Archive for the ‘Health’ Category
By Alan Caruba
Okay, let’s say that President Obama or Hillary is in office and Congress has passed a bill that requires everyone to have health insurance. Gas is up over $4.00 a gallon, food prices are sky high, and, if you’ve recently graduated from college, you are paying off loans at $1,000 per month.
If you’re a homeowner, you have a mortgage, property taxes, and a stack of other bills. You’ve got to decide between paying the mandated premium or being able to drive to work, buy food, holding onto your home, or keeping the bill collector from your door.
All of a sudden, mandatory health insurance doesn’t seem like such a great idea. In fact, your big worry is that Social Security will be able to send you a monthly check and that Medicare and Medicaid won’t go flat broke before you die. Trustees for these massive entitlement programs just announced Social Security will be depleted by 2041, while Medicare goes bust eight years from now in 2019.
According to a March 18 Policy Analysis published by the Cato Institute, health care consumers are annually spending “more than $1.8 trillion dollars for overall health costs, more than what Americans spend on housing, food, national defense, or automobiles.”
Moreover, “because of the way health care costs are distributed, they have become an increasing burden on consumers and businesses alike. On average, health insurance now costs $4,479 for an individual and $12,106 for a family per year. Health insurance premiums rose by little more than 6 percent in 2007, faster on average than wages.”
The news gets worse. “Moreover, government health care programs, particularly Medicare and Medicaid, are piling up enormous burdens of debt for future generations. Medicare’s unfunded liabilities now top $50 trillion.”
By Alan Caruba
If you want the government, federal, state and local, to tell you what you can and cannot eat, please raise your hand. Apparently no one does except for the various politicians who think they were elected to determine what you should eat and drink.
Let’s get something straight, however. I’m fat. You’re fat. And your kids, if you have any, are probably overweight too. There are some easily understood reasons for this and economist, Eric A. Finkelstein, along with Laurie Zuckerman, tells us what they are in their new book, “The Fattening of America: How the Economy Makes Us Fat, If it Matters, and What to Do About it.”
Looking to the government for answers, however, is predictably a bad idea. Sally C. Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute, points out that “government data about what constitutes ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’ are misleading.” The standard metric for this is a person’s body-mass index (BMI). It is the ratio of one’s height to one’s weight. It is a measurement standard that “does not take into account an individual’s body type.” Some athletes would be categorized as obese, but their weight comes more from muscle than fat.
We keep hearing that America is in the midst of an “obesity epidemic” and this is just hype. Americans in general have put on more pounds, but an epidemic is a term applied to diseases that are quickly spread whereas the only thing spreading in America is our waistlines. It’s happening worldwide and even occurring in the world’s poorest countries. Finkelstein notes that “an astounding 1.6 billion people or roughly 25 percent of the planet’s population are (in a) higher than normal weight range, and 400 million of these are considered obese, according to a fall 2005 report by the United Nation’s World Health Organization.”
There are cultural and racial characteristics, too, that play a role in over-weight. “As was the case 30 years ago, excess weight remains more common among African-Americans and Hispanic children than among whites.” And, if the kids are fat, their parents are likely to be fat, too.
Plainly said, Americans are just eating more. “Between the late 1970s and today, men have increased their daily food intake by about 180 calories and woman have increased their daily food intake by about 360 calories.” For men that’s the equivalent of a pint of beer and, for women, it’s a four-ounce slice of chocolate cake. Over all, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), men now consuming 2,600 calories per day and woman now consume 1,900 calories daily.
A major contributing factor has been the price of food that has dropped 38 percent relative to the prices of other goods and services. Add to this that, “high-calorie foods have become much cheaper compared to healthier alternatives such as fish, fruits, and vegetables.” Fast food establishments have thrived in the U.S. and even restaurants serve large portions these days. It’s Economics 101. Cheaper food equals eating more.
In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom recently announced he intends to tax retail chains for stocking Coke, Pepsi, and other drinks sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. He is typical of politicians who (a) think raising taxes on anything is a good idea and (b) haven’t a clue about nutrition.
Henry Miller, a physician and fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the author of “The Frankenfood Myth”, points out that “In sweetness, high-fructose corn syrup is equal in intensity to disaccharide sucrose, otherwise known as table sugar.” Moreover, “Sugar and high-fructose corn syrup also have essentially the same affect on the body’s production of insulin, which helps burn calories and lowers blood sugar.” According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans actually consume less high-fructose corn syrup than sugar.
By Frank Hyland
Food for thought.
Picture this if you will: You are on the way to a soccer game in your car with your kids and the children of neighbors in the back seat. Your SUV has been acting up and again this time the engine falters and sputters. It is running so poorly that you realize clearly that it is destined to wind up on the shoulder of the downhill side of the road, to run no more. The kids sit there disconsolately, staring out the windows, waiting for you to take some action on their behalf so that they can make it to "the game."
Now try to imagine yourself walking around to the rear of the vehicle and pushing it forward, only to realize that you and the children are approaching the edge of a cliff.
Dumb Question # 287: What do you do when you realize that the SUV is picking up speed toward the cliff’s edge? It was a trick question for anyone with more than four functioning brain cells. Of course you would do everything in your power, once you saw the danger ahead, to stop the vehicle before the children were hurt. Why, then, would anyone continue pushing your kids and others’ kids toward and over a cliff, you ask? Why, indeed.
By now you’ve figured out that the "SUV" is the federal and state programs collectively known as "entitlements," chief among them being Social Security and Medicare. Both have been the subject of repeated warnings, followed by repeated creation of commissions to investigate and recommend solutions. I would recommend, for openers, the near-term renaming of both, to become Social Insecurity and Mediscare as a means of getting the attention of those who still hope to become recipients.
In case those pushing the two programs off the cliff haven’t noticed, we’re now in the year 2008. It was one thing for proponents to put things off when we were still in the 20th Century, back in the ‘90s, and insolvency was still more than a decade away. For those who get elected every six, four, and especially for those elected every two years, that’s a lifetime and the problems can safely be "kicked down the road" for others to deal with. Depending on the date of the estimate and the source, the year of impending insolvency swings back and forth by a year or so.
WASHINGTON, D.C.— American Life League slammed the latest ad campaign of Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, describing their new “safe sex” ad as a promotion tool for new abortions, and took strong exception to the fact that the campaign was paid for with taxpayer dollars.
“Planned Parenthood says it promotes sexual health, but in reality, it’s just promoting recreational sex,” said American Life League vice president Jim Sedlak. Planned Parenthood Golden Gate recently released an ad campaign to be aired on MTV, VH-1, and Comedy Central that associates Planned Parenthood with the so-called Mile High Club.
Sedlak explained, “Planned Parenthood makes one third of its income by providing contraceptives and abortions. It promotes recreational sex to keep demand for their business high.”
The Mile High Club is a slang term used to describe people who have engaged in sexual activity aboard an airplane at least one mile above the earth’s surface.
“By linking itself to the Mile High Club, Planned Parenthood’s message is loud and clear,” said Sedlak. “It is telling kids in the 18-24 age bracket to ‘Have sex! It’s fun.’ In reality, Planned Parenthood is just farming for more business.”
“What most people probably do not know is that ads such as these are paid for with taxpayer money,” said Sedlak. “The Federal Government gives at least $305 million annually to Planned Parenthood. This must end! American Life League is continuing its call to American taxpayers to sign the online petition at www.StopPlannedParenthoodTaxFunding.com and contact state and federal elected officials to cut Planned Parenthood off from our wallets!”
For more information on how to stop Planned Parenthood, go to www.all.org/stopp/planopen.htm
By Jim Kouri
In the United States, Tuberculosis infection and disease occur most often among people born in areas of the world where TB is common, such as Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In most cases, these foreign-born persons become exposed to and infected in their country of birth and bring the contagious disease into the US.
Of all TB cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control in 1997 — the last year studied — 39% were in foreign-born persons. This is an increase from 1986, when 22% of cases were in foreign-born persons. Tuberculosis case rates were seven times greater in the foreign-born compared with the US-born population.
Also, foreign-born individuals now represent 46 percent of all tuberculosis cases reported in the United States compared to 27 percent of cases eight years ago. The CDC is currently processing new data on the illegal alien-TB connection.
TB cases come from Mexico, Philippines, and Vietnam, by and large. All people who apply for immigration and refugee status are screened for TB disease before coming to the United States. Immigrants with TB disease who are infectious at the time of screening are required to receive treatment before they are allowed entry into the United States.
However, the majority of those entering the US are illegal aliens who undergo no physical exams nor do they undergo treatment for their diseases.