Before repairing to bashing the industrial standards of Asian maunfacturers for toothpaste with high lead-content, and eliding over our own thiftiness for going with the lowest bidder in the first place, the Western world makes and has made for decades quite enough poisonous products all on its own. One piece that rather made my skin crawl and left me shuddering for the checkout girl where H and I went shopping just a little bit earlier concerned studies showing that Bisphenol A leeches from thermal-receipt paper through the skin and into the body just from casual handling. It's nearly as devastating as the formaldehyde that leaks out of new furniture and carpeting.
Saturday 6 November 2010
pharmacokinetics or better living through chemistry
catagories: ๐งช, environment, health and medicine
Wednesday 3 November 2010
symbols of state or no we canntibus
catagories: America, health and medicine, language, lifestyle
Tuesday 21 September 2010
aqua teen hunger force
catagories: environment, health and medicine, technology and innovation
Sunday 29 August 2010
tarnhelm or with my sword and magic helmet
catagories: health and medicine
Wednesday 21 April 2010
when I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery
catagories: ๐ฅธ, health and medicine
Wednesday 24 March 2010
there's a lake of stew and soda-pop too and you can paddle all around in a big canoe
On Sunday, Obama pushed through the much simonized the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, and I have hope that this is a good thing for America. A lot of compromise and negotiation went into this and are still to come, surely there are more to come with Senate input. I just hope that this does not go the way of other recent, historic overhauls like the Department of Homeland Security or Rumsfeld's mad-bomber approach to reforming the civil service system with NSPS (National Security Personnel System), which is now being rescinded or the half a dozen changes of nomenclature promulgated by the Ministry of Revisions. One can read the full text from the Library of Congress here.
There has been a virtual landslide of commentary on both sides. Here is a bit of point/counterpoint. First Reuter's News Services issued this fact box with a timeline.
-Insurers will be barred from excluding children for coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
-A temporary reinsurance program is created to help companies maintain health coverage for early retirees between 55 and 64.
-Medicare drug beneficiaries who fall into the "doughbut hole" coverage gap will get a $250 rebate...
WHAT HAPPENS IN 2011
-Employers are required to disclose the value of health benefits of employees' tax returns...
There is a virtual landslide of commentary on both sides, and here is a little bit of point/counterpoint.
Investors' Digest Daily has issued the counter-argument:
-You are young and don't want health insurance? You are starting up a small business and need to minize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego personal insurance? Tough. You have to pay $750 per annum for that "privilege."
-Health insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person's health status.
-Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them cost sharing, despite customer wishes.
-As a hospital administrator, you can only expand your facility if and only if it is located in a county whose population has grown 150% in the last five years proportionally to the population of the surrounding state.
-Employers can no longer offer flexible spending plans, even if that's what the worker wants.
H and I talked about these developments a little bit, and suspects that German who abandon its social healthcare system, if they could get away with it, no matter how equitable it is. I just hope there is some convergent evolution on the part of America.
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, economic policy, health and medicine
Saturday 20 March 2010
spring funk
catagories: health and medicine, lifestyle
Monday 27 April 2009
grippa porcina
As if there wasn't enough already to stroke one's worry-stone over, now comes the latest cause for mass-hysteria, neatly packaged and easily digested--swine flu. Apparently the nebulous ecomonic situation has become no longer captivating, and now a scenario, ham-fisted, that only the machinery of big governments comes along, begging intervention and a fresh, contained medical bail-out. Too clumsy to intervene in a supposedly self-regulating system, like world finance, it is as if the masses wanted something bureaucratic to believe in--or else, the government gets the chance to assert its relevance again. Avian influenza seemed much more scary, death rained from the skies, than whatever pig flu is made out to be, killer packs of zombie hogs--disfigurement from symptoms, including a piggy snout? The timing is superb, as is the chorus of panic.
catagories: economic policy, health and medicine