Any way you slice this, our economy is in very dark and disturbing times. We are standing on the edge of an abyss with one foot half way already down into it. It seems like as a nation we are running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Everyone knows we are in deep despair but no one seems to be able to agree on what to do about it. So much attention has been given to the mortgage crisis that little attention or credit for what the high cost of fuel this past year has played in our downward spiral. That one single factor caused families to break the budget at the pump alone. Consumer goods in every capacity from production to shipping passed the increased costs on to us. (and most products now cost more and come in smaller packages) Electric companies sought and were granted huge price increases. We cut back, quit going out to eat as much or at all, quit spending on frills and even necessities, that sadly resulted in even more jobs being lost. It has been a real catch-22 in the economy. Record jobs and homes are being lost still. Unemployment is climbing every day. While most of the public seem to be doing the happy dance around the pumps, and reporters are reporting the happy dance, little is being reported about OPEC's plans to keep cutting production and they will until they get prices back up where they want them to be. The average family is so far behind they will never get caught up. Jeff Wilson has an interesting book just out called The Manhattan Project of 2009. I heard him on a radio talk show interview and he blew me out of the water. I got his book on Amazon. I think we are going about this whole thing wrong. WE keep spending billions on bailouts and stimulus checks. Why not invest in creating improved grids, infrastructures, and creating millions of badly needed new green collar jobs? The last stimulus package cost us 168 BILLION and did NOTHING to stimulate our economy. That would have gone a long way toward starting up alternative energy projects and creating new jobs. www.themanhattanprojectof2009.com Check out what they are doing in California.Check out this link to read the news. This is so exciting for those who realize the importance of seeing out country transfrom away from fossil fuels and to cleaner, cheaper electric cars. I read about this in Jeff Wilson's book The Manhattan Project of 2009. I am thrilled and surpriesed to see it taking place so soon. Go The Manhattan Project of 2009, Go Jeff Wilson for writing this enlightening book, Go California, Go Arnold, and GO BETTER PLACE...IT IS ENCOURAGING TO SEE THERE ARE THOSE OUT THERE WHO ACTUALLY GET IT. HOPEFULLY WASHINGTON WILL FOLLOW SUITE SOON! Link to news story below or simply type electric car infrastructure california or Better Place into search engine. http://www.freep.com/article/2... http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_ weblog/2008/11/better-place-gl.html

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Why? Because 20,000 will die every year , while we do...HR 676. It can be done. But, will the Dems do it? Probably not.

Unless it costs over $850 billion dollars, dont even say we "cant afford it"!!

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of politics. If campaign finance reforms aren't on the horizon, it will be business as usual in congress. These guys know that they must have money to run on next time.

When you say "the best government money can buy" you always get a smile and sometimes a laugh. If you don't want big money determining health care, you had better reform campaign finance first. Or rather we have to buy our government back. If you don't want health care reform infected by the wishes of big money, you will recognize that a total, radical, absolute change in campaign finance must happen first.

Is there a choice?

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HMO Executive Salaries
Reprinted from FAMILIES USA
The 25 Highest Paid HMO Executives 1996 Annual Compensation
Exclusive of Unexercised Stock Options
Stephen Wiggins, CEO, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $29,061,599
Wilson Taylor, Chairman and CEO, CIGNA Corporation $11,568,410
David Snow, Executive Vice President, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $10,403,451
Robert Smoler, Executive Vice President, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $10,085,972
William Sullivan, President, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $7,823,076
Joseph Sebastianelli, President, Aetna, Inc. $7,394,506
Michael Cardillo, Executive Vice President, Aetna, Inc. $7,069,969
Leonard Schaeffer, Chairman and CEO, WellPoint Health Networks, Inc. $7,010,698
George Jochum, President and CEO, Mid-Atlantic Medical Services, Inc. $6,526,065
Ronald Compton, Chairman and CEO, Aetna, Inc. $5,813,287
Wayne Smith, Former President, Humana, Inc. $5,166,575
James Stewart, Executive Vice President, CIGNA Corporation $4,832,799
Richard Huber, Vice Chairman, Aetna, Inc. $4,801,841
Roger Taylor, Executive Vice President, PacifiCare Health Systems, Inc. $4,103,864
Daniel Crowley, CEO and President, Foundation Health Corporation $3,849,023
Gerald Isom, President, Property and Casualty, CIGNA Corporation $3,778,293
Alan Hoops, President and CEO, PacifiCare Health Systems, Inc. $3,221,602
Daniel Kearney, Executive Vice President, Aetna, Inc $3,189,272
D. Mark Weinberg, Exec. Vice President, WellPoint Health Networks, Inc. $3,009,944
Donald Levinson, Executive Vice President, CIGNA Corporation $2,985,017
Ronald Williams, Exec. Vice President, WellPoint Health Networks, Inc. $2,827,381
Allen Wise, Executive Vice President, United HealthCare Corporation $2,697,751
Jeffrey Elder, Senior Vice President, Foundation Health Corporation $2,235,783
H. Edward Hanway, President CIGNA HealthCare, CIGNA Corporation $2,217,711
Kirk Benson, President and COO, Foundation Health Corporation $2,104,414

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I think what we all ought to do as Americans working together and that is dump all the health insurance and not pay those greedy companies a dime. I bet then the health care reform will come very swiftly because everyday we don't play the greed game with them is another day we might get things our way for a change. It is time these companies learned who is boss and that is we the people. I have not had health insurance for quite a long time and think the current system is nothing but a bunch of BS. Quite frankly I am sick of it and ashamed that this once proud country is nothing but greedy, caring for the all mighty dollar more than it's citizens. Oh and while we are at it the pharmaceutical companies need to be brought back under control as well. This is what unregulated capitalism does for you. I for one can't stand capitalism the way it is now as it does need to be under regulations.

How hard would it be to look at some of the other health care systems in Europe that actually work and model ours after them?

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If there was a way to dramatically lower rates for asthma, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, MS, and TB, that should be widely broadcast, right?

Yes, it's hard to believe that there could be an easy answer to such complex problems. But the NIH says 8 out of 10 Americans are deficient in vitamin D, which recent research connects to that list of debilitating conditions.

We have historical examples of “easy” answers to complex problems. Lemon juice was an easy answer to the terrible problem of scurvy (and this answer allowed the British navy to gain and protect a vast empire, maybe not such a good thing). Also, B vitamins were added to flour early last century, which stopped pellagra in its tracks in the South, saving tens of thousands of lives and emptying many insane asylums.

See an article about vitamin D at: http://goodschoolfood.org/vitamin_dropout.shtml

Since that leaflet was put online, two related articles have appeared. First, NPR's Living on Earth program visited Boston's Mattapan Community Health Center where Dr. Bibuld routinely prescribes 7000 IU or more of D a day (compare that to the designed-to-fail FDA RDA of 400 IU). Read the transcript online at: loe.org

The other recent news is from 18 UC scientists who urge the FDA to raise the RDA to 2000 IU a day:
http://newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=1968

D has gotten some press lately, but most articles I've seen have ballyhooed the nutrient without any info on dosage, or give the FDA recommendation, which is embarrassingly out of date.

Every person is different depending on:
sun exposure
the melanin content of their skin
what they eat
Therefore, blood tests would be the ideal approach, to establish a base line in order to calculate a daily dose.

But until then, 2000 IU would be a good start. Anything less won’t make any difference but will simply appear to show that D doesn’t help. By way of comparison, a pale person can make 20,000 IU of D in their skin in 15 minutes in a suit on a summer day. Someone with more melanin in their skin might need an hour or even 2 ½ hours to make that much D.

Salud,
Lauren

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Yes, Medicare for All !

... Sales tax receipts, property tax receipts, state income tax receipts and pension funds are falling precipitously creating a fiscal nightmare for school districts, cities, counties, states and business. How do we inject money as efficiently and fairly as possible into the economy saving jobs, government programs and pension funds ?

Medicare for All ...

Medicare for All would help re-capitalize business (especially manufacturing), school districts, state and local government, individual payers and the under and uninsured. The states and business would be required to use any excess of savings for unemployment and pension funds. Overall this could save hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs while putting money quickly and directly into the system in the most efficient, fairest way possible ... taking care of people's medical bills.

Saving existing jobs is much quicker and more efficient than creating new jobs.

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“We are what we eat” is how we can address the “health crisis.’

For years I wrote service in the automobile industry. Like a person’s body some owners of the automobiles needed “health care,” you broke it and someone has to pay or
you had insurance. Most auto or warranty “insurance” will not pay for neglect.

30 years ago I would take medical histories while waiting for the dye that was in the retinal vessels to be eliminated from the blood stream to get that last photo.
In both cases those who cared for their mode of transportation spent less on “health care.”

If we as a nation are to redirect our wealth so that our children can breathe, we must take responsibility our mode of transportation, our bodies.

We are what we eat.
If you eat processed foods and spend more for ill health care maybe it could be the food you eat?
If you drink very little water, coffee, tea and most soft drinks are diuretics and create an interesting impediment for our body to function. It is called dehydration. Please forgive my patronage, DEHYDRATION.

Rather than purchase or advocate for your employer to adopt a true health insurance policy consider that insurance is to protect us from our Karma and acts of God not our ignorance.
Having an entire society pay for those who do not maintain their conveyance, their body; this is an ignorance which benefits only the medical health care industry. Somebody has to pay.

Cancer, Alzheimer’s, mental illness including depression, appear to follow the time line of the global adoption of chemical fertilizers made from crude oil. Dead dinosaurs.

Would you rather be a new statistic for one of the disease entities or consider taking responsibility for your own health? You spend the money. Chemicals or food?

The 1954 Rider to the Farm Subsidies Act of the New Deal of 1946 made the use of chemical fertilizers became the law of the land under this rider.
NO more manure, an act of God, but pellets of Ammonium nitrate and sulfates which are excellent explosives but incomplete plant foods. Contact your representative to repeal this blank check to the petrochemical industry or continue taking the meds. Meds prescribed because the food you were sold was deficient in minerals which Linus Pauling suggested is the cause of our “modern diseases.”

These fertilizers are not poop. All organisms poop, to recycle what they have eliminated. Animal manure and even urine can be recycled like they were before Nelson Rockefeller and Prescott Bush convinced Ezra Taft Benson it was not only good for the farmer but very good for the faltering oil industry. It was good for both but has proven very detrimental to we who eat the food.

Until organic agribusiness reoccurs please contact the Live Blood and Cellular Matrix Study of the Body Human Project to help explain why adding sulfur back into your diet may help your health.

The cycles of life, not throw a ways.

Patrick McGean
Director
organicsulfur@sisna.com

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would have to give you an option for having health coverage or collect the payments. Say your spouse has good insurance, you don't need it. How long do we sit there and take this? It's not we the people. pffft

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We don't need Big Pharma's drugs shoved down our throats at the point of a gun. We don't need them imprisoning doctors and healthcare people because they have found a better way to treat cancer than by chemo, radiation and surgery. Healthcare in America is a big racket, and everybody loses. The medcine is murderous, the treatments are barbaric, and the people are sick and dying, and losing their life savings and everything they own to pay for the "treatments" that are out of a horror movie.

There's no such thing as free healthcare, and what we have in America is not even health care to begin with.

Watch the Town of Allopath online. Google it. It tells the whole story of the racket known as American Healthcare.

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