Health Reform - What's In It For You?

As I health care worker, I've heard very little discussion at work about the recent health care bill and vote. Today the laboratory manager posted this Press Ganey article for anyone interested. It is a very brief summary of some practical points taken from the Health Care Bill.

To me it says:
charge all individuals (healthy and ill alike) the amount of an operation every year paid to the federal government for health insurance
reduce medicare payments to all health care facilities
reduce medicare payments to all physicians
threaten to increase the medicare payment reduction to facilities that do not comply on schedule to demands of the government
further continued reduction in payments to facilities that do not comply with a "smile" (patient satisfaction)
offer educational loans and grants to encourage students to enter medicine as a general practitioner

By the time more new doctors enter their general practice to handle the millions of new insured patients, hospitals will be bankrupt...and I'll be without a job. This is not about health care, but rather, about money and power. Government control over your money and you.

Read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

Early March at Our House

Sprouts!!! The tomato and cucumber seeds I saved last year from my plants really sprouted and here's a photo to prove it. This is all so exciting! Right now they are under a small grow light in the living room.

But more than plants is going on at home...

Along with a major reorganize, clean out and clean up of the cellar, we had some plumbing updated. We were told that in order to properly vent the new drain in the basement, they would have to look into the bathroom walls!!!

So now we've started the remodel of the bathroom with a brand new toilet and spiff up of the heater.

So far, so good.

A potent global warming gas...

Methane Seen As A Growing Climate Risk
Associated Press

Thu Mar 4, 2:00 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Methane, a potent global warming gas, is bubbling out of the frozen Arctic faster than had been expected.
Methane had become trapped in the permafrost over time and a warming climate is now resulting in its release, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
"The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world's oceans," said Natalia Shakhova, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks International Arctic Research Center and the co-author.
Concerns about global warming have centered on rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but scientists note that methane can be 30 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
Historically, methane concentrations in the world's atmosphere have ranged between 0.3 and 0.4 parts per million in cool periods to 0.6 to 0.7 in warm periods. Current methane concentrations in the Arctic average about 1.85 parts per million, the scientists said, the highest in 400,000 years.
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On the Net:
Science: http://www.sciencemag.org