KRISTA BROWN and SARA SIROTA, - The American Prospect
Stephan:
The United States spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country, $12,318 per person in 2021. Canada spent $5,905 that same year, yet the United States healthcare ranks 18th on the LPI scale; 30th on the CEO World Ranking scale. Dreadful in either case. Does that not strike you as odd? To pay the most by orders of magnitude and yet get such a poor standing. That is an illness profit system, not a healthcare system. Why is this disparity not a bigger issue? We need to establish universal birthright single payer healthcare
“Do I enjoy being king? Yes, that’s fun,” said Richard Burke in 1987. He had spent over ten years running a health care nonprofit in Minneapolis called Physicians Health Plan (PHP), and also UnitedHealth, the for-profit company that was managing it. In 1986, the nonprofit paid him $267,823; the for-profit, $418,342, not including stock options. The average income for the highest-earning doctors at the time (orthopedic surgeons) was just 16 percent of that. But Burke’s salaries weren’t what caused doctors at PHP to rebel.
In 1984, UnitedHealth used PHP to pay $600,000 toward United’s termination costs in a delayed stock offering. At the same time, PHP had quietly agreed to pay United 15 to 17 percent of its revenue for the next 25 years in exchange for future United stock. Doctors at PHP immediately protested, pointing at the conflicts introduced by interlocking boards that were both under Burke’s thumb. United went public with a shorter PHP management contract, but doctors had to pull the SEC documents to learn that, despite being salaried workers, there would be a 20 percent pay cut to cover PHP “
I don’t think enough people understand that the Amazon is a significant factor in shaping the earth’s biosphere. This is very good news. It also is a dramatic example of what a difference in wellbeing government policies fostering wellbeing can produce compared with fascist nationalists
A deforested and burning area of the Amazon rainforest in the region of Labrea, state of Amazonas, northern Brazil. Credit: Douglas Magno / AFP / Getty
ALTAMIRA, BRAZIL — Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by at least 60% in July compared to the same month last year, the environment minister, Marina Silva, has told the Guardian.
The good news comes ahead of a regional summit that aims to prevent South America’s largest biome from hitting a calamitous tipping point.
The exact figure, which is based on the Deter satellite alert system, will be released in the coming days, but independent analysts described the preliminary data as “incredible” and said the improvement compared with the same month last year could be the best since 2005.
The rapid progress highlights the importance of political change. A year ago, under the far-right then president, Jair Bolsonaro, the Amazon was suffering one of the worst cutting and burning seasons in recent history. But since a new administration led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took power at the start of the year, the government […]
Ella Nilsen , Staff Writer - Reader Supported News
Stephan:
I think Ella Nilsen has written an excellent exegetic essay describing where the Republican Party stands on climate change. It bring some clarity to the murky work of Republicans’ views expressed to the media.
Driver Jose Viveros delivers bottled water and other beverages in the Little Tokyo district of Los Angeles. Credit: Damian Dovarganes / AP
Deadly heatwaves are baking the US. Scientists just reported that July will be the hottest month on record. And now, after years of skepticism and denial in the GOP ranks, a small number of Republicans are urging their party to get proactive on the climate crisis.
But the GOP is stuck in a climate bind – and likely will be for the next four years, in large part because they’re still living in the shadow of former president and 2024 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
Even as more Republican politicians are joining the consensus that climate change is real and caused by humans, Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has driven the party to the right on climate and extreme weather. Trump has called the extremely settled science of climate change a “hoax” and more recently suggested that the impacts of it “may affect us in 300 years.”
How is it possible that one of the six people now telling 340 million of the rest of us how we can live our lives, and what rights, particularly women, have over their bodies, can at the same time be this corrupt? Why is it in America today, that the wealthy, well-connected holders of high government office never seem to be held to account?
Justice Clarence Thomas, circa 2000, with his great-nephew and his Prevost Le Mirage XL Marathon motor coach.
Faced with questions about the financial details tied to helping Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas purchase a $276K recreational vehicle decades ago, the healthcare executive who gave him a helping hand shut off communications after the New York Times pressed him for details.
With Thomas already under scrutiny for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in trips and gifts from wealthy conservative admirers, the Times reported on Saturday that Thomas’ boasts about “skrimping” to purchase the used 40-foot-long Prevost Le Mirage XL Marathon fell apart after a title search.
According to a report from the Times’ Jo Becker and Julie Tate, Thomas has long talked about using his RV — seen in a 2007 “Sixty Minutes” interview — to travel the country when the court is out of session.
However, a description of how he acquired it, given to one of his biographers omitted a few pertinent details.
As the Times reported, “His Prevost Marathon cost $267,230, according to title history records obtained by The New York Times. And Justice Thomas, who in the […]
If it had been up to me Bernie Sanders would have been the 2020 Democrat candidate. Sanders for decades now has been working to strengthen democracy in the United States, trying to get universal birthright single payer healthcare, women’s rights, and ending the obscene wealth inequality produced by the Republicans through rigging the tax codes. Here is his latest effort which he has put forward with Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. Read this and you will see yet again what I mean by obscene wealth inequality.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks at a press conference alongside Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) on March 1, 2023. Credit: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images
“It is unacceptable that taxpayers are forced to spend billions of dollars subsidizing the retirement accounts of the wealthiest people in America,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
A report published Thursday by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office shows that the median retirement account balance of high-income U.S. households nearly doubled between 2007 and 2019 while those in the middle class saw their retirement savings stagnate—if they had savings at all.
The GAO report was commissioned by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who both pointed to the massive subsidies the federal government provides to tax-advantaged retirement accounts such as 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts (IRAs).
Citing Treasury Department data, the GAO’s new report notes that “the estimated federal tax expenditure, or annual net revenue forgone, for tax-preferred retirement accounts was over $195 billion in 2022.”
Those tax benefits flow disproportionately to high-income households. Daniel Hemel, a professor at New York University School […]
