Andrew Van Dam, Staff Writer - The Washington Post
Stephan:
Everything about healthcare in the United States is a mess. Despite the gobsmacking salaries physicians, particularly specialists earn, in a 2021 large survey by the American Medical Association it was found that about 1 in 5 doctors intended to leave their current practice within two years. Why? Burnout, the system is simply too awful for them to want to continue in spite of their high pay. Reflecting this the share of physicians in private practice fell from 56 percent in 2016 to 47 percent in 2022 and, today, the United States has fewer doctors per person than 27 out of 31 member countries tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. I think it is also noteworthy that in spite of their enormous salaries doctor pay constitutes only 8.6 percent of overall U.S. health spending. What becomes clear when you look at the data is that America does not have a system focused on wellbeing for all. Instead it is an illness profit system.
The average U.S. physician earns $350,000 a year. Top doctors pull in 10 times that.
When those simple data points were first presented in 2020, a small subset of physicians came unglued on the microblogging site formerly known as Twitter, slinging personal insults and at least one deeply unflattering photo illustration of an economist.
We couldn’t understand why. The figures are nigh-on unimpeachable. They come from a working paper, newly updated, that analyzes more than 10 million tax records from 965,000 physicians over 13 years. The talented economist-authors also went to extreme lengths to protect filers’ privacy, as is standard for this type of research.
By accounting for all streams of income, they revealed that doctors make more than anyone thought — and more than any other occupation we’ve measured. In the prime earning years of 40 to 55, the average physician made $405,000in 2017 — almost all of it (94 percent) from wages. Doctors in the top 10 percent averaged $1.3 million. And those in the top 1 percent averaged an astounding $4 million, though most of that (85 […]
I hope this story fosters a trend. This is how it works when you work within the matrix of life. Such a nice story.
A beaver. Credit: NASA / Boise State University
Beavers relocated to a remote Idaho valley have transformed the landscape into a lush wetland and a haven against fire and drought, satellite imagery shows.
In Idaho, beavers can be something of nuisance, chewing down trees and building dams that flood yards and fields. In the 1930s, officials began trapping beavers near cities and towns and dropping them — sometimes by parachute — into remote areas.
In one such area, Baugh Creek, beavers have visibly altered the landscape, as shown in newly released satellite imagery from NASA. Beavers erected dams that formed ponds and flooded meadows, supporting the growth of grasses and shrubs. A wide swath of vegetation now lines Baugh Creek, which is more verdant than other, nearby waterways.
Flooded stretches along Baugh Creek are well guarded against drought and fire. When the Sharps Fire burned through the area in 2018, it left unsinged those parts where beavers had settled.
NASA is now supporting efforts to introduce more beavers to the landscape, using satellite data to determine which streams can support beavers and […]
I am increasingly concerned about the weaponization of misinformation and its ability to utterly shape the thinking of the people who make up MAGAt world; a growing body of research shows the strong correlation misinformation has with far right conservatives. These people are so discounted from factual reality that they threaten the continuation of our democracy
New research suggests that the spread of misinformation among politically devoted conservatives is influenced by identity-driven motives and may be resistant to fact-checks. These individuals tend to prioritize sharing information that aligns with their group identity, regardless of its accuracy. The new research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, utilized behavioral tasks and neuroimaging to understand the underlying processes involved.
Social media has become a major source of news for many adults, but malicious agents are using such platforms to spread misinformation to larger audiences faster than ever before. Online misinformation can have serious real-world consequences, such as fueling political polarization, threatening democracy, and reducing vaccination intentions. Thus, the researchers wanted to understand the psychological processes behind the sharing of misinformation and explore potential interventions to counteract its spread.
“In the past, I had been working on extremism and ‘will to fight’ among supporters of Salafi-jihadist groups. Even though I found those groups very interesting to study, there was a cross-cultural barrier that made it hard for me to […]
Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist - Common Dreams
Stephan:
The greed of the corporations that control America’s illness profit system has become so rapacious that the doctors and nurses who are trapped in the system are burning out, and have had enough. This article explains what is going on with the nurses.
Nurses strike for a fair contract on January 11, 2022. Credit: Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency / Getty
NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY — Judy Danella, president of United Steel Workers Local 4-200 — the union that represents Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital’s more than 1,700 nurses — stands in a church basement before a room full of her union members. Her voice quavers slightly as she delivers grim news. The hospital management, whose top administrators earn salaries in the millions of dollars, has refused to concede to any of the nurse’s core demands. Friday at 7:00 a.m. they will be locked out of the hospital and on strike.
But it is not only the strike that concerns Danella, who is wearing a blue T-shirt that reads: “Safe Staffing Saves Lives.”
“It is 100 percent my belief that the goal is to break the union,” says Danella, who has worked at the hospital for 28 years. “This is about the future of nursing.”
The front line against corporate tyranny is not the ballot box. It is in the desperate struggle by […]
Nina Lakhani, Climate Justice Reporter - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
This is a very thought provoking assessment of America’s response to the heatwaves we have been experiencing. I confess that while I could see a racist component in this, mostly the agriculture and construction workers who have had to continue in these miserable conditions, I had not fully appreciated all the nuances. Jeff Goodell lays it out, and I think his assessment is correct.
Jeff Goodell . Credit: Eugene Gologursky / Getty
Racism is at the heart of the American government’s failure to tackle the growing threat of deadly heatwaves, according to the author of an authoritative new book on the heating planet.
Jeff Goodell, an award winning climate journalist, told the Guardian that people of color – including millions of migrant workers who are bearing the brunt of record-breaking temperatures as farmhands, builders and delivery workers – are not guaranteed lifesaving measures like water and shade breaks because they are considered expendable.
In The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet,Goodell documents the tragic – and preventable – death of Sebastian Perez, a Guatemalan garden centre worker who collapsed and died in Portland, Oregon, on the first day of the brutal Pacific north-west heatwave in June 2021. In the US, there are no federal rules related to heat exposure for workers – indoors or out.
“To be blunt about it, the people most impacted by heat are not the kind of voting demographic that gets […]
