SeniorJunior

We Hear a Lot About the British, Canadian, French and Danish Systems, but not... The German health care system "The German health care system has the reputation of being the best in the world. There is an extensive network of hospitals and doctors covering even the remotest areas of Germany. Waiting lists for treatments are rare. Medical facilities are equipped with the latest technology and the statutory health insurance scheme provides nearly full cover for most medical treatments and medicines. Almost everybody in Germany has access to this system, irrespective of income or social status." It ain't perfect, but it's one helluva lot better than ours. The key is a mix of non-profit (by far the largest segment) and for-profit (for the rich, mostly) insurance companies, both rigorously regulated by the German government. Want a (rigorous, German) perspective? Check this out. Then, check out the Duffer's plan for the U.S. transit

Make Our Infrastructure Into A Super-Infrastructure In a fool's paradise, who is the fool? The big Midwestern floods just put an explanation point on the truth most of us know but seem powerless to do anything about: Our infrastructure is crumbling. “We” are powerless because we let the people who can do something, our elected federal officials, do nothing. Are we stoopid or unconscious or what? And we all just witnessed dikes breaking and homes, businesses and farms being ruined. Again. "We need profound changes," said engineer Kumares Sinha of Purdue University. "We can't live in a fool's paradise." (From the same Reuters article) Elected officials are afraid of the word “tax.” If something worthwhile needs doing and takes money to do it, our Congress and our Administration act like we are teenagers with credit cards. Actually pay for what we need? Horrors! Politicians who have the guts ask our citizens to sacrifice a bit to pa

Propaganda for the lame minded "ANWR Is Such an Ugly Piece of Wasteland There's No Reason Not To Let The Oil Companies Completely Screw It Up" So since the "Eco Nazis" misrepresent how ANWR really looks ( ugly! ) we should dismiss what they say about the environmental disaster drilling would cause and GET THOSE RIGS UP THERE PRONTO!! (And get our gasoline prices down, equally pronto.) That was the essence of the misleading, misquided piece o' drek that was forwarded to me. I looked at the pictures and read the idiotic text. My response: The coastal plains of ANWR: I never saw a more fragile, important ecosystem in my life. "Barren Wasteland" indeed. The author of that stupidity is obviously massively ignorant of anything about how nature works. Portraying the coastal plains of northern Alaska as "ugly" and not worth saving is exactly like saying the "Everglades are evil," and look what that got us. ANWR is one

A Bunch of Students, Of Course ... More on that in a minute, but who else? Can you name even one legitimate, professional, scientifically credible group in favor of pot for people with painful prognoses? Here are just a few of the wacko ones: The AIDS Action Council, the Alaska Nurses Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Nurses Association, the American Preventive Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, the California Academy of Family Physicians, the California Medical Association, the California Pharmacists Association, the Connecticut Nurses Association, Cure AIDS Now, the Florida Medical Association, the Los Angeles County AIDS Commission, the Lymphoma Foundation of America, the Medical Society of the State of New York, the National Association for Public Health Policy, the National Association of People with AIDS, the National Nurses Society on Addictions, the New England Journal of Medici

Note to Neighbors Remember I'm a four-cistern guy? Read all about it here . Anyway, here is sort of an update on that "cistern" story written about this time in '06. It's in the form of a "Discussion" entry on a new, trial-balloon neighborhood community website. Big lesson on water usage: We have four sisterns draining our metal roofs on house, garage and dog kennel; two 1600 galloners, one 1200 gals and one 600 gals (the kennel). We drip irrigate two vegetable plots, one 30' X 5' and one 15' X 3'. We water an hour a day during these early-growth days. We use about 150 gallons per watering. We also water our "courtyard" of flowers and trees, fenced off from our herd of big Airedales. About 100 gals a day\ Figger it out. That's about twenty day's worth. We are almost out of water and the Monsoons aren't here yet. I hate to

Another End Run - This Time by the E.U. We all read about how the progress we made in The Americas has slipped badly during the W. Bush years. Really too bad. So now there is an opportunity to do some fix-up. With Fidel fading in Cuba, we could step in and encourage our island neighbor to move away from their failed communist orthodoxy. We could rejoin our old bonds (not the ones with American gangsters) and build a potential ally, trading partner and, eventually, friend. Heaven knows we need one. If there was ever a chance to open a new chapter in inter-American relations, this is it. But ... Nah, we will keep up our failed policy of an endless embargo, mainly to pander to all those Cuban immigrants (whose property was confiscated and who can never get it back until we have a legal relationship with Cuba. Huh?). Now the European Union is reestablishing a full relationship with Cuba. They will start reaping the benefits and influencing the direction Cuba will go. Of course the

One Big Plan, Man Bollixed: The Current U.S. Health Care Situation: Our private, mostly unregulated, profit-driven insurance system guarantees by its very nature that millions of citizens, many who are highly productive workers, are either uninsured or under-insured. This situation cannot be improved significantly without eliminating private health insurance as the primary form of healthcare financing. Adding approximately 30% to the cost of healthcare (that's about $300 BILLION A YEAR!) private health insurance is parasitical in that it helps only the owners, stockholders and employees of the insurance companies and does essentially nothing to improve health care. Converting from private health insurance to Single Payer Government Insurance - "Medicare for All" (MFA) faces formidable hurdles, which are addressed in this plan. Hurdles. (I'm talking high hurdles, track fans.) The private health insurance companies are an immense po