The U.S. Congress is preparing to overhaul the United States’ troubled healthcare system and President Barack Obama hopes to sign legislation before the end of the year. Here are some facts about healthcare in the United States: * U.S. government economists predict that public and private health spending will hit $2.5 trillion this year, taking up a 17.6 percent share of gross domestic product. * Americans spend more per capita on healthcare than any other country at $7,421 per person, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reports. Yet studies suggest Americans get poorer care than people in other industrialized countries that have national healthcare plans. * Private insurance pays 35 percent of this; Medicare, the federal health plan for the elderly and disabled, pays 19 percent; Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program pays 15 percent; 12 percent comes from other public funds; 7 percent from other private sources, and 12 percent is paid out-of-pocket by patients. * The U.S. Census Bureau says 46 million Americans, or 15 percent of the population, have no health insurance. * About 63 percent of U.S. employers offer health benefits to workers, according to the […]
Despite current economic woes, a new study based on global survey data finds optimism to be universal. Sunny outlooks are most prevalent in Ireland, Brazil, Denmark, and New Zealand. The United States ranks No. 10. Nearly 90 percent of people around the globe expect the next five years to be as good or better than life today, the study found. And 95 percent expect their life in five years to be as good or better than it was five years ago. The study, from the University of Kansas and Gallup, suggests humans are optimistic by nature, the researchers conclude. ‘These results provide compelling evidence that optimism is a universal phenomenon,’ said Matthew Gallagher, a psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas and lead researcher of the study. The results are not entirely surprising. Past studies have found optimism to be a common human trait. People tend to expect to live longer and be more successful than average, and underestimate their chances of getting divorced, for example. Optimism tends to increase with age, another study found. Optimism is good for you. A decade-long study published in 2004 found that those with brighter outlooks […]
The Number of online adults to use classified ads websites, such as Craigslist, has more than doubled since 2005. The number of online adults who have used online classified ads has more than doubled in the past four years. Almost half (49%) of internet users say they have ever used online classified sites, compared with 22% of online adults who had done so in 2005. On any given day about a tenth of internet users (9%) visit online classified sites, up from 4% in 2005. These are the main findings of an April 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project survey. They highlight the growing importance of such sites to internet users and reflect the changes in the audience for classified ads – both those who place them and those who make purchases – that have devastated a key revenue source for traditional newspapers. The figures also underscore the growing social role of online classified ads. On May 13, Craigslist eliminated the controversial ‘erotic services section of its site and said it would manually review every ad posted in a new ‘adult services section it had created. The move came after […]
FINNEY COUNTY, Kansas — U.S. communities are changing complexion as ethnic diversity grows in the American heartland. Going to church is a popular activity on Sundays in racially diverse Garden City, Kansas. Though not new in California, Arizona, Texas or Florida, the change of demographics is a bit more surprising in southwest Kansas. Finney County, Kansas, is one of six counties across the nation that became majority-minority between 2007 and 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau recently announced. The agency defines majority-minority as a county where more than half the population is made up of a group that is not single-race, non-Hispanic white. Nearly 10 percent (309) of the nation’s 3,142 counties were majority-minority as of July 1, 2008. ‘Why there?’ people ask Tim Cruz, former mayor of Garden City, Kansas, the largest town in Finney County. And then, ‘How do you all get along?’ ‘It’s just another melting pot you know,’ Cruz says. ‘It makes it nice to have those different cultures. And sure they’re different — we have to understand what they celebrate and why they do it.’ In the last couple of decades, massive meatpacking plants in Garden City have drawn workers […]
WASHINGTON — The US state department said on Friday it had offered to resume talks with Cuba about Cuban migration to the United States, a fresh sign of President Barack Obama’s effort to engage the communist state. The talks, last held in 2003 and suspended by Washington in 2004, cover a mid-1990s agreement that aimed to prevent an exodus of Cuban refugees to the United States such as the 1980 Mariel boatlift and another wave of boat people in 1994. ‘We have offered to resume the talks, said Heide Bronke, state department spokeswoman, adding that the offer was made at a meeting with Cuban diplomats in Washington at 4.30pm EDT (2030 GMT) on Friday. Ms Bronke said she did not know whether the Cuban government responded positively to the US overture. Predictably, the Obama administration’s latest gesture to Cuba drew mixed reviews from the Cuban American community, with some blasting it as a ‘unilateral concession to a dictatorial regime and others hailing it as step toward better relations. Mr Obama on April 13 decided to ease limits on family travel to Cuba and to allow US telecom companies to operate on the communist-run island, a […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
