Sunday, December 31st, 2017
Aaron E. Carroll and Austin Frakt, Professor of Pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine — Director of the Partnered Evidence-Based Policy Resource Center at the V.A. Boston Healthcare System; Associate Professor with Boston University’s School of Public Health; and Adjunct Associate Professor with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health - The New York Times
Stephan: One of the objections raised about creating a single payer healthcare system is that the change would be too difficult. It's a lie, but widely believed. Consider Taiwan. I would propose to you that the real problem about creating a single payer system is that the conversion would create real healthcare and eliminate the illness profit system that has sucked trillions of dollars out of the pockets of ordinary people and placed profit above human wellbeing.
The Taipei 101 building, far left, in Taiwan. Relative to the U.S. and some other countries, Taiwan spends a lot less of its economy on health care.
CreditDavid Chang/European Pressphoto Agency
Taiwan is proof that a country can make a swift and huge change to its health care system, even in the modern day.
The United States, in part because of political stalemate, in part because it has been hemmed in by its history, has been unable to be as bold.
Singapore, which we wrote about in October, tinkers with its health care system all the time. Taiwan, in contrast, revamped its top to bottom.
Less than 25 years ago, Taiwan had a patchwork system that included insurance provided for those who worked privately or for the government, or for trade associations involving farmers or fishermen. Out-of-pocket payments were high, and physicians practiced […]
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Sunday, December 31st, 2017
Juliane von Mittelstaedt, Editorial Board - Der Spiegel (Germany)
Stephan: A number of my European readers have written in the last few days challenging me, as one put it: "Do have any idea how diminished in the eyes of Europe the United States has become as a result of Donald Trump?" A Germany reader, a political science professor, sent me this telling me, "America was the last century. Europe and China are becoming the leaders for this century."
Perhaps because 64% of Americans have never been outside of the country, Europe, Asia, and Africa might as well be Mars as far as their understanding goes. Indeed, in conversations I have had traveling around America, I suspect more people know about Mars, than know anything about say Belgium.
US and Israeli national flags projected on the wall of Jerusalem’s Old City in Jerusalem, 06 December 2017. US President Donald J. Trump on 06 December signed a proclamantion formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and will relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Credit: ABIR SULTAN/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock
Zionists have never liked Jerusalem. Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, dreamed of a capital city in the north of the country, on the slopes of the Carmel Mountains overlooking the Mediterranean. He had nothing but disdain for the Western Wall in Jerusalem, once writing: “What superstition and fanaticism on every side!”
It’s a shame that the Zionists didn’t get their way. Because ever since Israel declared Jerusalem to be its capital almost 70 years ago, the city’s status has been the subject of conflict. And U.S. President Donald Trump poured a large bucket of oil on the flames of that conflict on Wednesday by announcing that the United States was formally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and would be moving […]
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Sunday, December 31st, 2017
Paul Brown, - EcoWatch/Climate News Network
Stephan: In spite of the Trump administration's efforts to keep nuclear power alive -- with the result that it will raise Georgia consumer's rates an estimated 10% -- nuclear is dying. And it can't happen a moment too soon for my taste. So I take this article to be excellent good news.
Credit: Shutterstock
Cheap renewables are mounting a serious challenge to nuclear power, which in 2017 has had a difficult year.
Key projects have been abandoned, costs are rising, and politicians in countries which previously championed the industry are withdrawing their support.
Renewables, on the other hand, especially wind and solar power, have continued to expand at an enormous rate. Most importantly, they have gotten significantly cheaper.
And newer technologies like large-scale battery storage and production of hydrogen are becoming economic, because they harness cheap power from excess renewable capacity.
This latest trend—the production of hydrogen from excess wind and solar power—raises the possibility of replacing natural gas, at least in part, for domestic heating and cooking and for power stations.
Many existing gas pipelines and domestic networks are equally capable of taking natural gas, biogas and hydrogen, or a mixture of all three.
The speed with which the transition is taking place has exceeded all official estimates. In favorable locations across the world, including the U.S., Europe and India, onshore wind and solar farms are the least expensive way of producing electricity.
Even off-shore […]
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Sunday, December 31st, 2017
Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer - Live Science
Stephan: Here is the latest on consciousness and death. This is the research that I think is going to finally end the misbegotten myth of materialism, and that consciousness arises from matter.
Driven by ambition and curiosity to learn what lies on the other side of death, five medical students deliberately stop their hearts in order to experience “the afterlife” in the new thriller “Flatliners” (Sony Pictures), which opened in U.S. theaters on Sept. 29.
They quickly discover that there are unexpected and terrible consequences of dallying with death — but not everything they experience after “dying” is in the realm of science fiction. A growing body of research is charting the processes that occur after death, suggesting that human consciousness doesn’t immediately wink out after the heart stops, experts say.
But what really happens in the body and brain in the moments after cardiac arrest? [The Science of Death: 10 Tales from the Crypt & Beyond]
The terms “cardiac arrest” and “heart attack” are frequently used interchangeably, but they are not identical conditions, according to the American Heart Association(AHA). During a heart attack, a blocked artery prevents blood from reaching a portion of the heart, which can cause that section to die — though the heart continues to beat, the AHA explained.
During cardiac arrest, the electrical signals […]
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Saturday, December 30th, 2017
Cas Mudde, Associate Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: I started out to write an essay much like this, then came across this one. This is the truth about America no one wants to talk about. We have about a third of our population is a fear fugue that is financed and manipulated by uber-rich to their own ends.
Donald Trump doesn’t control ‘Trumpism’. He is merely the current voice of the radicalised base.
Credit: Bryan R. Smith/AFP/
The author Tom Wolfe once wrote: “The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.” He was reflecting a consensus, shared by public and scholars alike, that far right politics is a European phenomenon, at odds with “American values”. It is a conviction so deeply held that it has left the US blind to reality.
Any example of far-right politics is explained away as exceptional, not representative of the “real” America, from “lone wolf” terrorists such as the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to the rise of Trumpism.
Rather than address the structural conditions that have made anti-government militias a permanent presence in the US, but not in any other advanced democracy, or which have fuelled previous populist radical right movements such as the Tea Party, explanations focus on individuals such as Donald Trump or their Rasputin figures […]
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