Facts on Healthcare System
NOTE: The facts below draw a distinction between healthcare spending, prices, and costs based upon the following definitions:
• “Spending” refers to what is spent on healthcare in general. Thus, if people use more healthcare services, this causes spending to increase even if prices remain the same.
• “Prices” refer to what healthcare providers charge for particular services and products.
• “Costs” refer to what healthcare providers spend in order to provide particular healthcare services and products to patients. This is equivalent to prices minus profits or losses.
* Between 1960 and 2009, healthcare spending in the United States increased
• from a yearly average of $147 per person to $8,086 (by 55 times).
• from a yearly average of $1,082 per person in inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars to $8,218 (by 7.6 times).
• from 5.2% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) to 17.8% (by 3.4 times).[1]
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IRS INFO – What You Don’t Know Won’t Hurt You. NOT
What You Don’t Know Won’t Hurt You.
It’s What You DO Know That’s JUST NOT TRUE That Does All The Harm
(Plus a bonus– More Supreme Court acknowledgment of the truth about the tax!)
In a Dec. 26 column titled ‘Gullible Americans’, the great Walter Williams discusses routine lying by federal actors about costs or limits of measures they’re promoting– and the naiveté of Americans who repeatedly fall for the lies. Among the examples presented are declarations by supporters of the 16th Amendment that it would not result in the income tax reaching anyone but the rich. Williams argues that while the initial legislation following the amendment DID confine the imposition of the tax to high levels of income, it was not too long before the tax applied to everyone.
Ironically, Dr. Williams’ column is itself a product of gullibility. The good doctor has fallen prey to dis-information about the income tax. Even more ironically, his article serves as a transmitter of the very nonsense that makes possible the offense of which it complains. Let’s (as the doctor would say) take a look at it…
To freely enjoy the rest of the article, navigate to losthorizons.com/Newsletter.htm.
(There’s never any charge, registration, adware, etc. at http://www.losthorizons.com — I just want you to be informed.)
Feds Say Morgellons Disease Probably A Delusion
Morgellons disease – a creepy illness that leaves patients with painful lesions, gives them a feeling that bugs are crawling all over their body, and has them seeing colorful, threadlike fibers poking through their skin – isn’t infectious and probably isn’t caused by anything in the environment, according to the first government study of the condition.
Rather, Morgellons is likely to be a mental illness and should probably be treated with the same drug and psychiatric care that works for people who suffer delusions, researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.
“There were some possibilities of what could be causing this, and we’ve taken a couple of the big ones off the table. That’s a really big step forward,” said Dr. Mark Eberhard, director of the CDC’s Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria and a lead investigator in the study.
Seeking acknowledgement
The study focused on patients in the Bay Area, where a cluster of Morgellons cases have been reported over the past several years. Patients all complained of the same strange, often horrifying symptoms, and they became increasingly angry and frustrated that physicians weren’t taking their condition seriously.
George Soros Predicts U.S. Riots – Backs Euros
Billionaire investor George Soros has warned the global economic system could collapse and riots on the streets of America are on the way.
The 81-year-old said he’d rather survive than stay rich as the world faces an ‘evil’ period and Europe fights a ‘descent into chaos and conflict’.
He has backed the euro, bought $2billion in European bonds and insisted the economic climate is similar to the 1930s Great Depression.
‘The euro must survive because the alternative – a breakup – would cause a meltdown that Europe, the world, can’t afford,’ he told Newsweek.
‘The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world.’
His warnings came as U.S. stocks dipped on Tuesday, with talks to resolve Greece’s debt crisis faltering and threatening a five-day winning streak.
The Lost Generation’s Call To Action
America is a country of rugged individualism. — I earned my money! — Free enterprise is the foundation of American greatness! — Don’t rock the boat. — Get with the game. — Don’t be left behind. — Go with the flow. — Policy should promote market certainty. — Why don’t poor people get a job?! — Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. — You reap what you sow. — If only they worked hard, the market would reward them!
Is this what the American dream has become?
Where is the inspiration?! Where is the aspiration to a higher goal, an advancement of humanity beyond pointless toil? The Great Recession is forcing a systemic shift. The current system situated on a bedrock of American exceptionalism seems empty, the illusion propped up by billions in advertising dollars meant to whitewash reality. We have big oil destroying an entire ecosystem in the Gulf. The nuclear industry is more dangerous than ever. Big financial firms like Goldman pulled a reverse Robin Hood and took from Peter (you) to pay Paul (the CEO class). Vulture capital firms buy up entire retail chains, cut them to the bone, then flip ‘em on the market for a fat profit; it’s how one Presidential candidate made his millions.Despite the feel-good rhetoric, everyone of us knows the current system offers little inspiration for our shared future. As the great social commentarian George Carlin used to say:
The owners of this country know the truth: It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
The owners of this country spend billions giving propagandists (some call them talking heads, others pundits) cushy prime time TV spots to regurgitate sound bites produced by think tanks like the corporate-financed Heritage Foundation. These propagandists explain away the hypocrisies of their corporate masters, and berate anyone who opposes their big money agenda. This is their game, rigged to support an ever-shifting set of rules, all at our expense. So obsessed are they with retaining their power, the owners of this country have shown they are willing to tank the entire global economy to retain their dominance, a point which became all too clear in the recent debt ceiling debate.
The media is doing its part to put the blame on the underclass, labeling this group the American Lost Generation. The vast majority of people within the Lost Generation will never have the political clout necessary to attain the American dream of multiple mansions, fast cars, and star-studded birthday parties (a hollow existence if you ask me). The bottom 99% of the US faces an uncertain future with limited job prospects due to increasingly automated technologies owned by a few. What’s more, we can’t go looking to government for help either, since the corporate class has diminished government capacity to blunt the economic crises brought on by the owners of Western democracies.
What’s an entire generation of people to do?!
Georgia Mom Arrested After Allowing Her Child To Get A Memorial Tattoo
A Georgia mother who was arrested for allowing her 10-year-old to get a tattoo said she had no idea it was illegal for him to get one, even with her consent.
When Chuntera Napier’s son Gaquan Napier asked her if he could get a memorial tattoo for his 12-year-old brother Malik who died after being hit by a car, Napier was touched by the request.
“My son came to me and said, ‘Mom, I want to get a tattoo with Malik on it, rest in peace,’” she told ABC News’ Atlanta affiliate WSBTV. “It made me feel good to know that he wanted his brother on him.”
When Gaquan Napier was asked why he wanted the tattoo, he said, “Because it represents my brother.”
“What do I say to a child who wants to remember his brother? It’s not like he was asking me, ‘Can I get Sponge Bob?” Napier said. “He asked me [for] something that’s in remembrance of his brother. How can I say no?”
Alaska Man Arrested For Trading Moose Meat For Firewood
The Fairbanks man who is accused of illegally trading moose meat for firewood is taking his case to court.
Chad Gerondale, 41, has hired well-known Fairbanks attorney Bill Satterberg to represent him in the “meat for heat” case, as it has been dubbed by online spectators.
“I’ve got a lot to say about it but (Satterberg) told me not to,” Gerondale told the News-Miner Tuesday morning when he returned phone messages left during the weekend.
Alaska Wildlife Troopers last week issued Gerondale a summons to appear in court on Feb. 3 to be arraigned on a misdemeanor charge of illegal barter of game meat. Troopers issued a news release Friday stating Gerondale had been cited for agreeing to trade 125 pounds of moose meat for two cords of firewood.
Buying, selling or bartering of game meat, except snowshoe hares, is illegal. The one exception is caribou meat in northern and western Alaska (units 22-26) may be bartered, but the meat cannot be taken out of those units.
Gerondale allegedly offered to swap moose meat for firewood on the radio show, Tradio, which airs on KFAR 660 AM.
“The allegations are the guy was on Tradio and said, ‘I need some firewood and I’m willing to trade some moose meat,’” Satterberg said.
Trooper Ken Vanspronsen contacted Gerondale to make a deal and then showed up at his house and issued him a citation, Satterberg said.
Read more: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
New Cases Of H1N1 Reported In Asia & Mideast
New cases of the H5N1 virus — or bird flu — are being reported more frequently throughout Asia and the Mideast.
On Thursday, Vietnam confirmed its first human death resulting from the virus since April 2010. The fatality came just one day after neighboring Cambodia reported a bird flu death.
The 18-year-old Vietnamese man, who died on Jan. 11, was a duck farmer in the southern Mekong delta province of Hau Giang, according to Channel News Asia. Experts in the country are investigating whether the infection came from his flock.
In Cambodia, a 2-year-old boy from northwestern Banteay Meanchey province, died on Jan. 18 after contracting the virus. The child is thought to have been exposed to infected poultry, according to the World Health Organization.
Vietnamese authorities say that there is no need to be alarmed about the recent H5N1 reports.
US Led Forces Kill Five Afghan Civilians
Local officials said on Wednesday that a woman and two children were among the dead, a Press TV correspondent reported.
NATO claimed that the foreign forces operation was carried out against the Taliban in cooperation with Afghan forces, saying two Taliban militants were killed.
Other sources put the number of civilian deaths at seven.
The killing of Afghan civilians by blasts and US-led foreign forces has prompted anti-US demonstrations in the country.
The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 under the pretext of combating terrorism and toppling the Taliban regime.
However, insecurity continues to rise across Afghanistan despite the presence of thousands of US-led foreign forces in the country.
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