WASHINGTON — The cost of health insurance in the United States climbed nearly twice as fast as wages in the first half of 2007, with family coverage costing employers around 1,000 dollars (714 euros) a month, a poll showed Wednesday. Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose an average of 6.1 percent in 2007, while wages went up by 3.7 percent, the Employer Health Benefits Survey released by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust showed. The 6.1 percent rise in health insurance premiums marked a slowdown from the rate of increase last year, but also strongly outpaced inflation, running at 2.6 percent. ‘In 2007, the increase in health insurance premiums was about twice the rate of inflation and not quite twice the increase in workers’ pay,’ Kaiser vice-president Gary Claxton said in a webcast. Premiums for family coverage have surged by 78 percent since 2001, while wages have gone up 19 percent. The average premium for family coverage in 2007 was just over 12,000 dollars, with workers having to pick up part of the cost. Workers contributed, on average, 273 dollars a month towards family health coverage packages, up from […]
SAN FRANCISCO — Diagnosed with polio at age 2, Yan Ling Ho has lived with pain for most of her 52 years. After immigrating here from Hong Kong last year, the soreness in her back and joints proved too debilitating for her to work. That also meant she did not have health insurance. Not wanting to burden her daughter, who was already paying her living expenses, Ms. Ho delayed doctor visits and battled her misery with over-the-counter medications. ‘Sometimes the pain was so bad, I would just cry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’ Last month, unable to bear her discomfort any longer, Ms. Ho came to North East Medical Services, a nonprofit community clinic on the edge of Chinatown, and discovered to her delight that she qualified for a new program that offers free or subsidized health care to all 82,000 San Francisco adults without insurance. The initiative, known as Healthy San Francisco, is the first of its kind in the nation, and represents the latest attempt by state and local governments to patch a broken federal system. It is financed mostly by the city, which is gambling that it can […]
ERIE, Pa.– An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the ‘most remarkable’ water science discovery in a century. John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn. The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel. Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations. The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said. The discovery is ‘the most remarkable in water science in 100 years,’ Roy said. ‘This is the most abundant element in the world. It is everywhere,’ Roy said. ‘Seeing it burn gives me the chills.’ Roy will meet this week […]
WASHINGTON — Only 5 per cent of Americans say they trust the Bush Administration to resolve the Iraq conflict, says a poll published on the eve of the American commander’s appearances before Congress. General David Petraeus was due to give testimony on progress in Iraq early today, Sydney time, to a joint hearing of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees and to the Senate tomorrow. The New York Times reported yesterday that General Petraeus had recommended that decisions on the contentious issue of reducing the main body of American troops in Iraq be put off for six months. He has informed Mr Bush that troop cuts may begin in mid-December, with the withdrawal of an American combat brigade, about 4000 troops. By mid-July, the American force in Iraq might be down to 15 combat brigades, the force level in Iraq before Mr Bush’s troop reinforcement plan. The precise timing of such reductions, which would leave about 130,000 troops in Iraq, would depend on conditions in the country. But the general has also said that it is too soon to present recommendations on reducing American forces below that level and has suggested that he wait […]
SANTA BARBARA — For 43 years, Sister Angela Escalera has lived and often worked out of her order’s small convent on this city’s east side, helping the area’s many poor and undocumented residents with translation, counseling and other needs. Now retired and partly disabled at 69, the nun thought she would live out her days here, in the community where she is still an active volunteer and in the dwelling that was built for the order in 1952. But she and the other two nuns at the Sisters of Bethany house recently received word that their convent, which is owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, will be sold to help pay the bill for the church’s recent, multimillion-dollar priest sex abuse settlement. The nuns have four months to move out, according to a letter from the archdiocese. The notice, which was dated June 28 but not received until the end of August, asked the women to vacate the property no later than Dec. 31 — and noted that an earlier departure ‘would be acceptable as well.’ Signed by Msgr. Royale M. Vadakin, the archdiocese’s vicar general, the letter offers the nuns no recourse but […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
