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Like our public education system?
long live china
i think they hold alot of ur treasury bonds
Like our public education system?
Nope.
Spiraling health care costs are because we don't provide cheap preventive medicine that would avoid those expensive cures.
Just a guess...
I thought everyone was in dire straits in the US because
the rich were robbing everyone else........
Now I am confused.
Wife is teaching a class on causes of cancer; no "preventative measures" in the WORLD are going to stop it; AND it's the MOST expensive thing going. We are PRE-WIRED to get cancer if nothing else gets us.
Preventive care is WAY overrated in terms of saving health care dollars.
Also:
Lowest number of doctors per capita in the country = Minnesota
Least $$$$ spent on Healthcare in Country = Minnesota
More AVAILABLE Doctors and Visits != Good Health or lower costs; just the opposite.
US debt could trigger dollar collapse, UN warns
LinkyThe United States dollar is facing imminent collapse in the face of an unsustainable debt, the United Nations warned today.
United States debt, which had now deepened to well over $3 trillion, might turn out to be unsustainable in the rest of 2007 or next, putting further downward pressure on the United States dollar, Rob Vos, the Director of the Development Policy and Analysis Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference.
He pointed out that since its peak in 2002, the dollar had depreciated vis-à-vis the major currencies by some 35 per cent and by 25 per cent against a broader range of other currencies.
Vos made these comments at the launch of the 2007 World Economic Situation and Prospects report midyear update.
With that increased debt the risk of a sharp depreciation of the dollar continued, he warned. If countries willing to invest in United States dollar assets expected further depreciation, they might be less willing to hold dollar assets, triggering a much sharper fall in the United States dollar. The risk of disorderly adjustment and the steep fall of the dollar existed. The policy challenge was how to prevent a hard landing of the United States dollar and forge a benign adjustment of the global imbalance.
Who owns you?
Mission accomplished! I wonder what Bin Laden will be doing at that podium on the Carrier Abraham Lincoln???
A strong dollar, massive debt, and huge trade deficits cannot exist in the long run. It is simply not economically possible.
As long as we spend more than we have year after and borrow the difference, and allow these "free trade" trade policies to continue that are actually perversions of the theory of comparative advantage due to the wage differentials in third world countries, then our debt and deficits are only going to grow. You don't need a PhD in economics to know what that inevitably means for the dollar.
Ron Paul appears to be either the only presidential candidate who understands this, or he's the only one who will admit the problem and do something about it.
So finding and detecting cancer early really isn't cheaper than expensive desperate treatment?
What about the lost costs to the economy of lost productivity of people who would otherwise live and be productive members of our economy?
The costs both in actively spent dollars and opportunity costs of not having decent preventive health care are much greater than you seem to think.
You can always try and get the drug people to pony up if it doesn't
work. Right.
From Times Online
June 4, 2007
Drugmaker to refund NHS when its medicine fails
Pharmaceutical firm Janssen-Cilag is offering an innovative system of NHS refunds should its cancer treatment not work
Robert Lindsay
In a ground-breaking move that could provide a cost-effective way to fund expensive new drugs, the National Ins ute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the Government's health adviser, proposed today to fund a cancer treatement, Velcade, only for patients who responded to the drug.
Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of NICE, said that he was taking up a proposal from the drug manufacturer Janssen-Cilag, a division of the US consumer goods giant Johnson & Johnson, that it refund the NHS for patients who showed no significant response to Velcade.
NICE originally had refused to fund the drug at all, because it was not convinced that the medicine was effective in enough cases to be worthwhile.
But Janssen-Cilag won its appeal of this decision by suggesting that it pay when the drug does not work.
Mr Dillon said: “We are aware of the challenge that the NHS faces in ensuring that patients can access expensive, but potentially effective, treatments for life-threatening conditions such as cancer.
"If the drug’s manufacturer accepts the proposals we are consulting on today, it will mean that when the drug works well the NHS pays but when it doesn’t the manufacturer should bear the cost. All patients suitable for treatment will get the chance to see if the drug works well for them.”
NICE is proposing, in a consultation do ent, that the NHS pay only when the drug is shown to have reduced a particular protein in multiple myeloma patients' blood by at least 50 per cent.
It is also capping funding at four cycles of treatment.
However, Janssen-Cilag wants the threshold to be 25 per cent and believes that many patients will benefit if funding continues for longer than four treatments.
NICE will take on board any comments made up to the end of June and issue another draft against which appeals can be lodged.
At the moment funding for the drug is available only on a case-by-case basis determined by local health authorities.
Or just tell them how to live their lives.
Smokers told to quit or surgery will be refused
By DAN NEWLING - More by this author » Last updated at 16:02pm on 4th June 2007
Comments Comments (32)
smoker
Smokers are to be denied operations on the NHS unless they give up cigarettes for at least four weeks beforehand
Smokers are to be denied operations on the Health Service unless they give up cigarettes for at least four weeks beforehand.
Doctors will police the rule by ordering patients to take a blood test to prove they have not been smoking.
The ruling, authorised by Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, comes after medical research conclusively showed smokers take longer to recover from surgery.
It is thought that 500,000 smokers a year will be affected.
However patients' groups argue that the move is about the NHS saving money rather than improving patient care.
They claim that health trusts do not want to operate on smokers because they stay in hospital longer, blocking beds and costing more to treat.
The ruling applies to routine operations such as hip replacements and heart surgery for conditions that are not immediately life-threatening.
If smokers refuse to give up, they are still likely to be treated but may have to wait longer.
Leicester City Primary Care Trust will become the first health authority to introduce the "quit or wait" rule this summer. Other health trusts are consulting on the idea.
Rod Moore, the trust's assistant director of public health, said: "If people give up smoking prior to planned operations it will improve their recovery. It would reduce heart and lung complications and wounds would heal faster.
"Our purpose is not to deny patients access to operations but to see if the outcomes can be improved."
Patricia Hewitt has described the ruling as "a perfectly legitimate clinical decision".
Yesterday her spokesman explained: "Trusts commission surgery services based on their assessment of the needs of their local population and availability of service capacity.
What about drinkers, drug takers, people who eat too much and people who never exercise? Online forum
"The provision and availability of a particular surgical intervention should be dependent on the clinical needs of the individual patient."
• The European Commission is considering a proposal to extend the forthcoming ban on smoking in enclosed public places to cover doorways.
Officials have been studying the Canadian province of Quebec, where smoking is banned within nine metres of the doorway into any healthcare-related building, school or social services building.
The experiment is thought to have shown positive health benefits.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said the Health Act 2006, which covers the July 1 ban, contains reserve powers to extend the law to outside areas. Sports stadia, bus shelters and train platforms are already classed as enclosed public spaces under the Act and it would not have to go back to Parliament to be extended to doorways.
yes, trust us Argies, we know something about that
Clearly, our governemnt screwed things up in the 90s taking on way more debt than what, as a country, we could handle.yes, trust us Argies, we know something about that
The problem in the US is that both at the government and at the household level, there is too much debt.
In Argentina, at the individual level, it's very difficult to be overlevered because the is no credit available.
Yeah, then we can all have half of our paychecks taken out to cover it like they do in Great Britain. Can't wait for that day to get here.
Yep, a guy that made his entire fortune off of ambulance chasing is going to reform an industry where the majority of the costs to taxpayers are charges to cover malpractice insurance of medical workers.
Are you really that gullible?
US debt could trigger dollar collapse, UN warns
http://pressesc.com/01180629622_dollar_falls
I don't know where they got $3 trillion from when it comes to all that we owe. I usually see around $60 trillion when economists add up everything, and I've see $100+ trillion figures as well.
It didnt happen in 1917-1940.
its the overcommercialization of the industry and no demand response to price changes.
We didn't have those programs to fund then either.
I think we are in need for a serious devaluation of our dollar world wide. It would balance the trade deficit rather well if USA goods became cheaper for others to buy, and if out imports cost us more to buy. It could revitalize USA manufacturing!
You're right, the USA did not default on its social welfare system between 1917 and 1940. I'm not sure what your point is, however.
Interestingly, we did have both a major depression and an attempted coup in that interval.
Lots of bad things will happen if the dollar undergoes a serious devaluation. For one, it will cease to be a reserve currency worldwide. Once oil starts being traded in euros, then as the dollar slides against the euro, energy becomes unaffordable. If the dollar loses half its value, we're paying $5.50 a gallon at the pump instead of $3, without the intrinsic price of oil changing at all.
That is but one example.
If the dollar tanks then the manufacturing that will rise up here will resemble the third world countries that currently export to us rather than the manufacturing of old that provided excellent blue collar jobs. Factor in the tens of millions of immigrants here now and that will be here in the future, along with an inevitably devalued dollar, and your looking at a future where manufacturing in America will be similar to the countries that are currently exporting cheaply to us; that's how the trade deficit will correct. In other words, it will correct in a very negative way for everyone who doesn't own a major corporation or bank (surprise, surprise - they run the world).
If we really want ro revitalize US manufacturing, then the best way to do it would be to place tariffs on all imported goods in the amount of the wage differential between the exporting country and the US; then we'll truly see which country has the comparative advantage in a particular market instead of seeing which country's corporations can pay their workers the least.
Fat chance of that happening, sadly, because free trade has reached religious status in the power centers of the country. Tariffs are heresy to the god of globalization.
This article is a tad long, but it describes this whole situation very well, including the disconnect between the booming stock market and microscopic GDP growth.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publ...cle_2053.shtml
Smegol will disagree with you. He wants a more level
playing field.
A cheaper dollar wont even affect most Americans, except
as wildcobra said, you will pay more for imported goods,
but I have stated before it will increase our exports because
like he said it will make our goods cheaper.
So that's what he means when he says that. Have the American government stop looking out for the best interests of its workers and treat them the same as citizens everywhere in the world. I'd call that treason, but maybe that's just me.
That's not true. A massive dollar devaluation will be bad for most Americans' finances in many ways. Inflation will affect everything; just look at the change in prices at the grocery and convenience stores over the last few years. Everything is much higher than it was just a few years ago, and if we're talking about the inevitable major collapse, then this is just the beginning. The Dow is a huge credit bubble, like so many markets around the world today, and it will go down with the dollar in a major devaluation. This is bad for everybody. In short, people will pay higher prices for everything while much of their savings evaporates.A cheaper dollar wont even affect most Americans, except
as wildcobra said, you will pay more for imported goods
The export and debt repayment benefits of a much cheaper dollar will be far outweighed by the negative effects.but I have stated before it will increase our exports because
like he said it will make our goods cheaper.
If I put my assets in euros now, what happens to me? Do I become a miniature Joseph Kennedy?
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