What's up with the Star this week?

What was that with the Star this week?

Yesterday, it was a size-shrunken version, first. Height and width was reduced and it was only four columns wide.

What was that?

Then, for a couple days, it was on a really hard, white--no doubt cheaper--paper stock.

Today?

Today it's back to the old, familiar newsprint--well, except for the Johnson County pull-out--and 5 columns wide.

It's like Forrest Gump famously said with the Star now:  "You never know what you're gonna' get."

I don't envy the situation either the Star--or any newspaper, of course--or the US Postal Service are in. Both of them have continuing loss of revenue and advertising and customers so they have to keep raising their price and/or giving less and less product or service or both, so fewer and fewer people use the product so they have less and less income and profit so they have to raise the price higher so they have fewer customers...and, well, that ugly dog keeps chasing its own very ugly tail.

It's one bad spiral.

Down.

More health care debacles--losses--in America

The health care insurance companies are even worse than we thought. After stealing from Americans for decades and being so very much instrumental in making US health care the most expensive, literally, in the world, they went into negotiations with the Obama Administration earlier this year to, hopefully for them, put the brakes on the toughest parts of the reform. It worked and it worked exceedingly well. According to Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone Magazine, the insurance companies were able to do away with the "public option" for getting more competitive insurance rates and situations for Americans, at the beginning of these negotiations. All the while, during the negotiations, these same companies were painting themselves as the "protectors" of American's health care and our lives and as "victims" of the system and, finally as "good guys". So now what's happening, after all this "health care reform" that was passed, however weak? Yesterday, the Aetna Insurance Company announced that they were raising their premiums--the costs, the prices we pay--as much as 19% in California. As though that's not horrific enough, they're also BLAMING THE HEALTH CARE REFORM FOR THE PRICE INCREASE. Man, isn't that beautiful? could they be more cynical and manipulating? This is perfect for them, too, in so many ways. First and most importantly for them, they get more and more money. That's paramount for any corporation, of course. Second, with blaming it on the health care reform, they reap many benefits. If the American public is dumb enough to swallow that--and we are, sadly, we are, I'm afraid--we'll become the best, first critics of the reform and call for it's repeal. This will have the fact of taking the fuzzy, soft handcuffs and shackles this reform provided so they can go back to business as usual---and bill us ever more and higher. Finally--though the list of benefits they gain with this is really quite long--the Republicans, Conservatives, Tea Party, Libertarians, Fox "News" and everyone else in their corner will take up this mantle and cry and call for health care reform's repeal. Face it, folks, the deck is stacked against us heavily and badly here. It looks like the health care companies are going to win--again and some more. Insane. Sad. Pitiful. Pathetic. All. And we're bringing it on ourselves.

Never mind

No, there's just too bloody much insanity and stupidity to not write.

Check this out:

"Insurance premiums have risen by 73.8% from 2000 to 2006, while the U.S. median income has increased 11.6% during that same period, according to a study released Tuesday by Families USA, the Helena Independent Record reports (Harrington, Helena Independent Record, 10/18)."

This report just came out in the middle of trying to get our health care overhauled in the US.

Read it again, ladies and gentlemen, and remember this.

The above statistic is further proof that, not only do we need health care reform in the US but we need it badly and it must, by necessity, include the government-run "public option" of insurance.

The corporations, I will say again, are eating us alive.

And we're letting them.

If you aren’t for health care reform in general and the “public option”, in particular, you’re voting against your own self-interests, in favor of the corporations.

Which, normally, would be fine except the rest of us would all suffer along with you, with much higher costs, ad infinitum.

Link to story:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/54522.php