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

Answers To Prayer

When your heart cries out to God and pleads for His intervention in your life, He may answer you in His "still, small voice" or in His stormy, large voice. Both are a comfort and a wonder. Our God is an awesome God.

Wisdom From Eating

"Either we restrict the foods we eat when we have a choice, or our diet will eventually be restricted by chronic diseases." (CHS, May 9, 2009)

Amazing Grace

Dave and I watched this movie today. Quite amazing. It could motivate you to never eat sugar again in remembrance of those that died during the development of the sugar industry.

Watch it.

Globalization: Good vs. Bad

"At first glance, of course, one might think that globalization is a good thing: each country or people liberated to exchange the fruits of their labor on the world's markets; each culture free to learn from all the others; more buying and selling, higher standards of living, and modernity; less poverty and backwardness. In practice, however, much of globalization tends to promote an extremely selective, and often quite destructive and unjust, distribution of power and wealth. It supports certain cultures and communities and eliminates others. Its successes tend to be measured by the simplest and least humane of economic measures -- more economic activity, more 'wealth' understood purely as purchasing power -- while its crushing human and ecological effects are ignored. Above all, globalization's transformations of the way people work, live, and raise families are not democratically chosen but created and managed by political and economic elites."

"To get a sense of globalization's dark side, consider and example of the international production of energy involving Enron in the Indian state of Maharastra. Enron contracted to build power plants there, and Maharastra agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in return. Because the resulting facilities produced electricity that was between two and seven times more expensive than previously existing Indian plants, a new state government attempted to break the disastrous agreement. Pressure was applied by the U.S. ambassador (who soon retired from government service to become an Enron director), and soon a new contract was signed that was even more expensive. Millions of dollars of bribes to local officials secured the contract, threats from U.S. and other global institutions solidified Enron's position, and Enron made billions in profits. An already poverty-stricken area of a third world country became poorer, but economic activity measured as the exchange of funds increased. National boundaries, and to some extent national sovereignty, were diminished. Some people did quite well out of the deal, but many more suffered."

"Another harmful impact of globalization arises when subsistence farming is replaced by huge plantations growing a single export corp, and peasants who used to support themselves on the land move to already overcrowded cities with high unemployment. In such cases, people who had been living a reasonably secure existence, with access to land and food, get turned into consumers who must pay for everything they need. Economic activity increases, more money circulates, but the loss of access to their own fields, forests, or coastlines is not registered as a monetary loss, and because the ensuing poverty involves more cash flow, it can be seen as a 'better life.'"

Quotation taken from: A Greener Faith, by Roger S. Gottlieb