The winter solstice will be at 12:11 p.m. E.T. USA.
Best Wishes for a Great Holiday Season!
Category: Health Care
Your complaining about healthcare.gov/
WordPress is one of the web sites that rarely goes down. Since starting this blog in July 2007 I have had two instances when the site did not function. I was back on line within a few hours.
However, my bank sent me home because their system was down. They advised me to return in two days. I was unable to deposit my paycheck. They had no problem honoring the checks I had written.
My employer’s e-mail was invaded by a virus that took three days to repair. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times web sites were hacked.
In California the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power currently is contending with a broken new computer system that has sent out bills that are either double the actual usage or one half the actual usage. The expected time to repair the computer glitches is likely to be two months.
The California Employment Development Department (they send out unemployment checks) tried to implement a new computer system. They said they did test it. The system has been out of order for a month. Few unemployment checks are being sent out. There has not been a date announced for the system to become operational.
I am complaining about Covered California. It’s linked to the healthcare.gov/ web site. When you click the start button on the home page you see the following:
U.S. Health Care – Not so Good
12 years ago, the World Health Organization released the World Health Report 2000. Inside the report there was an ambitious task — to rank the world’s best healthcare systems.
The results became notorious — the US healthcare system came in 15th in overall performance, and first in overall expenditure per capita. That result meant that its overall ranking was 37th.
The nation ranked number one is France. Italy is number 2, U.K. is number 18, Canada is number 30.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/best-healthcare-systems-in-the-world-2012-6?op=1#ixzz2YlqDejbr
A 2012 report by Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation provided results of a world wide study of Infant Mortality Rate (Total Deaths per 1,000 Live Births). Of 209 nations Afghanistan is in last place at 121.63. Bermuda is in first place at 2.47. Italy in 5th place at 3.36. France in 6th place at 3.37. United Kingdom in 27th place at 4.56. Canada is 33rd at 4.85. U.S.A. is 40th at 5.98. Details at http://kff.org/global-indicator/infant-mortality-rate/
CNN reports that Nearly 50 countries have attained universal or near-universal health coverage by 2008, according to the International Labor Organization. Several well-known examples exist like the UK, which has the National Health Service, and the Canadian public health care system. Wikipedia lists the countries.
Oh yes there are reasons to oppose universal / socialized medicine. Someone other than your doctor will have to decide if the procedure is appropriate. Currently In the United States it is your insurance company.
Clean Tap Water Fails to Reach Faucets Nationwide
June 17, 2013: The Los Angeles Times has caught up with KPCC and the New York Times in today’s from page article titled “Funding to improve drinking water has come at a slow drip.” What will it take to motivate California government?
—
KPCC, an NPR station in Los Angeles, had an item this past Friday about Springfield California that does not have drinkable water. Nitrates from fertilizer have poisoned the well that is the source of their piped water. The residences of the community must drive five miles to buy bottled water. The people are all too poor to move from the community. The community is unincorporated and does not qualify for any grant programs.
Springfield lies along a single dusty road near Watsonville in Monterey County. Strawberry fields surround the road. The town is so small you cannot find it on a map. In the middle of one of those fields is the source of the community’s frustration.
Upon research I have learned that this situation is not at all uncommon throughout the nation.
Laura Garcia, whose well water is laced with excessive nitrates, had to use bottled water until the recent installation of a filtration system in her sink.
MONSON, Calif. — I did find it on the map north of Visalia California. Laura Garcia was halfway through the breakfast dishes when the spigot went dry. The small white tank beneath the sink that purified her undrinkable water had run out. Still, as annoying as that was, it was an improvement over the days before Ms. Garcia got her water filter, when she had to do her dishes using water from five-gallon containers she bought at a local store.
Environmental Protection Agency distributes funds to state agencies that are supposed to identify problems and underwrite solutions. By the E.P.A.’s calculations, no state has been as inept in distributing the money as California.
According to Jared Blumenfeld, the regional administrator of the E.P.A., nearly a quarter of all small water systems in California are in the Central Valley. To fix the problems, however, requires access to engineering and financial management resources beyond the reach of the needy communities, Mr. Blumenfeld said. “We require the state to be sure the people they fund have managerial, financial and administrative capacity to deal” with their water issues.
Meanwhile there are people retiring in California from government jobs with annual pensions of more than $100K.
Additional source for this article from the New York Times.
Be Rich, Be Smart, Live Longer
Peter R. Orszag, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, has written a column for Bloomberg.com that tells us nothing we did not already know. Better educated Americans live longer than the rest of us and children of those rich people are getting more education than those that are poorer. This is hardly news. I would only disagree with one part of this article. You will most likely live longer if you are better educated no matter how rich you are. The riches enable you to buy the best health care and that will most likely extend your life.
Life among the wealthy is extended simply because they are wealthy. An example of extended life is the still alive Zsa Zsa Gabor who turned 96 this past February. Her health has seriously deteriorated in recent years but thanks to her wealth she is still alive.
I would have preferred that Mr. Orszag had discussed the primary benefit of ACA (the Affordable Care Act/Obama Health Care). That would be more productive years of life for more people.
Thus Mr. Orszag ought to be promoting the benefits of ACA. Similarly the President ought to be promoting the benefit of longer life thanks to the availability of health care.
Golden Years – A Tale of Madness and Greed
A story from Businessweek magazine.
One Nevada man prepared for everything but the inevitable
By Devin Leonard
Walter Samaszko Jr. was not a guy who wanted company. He covered the windows of his house in Carson City, Nev., with cardboard so the neighbors couldn’t see inside. He made the postman stick the mail through the slot in his garage rather than coming to the front door. He was so good at keeping people away that when he died of heart failure at age 69 in June, nobody noticed until his house began to smell. Someone called the sheriff’s department. A hazmat team removed Samaszko along with part of the floor he was stuck to.
That’s when everybody found out why he hadn’t been more sociable: The dour, white-haired recluse had been hoarding $7 million worth of gold coins, most of them hidden in the crawl space beneath the house. Some were in an old washing machine. There were British sovereigns dating back to the 1840s, Austrian ducats, and South African Kruggerands. But mostly Samaszko had collected rolls and rolls of $20 American gold pieces, the kind with double eagles on them. He also had $12,000 in cash, a stock account worth $165,000-and $200 in the bank.
The person who discovered Samaszko’s secret was Jeri Vine, a local real estate broker hired to clean up his house. She spent five days combing through his possessions. Samaszko had been prepared for the worst. He owned several guns, gas masks, and survivalist manuals. His cupboards were filled with canned The person who discovered Samaszko’s secret was Jeri Vine, a local real estate broker hired to clean up his house. She spent five days combing through his possessions.
Samaszko had been prepared for the worst. He owned several guns, gas masks, and survivalist manuals. His cupboards were filled with canned tuna fish. He had a lot of Johnny Mathis tapes. Vine threw most of it out. “We had like a 33 yard dumpster on the driveway,” she says. “I filled that thing.”
On the fourth day, Vine opened a metal ammunition box in the garage. It was full of gold coins in plastic cases. She called Alan Glover, the public administrator of Carson City. “Alan, get over here immediately!” she told him. “There’s so much money it’s unbelievable.” The sheriff’s department returned to the house, this time with metal I detectors. It took Glover and three attorneys two days to count all the coins. With the help of a numismatic expert, they determined that Samaszko’s clutch was worth $7 million. The gold is being stored in a vault in Reno until a local probate court judge decides its fate.
Samaszko may have been prepared for a societal collapse, but not for his own end. He had no will. Nor did he have any children. Glover was able to locate a first cousin, Arlene Magdanz, a part time teacher in San Rafael, Calif., who hadn’t seen him in years. Glover expects the probate court to release the fortune to Magdanz after the IRS extracts its cut. (He estimates the federal government’s take will be about $800,000.) The tale of the elderly recluse who turned out to be a millionaire became a brief sensation, with Vine and Glover appearing on the Today show.
Vine eventually sold Samaszko’s house for an undisclosed price. Some prospective buyers just wanted to see if there was any more gold hidden there. “One guy had his contractor friend go underneath the house,” Vine says. “I told him we went through that place with a fine-toothed comb. Never heard from him again.”
It’s easy to see why Samaszko’s death and the revelations that followed fascinate people. How many of us would have kept $7 million in a crawl space and not touched it? It makes you wonder what other secrets died with him.
Medicare for Everyone
Even before the annual enrollment period for Medicare had started (October 15) I was receiving the start of insurance company campaigns for my enrollment. Since then the volume of mailings has become an avalanche. This has caused me to ask: Are there significant profits to be made in Medicare enrollments?
The answer appears to be YES. AARP’s single largest revenue source is royalties from United Health Care Group. This is no surprise. I receive solicitations from AARP to join United Health Care every single month of the year. 34% of their revenue comes from United Health Care. In 2011, the AARP generated $458 million in royalty fees from so-called “Medigap” plans. Read more about AARP’s special treatment at this forbes.com link.
Other companies solciting my enrollment include: Blue Cross, Blue Shield, SCAN, Aetna, and Humana.
This campaign leads me to the conclusion that Medicare for all would be a real solution to affordable health care for everyone.
Republican Party Opposes All Abortions
As time passes more and more Republican politicians oppose all abortions no matter how the woman became pregnant. Rape, incest or a woman’s health are no longer reasons to permit an abortion. It is an idea pulled from another century along time ago.
I am mystified by the idea that any woman would vote to elect Mitt Romney for president. The GOP Party platform includes these words: “We call on the government to permanently ban all federal funding and subsidies for abortion and healthcare plans that include abortion coverage.”
Three candidates for U.S. Senator or U.S. Congressman have spoken against the idea of abortion even in the case of rape. Todd Akin in Missouri, Richard Mourdock in Indiana, and now John Koster in Washington. Romney running mate, Paul Ryan, holds the same view.
Free access to birth control could prevent up to two thirds of U.S. abortions. This was the results of a research study conducted at the Washington University School of Medicine. However this is useless information to people who do not want to prevent unwanted pregnancy.
Mitt Romney is now trying to convince women that he does not subscribe to the idea that life begins at conception. Then why is this thought part of the GOP platform? Why did he select Paul Ryan as his running mate?
A Mitt Romney presidency will take this nation back to the middle ages. The Taliban couldn’t be happier.
G.O.P. Wants to Control Women
Muslims are known for their mis-treatment of women. They are treated as second class citizens. If you have never seen the movie “Not Without My Daughter” you should watch it. It tells of the treatment of women in a Muslim country. Most of us in America are shocked by the depictions of life in Iran. And yet, many Americans want to treat their wives and daughters as if they have no right to make decisions for themselves.
The orthodox of most religions in the United States still want to tell the women in their lives what to do and when to do it. The men can have sex but the women can not. If they get pregnant they must bare the child no matter how it was conceived. Both Tod Akin, Republican candidate for the Senate in Missouri and Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock have taken the position that women have natural protection against rape or if they were rapped the child must be born.
Is this the view of the Republican Party? Read their platform. Buried in the writing are these gems that lead to the same conclusions as Akin and Mourdock have made.
This is enough for me to oppose Republicans for office.
- Through Obamacare, the current Administration has promoted the notion of abortion as healthcare. We, however, affirm the dignity of women by protecting the sanctity of human life. Numerous studies have shown that abortion endangers the health and well-being of women, and we stand firmly against it.
- We call on the government to permanently ban all federal funding and subsidies for abortion and healthcare plans that include abortion coverage.
- We likewise support the right of parents to consent to medical treatment for their children, including mental health treatment, drug treatment, and treatment involving pregnancy, contraceptives and abortion. We urge enactment of pending legislation that would require parental consent to transport girls across state lines for abortions.
- We oppose school-based clinics that provide referrals, counseling, and related services for abortion and contraception. We support keeping federal funds from being used in mandatory or universal mental health, psychiatric, or socio- emotional screening programs.
Social Security Now Called ‘Federal Benefit Payment’
Have you noticed, your Social Security check is now referred to as a “Federal Benefit Payment”? It’s not accurate!
Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too. It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.
If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that’s close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.
If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both your and your employer’s contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you’d have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved. This is your personal investment.
Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you’d receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.
That’s almost three times more than today’s average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration (Google it – it’s a fact). And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you’re 98 if you retire at age 65)!
I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts. Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did.
They took our money and used it elsewhere. They “forgot” that it was OUR money they were taking.
They didn’t have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them.
And they didn’t pay interest on the debt they assumed. And recently, they’ve told us that the money won’t support us for very much longer.
But is it our fault they misused our investments? And now, to add insult to injury, they’re calling it a “benefit,” as if we never worked to earn every penny of it.
Just because they “borrowed” the money, doesn’t mean that our investments were a charity!
Let’s take a stand.
We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government – Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going, for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it.
Then call it what it is: Our Earned Retirement Income. 99% of people won’t forward this.
Will you?
Coast Contact 