Here is some of what I hope will prove to be good news. The greed and poor service of the American illness profit system is finally causing voter pushback. Of course, the Republicans are paying no attention, but it looks like some Democrats are beginning to get the message.
Democratic Illinois state Sen. Mike Simmons speaks while activists including Michael Grice (in wheelchair) listen during a Care Over Cost rally in Chicago on October 11, 2023. Credit: Deana Rutherford
Pushing back against insurers’ annual denial of nearly a quarter-billion healthcare claims or pre-authorization requests, activists rallied in more than a dozen U.S. cities on Wednesday to demand “an end to private health insurance industry greed so people can get the care they need when they need it.”
The Care Over Cost Campaign—a national grassroots initiative launched by the advocacy group People’s Action—held rallies in cities including Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; Denver, Colorado; Detroit Michigan; Portland, Maine; and Hartford, Connecticut, known as the “insurance capital of the world.” The campaign called on the industry lobby group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) to “direct its members to put people over profit.”
Activists implored AHIP and private health insurance corporations including Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS), UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, Humana, and […]
I think one of the lasting effects of the Covid pandemic is going to be loneliness. Three years of fewer dinner parties, less sports attendance, going to movies together, and a host of the small things that used to make up our social lives have left a lasting effect on people’s lifestyles.
In a new Meta-Gallup survey, 24% of people age 15 and older self-reported feeling very or fairly lonely, with young adults ages 19 to 29 having the highest rates. Credit: Yaraslau Saulevich / iStockphoto / Getty
If you feel lonely, you’re actually in good company: Nearly 1 in 4 adults across the world have reported feeling very or fairly lonely, a new Meta-Gallup survey has found.
The new survey, taken across 142 countries, found 24% of people age 15 and older self-reported feeling very or fairly lonely in response to the question, “How lonely do you feel?”
The survey also found that the rates of loneliness were highest in young adults, with 27% of young adults ages 19 to 29 reporting feeling very or fairly lonely. The lowest rates were found in older adults. Only 17% of people age 65 and older reported feeling lonely.
Over half of adults age 45 and older reported not feeling lonely at all, while the majority of those younger than 45 answered that they felt at […]
America’s obsession with eating mammals, particularly cattle, is the cause of a host of health issues. But did you know it is also disrupting the ecosystems of America’s land. No? That’s not surprising, no one in media or politics ever talks about this. But it is a growing issue.
Last month, an environmental group sued the federal government for failing to protect turtles from cows.
To understand this bizarre-sounding but important lawsuit, you first have to understand the nature of cattle ranching in the American West.
Some 215 million acres of public land in the West — over 10 percent of the continental US — is loaned to ranchers at bargain-bin prices for their cattle to graze. As the cattle graze, they tend to disrupt ecosystems and do a lot of damage to the land. They eat or destroy plants consumed by native species, like turtles, which can lead to biodiversity loss. Their manure pollutes rivers and streams, and as they move about, they erode soil.
“The problems are huge, sprawling, and major,” said Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist and executive director of the Western Watersheds Project (WWP), the group that sued numerous federal agencies for failing to preserve the habitat of the Mojave desert tortoise and 77 other species. And, Molvar added, we don’t get much benefit from it. About 2 million […]
Here is the latest report on Antarctic ice-shelf melting. This melting is going to produce disastrous sea rise. But except for the scientists who study this issue few politicians in the world seem to even be paying attention. In the United States all we have is a bratty kindergarten fight going on in the House. If you live along a coast or in Florida. or along the coast of North Carolina you life isin for a big change.
West Antarctica — home to the Thwaites Glacier, also known as the “Doomsday glacier” — is the continent’s largest contributor to global sea level rise. Credit: Jeremy Harbeck/OIB/NASA
Rapid melting of West Antarctica’s ice shelves may now be unavoidable as human-caused global warming accelerates, with potentially devastating implications for sea level rise around the world, new research has found.
Even if the world meets ambitious targets to limit global heating, West Antarctica will experience substantial ocean warming and ice shelf melting, according to the new study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Ice shelves are tongues of ice that jut out into the ocean at the end of glaciers. They act like buttresses, helping hold ice back on the land, slowing its flow into the sea and providing an important defense against sea level rise. As ice shelves melt, they thin and lose their buttressing ability.
While there has been growing evidence ice loss in West Antarctica may be irreversible, there has been uncertainty about how […]
George Bush just wasn’t smart enough to be president, and Donald Trump has no ethics but self-interest. Under their watches, the Republican Party and its leaders have, as this article lays out, destroyed our tax structure to enrich the oligarchs who rent people like them and It has produced the obscene wealth inequality we have today. To be honest, as I read day-after-day that criminal Trump is still the choice of the Republican Party for a second term I increasingly think most American voters don’t understand any of this, and I am thinking it just may be that Americans aren’t smart enough, engaged enough, to select leaders capable of running a democratic republic in the 21st century.
Donald Trump stood at the presidential podium in the White House Rose Garden on on July 14, 2020 and unleashed a torrent of criticism on his Democratic opponent, turning the press conference into a campaign event, while Dick Cheney and George W. Bush stood next to him looking on. Credit: Bush White House, 2004)
The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday released new figures related to the 2023 budget that showed a troubling drop in the nation’s tax revenue compared to GDP — a measure which fell to 16.5% despite a growing economy — and an annual deficit increase that essentially doubled from the previous year.
“After record U.S. government spending in 2020 and 2021” due to programs related to the economic fallout from the Covid-19 crisis, the Washington Post reports, “the deficit dropped from close to $3 trillion to close to $1 trillion in 2022. But rather than continue to fall to its pre-pandemic levels, the deficit unexpectedly jumped this year to roughly $2 trillion.”
While much of the reporting on the Treasury figures […]
