I stumbled upon your blog by accident a month or so ago and have found myself coming back to it at least a few times every week. You have become my favorite….
]]>You can’t budget when you don’t have a clue what a major expense is going to be.
]]>There is no such thing as a free lunch, but there is definitely a difference between a cheap lunch for a high price, and a good-quality lunch for a good price. The U.S. system is the former. The system used by the other industrialized nations is the latter. ‘Nuff said.
-Badtux the Health Penguin
]]>California was part of the problem when I tried to expand back in the 1980s. It seemed like every time I hired someone a new level of bureaucracy kicked in, so if you weren’t ready to go to 50 employees, you couldn’t easily expand. Going with independent contractors was the only way you could survive.
Health insurance was cheap when I worked in Rochester, New York because the big employers, like GM’s Rochester Products, Kodak, Xerox, etc. beat the crap out of Blue Cross/Blue Shield and essentially created universal coverage in the county. Everyone, including individuals, could get the same rate, and everyone had it. Even colleges provided BS/BS coverage through their fees. You kept your coverage when you changed jobs in the county.
It was certainly a shock when I moved to San Diego and encountered Kaiser, and a bigger shock when Rochester reverted to the same corrupt system as every where else after manufacturing started to leave.
We need universal coverage if we are to compete, because the competition has it and it undercuts our cost structure.
]]>Now, traditionally this has been okay with big companies, because it reduces competition. But now the big companies are starting to hurt because the insurance companies now are refusing to negotiate. Look at General Motors’ health care woes for an example. The health insurance companies have decided that GM needs them more than they need GM, and are ripping GM a new bunghole every time the insurance contract comes up for renewal. It’s unsustainable, and something has to be done. I just fear it’s going to be something that’s good for GM, but bad for the rest of us…
– Badtux the Healthcare Penguin
]]>Quebec has a significant North African population and the Pacific Coast of Canada is definitely part of the Pacific Rim. Canada was also the terminus of the Underground Railroad, so a lot of blacks have lived there for a very long time, not simply immigrants from the former British colonies in the Caribbean and Africa.
]]>Now, there may be some data to support the notion that minorities are the ones with the worst statistics for pre-natal care etc. here in the United States. But they are also largely locked out of the health care system, especially recent non-citizen immigrants who are not allowed to participate in Medicaid or other government-funded health care programs. On the other hand, I guess for the tighty righties that’s a feature, not a flaw… it’s no different from when I was a kid and Police Commissioner George D’Artois would send his horseback-mounted police officers galloping down the aisles of black churches “nigger-knocking” when the black community got too mouthy about that “civil rights” stuff (“I ain’t gonna have that nigger Martin Luther King Junior preachin’ his commie nonsense in my city!”). Them darkies gotta be kept “in their place”. Feh. The more things change, the more they don’t.
– Badtux the Racist-sniffin’ Penguin
]]>The basic problem is a lack of pre-natal care. We have a major shortage of pre-natal clinics down here because the whackos have a habit of blowing them up, even if there is no association with abortion.
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