http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/01/12/GA2010011203712.html?sid=ST2010011302017
The images are horrific to see! I'm very sad! Haiti had so many problems related to being such a poor country and now...
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Those Poor Democrats and the Big Mo
Yesterday Senators Byron Dorgan, D, N. Dakota and Christopher Dodd, D, Connecticut announced that they would not seek new terms in 2010. The news media immediately talked of the perilous times for President Obama and Democrats as they might now lose their 60 vote - "super majority".
While first of all "duh"! Did anyone really believe given how bad the economy is and the 47% approval rating of President Obama that Democrats were likely to keep all their senate seats in 2010?
It also is questionable whether this 60 seat majority is that significant - as shown by healthcare reform legislation when one recognizes how - impotent the Democrats have proven to be at dealing with both the intransigence of the Republicans and the Democrats "moderate" members such as Senator Nelson who hold healthcare captive to their support.
Let's go back to the "landslide" election of President Obama. President Obama's election was won with about 41-42% of the White vote. People of Color elected Barack Obama with a lower percentage of White Voters than elected Reagan in 1980.
The "Democratic Mandate" of 2008 if there ever was such a thing was a reaction to the Republican failures and a statement of - "no - not this" - not "yes, we want Democrats".
Pundits earlier talked of the Big Momentum shown by governor losses by the Democrats in 2009 in Virginia and New Jersey. Few looked at the facts that Governor Corzine in New Jersey had alienated the populace and that in Virginia without a Strong Black Vote - the Democrat had little chance of winning.
Let's finally look at the candidates. Dorgan - might have been a slight favorite to win in 2010. Republicans are likely to win without him - in a heavily Republican State. Dodd was in big trouble and the Democratic candidate seemingly has a better chance at winning in 2010.
This is hardly - a landslide for the Republicans. The Democrats may well lose seats in 2010. This will though be a result of both their failures and the successes of the right-wing forces at fighting against Democratic leadership.
Thanks!
While first of all "duh"! Did anyone really believe given how bad the economy is and the 47% approval rating of President Obama that Democrats were likely to keep all their senate seats in 2010?
It also is questionable whether this 60 seat majority is that significant - as shown by healthcare reform legislation when one recognizes how - impotent the Democrats have proven to be at dealing with both the intransigence of the Republicans and the Democrats "moderate" members such as Senator Nelson who hold healthcare captive to their support.
Let's go back to the "landslide" election of President Obama. President Obama's election was won with about 41-42% of the White vote. People of Color elected Barack Obama with a lower percentage of White Voters than elected Reagan in 1980.
The "Democratic Mandate" of 2008 if there ever was such a thing was a reaction to the Republican failures and a statement of - "no - not this" - not "yes, we want Democrats".
Pundits earlier talked of the Big Momentum shown by governor losses by the Democrats in 2009 in Virginia and New Jersey. Few looked at the facts that Governor Corzine in New Jersey had alienated the populace and that in Virginia without a Strong Black Vote - the Democrat had little chance of winning.
Let's finally look at the candidates. Dorgan - might have been a slight favorite to win in 2010. Republicans are likely to win without him - in a heavily Republican State. Dodd was in big trouble and the Democratic candidate seemingly has a better chance at winning in 2010.
This is hardly - a landslide for the Republicans. The Democrats may well lose seats in 2010. This will though be a result of both their failures and the successes of the right-wing forces at fighting against Democratic leadership.
Thanks!
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Swiss Healthcare System - a "Free Market" Option
Swiss health-care system might serve as model for U.S.
By The Dallas Morning News Sunday, February 26, 2006
BERN, Switzerland -- Karl Zbinden's hospital room overlooked the snowy banks of the Aare River on a bleak January afternoon. The gaunt, 53-year-old biologist was in bed with pancreatitis, a serious condition that emerged after a kidney transplant.
Like all Swiss citizens, Zbinden has health insurance. And, like all Swiss, he pays for it himself with no help from his employer.
An American in his situation might face tens of thousands of dollars in expenses. But under the Swiss health-care system, individuals pay about a third less on health care than the average American, in part because of government-enforced price controls.
President Bush is pushing for health care reforms based on individual choice. The Swiss system offers some of those choices, and some health economists say their system works better.
"I think we're going to get there soon, not eventually," said Regina Herzlinger, a Harvard Business School professor who's studied the Swiss system. "The major reason is, most people agree that employer support for health insurance is just not going to continue."
Every resident of Switzerland is required to buy health insurance. If they don't, they pay stiff monetary penalties. Companies have no role. Health-care plans are chosen at the kitchen table, not through employee benefit departments.
And the plans can be costly. A family of four in Switzerland pays an average of $680 a month in premiums. Government assistance helps pay premiums for those less well off.
Health-care prices are set each year after negotiations between insurance companies and medical providers. The fee schedule has to be approved by the Swiss canton (or state) governments -- an approach Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton University compares to the doomed health-reform plan drafted by the Clinton administration.
Drug costs also are subject to price ceilings, but they still seem fairly expensive, at least in the minds of Swiss consumers.
"Within Europe, we are almost the only country left with a strong drug company sector," said Swiss congressman Felix Gutzwiller, a medical doctor who also heads the University of Zurich Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine.
"The public has a very peculiar attitude about that. They want a high level of innovation, but there is a permanent discussion about the cost of medications."
The Swiss approach insures everyone while eliminating the headaches and costs of health care for companies sensitive to global competition.
"People in Switzerland realize what these costs do to American business, and they don't want to add to the anti-competitive burden of Swiss businesses in the global economy," Gutzwiller said.
"Also, people do not want employers to get so much into their private life and lifestyle."
The Swiss think the quality of their medical care is among the best in the world. They spend more of their national income on health care, at 11.5 percent, than anyone except Americans, who spend 16 percent.
The Swiss have the freedom to see any doctor in their canton, and they don't have long waits. And Swiss health-care providers have much less paperwork than their U.S. counterparts.
In 2003, Switzerland spent an average of $3,781 per person on health care. The United States spent $5,635 per person, according to an October report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Herzlinger said consumer choice accounts for Switzerland's lower costs.
Bush and market-oriented health economists are all for consumer choice. They're urging Americans to start health savings accounts and buy high-deductible health care plans. Bush gave those ideas another push in his State of the Union Address. Critics call it health-care rationing by income, where only the wealthy have health savings accounts big enough to cover medical expenses.
While everyone in Switzerland is obliged to buy insurance, the 87 Swiss health insurance companies also have to offer a basic health-care plan priced without regard to risk.
The companies can't make a profit on this basic plan, and they compete for profits by offering high or low deductibles and supplemental benefits. A healthy 24-year-old living in Bern pays the same premium as someone like Zbinden (300 Swiss francs a month, or about $242).
Swiss insurers charge a premium for each family member. Children have a lower premium than adults, but for a family of four, insurance premiums for the basic coverage plan are about $8,167 a year. An American family with employer-provided health insurance pays an average of $2,713 a year in premiums, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Deductibles and co-pays are comparable to those paid in the United States.
Swiss cantons subsidize health insurance premiums based on income. With premiums climbing an average of 5 percent a year over the last decade, subsidies now go to nearly a third of Switzerland's 7.5 million residents.
Swiss health insurance premiums are lower than the U.S. average when employers' costs are added, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation survey. For an American family of four, employers contribute an average of $8,167, for a total of $10,880 a year. That's up 73 percent since 2000, according to the Kaiser survey.
And fewer American companies are offering health insurance. In 2000, 69 percent of workers got health insurance as a benefit. In 2004, that dropped to 60 percent.
Small companies in particular are finding the costs too high, and the number of uninsured Americans is climbing, said Drew Altman, chief executive and president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. More than 46 million Americans have no health insurance.
"Americans have a clear sense of what they are paying out of pocket, and they're really upset about it," he said. "But as health-care premiums have gone up sharply, employers have eaten a significant share."
Devon Harrick, a health economist with the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, said employers got into the business of paying health insurance premiums when they couldn't compete for workers by offering higher wages.
"The only reason our current system exists the way it does is because of the tax laws in the 1940s. Price controls prohibited wage hikes, but you could attract employees with health insurance," he said. And, unlike payroll, health care benefits are not taxed.
"In the end, employees pay their own health-care costs," Harrick said. "A lot of employees don't understand that's really not a free benefit. It's part of their compensation."
In a consumer-driven health-care system such as Switzerland's, employers freed from health insurance obligations pay higher wages, said Herzlinger.
A health-care system based on choice would, in theory, also give consumers a way to compare the prices charged by doctors and hospitals. Those prices are hard to come by in the United States. But in Switzerland, they are all pretty much the same.
"Price (in the Swiss system) doesn't matter, because it's set by these negotiations," said Reinhardt, a professor of political economy at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
U.S. health care providers fiercely oppose that approach, said Altman.
"Government regulation to control costs of a kind practiced in every other developed country is opposed by our health care providers," he said, "so we are stuck in a bunch of half-measures."
Not all Swiss citizens are happy with the system. They complain that prices are getting too high, that their system encourages patients to stay in hospitals longer than necessary and that the insurance companies, trying to find ways to make money in a regulated market, offer such a bewildering mix of plans that most consumers aren't making informed choices.
"Theoretically, it's consumer-driven. But practically, no," said Gaudenz Silberschmidt, head of the international affairs division of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health.
The complicated nature of the system is partly the fault of the insurers, he said. "They offer thousands of different premium plans, and when it's that many, it means it's not transparent."
"There is no best health-care system, no gold standard," he said.
There does seem to be a standard for what countries want to avoid, however.
"It's a sad thing, but when I go to international conferences, there's no question the U.S. health system is the bogeyman everywhere," said Reinhardt.
Zbinden's wife, Katharina, says the couple feels fortunate. "We are very grateful to have the Swiss system, even though it's expensive. We could not afford this in the United States."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_427691.html
By The Dallas Morning News Sunday, February 26, 2006
BERN, Switzerland -- Karl Zbinden's hospital room overlooked the snowy banks of the Aare River on a bleak January afternoon. The gaunt, 53-year-old biologist was in bed with pancreatitis, a serious condition that emerged after a kidney transplant.
Like all Swiss citizens, Zbinden has health insurance. And, like all Swiss, he pays for it himself with no help from his employer.
An American in his situation might face tens of thousands of dollars in expenses. But under the Swiss health-care system, individuals pay about a third less on health care than the average American, in part because of government-enforced price controls.
President Bush is pushing for health care reforms based on individual choice. The Swiss system offers some of those choices, and some health economists say their system works better.
"I think we're going to get there soon, not eventually," said Regina Herzlinger, a Harvard Business School professor who's studied the Swiss system. "The major reason is, most people agree that employer support for health insurance is just not going to continue."
Every resident of Switzerland is required to buy health insurance. If they don't, they pay stiff monetary penalties. Companies have no role. Health-care plans are chosen at the kitchen table, not through employee benefit departments.
And the plans can be costly. A family of four in Switzerland pays an average of $680 a month in premiums. Government assistance helps pay premiums for those less well off.
Health-care prices are set each year after negotiations between insurance companies and medical providers. The fee schedule has to be approved by the Swiss canton (or state) governments -- an approach Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton University compares to the doomed health-reform plan drafted by the Clinton administration.
Drug costs also are subject to price ceilings, but they still seem fairly expensive, at least in the minds of Swiss consumers.
"Within Europe, we are almost the only country left with a strong drug company sector," said Swiss congressman Felix Gutzwiller, a medical doctor who also heads the University of Zurich Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine.
"The public has a very peculiar attitude about that. They want a high level of innovation, but there is a permanent discussion about the cost of medications."
The Swiss approach insures everyone while eliminating the headaches and costs of health care for companies sensitive to global competition.
"People in Switzerland realize what these costs do to American business, and they don't want to add to the anti-competitive burden of Swiss businesses in the global economy," Gutzwiller said.
"Also, people do not want employers to get so much into their private life and lifestyle."
The Swiss think the quality of their medical care is among the best in the world. They spend more of their national income on health care, at 11.5 percent, than anyone except Americans, who spend 16 percent.
The Swiss have the freedom to see any doctor in their canton, and they don't have long waits. And Swiss health-care providers have much less paperwork than their U.S. counterparts.
In 2003, Switzerland spent an average of $3,781 per person on health care. The United States spent $5,635 per person, according to an October report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Herzlinger said consumer choice accounts for Switzerland's lower costs.
Bush and market-oriented health economists are all for consumer choice. They're urging Americans to start health savings accounts and buy high-deductible health care plans. Bush gave those ideas another push in his State of the Union Address. Critics call it health-care rationing by income, where only the wealthy have health savings accounts big enough to cover medical expenses.
While everyone in Switzerland is obliged to buy insurance, the 87 Swiss health insurance companies also have to offer a basic health-care plan priced without regard to risk.
The companies can't make a profit on this basic plan, and they compete for profits by offering high or low deductibles and supplemental benefits. A healthy 24-year-old living in Bern pays the same premium as someone like Zbinden (300 Swiss francs a month, or about $242).
Swiss insurers charge a premium for each family member. Children have a lower premium than adults, but for a family of four, insurance premiums for the basic coverage plan are about $8,167 a year. An American family with employer-provided health insurance pays an average of $2,713 a year in premiums, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Deductibles and co-pays are comparable to those paid in the United States.
Swiss cantons subsidize health insurance premiums based on income. With premiums climbing an average of 5 percent a year over the last decade, subsidies now go to nearly a third of Switzerland's 7.5 million residents.
Swiss health insurance premiums are lower than the U.S. average when employers' costs are added, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation survey. For an American family of four, employers contribute an average of $8,167, for a total of $10,880 a year. That's up 73 percent since 2000, according to the Kaiser survey.
And fewer American companies are offering health insurance. In 2000, 69 percent of workers got health insurance as a benefit. In 2004, that dropped to 60 percent.
Small companies in particular are finding the costs too high, and the number of uninsured Americans is climbing, said Drew Altman, chief executive and president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. More than 46 million Americans have no health insurance.
"Americans have a clear sense of what they are paying out of pocket, and they're really upset about it," he said. "But as health-care premiums have gone up sharply, employers have eaten a significant share."
Devon Harrick, a health economist with the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, said employers got into the business of paying health insurance premiums when they couldn't compete for workers by offering higher wages.
"The only reason our current system exists the way it does is because of the tax laws in the 1940s. Price controls prohibited wage hikes, but you could attract employees with health insurance," he said. And, unlike payroll, health care benefits are not taxed.
"In the end, employees pay their own health-care costs," Harrick said. "A lot of employees don't understand that's really not a free benefit. It's part of their compensation."
In a consumer-driven health-care system such as Switzerland's, employers freed from health insurance obligations pay higher wages, said Herzlinger.
A health-care system based on choice would, in theory, also give consumers a way to compare the prices charged by doctors and hospitals. Those prices are hard to come by in the United States. But in Switzerland, they are all pretty much the same.
"Price (in the Swiss system) doesn't matter, because it's set by these negotiations," said Reinhardt, a professor of political economy at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
U.S. health care providers fiercely oppose that approach, said Altman.
"Government regulation to control costs of a kind practiced in every other developed country is opposed by our health care providers," he said, "so we are stuck in a bunch of half-measures."
Not all Swiss citizens are happy with the system. They complain that prices are getting too high, that their system encourages patients to stay in hospitals longer than necessary and that the insurance companies, trying to find ways to make money in a regulated market, offer such a bewildering mix of plans that most consumers aren't making informed choices.
"Theoretically, it's consumer-driven. But practically, no," said Gaudenz Silberschmidt, head of the international affairs division of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health.
The complicated nature of the system is partly the fault of the insurers, he said. "They offer thousands of different premium plans, and when it's that many, it means it's not transparent."
"There is no best health-care system, no gold standard," he said.
There does seem to be a standard for what countries want to avoid, however.
"It's a sad thing, but when I go to international conferences, there's no question the U.S. health system is the bogeyman everywhere," said Reinhardt.
Zbinden's wife, Katharina, says the couple feels fortunate. "We are very grateful to have the Swiss system, even though it's expensive. We could not afford this in the United States."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_427691.html
Friday, January 01, 2010
Avatar - some impressions
We went to see Avatar at an Imax theater last night. Prior to seeing the movie I'd heard:
1.) It's an incredible movie, one of the best ever seen - great insight into racism, environmental issues and how we relate to them,
2.) 2 1/2 stars - local newspaper - spectacular visual effects - but weak, stereotypical plot,
3.) Blasphemous movie - which is strongly counter to "Good Christian Values".
In some ways the movie was all of these things and perhaps more. It certainly had an appeal to it as it portrayed the importance of us being "with" nature and respecting others. It strongly, strongly put down the Zenophobia and "might is right" mindsets that we can best see in our U.S. Government-Military-Corporate culture. It could be seen as empowering confronting "the establishment" and not feeling disempowered by the Powers one faces in activism.
The mythical planet and its people and animals were portrayed in an incredibly beautiful way. Watching the movie for its images alone could result in one feeling incredibly enriched. The "education" of the hero can show a viewer how our life realities are rigidly ethnocentric. We can see how important it is to understand others as they are and how they view themselves.
The movie also is "very Hollywood" in some of its worst ways. The "good" are stereotyped as "very good" and the "bad" are "very bad". While there are surprises and unexpected nuances much of the movie is Very predictable. Perhaps more troubling is the naive, limited view of how change is brought about.
A few allies of the "hero" join him in taking on the rest of the "bad guys" from whence they came. It is not difficult to see how well-meaning people could take from such a movie - if they viewed it "directly" how we can for example use technology to help "those poor people" in Africa or wherever. While the movie pushes an image of "respect" and understanding our ethnocentricity, it also has an underlying image of "we can use our knowledge for good" which is limited.
Building systemic change requires grassroot organizing and building support to avoid cooptation and insignificant change which doesn't help (much) and may hurt things in some instances. We need significant campaign finance reform in the U.S. and our failure to end corporate dominance infects us over and over again - as can readily be seen related to healthcare reform legislation. It is no coincident that Connecticut has major insurance company "strength" and that Joe Lieberman looks out for the insurance companies' interests.
The movie is certainly a nightmare for rightwing Christians who believe in "the Lord" and "the natural order" of both the environment and private enterprise. It does strongly confront these stereotypic views and indicate that we need to respect the environment and people who are different from us.
I'm glad I saw the movie! I'd recommend it to others. It can "help" in some ways. To me it isn't "the answer", though that is a next-to-impossible thing to have. To reach "the masses" the message can't be 'too deep' or in some ways 'too radical'. I'd give the movie either a B+ (if looking at it's weaknesses) or an A- or even an A - if looking at its strengths and beauty.
Thanks!
1.) It's an incredible movie, one of the best ever seen - great insight into racism, environmental issues and how we relate to them,
2.) 2 1/2 stars - local newspaper - spectacular visual effects - but weak, stereotypical plot,
3.) Blasphemous movie - which is strongly counter to "Good Christian Values".
In some ways the movie was all of these things and perhaps more. It certainly had an appeal to it as it portrayed the importance of us being "with" nature and respecting others. It strongly, strongly put down the Zenophobia and "might is right" mindsets that we can best see in our U.S. Government-Military-Corporate culture. It could be seen as empowering confronting "the establishment" and not feeling disempowered by the Powers one faces in activism.
The mythical planet and its people and animals were portrayed in an incredibly beautiful way. Watching the movie for its images alone could result in one feeling incredibly enriched. The "education" of the hero can show a viewer how our life realities are rigidly ethnocentric. We can see how important it is to understand others as they are and how they view themselves.
The movie also is "very Hollywood" in some of its worst ways. The "good" are stereotyped as "very good" and the "bad" are "very bad". While there are surprises and unexpected nuances much of the movie is Very predictable. Perhaps more troubling is the naive, limited view of how change is brought about.
A few allies of the "hero" join him in taking on the rest of the "bad guys" from whence they came. It is not difficult to see how well-meaning people could take from such a movie - if they viewed it "directly" how we can for example use technology to help "those poor people" in Africa or wherever. While the movie pushes an image of "respect" and understanding our ethnocentricity, it also has an underlying image of "we can use our knowledge for good" which is limited.
Building systemic change requires grassroot organizing and building support to avoid cooptation and insignificant change which doesn't help (much) and may hurt things in some instances. We need significant campaign finance reform in the U.S. and our failure to end corporate dominance infects us over and over again - as can readily be seen related to healthcare reform legislation. It is no coincident that Connecticut has major insurance company "strength" and that Joe Lieberman looks out for the insurance companies' interests.
The movie is certainly a nightmare for rightwing Christians who believe in "the Lord" and "the natural order" of both the environment and private enterprise. It does strongly confront these stereotypic views and indicate that we need to respect the environment and people who are different from us.
I'm glad I saw the movie! I'd recommend it to others. It can "help" in some ways. To me it isn't "the answer", though that is a next-to-impossible thing to have. To reach "the masses" the message can't be 'too deep' or in some ways 'too radical'. I'd give the movie either a B+ (if looking at it's weaknesses) or an A- or even an A - if looking at its strengths and beauty.
Thanks!
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