Our Insane US Healthcare System

No other nation in the world does health care the way we do in the US.

--We have, far and away, the most expensive health care system in the world. --We are the only nation that ties health care to profit. --We are the only nation where citizens go bankrupt from health care costs. --We are the only nation where our number one cause for bankruptcy for citizens is health care costs, approximately 40% of all bankruptcies in the US are from this, year after year, consistently. Insane. Obscene. Immoral. Fixable.

Kansas City Fugly

There is a page on Facebook with this very title--Kansas City Fugly.

I think you get the idea.

It shows ugly, really ugly, new buildings all across the city. I've posted at least several there in the last several months.

Sadly, companies and corporations want to, yes, understandably, keep their costs down but they do so with their new buildings by stripping them bare, calling them "modern" and honestly making them monstrosities.

I happened upon this one, below, going up on Westport Road diagonally across from the Quik Trip--which, itself has become even more of a monstrosity in the last year. But I digress.

So here it is, some shots.

This is right along Westport Road so it is the front of the building.

This is the part going down the side street by Mike's Liquors.

Nice, huh?

I've never seen more gray, concrete blocks. Well, no more than if I went to a hardware store and saw their inventory.

The only thing worse than the companies buying and building these things are the architects that create them. It is stunning. And they're pervasive. Look around.

We've had thousands upon thousands of years of development and education and advances, we humans. And this is where we're headed? This is our future? This is what we all have to look forward to?

Really?

I hear people say they won't bring children, babies into the world because of the way we're all headed, we humans, this human race.

This seems very clearly like one more indication. 

And that it won't be pretty.

Far from it.

Link:

KANSAS CITY FUGLY

Don't Look Now But a Town In Rural Missouri Just Got Hit. And Hard

I hadn't seen anything of this but it seems a hospital in rural Missouri, in the town of Kennett, is closing.

116-bed Missouri hospital to close 

next month

The website Axios simply and clearly points out three very big factors of all this:

• Many people are worried residents won't get care at all or will suffer from having to drive long distances for hospital care.
• "We have two nursing homes, and people are already talking about pulling their loved ones out because there's not a hospital close enough," one worker said.
• "This little town just lost its biggest employer...financially, a lot of businesses are going to suffer," another employee said.
• Kennett is a farming community in Dunklin County, whose residents are poor and have some of the worst health outcomes in the state. (The area overwhelmingly voted for President Trump in 2016.)

Get that.

Not only losing your town's only hospital but also it's biggest employer. Talk about a double, if not triple or worse "whammy."

Can you imagine even being elderly in that town, let alone in a nursing home, knowing your town is losing its hospital?

If you had a loved one in a nursing home there, would you keep them there?

Worse, if you were in that nursing home and in reasonably good condition otherwise, would you want to stay there, in that town, in that nursing home?

What do you bet the nursing home or homes in Kennett, Missouri will be losing patients, customers? And quickly?  I would be very surprised if, in only a couple to a few years, the nursing home or homes there don't also close, have to close. I certainly hope I'm wrong about that.

Then, can you imagine being an employee of the hospital? Thinking you had a job for life? And you're in rural Missouri, rural America. The nearest hospital is 50 miles away. Further, do you think they have many job openings? It's questionable, at least.

The heck of it is, this is not good for the town of Kennett but it's not good for that entire area. It's not good for that region, that part of the state. Simply put, it's no way good for Missouri.

It's not good for America. It's not good for the nation.

____________________________________________________________

More of the fuller situation that brought this about here, below:

When a rural hospital shuts down

Other links:

Sudden hospital closure gravely concerns Kennett doctors 

Wellington, Kan., hospital threatened 

like other rural facilities 

Possible shutdown of St. Francis hospital in Topeka

Closing of Kansas hospital adds to 

Medicaid expansion debate

America's Rural Hospitals Are Dangerously Fragile 

A Call For Corporate Taxation and a Required National Wage

An economist warns that "advances in technology and automation are set to wipe out up to half of all jobs in the developed world."

RBS Warns: Sell Everything

A small bit from the article:

RBS economists have urged investors to sell everything except high-quality bonds, warning of a “fairly cataclysmic year ahead.”

If that isn't a call for a national, base wage to all citizens, I don't know what is.

Also reason why all corporations should pay a minimum tax and not be able to deduct their way out of paying any taxes or, worse, get a rebate or, worse yet, offshore profits or be able to.

Another good, related article:

There will be chaos: Big Oil's collapse and the birth of a new world order

The current rout in oil prices has obvious implications for the giant oil firms and all the ancillary businesses — equipment suppliers, drill-rig operators, shipping companies, caterers, and so on — that depend on them for their existence. It also threatens a profound shift in the geopolitical fortunes of the major energy-producing countries. Many of them, including Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela, are already experiencing economic and political turmoil as a result. (Think of this, for instance, as a boon for the terrorist group Boko Haram as Nigeria shudders under the weight of those falling prices.) The longer such price levels persist, the more devastating the consequences are likely to be.

If anything like or near these "worst case scenarios" take place, governments and corporations the world over may HAVE to give and require a minimum payout to their citizens, just to keep the economic world spinning.

Here's a perfect example and it's from a current article.

Chinese factory replaces 90% of humans 

with robots

A nation of more than 1.4 billion people and the companies, the corporations replaced, as the headline shows, the vast majority of the employees with machines.

If corporations and nations don't give a minimum payout to their citizens, who will be able to buy the  products that keep this whole merry go round turning?

Health Care in America

From the New Zealand Nurses Organisation on Facebook. 

An American in our health care industry visits that country.

Two Huge Things the Nation Needs

Great news from--who else? Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders:

Bernie Sanders Introduces Bill To End Offshore Tax Havens and Outsourcing of Jobs

Two things that should never have been put in the books anyway but they were because the wealthy and corporations can buy our legislators with "campaign contributions" and get the legislation they want, in spite of what's good for the nation.

Right now, America, we have laws on the books making it legal to take profits that were made here in the US, take them to the Cayman Islands and so, make them tax free.

That is textbook insanity. It's certainly fiscally irresponsible.

And the other thing that should no way have ever been made law was that companies would get tax credits, too, for offshoring manufacturing and so, manufacturing jobs.

More crazy.

We all know we want more jobs back here in our country, maybe especially manufacturing jobs. This is an excellent way to begin that process.

These two efforts, that is, bringing profits and jobs back "on shore", back to America, would go a long, long way toward fixing two major problems in this country. The first being tax revenue on profits made here in the country and the other of bringing jobs back.into the country.

There shouldn't be one government representative that is against either of these goals.

Sadly, however, because the corporations and wealthy virtually own the Republicans and the Republican Party, they won't be for it.

What Capitalism Is Not

Quote of the day -- on Monsanto and their GMOs

Lest anyone should think it's from some Left Wing, progressive, corporate-hating person with too many opinions, check out the source for the quote, too:

I think we can officially say the "auto bailout" officially worked now

Breaking news today: GM posts its highest profit ever: $7.6 billion GM earns its highest profit ever in 2011 with $7.6 billion; overseas losses cut 4Q profit So can we now, officially end the conversations and questions about the need, sense and logic of having "bailed out"--or invested in--GM, Detroit, Chrysler and the American auto workers? Please. Sure, we didn't want to do it and we didn't want to need to do it but the fact is, if we hadn't bailed them out, we would have lost that industry, for the most part, almost completely. Link to original story: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gQQyKL1zj8FAOWVfwO1Et4tc1VOA?docId=7878364211444f549d5c2356de1fdce9

Quote of the day--what Capitalism and corporations do badly

"Your water, your health care, your kids' schools, they shouldn't be profit based. They should be community based. If, for example, a private enterprise takes over a prison, it will have to show growth from one year to the next. In other words, next year it will have to either have more prisoners or give the existing ones even worse services. Ditto for schools; ditto for hospitals. This is a major reason why the US has 5-10-50 times more domestic incarcerations than any other country that calls itself civilized. Profit."  


Yes, government-run institutions are often poorly-run. But you still have no choice but to re-organize them, since the only alternative is to lose control of what you really can't afford to lose control of. I don’t want to cover all services right here and now, but you don’t for instance want to let some private company uphold and police the law in your community. After all, what would be next? Let them make the laws too? What, we’re not close enough to exactly that yet? Really, you tell me, what's the difference between making the laws on the one hand versus interpreting the existing ones on the other? Blackwater, anyone?

"Outsource every public sector job possible", Mish? I don't think so. It's the road to hell, because the Carlyle Group and Blackrock and a bunch of Chinese and Arab multi-billion dollar enterprises and sovereign wealth funds will wind up telling you what you can do and say, what health care you can get, and whether or not you’ll have clean water in the morning. And the decisions between these options will be based on profit, not on whether your kids get a good education, or a good doctor, or whether they can drink their tap water or not. "Sorry, no profit in that."


--The Automatic Earth Blog, "The United States of Disintegration


You really should read about the debt and debts of states in the country and what it portends for the coming year.


That said, Merry Christmas


Link:  http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2010/12/december-20-2010-united-states-of.html

The gross unfairness and imbalance of corporations

A headline today points out one of the many inherent unfairnesses and imbalances created by the constantly-demanded profits of corporations. Here it is: FedEx 1Q profit doubles; will cut 1,700 jobs It's insane. They double their profit for the first quarter of this year but they slash jobs by 1700. Here's another insanity--these same corporations that do this still expect the great unwashed masses out here to buy and use their products and services. How can we do that, if we get pay cuts or, worse, fired or "let go"? When it used to be "mom and pop" businesses, people realized there were business cycles and we all lived with them. But now, in the modern, corporate world, these same corporations constantly demand profits and, worse, increases in profits, resulting in situations like this where, sure the business not only made money but made twice as much, during the quarter, as it did earlier. But that's not enough. It's never enough. So what do they do? Fire people. They "make them unemployed". It's ugly. It's incongruous. It makes no sense. And yes, I know I'm looking at a smaller, one-quarter of the year picture but the point is still very valid. This is a smaller microcosm of what happens in our corporate culture, in the broader view, absolutely. The trouble is, without a full collapse of Western society, there's no way to stop this process, either. The corporations will keep demanding ever-larger profits and, to make matters worse exponentially, they will also keep merging with other companies and devouring each other, which makes for less jobs due to duplication of work, once those companies do combine. In short, to summarize--we're screwed, you and I. Good luck out there today. Try to enjoy the weather. Link to original story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100916/ap_on_bi_ge/us_earns_fedex