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1) Americans pay way, way, way more for health care than anyone else

Health care in the United States is expensive. Insanely, outlandishly expensive.

We spend $2.8 trillion on healthcare annually. That works out to about one-sixth of the total economy and more than $8,500 per person – and way more than any other country.

health spending fixed

If the health-care system were to break off from the United States and become its own economy, it would be the fifth-largest in the world. “It would be bigger than the United Kingdom or France and only behind the United States, China, Japan and Germany,” says David Blumenthal, executive director of the non-profit Commonwealth Fund.

Or here’s another way to put it in its (insane) perspective: The US, which has a mostly private health-care system, manages to spend more on its public health-care system than countries where the health-care system is almost entirely public. America’s government spends more, as a percentage of the economy, on public health care than Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan or Australia. And then it spends even more […]

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Last week, I detailed the conflicting signals and statements to which Americans were being exposed by the press and government officials relative to the threat posed by the so-called Islamic State (formerly the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS). This week, the news cycle has been dominated by the Obama administration’s unfathomable lack of resolve with respect to ISIS, particularly the president’s laconic admission last week that the White House did not have a strategy to combat the terror group.

One of the criticisms the administration has faced is the president having been highly dismissive of ISIS, at one point calling them the ‘JV team” among terrorist groups. Outrage on the part of Americans and world leaders came to a head on Aug. 19 when American journalist James Foley was beheaded by ISIS. Video footage of the murder was widely distributed by the group.

Then, on Sept. 2, new video was released by ISIS; Steven Sotloff, an American journalist being held by the terror group since last year, was shown being beheaded by a black-robed militant. As in response to nearly all of the disturbing advances, threats and atrocities concerning Islamic terrorists, once again, Obama’s response was as tepid as […]

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Source: BLS

As bright-eyed college freshmen arrive on campus, they can look forward to accruing knowledge, independence, lifelong friendships-and serious bills. In the 2012-13 school year, first-year, on-campus tuition averaged $43,000 at four-year, private schools and $21,700 at in-state public schools.

It wasn’t always like this: The cost of undergraduate education is 12 times higher than it was 35 years ago, far outpacing inflation. While the indexed price of college tuition and fees skyrocketed by more than 1,122 percent since 1978, the cost of medical care rose less than 600 percent, and the cost of housing and food went up less than 300.

Back in 1993, 47 percent of college students graduated with debt, owing an average of $9,450 per grad. As tuition rates have shot up, so has student debt: 71 percent of the class of 2012 graduated with outstanding loans, owing an average of $29,400. That’s more than 65 percent of the entire first-year salary of an average recent grad.

That debt has lasting consequences. Households headed by a young adult […]

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Pennsylvania had an obesity rate of 30 percent in 2013.

The adult obesity rate in two states now exceeds 35 percent, and 20 states now have an obesity rate above 30 percent, according to a new report looking at weight across the United States.

The report examining U.S. adult obesity, released today (Sept. 4) from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, shows that the obesity rate is 35.1 percent in both Mississippi and West Virginia.

Obesity has been rising over the last few decades. Thirty years ago, no state had an obesity rate above 15 percent, while in 1991, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent. In 2000, no state had an obesity rate above 25 percent. Now, two states have obesity rates over 35 percent. (Adults with a body mass index of 30 or more are considered obese.)

However, the report does show that there seems to be some slowing in growth of the obesity rate. […]

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Photographer: Jon T. Fritz/MCT via Getty Images

BP Plc acted with gross negligence in setting off the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, a federal judge ruled, handing down a long-awaited decision that may force the energy company to pay billions of dollars more for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier held a trial without a jury over who was at fault for the catastrophe, which killed 11 people and spewed oil for almost three months into waters that touch the shores of five states.

‘BP has long maintained that it was merely negligent,” said David Uhlmann, former head of the Justice Department’s environmental crimes division. He said Barbier ‘soundly rejected” BP’s arguments that others were equally responsible, holding ‘that its employees took risks that led to the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.”

Related: BP Negligence Ruling to Force Billions More in Payouts

The case also included Transocean Ltd. (RIG) and Halliburton Co. (HAL), though […]

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