America's Actual Health Care Problems

The news has been breaking lately--

Employees' Share of Health Insurance 

Costs Rising

So naturally, too many people are blaming it on Obamacare. 

The fact is, the culprit and problem isn't Obamacare, the actual problem is that we still have our health care costs tied to profit and profits.  It needs to be pointed out, yet again, that NO OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED NATION IN THE WORLD does this. No other nation ties health care to profit. 

It's why we have the most expensive health care system in the world. It's how we got where we are today. To now blame Obamacare and President Obama for the health care costs rising just gives further license to these corporations to raise their rates and premiums and prices all the further. It's insane. It's how we're getting things like this:

U.S. Health Care Costs Rise Faster 

Than Inflation

We have to end our current system of health care and go to a single payer plan, once and for all.

Gasoline: It Happened

I remember when gasoline crossed over the $2 per gallon price. I also remember thinking, at the time, that it would never go back, under that marker again.

But here we are.

This was yesterday, last evening, in Springfield, Missouri, anyway. It's likely lower in Oklahoma.

The American Economy: How We Got To Here

What Americans need to know about our nation and economy, from an economist.

Quote of the day

‎"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists." --Ernest Hemingway

Gas price jump this week

From Wednesday to Thursday this week, at least up North here in the Kansas City area, gas jumped from 3.049/gallon to $3.199. That's quite a jump by my way of thinking. It always seems so arbitrary.

Hard data showing we need to cut the defense budget mightily

4 very telling statistics from Nicholas Kristof, columnist at The New York Times:

• The United States spends nearly as much on military power as every other country in the world combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It says that we spend more than six times as much as the country with the next highest budget, China.

• The United States maintains troops at more than 560 bases and other sites abroad, many of them a legacy of a world war that ended 65 years ago. Do we fear that if we pull our bases from Germany, Russia might invade?

• The intelligence community is so vast that more people have “top secret” clearance than live in Washington, D.C.

• The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined.

My own "statistic"/hard data?  We are weakened a great deal by spending all we do on defense and the military and their contractors, instead of strengthened.  It weakens us by running up further huge debt, first, and secondly, by not spending instead on infrastructure on and for the country and on health care for our citizens as well as education.

Keep in mind, too, this is only 4 statistics--four points, telling of our situation.  There are many more points to be made about this, actually. 

At this point, we're not on a dangerous, I think, path and one that is not sustainable by a long shot.  We're draining our resources and country because of it.

Link to original post:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26kristof.html?_r=4
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=us+defense+spending+statistics&aq=0v&aqi=g-v1g-o1&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=10ed5043a6013aa8

More of What "W" Has Wrought, Part II

Americans' Unhappy Birthday: 'Too much wrong right now'
By PAULINE ARRILLAGA (AP National Writer)
From Associated Press
July 05, 2008 2:32 PM EDT

Even folks in the Optimist Club are having a tough time toeing an upbeat line these days.

Eighteen members of the volunteer organization's Gilbert, Ariz., chapter have gathered, a few days before this nation's 232nd birthday, to focus on the positive: Their book drive for schoolchildren and an Independence Day project to place American flags along the streets of one neighborhood.

They beam through the Pledge of Allegiance, applaud each other's good news - a house that recently sold despite Arizona's down market, and one member's valiant battle with cancer. "I didn't die," she says as the others cheer.

But then talk turns to the state of the Union, and the Optimists become decidedly bleak.

They use words such as "terrified," "disgusted" and "scary" to describe what one calls "this mess" we Americans find ourselves in. Then comes the list of problems constituting the mess: a protracted war, $4-a-gallon gas, soaring food prices, uncertainty about jobs, an erratic stock market, a tougher housing market, and so on and so forth.

One member's son is serving his second tour in Iraq. Another speaks of a daughter who's lost her job in the mortgage industry and a son in construction whose salary was slashed. Still another mentions a friend who can barely afford gas.

Joanne Kontak, 60, an elementary school lunch aide inducted just this day as an Optimist, sums things up like this: "There's just entirely too much wrong right now."

Happy birthday, America? This year, we're not so sure.

The nation's psyche is battered and bruised, the sense of pessimism palpable. Young or old, Republican or Democrat, economically stable or struggling, Americans are questioning where they are and where they are going. And they wonder who or what might ride to their rescue.

These are more than mere gripes, but rather an expression of fears - concerns reflected not only in the many recent polls that show consumer confidence plummeting, personal happiness waning and more folks worrying that the country is headed in the wrong direction, but also in conversations happening all across the land.

"There are so many things you have to do to survive now," says Larue Lawson of Forest Park, Ill. "It used to be just clothes on your back, food on the table and a roof over your head. Now, it's everything.

"I wish it was just simpler."

Lawson, mind you, is all of 16 years old.

Then there's this from Sherry White in Orlando, Fla., who has a half-century in years and experience on the teenager:

"There is a sense of helplessness everywhere you look. It's like you're stuck in one spot, and you can't do anything about it."

In 1931, when the historian James Truslow Adams coined the phrase "The American Dream," he wrote of "a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement."

________________________________________________________

The article goes on from there to be very "PC" and not blame the President, his administration, their lying and creation of their war--for oil--etc., etc., and just, instead, leave the question in the air, so to speak.

I was glad to see the article (see link at bottom for the complete article) but for pity's sake, not putting any blame? It was the responsible thing to do and this isn't Keith Olbermann, for sure, but it's been W's push for his precious Big Oil companies and large corporation's profits that has gotten us into this mess. Get some education, people. Read the papers. Since you haven't, apparently, been reading anything for the last 7 years, do some research, check it out. Learn about your country, your government, what they're doing. Vote, for God's sake, but not if you're going to be stupid and listen to some "spirit" or voice you think you hear or some friend who quotes Rush Limbaugh and/or talk radio.

Our country's in a mess because we got George W. Bush and his cronies in office and they've been wreaking havoc for these 7 long years.

And if you don't know why we're in the mess we're in, then you haven't been paying attention and, frankly, you're a dumbass and you deserve what you get. As for the rest of us, we didn't vote for this clown, we do read and we're pissed.

---

Contributing to this report were AP Writers Allen G. Breed, Martha Irvine, Todd Lewan, Martha Mendoza, Vicki Smith and Becky Bohrer.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Find the original post here:
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20080705/486ef1c0_3ca6_1552620080705-1059433911

New developments

Well, big new developments this morning, concerning the economy and neither is good.

First, wholesale prices are up a whopping 1.1 percent in March, nearly triple the expected increase. Added to it is that this is "the largest increase since a 2.6 percent rise last November, which had been the biggest one-month jump in 33 years."

Yeah, that's 33 years. Zounds.

In itself, it's just not good news, of course. With everything else that's going on--all the bad news like the deficit spending we're doing, the war in the Middle East, the ridiculously, embarassingly low dollar on the world market, etc.--this is what the Federal Reserve and most economists absolutely didn't want and wanted desperately to avoid. With the falling dollar and a slowing economy, virtually all conversations about that same economy virtually always ended with "Well, at least we don't have any inflation."

And here's why:

With a slow economy or recession and inflation, you get the dreaded "stagflation" of a stagnant economy and inflation.

Now, economists know very well what to do for one or the other, but when you put the two together, it makes for a heck of a mess, a very difficult situation because they just don't know what to do. For inflation, you increase interest rates, to slow the economy. For a recession, you cut interest rates. Either is simple. Together, it's a stinker. You really have to walk a tight rope.

And frankly, if you were a student of history, you would know that this is almost inevitable, given that this President and his administration took us into their arbitrary war, with all it's spending. In the 60's, it was President Johnson's war in Vietnam, with all it's spending--and no tax increases--that brought us to the inflation, later, in the 70's. Different presidents and administrations paid dearly for that--right Mr. Carter?

But that's what is so great about this President. He was never a student of history. Don't know anything about how economies work? Don't know how those same economies work with high spending, low interest rates, low tax rates and more tax cuts for big business and the wealthy? Don't know anything about creating power vacuums in a despotic country, especially in the Middle East? No problem. Don't worry your pretty little head. Your friends will take care of you and your friends, for sure.

Okay, so here we are with a "bad moon rising." We need some good news and here it is: The good news, if there is any, is that the Fed will now be much less likely to cut interest rates further. MUCH less likely. You can bet on that. The one thing that REALLY concerns that group is inflation. So now, the dollar will be much less likely to drop a whole lot farther, even though today it did, what with the psychology of the markets and all. It's not great news, but it's something.

The second big development today---yeah, just second--is that oil hit $114.00 a barrel today. Yup. Read it again: $114.00 a barrel for oil. It did back off but hey, it hit it. And the lower the dollar goes, the higher oil will go, certainly.

The thing is, I'm sure the Current Occupant of the White House--as Garrison Keillor and I like to call him (he created it, of course)--has no idea what to do about the economy. Heck, the Fed will hardly know what to do so how would he?

So, folks, all I'm sayin' is, it ain't good, it's not getting better and they won't know quite what to do. Terrific, huh?

Kevin Phillips says we're sliding into our "post-abundance" period. My description of his theory, not his.

My point is that we should all start paying attention now.