The Theory of Reality:
Reality isn’t the way you wish things to be, or the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are. You either acknowledge reality and use it to your benefit, or it will automatically work against you.
One day I was playing Grand Theft Auto 4 in the 360, watching the TV in the game and saw this show called "The Mens room". It is a talk show with two hosts that takes place in a set made to look like a locker room. The topics of the show include: health, relationship advice, and understanding your anger. Unfortunately though, because of one of the hosts intense attitude, most of the topics turn into a story about his bloody experiences. Because of this I was laughing so fuckin hard I could hardly breathe. I remember this one thing that he said which explain the truth about this world "Now a lot people in the joint should learn from my advice, you are the boss or you are the bitch". That was the most deep words Ive ever heard. Them I had a idea popped into my head. I can do a show online like this. It would be a lot more informative and insanely funny.
To see "The Men room" video go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ttpRDEvmvg&feature=related Trust me you will laugh.
Due to budget costs I am doing a blog instead. My blog and hopefully my show will talk about current issues where the media, society, hell even the government would even dare to go.
My first blog I'm going to write about is health care in the good old USA, everyone, everywhere in the country that's all you hear is health care. Damn are people that fucked up or insurance companies trying to make a buck out of your health.
Here some basic info you need to know about health care in the United States.
Health care in the United States is provided by many separate legal entities both private and public. More money is spent on health care in the United States than in any other nation in the world. A study of international health care spending levels published in the health policy journal Health Affairs in the year 2000 found that while the U.S. spends more on health care than other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the use of health care services in the U.S. is below the OECD median by most measures. The authors of the study conclude that the prices paid for health care services are much higher in the U.S. Oh did you know, Medical debt is the principal cause of bankruptcy in the United States. That last line alone must alarm people about the current crisis.
However, the revenues generated from these high health care costs have encouraged substantial investment: the United States dominates the pharmaceutical field, accounting for three quarters of the world’s biotechnology revenues and spending in research and development. In addition, the U.S. produces more new pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and affiliated biotechnology than any other country combined. Funny I read this, well I mean every time I see a ad on TV about a new wonder drug, there's an another ad made by a law firm about the same drug asking if you had any extreme side effects because of taking the drug to call the lawyer to sue.
Hospitals provide some outpatient care in their emergency rooms and specialty clinics, but primarily exist to provide inpatient care. Hospital emergency departments and urgent care centers are sources of sporadic problem-focused care. "Surgicenters" are examples of specialty clinics. Hospice services for the terminally ill who are expected to live six months or less are most commonly subsidized by charities and government. Prenatal, family planning, and "dysplasia" clinics are government-funded obstetric and gynecologic specialty clinics respectively, and are usually staffed by nurse practitioners.
In the United States, doctors and hospitals are generally funded by payments from patients and insurance plans in return for services rendered.
Around 84.7% of citizens have some form of health insurance; either through their employer or the employer of their spouse or parent (59.3%), purchased individually (8.9%), or provided by government programs (27.8%; there is some overlap in these figures).All government health care programs have restricted eligibility, and there is no government health insurance company which covers all citizens. Americans without health insurance coverage at some time during 2007 totaled about 15.3% of the population, or 45.7 million people.
The causes of this rate of uninsurance remain a matter of political debate. Rising insurance costs have contributed to a trend in which fewer employers are offering health insurance, and many employers are managing costs by requiring higher employee contributions. Many of the uninsured are the working poor or are unemployed. Others are healthy and choose to go without it. Some have been rejected by insurance companies and are considered "uninsurable."
The number of uninsured Americans is one of the primary concerns raised by advocates of health care reform in the United States.
Among those whose employers pays for health insurance, the employee may be required to contribute parts of the costs of their insurance, while the employer usually chooses the insurance company and, for large groups, negotiates with the insurance companies.
Insurance for dental and vision care is usually sold separately. Prescription drugs are often handled differently than medical services, including by the government programs. Major federal laws regulating the insurance industry include COBRA and HIPAA.
Individuals with private or government insurance are limited to medical facilities which accept the particular type of medical insurance they carry. Visits to facilities outside the insurance program's "networks" are usually either not covered or the patient must bear more of the cost (usually waived for emergencies). Hospitals usually negotiates with insurance programs to set reimbursement rates; some rates for government insurance programs are set by law. The sum paid to a doctor for a service rendered to an insured patient is generally less than that paid "out of pocket" by an uninsured patient. In return for this discount, the insurance company includes the doctor as part of their "network", which means more patients are eligible for lowest-cost treatment there. The negotiated rate may not cover the cost of the service, but providers (hospitals and doctors) can refuse to accept a given type of insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid.
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requires virtually all hospitals to accept all patients, regardless of the ability to pay, for emergency room care. The act does not provide access to non-emergency room care for patients who cannot afford to pay for health care, nor does it provide the benefit of preventive care and the continuity of primary care. Emergency health care is generally more expensive than an urgent care clinic or a doctor's office visit, especially if a condition has worsened due to putting off needed care. Emergency rooms are typically at, near, or over capacity. Long wait times have become a problem nationwide, and in urban areas some ERs are put on "diversion" on a regular basis, meaning that ambulances are directed to bring patients elsewhere.
What we recognize as modern medicine, began during in the 1920s. When doctors and hospitals, having only during the previous decade have learned enough about disease that they could be reliably helpful in treating people, then began charging more than most individuals could pay. To close this gap, which worsened because of the Great Depression, the administrator of Baylor Hospital in Dallas created a system that caught on elsewhere and eventually evolved into Blue Cross. In exchange for a tax break, Blue Cross kept premiums reasonably low.
The success of Blue cross persuaded commercial insurers, who initially considered medicine an unpromising market to enter the field. Private insurers accelerated these efforts in the 1940's when businesses finding ways to get around wartime wage controls, began to compete for labor by offering health insurance.
In their early days, Blue cross charged everyone the same premium, regardless of age, sex, or pre-existing conditions. This was partly because the Blues were quasi-philanthropic organizations, because Blue cross were created by hospitals and therefore interested mainly in signing up potential hospital patients. They were sufficiently pissed off that when President Harry Truman proposed national health-care, opponents were able to defeat it by arguing that the nonprofit sector had the problem at ease. As private insurers entered the market, however by calculating relative risk, and avoided the riskiest potential customers altogether. To survive, the Blues followed suit; today, they no longer enjoy a tax advantage and are virtually indistinguishable from other health insurers. Meanwhile, large companies, which tend to employ significantly more young people than old people, began to self-insure. The combined result was that people who really needed health care had an increasingly difficult time affording, or even getting, health-care insurance.
In the backdrop of the history of American health care, opponents of universal health care are set in the context of 1950s-style anti-communist propaganda. A 1960s record distributed by the American Medical Association and narrated by Future President Ronald Reagan warns that universal health care could lead to communism.
OK I have to say something personal right after I give some definitions of certain words.
Capitalism typically refers to an economic and social system in which the means of production are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in new technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor.
Communism is a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating party, group etc.
Socialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating state, public or common worker (through cooperatives) ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals.
As health-insurance costs rose during the 1970s and 1980s—driven both by improving medical technology and by the growing inefficiencies of the health-care system—health maintenance organizations, which had been around since the beginning, began to proliferate, along with other managed-care schemes. Like the Blue cross, HMOs became victims of their own success. Initially they were mainly nonprofit, but once again they spotted an opportunity and for-profit HMOs displaced nonprofit HMOs. 12 percent of the market was served by for-profits in the 80's; by the late 90's, that was more like 65 percent.) With their bottom-line, the for-profit HMOs were necessarily more aggressive about denying treatments and suffered people for profits.
Health care kept cost increases in check for a while during the 1990s, but eventually costs started creeping up again, creating the current crisis. Today employers are reducing or eliminating outright health-care benefits for employees; hospitals are consolidating and becoming less accommodating to low-income patients as they seek to push back against insurers; and a shrinking portion of the population has any health insurance at all. The Bush administration in the past has encouraged the growth of health savings accounts, which in the guise of providing greater consumer choice create a confusing array of alternatives that disguise a further reduction in coverage and more cost-shifting away from the young and healthy toward the old and sick. The overall trend—the gift of an increasingly market-driven health-care system—is to undermine the very idea that the cost of illness should be spread out among the general population, healthy and unhealthy alike. In this sense, the private health-care market is too efficient. Assigning health care costs to sick people is what the market wants to do.
The Market can do many wonderful things, but they've made a complete hash of the health-care system.
Last but not least there something for you dumb ass in this world for inspiration.
Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.
The question: Just two generations ago, in 1923, who was:
1. President of the largest steel company?
2. President of the largest gas company?
3. President of the New York Stock Exchange?
4. Greatest wheat speculator?
5. President of the Bank of International Settlement?
6. Great Bear of Wall Street?
These men were considered some of the world's most successful of their day. Now, 80 years later, the history book asks us if we know what ultimately became of them. The answer:
1. The president of the largest steel company, Charles Schwab, died a pauper.
2. The president of the largest gas company, Edward Hopson, went insane.
3. The president of the NYSE, Richard Whitney, was released from prison to die at home.
4. The greatest wheat speculator, Arthur Cooger, died abroad, penniless.
5. The president of the Bank of International Settlement shot himself.
6. The Great Bear of Wall Street, Cosabee Livermore, also committed suicide.
However, in that same year, 1923, the PGA Champion and the winner of the most important golf tournament, the US Open, was Gene Sarazen. What became of him? He played golf until he was 92, died in 1999 at the age of 95. He was financially secure at the time of his death.
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The moral:
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Screw work hard. Have fun enjoy your live, Do what you love and make a living doing it. Hopefully You'll live longer and be better off in the end.
My next Blog I am writing about health care all over the world
Notes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicko
http://www.slate.com/id/2161736/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninsured_in_the_United_States
