, a member of the RIMS board of directors and assistant treasurer, risk management, at Snap-on Inc.
?The soft market appears to be winding down, but except for increases already taking place in some financial segments, there are no strong signals that rates will rebound sharply in the near future,?
1): MMS works perfectly fine here in New Zealand and other countries so the problem solely lies with AT&T NOT Apple because Apple has not removed the feature from the phones it's AT&T causing the issue.
2): They were TOLD that MMS would not work properly and were told when it would be available and so they have nothing to complain about.
America needs it's judicial system sorted out because it's ludicrous that stupid people should be rewarded for their stupidity.
[quote]MMS support from AT&T coming in late summer.[/quote[
So basically Apple is being sued because someone thinks summer ends in mid august?
Quote:
Send MMS.
Take a photo or shoot some video, then send it via Messages. You can also send audio recordings from Voice Memos, contact information from Contacts, and locations from Maps.
Does MMS for all phones offer these later functions? Perhaps the delay is simply AT&T building a way to deliver something reasonable to other phones if an iPhone sends an MMS that is a contact or map location?
Well, you are paying for each month. You're not getting a discount even though they're not providing one of the advertised features.
the trouble with that notion is that you aren't paying any more than you would have prior to 3.0. texting costs have stayed the same. if they had gone up, like how the data plans went up regardless of 3g performance in your area, you'd have something to go on
also, the phone itself can do MMS. the lack is all on ATT. so hitting ATT is not something bad in my opinion. because it seems a lot like they are just taking their time and in fact, they could turn it on at any time.
as for the false advertising claims, Apple has been up front about MMS not being on out of the box in their public statements. now if a few random sales staff are not up to speed . . .
Also, why limit this to just a handful of folks. is it not all the folks with a 3gs (which came with 3.0 out of the box) for sure that are affected. one could argue all iphone owners since any phone can be upgraded to said software
I say cut Apple out of this mess cause the phone can MMS if it is on 3.0. Hit ATT with an order to get their acts together. turn on MMS. as a fine for having not done it, they must refund all text charges from June on for all iphones with a text message plan (any level).and from judgment date to whenever they get MMS turned on, all iphone owners get free unlimited texting. and bar ATT from uping the rate plans for MMS given that they don't have different plans for such on any other phones. that ought to sting them
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse
Consumer goes to Apple store to purchase iPhone. Purchase is made from Apple employee using handheld POS device and no mention of this limitation is made by Apple employee.
so perhaps the employees need a list of talking points, to include that the douches at ATT haven't turned on MMS in the US. they can follow up with a string of points about accidental damage, jailbreaking etc. just to be sure that everyone understands that you can't come screaming if you drop your phone, your dog pees on it, you decide to hack it etc and the phone breaks.
I heard a "rumor" why MMS was pulled after beta 3 I believe it was. Remember when people found out that you could take the beta 3.0 and swap sim cards with another NON Iphone phone that had MMS, send an MMS then slip it back into your iphone, then MMS worked? Well AT&T caught on to this and wrote a program that sent out a kill switch to EVERYONE with an iPhone. When it got closer to release date, they realized that it was harder to UNDO the kill switch. So AT&T is to blame for the reason MMS isnt active today. Of course this is from an AT&T REP, so take it with a grain of salt.
I'm pretty sure that if I buy the $20 unlimited messaging package and I own a motorola razor I can send mms messages. If I buy the $20 unlimited messaging package and I own an iPhone I cannot send mms messages.
I'd say it's pretty clear that I AM paying for mms and not getting it.
We all knew that it would be a while before att turned it on, so I see no need to bitch, but if you pay for unlimited messaging you are paying for mms, and if you are not able to use mms, then you are paying for something you are not getting.
Except you aren't paying anymore than you were before iPhone 3.0 OS (assuming you had an iPhone before June). So if you owned a previous iPhone you were also paying for MMS and not getting it? Also, does the texting plan say MMS on it? If not, then its a service you are NOT paying for!
But, since we have Smart Phones how are those SMS + MMS better than email, which is much more widely used, and is more flexible!?!
Can SMS + MMS messages be offloaded to computer, and shared as easily as email?
iChat, on iPhone or any other device, during a meeting etc. - that might be easier than email, but a Chat via SMS + MMS, that seems less practical, to me, particularly if a "thread" can't be archived on the computer and easily shared various ways!
A friend once told me that his kids were using SMS, so that they don't eat up Cell Phone minutes! Let's say same goes for MMS. But, that's for kids, who don't care about archiving, and they are mostly on the run! Adults need more industrial strength tools, particularly when doing business, right? The exceptions could be: "Honey, please grab some milk on the way home!" which might not require archiving, unless one needs an alibi!
Can't wait for someone to explain that SMS+MMS vs.Email advantage to me!
TIA!!!!
Here is the advantage... Not everyone lives in a big city with 3G and an expensive smart phone. In fact only my friends around my age even have iPhones and I had to nag the crap out of them to persuade them to get one after I did (Now they enjoy them) however most of my friends use hotmail for thier email accounts and don't even bother setting up a "real" email account to use with thier iPhone, and the ones that have dont have push notifications for email so they never even notice when I send them something unless I text them right after I send it... So why not just use MMS in the first place.
They will get MMS nearly immediately (I know AT&T sucks so it takes a while sometimes, but that goes for plain texts too) but then they can see the pic I sent, and the message with it, and reply directly, and with copy/paste they can take the image from there and do what they want with it. How are MORE OPTIONS for sending/recieving a bad idea? Not to mention as has been stated numerous times before MMS was on like EVERY phone BUT the iPhone, which means when AT&T finally supports it, you can use your "SMARTphone" to send pictures to the crappy phones who nobody bothers to add thier email accounts to even if they do already have an account.
I live in a rural area, though most places have cell service its all EDGE, and almost NOBODY uses email on thier phones, everyone I work with sends messages all day long via MMS though. It would be nice to participate. Just keep in mind, though you and the people around you may be perfectly content with email, the world does not revolve around you, and other areas may prefer, or even need MMS as an alternative. Sure if everyone purchased the $99 MobileMe account and set up email on thier iPhones, we really wouldn't need MMS, but until apple drops the $99 charge, thats not going to happen. (I am the only person I know in my area who is subscribed to MobileMe)
In short: Many people use crappy phones, but those phones already have the ability to view MMS messages, and though some also support email, nobody likes to set up extra stuff like that on a crappy phone, or much less set up extra stuff in the first place. Heck older people dont even know what IMAP or SMTP is...
Email is great but most non smart phones dont handle email all that well. Additionally in order to send a quick photo to all you friends ho have smart phones, I would need to have their phone numbers and email information which isnt a big deal but MMS is standard way sending pictures when it comes to phones, so why wouldnt an advanced phone support this standard. And what i dont get is how can ATT say they are concerned about increased data traffic from MMS when every other non iphone can send picture messages.
But you can email to the phone number, and they can reply to your email via SMS or MMS. All of my contacts do this, from Verizon to Sprint. It's no big deal, I use email all the time to the phone number. I do pay for 200 SMS a month, just in case people screw it up and text me, but since I've had the phone so long I'm debating whether it's worth it or not anymore.
To give you an example, I email my wife's phone one of two ways:
These are stored in my phone as mobile numbers, and when I start typing the contact into the email field, it pulls up the list, I pick which email to send to, and send. Not that tough, I have push through mobile me and everything works fine, despite AT&T.
She just replies, or enters an email address into her phone and sends it. This has been working since I had a Palm Treo 650. It worked on my Windows6 phone as well, although those phones sucked, even on Verizon (who I left for the iPhone.)
Comments
Even though Apple has said "available late summer" it's not there service, it's there hardware- and the fact that all the other countries around the world have MMS with the iPhone, and many other phones on At&t have MMS capabilities and support, shows that discrimination, either to the device or the end user.
So what if a real "iPhone Killer" was released, I mean something just utterly amazing, and At&t happened to win the exclusivity bid. Would At&t still deny features and services to end users to spare their fragile network?
It is purely this reason why I am fed up with At&t
The following is a copy of an email I received from their customer service after I placed a call and inquiry:
Dear Mr. Ø,
Thank you for taking the time to e-mail AT&T regarding MMS and tethering
with the iPhone 3G S. My name is Deborah Valdez and I am happy to help
you with your inquiry and I'm sorry I was unable to reach you by phone
this afternoon to provide you with additional information.
Mr. Ø, please contact AT&T Customer Care by dialing 611 from
your AT&T Wireless phone, or 1-800-331-0500 from any phone so we may
assist you. Our hours are Mon - Fri 7:00 am to 10:00 pm, Sat 9:00 am to
7:00 pm and we are closed on Sunday.
We regret to hear you may wish to cancel your service, however, service
may be cancelled at any time and a declining Early Termination Fee (ETF)
may apply if the service is cancelled while still under contract. The
ETF of $175 is reduced by $5.00 for each full month completed towards
the service agreement and at this time your ETF would be $140. As
cancellation requests cannot be processed via email, if you wish to
cancel your service, please contact AT&T Customer Care at the number(s)
provided above.
Apparently there still is no update on the matter-
At&t you fail.
I don't think it does. This is what most consumers will see:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/
(Click on the "Messages" icon to view the marketing on SMS/MMS.)
Unless the consumer "digs around" they aren't going to see the disclaimer you posted. Again, it's AT&Ts fault that this isn't available yet, but Apple's marketing seem to have designed their web content to avoid drawing any attention to the limitation.
That webpage serves more than just the US. I think it was designed to be universal. In my opinion, it doesn't take a lot of digging to find the disclaimer unless the person still doesn't own a mouse with a scroll wheel. Either way it is there, and it is legible, I hardly see any case against Apple at all.
American companies always delay technologies that are available worldwide by 2-5 years. We are still paying ridiculous prices for for 1.5MBps internet, while in places like Japan, South Korea and even South Africa have access to 100MBps for less than our miserly service. It is all about greed. We Americans invented internet, yet other countries are inter-stellar away in service. We invented cellular phone, no American company is serious about cellular technology except Apple.
American corporations will pay the CEOs millions of dollars, rather than hire new employees to accomplish work. Greed is the culprit.
It's also an urban legend (as repeated by at least one poster to this thread) that medical malpractice suits have any significant impact on healthcare costs. Study after study has shown that this is false and, in fact, that the single greatest determinant of malpractice insurance rate increases are insurance company losses in financial markets, that they cover by jacking up insurance rates where they can.
Can you provide a reference to further qualify that statement?
Insurance companies make very little money, and often lose money, selling insurance and paying claims. They make money based on the fact that you pay your premium some finite amount of time before they need to use it to pay claims, and they can invest that money during that time. So yeah, if they can't make enough money off investments to cover claims liabilities and expenses, they have to raise premiums because they are required to hold enough money in reserves to pay future claims.
But I'd like to see the studies you are refering to that state investment performance, and not claims expenses, are the single biggest contributor to insurance rates. Keep in mind, that for every malpractice suit that results in a payment to the patient, there are many more that either never make it to court or are won by the defendant. And in all of those cases the insurance company pays the legal bills to defend the doctor. So if these studies are only looking at the actual malpractice awards, they are missing a pretty big chunk of expenses that affect the premium rates.
As a note of reference, from memory from some numbers I've seen in the past. For every dollar a premium a large P&C insurance company takes in, about 25-30 cents goes toward expenses (processing, legal, systems, etc) and about 65-70 cents goes towards paying claims. And some companies actually pay out more in claims and expenses than they take in for premium payments. So that leaves about 5% profit margin plus whatever investment return they can get on that dollar between the time they get it to the time they pay it out. So claims is by far the biggest contributor to insurance premiums.
However, I do agree with your first statement that malpratice suits have a relatively small impact on medical costs. I believe the awards plus the insurance premiums together account for less than 10% of the US's medical costs. So there are bigger fish to fry than either the lawsuits or the insurance companies.
BTW: Many insurance companies lost billions of dollars over the last couple of years due to investment performance. But they didn't raise rates to compensate. In fact, insurance has been a soft market the last several years and rates have been dropping, not raising to offset investment losses.
Can you provide a reference to further qualify that statement?
Well, I don't usually save these things, read over many years, but a quick search pulls up this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/bu.../07insure.html
There's another study out there, that I don't have time to look for right now, that looked at malpractice insurance rates, malpractice settlements and awards, and investment losses by insurance companies and showed that there was no relationship between insurance rates and settlements/awards, but a direct relationship between the money they lost in bad investments and rate hikes. This study looked at the industry over many years.
Which doesn't refute your argument. Yes, they base their rates on losses. It's just that those losses are not from "frivolous" (or even "non-frivolous") awards and settlements. The losses are from bad investment decisions by the insurance companies. Well, that's fine, that's how they do business.
But when they promote a brazen fiction to the public about how rates are going up because of "outlandish" malpractice awards, they are quite simply lying.
EDIT: And since you've gotten me started on the subject of tort reform, I will say this. The law allows people to sue for damages as a way of discouraging behavior that while perhaps not criminally illegal, is at least highly undesirable. This include doctors cutting off the wrong leg and companies manufacturing unsafe products that cause harm to consumers. Of course these companies and doctors (or insurance companies) don't want to have to pay damages for their misconduct, so of course they keep up a steady PR campaign to convince us that "the system is out of control". But there's a really good reason that punitive damages are allowed in these suits (which are often much higher than "real" damages), and an even better reason why there ought not be limits on these damages.
Punitive damages exist so that companies don't just consider harm to the public a cost of doing business. Sure, a death here and there might result in a certain cost due to real damages being awarded, but that cost is quantifiable. So, without punitive damages, or with caps on damages, companies are able to sit back and basically say, "Well, we know that the baby carriage is inherently unsafe, and our engineers tell us that that it will cause 1 death per 500 infants using it. But, if we factor out profits against the possible losses from law suits, we still come out ahead. And, since it'll take us a year to make it safe and cost just as much, and we need good results this quarter, let's just ship it anyway." So causing death and injury becomes just another cost of doing business.
(Many will object that this portrayal of corporate executives is too harsh, that they are not all evil. I would agree that most of them are not. (Some of them probably are, or become so.) They don't necessarily discuss the matter in the terms I outlined. They make all sorts of rationalizations and convince themselves that they aren't really putting the public at risk, and go home and play with their kids at the end of the day. But the end result, regardless, will be as I portrayed it.)
The only way to make causing harm something other than a manageable business cost is to introduce a degree of uncertainty into the equation. With unlimited punitive damages, shipping the unsafe product is always a gamble. It might work out, but it might also put them out of business. They do have a responsibility to the shareholders, so, in most cases, it's not a gamble that's worth taking. So called "tort reform" takes away this degree of uncertainty and encourages companies to engage in business practices that cause public harm.
And no, I'm not a lawyer, nor have I ever sued anyone, and I hope I never need to.
Can you provide a reference to further qualify that statement?
Insurance companies make very little money, and often lose money, selling insurance and paying claims. They make money based on the fact that you pay your premium some finite amount of time before they need to use it to pay claims, and they can invest that money during that time. So yeah, if they can't make enough money off investments to cover claims liabilities and expenses, they have to raise premiums because they are required to hold enough money in reserves to pay future claims.
But I'd like to see the studies you are refering to that state investment performance, and not claims expenses, are the single biggest contributor to insurance rates. Keep in mind, that for every malpractice suit that results in a payment to the patient, there are many more that either never make it to court or are won by the defendant. And in all of those cases the insurance company pays the legal bills to defend the doctor. So if these studies are only looking at the actual malpractice awards, they are missing a pretty big chunk of expenses that affect the premium rates.
As a note of reference, from memory from some numbers I've seen in the past. For every dollar a premium a large P&C insurance company takes in, about 25-30 cents goes toward expenses (processing, legal, systems, etc) and about 65-70 cents goes towards paying claims. And some companies actually pay out more in claims and expenses than they take in for premium payments. So that leaves about 5% profit margin plus whatever investment return they can get on that dollar between the time they get it to the time they pay it out. So claims is by far the biggest contributor to insurance premiums.
However, I do agree with your first statement that malpratice suits have a relatively small impact on medical costs. I believe the awards plus the insurance premiums together account for less than 10% of the US's medical costs. So there are bigger fish to fry than either the lawsuits or the insurance companies.
BTW: Many insurance companies lost billions of dollars over the last couple of years due to investment performance. But they didn't raise rates to compensate. In fact, insurance has been a soft market the last several years and rates have been dropping, not raising to offset investment losses.
Wow! Exactly what planet do you live on? I do not know of a single insurance company, regardless of product line, which has not raised it's rates and payouts due to the current economic conditions. And while I'm at it, did you ever notice that it is fairly common for the largest building in any US city to be the headquarters of an insurance company? 5% profit margin? REALLY? Most large US carriers have long term hedge positions that pay out more than that.
I have friends and other business associates that work in that industry. Trust me when I say they are not hurting at all.
http://images.apple.com/iphone/home/...7-20090608.jpg
We will get MMS when ever ATT opens the floodgates. Until then, just send a email.
Dont mean to get all technical, but this image shows a iPhone sending a MMS to a fictitious 415 area code (SF). and all the way at the bottom, in very small small font "MMS support from AT&T coming in late summer"
http://images.apple.com/iphone/home/...7-20090608.jpg
Well, not to get all technical back at you, but those words aren't part of the image.
Well, you are paying for each month. You're not getting a discount even though they're not providing one of the advertised features.
Nobody I know of has to pay for the 3.0 OSX update on the iPhone. The touch is a different story but should not qualify to be included in this suit since there is no AT&T agreement and no such marketing that I am aware of.
I'm SURE someone will CORRECT me if I have erred.
You ARE NOT being charged for MMS! The plans you get don't even include SMS texting for christ sakes! Can you not read what you're getting when you buy it?
SMS and MMS are NOT the same thing! SMS is for texting, MMS is for sending multimedia messages. That would be like saying a text ichat is the same as a video ichat, both represent chatting so they must be the same!
I'm pretty sure that if I buy the $20 unlimited messaging package and I own a motorola razor I can send mms messages. If I buy the $20 unlimited messaging package and I own an iPhone I cannot send mms messages.
I'd say it's pretty clear that I AM paying for mms and not getting it.
We all knew that it would be a while before att turned it on, so I see no need to bitch, but if you pay for unlimited messaging you are paying for mms, and if you are not able to use mms, then you are paying for something you are not getting.
Wow! Exactly what planet do you live on? I do not know of a single insurance company, regardless of product line, which has not raised it's rates and payouts due to the current economic conditions. And while I'm at it, did you ever notice that it is fairly common for the largest building in any US city to be the headquarters of an insurance company? 5% profit margin? REALLY? Most large US carriers have long term hedge positions that pay out more than that.
I have friends and other business associates that work in that industry. Trust me when I say they are not hurting at all.
If you'd bother to read, the 5% was on insurance operations, not net profits. Most larger carriers have combined ratios in the mid-90's, give or take. Check with your friends in the industry, that means 95 cents of ever dollar of premium they take in is paid out in claims and expenses. And that drives rates more than investment returns, which was the point being discussed.
Insurance companies will have large swings in profits/losses due to the market. Sometimes they make loads of cash, sometimes they lose loads of cash. But their insurance operations (and the combined ratio) are relatively level. That's the service they provide. In exchange for predictable premium payments, they take on the risk of huge swings in injuries, lawsuits, etc as well as market swings which could bankrupt a company if they had a pay out a settlement right when their investments had tanked. (Just like the unfortunate folks who are forced to sell their house in the current real estate meltdown.)
The commercial market (vs personal lines for your auto, homeowners, etc), which includes medical malpractice insurance, is currently in a soft market (but appears to be nearing the end of the soft market). That means rates have been dropped due to competition for market share.
http://www.property-casualty.com/Iss...Has-Begun.aspx
...the market in general remains relatively soft?as both general liability and workers? compensation policies posted average declines in premiums.
?If the gloom of the global recession has a silver lining for risk managers, it is the competitive insurance market,? said Daniel H. Kugler, a member of the RIMS board of directors and assistant treasurer, risk management, at Snap-on Inc.
?The soft market appears to be winding down, but except for increases already taking place in some financial segments, there are no strong signals that rates will rebound sharply in the near future,?
2): They were TOLD that MMS would not work properly and were told when it would be available and so they have nothing to complain about.
America needs it's judicial system sorted out because it's ludicrous that stupid people should be rewarded for their stupidity.
[quote]MMS support from AT&T coming in late summer.[/quote[
So basically Apple is being sued because someone thinks summer ends in mid august?
Send MMS.
Take a photo or shoot some video, then send it via Messages. You can also send audio recordings from Voice Memos, contact information from Contacts, and locations from Maps.
Does MMS for all phones offer these later functions? Perhaps the delay is simply AT&T building a way to deliver something reasonable to other phones if an iPhone sends an MMS that is a contact or map location?
Well, you are paying for each month. You're not getting a discount even though they're not providing one of the advertised features.
the trouble with that notion is that you aren't paying any more than you would have prior to 3.0. texting costs have stayed the same. if they had gone up, like how the data plans went up regardless of 3g performance in your area, you'd have something to go on
also, the phone itself can do MMS. the lack is all on ATT. so hitting ATT is not something bad in my opinion. because it seems a lot like they are just taking their time and in fact, they could turn it on at any time.
as for the false advertising claims, Apple has been up front about MMS not being on out of the box in their public statements. now if a few random sales staff are not up to speed . . .
Also, why limit this to just a handful of folks. is it not all the folks with a 3gs (which came with 3.0 out of the box) for sure that are affected. one could argue all iphone owners since any phone can be upgraded to said software
I say cut Apple out of this mess cause the phone can MMS if it is on 3.0. Hit ATT with an order to get their acts together. turn on MMS. as a fine for having not done it, they must refund all text charges from June on for all iphones with a text message plan (any level).and from judgment date to whenever they get MMS turned on, all iphone owners get free unlimited texting. and bar ATT from uping the rate plans for MMS given that they don't have different plans for such on any other phones. that ought to sting them
Consumer goes to Apple store to purchase iPhone. Purchase is made from Apple employee using handheld POS device and no mention of this limitation is made by Apple employee.
so perhaps the employees need a list of talking points, to include that the douches at ATT haven't turned on MMS in the US. they can follow up with a string of points about accidental damage, jailbreaking etc. just to be sure that everyone understands that you can't come screaming if you drop your phone, your dog pees on it, you decide to hack it etc and the phone breaks.
http://www.9to5mac.com/itunes_class_action
I'm pretty sure that if I buy the $20 unlimited messaging package and I own a motorola razor I can send mms messages. If I buy the $20 unlimited messaging package and I own an iPhone I cannot send mms messages.
I'd say it's pretty clear that I AM paying for mms and not getting it.
We all knew that it would be a while before att turned it on, so I see no need to bitch, but if you pay for unlimited messaging you are paying for mms, and if you are not able to use mms, then you are paying for something you are not getting.
Except you aren't paying anymore than you were before iPhone 3.0 OS (assuming you had an iPhone before June). So if you owned a previous iPhone you were also paying for MMS and not getting it? Also, does the texting plan say MMS on it? If not, then its a service you are NOT paying for!
Am I understanding this correctly?
SMS = text only
MMS - text + audio and or video attachment?
But, since we have Smart Phones how are those SMS + MMS better than email, which is much more widely used, and is more flexible!?!
Can SMS + MMS messages be offloaded to computer, and shared as easily as email?
iChat, on iPhone or any other device, during a meeting etc. - that might be easier than email, but a Chat via SMS + MMS, that seems less practical, to me, particularly if a "thread" can't be archived on the computer and easily shared various ways!
A friend once told me that his kids were using SMS, so that they don't eat up Cell Phone minutes! Let's say same goes for MMS. But, that's for kids, who don't care about archiving, and they are mostly on the run! Adults need more industrial strength tools, particularly when doing business, right? The exceptions could be: "Honey, please grab some milk on the way home!" which might not require archiving, unless one needs an alibi
Can't wait for someone to explain that SMS+MMS vs.Email advantage to me!
TIA!!!!
Here is the advantage... Not everyone lives in a big city with 3G and an expensive smart phone. In fact only my friends around my age even have iPhones and I had to nag the crap out of them to persuade them to get one after I did (Now they enjoy them) however most of my friends use hotmail for thier email accounts and don't even bother setting up a "real" email account to use with thier iPhone, and the ones that have dont have push notifications for email so they never even notice when I send them something unless I text them right after I send it... So why not just use MMS in the first place.
They will get MMS nearly immediately (I know AT&T sucks so it takes a while sometimes, but that goes for plain texts too) but then they can see the pic I sent, and the message with it, and reply directly, and with copy/paste they can take the image from there and do what they want with it. How are MORE OPTIONS for sending/recieving a bad idea? Not to mention as has been stated numerous times before MMS was on like EVERY phone BUT the iPhone, which means when AT&T finally supports it, you can use your "SMARTphone" to send pictures to the crappy phones who nobody bothers to add thier email accounts to even if they do already have an account.
I live in a rural area, though most places have cell service its all EDGE, and almost NOBODY uses email on thier phones, everyone I work with sends messages all day long via MMS though. It would be nice to participate. Just keep in mind, though you and the people around you may be perfectly content with email, the world does not revolve around you, and other areas may prefer, or even need MMS as an alternative. Sure if everyone purchased the $99 MobileMe account and set up email on thier iPhones, we really wouldn't need MMS, but until apple drops the $99 charge, thats not going to happen. (I am the only person I know in my area who is subscribed to MobileMe)
In short: Many people use crappy phones, but those phones already have the ability to view MMS messages, and though some also support email, nobody likes to set up extra stuff like that on a crappy phone, or much less set up extra stuff in the first place. Heck older people dont even know what IMAP or SMTP is...
Email is great but most non smart phones dont handle email all that well. Additionally in order to send a quick photo to all you friends ho have smart phones, I would need to have their phone numbers and email information which isnt a big deal but MMS is standard way sending pictures when it comes to phones, so why wouldnt an advanced phone support this standard. And what i dont get is how can ATT say they are concerned about increased data traffic from MMS when every other non iphone can send picture messages.
But you can email to the phone number, and they can reply to your email via SMS or MMS. All of my contacts do this, from Verizon to Sprint. It's no big deal, I use email all the time to the phone number. I do pay for 200 SMS a month, just in case people screw it up and text me, but since I've had the phone so long I'm debating whether it's worth it or not anymore.
To give you an example, I email my wife's phone one of two ways:
[email protected] or [email protected]
These are stored in my phone as mobile numbers, and when I start typing the contact into the email field, it pulls up the list, I pick which email to send to, and send. Not that tough, I have push through mobile me and everything works fine, despite AT&T.
She just replies, or enters an email address into her phone and sends it. This has been working since I had a Palm Treo 650. It worked on my Windows6 phone as well, although those phones sucked, even on Verizon (who I left for the iPhone.)
Email FTW!