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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
Alexandra Bradbury , Editor of Labor Notes. - truthout
Stephan:
One of Biden’s major failures was that he did not arrange to have Trumper Louis DeJoy removed from his position as Postmaster General. As a result for the past four year’s the quality of the U.S. Postal Service has been continually degrading year to year as the prices have gone up. Now it is scheduled to get significantly worse.
United States Postal Service processing clerk Debby Cheng at the U.S. Post Office Sorting and Delivery Center in Hicksville, New York, on October 9, 2024. Credit: Howard Schnapp / Newsday / Getty
Workers are battling an overhaul of the U.S. Postal Service that would cost thousands of jobs and slow the mail for half the country.
In the name of efficiency, a letter mailed within Cheyenne, Wyoming, would travel to Denver and back. And if you miss a package, your local post office would no longer have it. It might be 45 minutes away.
In March, Buffalo became the first place to fend off the closure of its mail processing plant, in a team effort by Letter Carriers (NALC) Branch 3 and Postal Workers (APWU) Local 374.
The unions turned out 300 people to picket in front of the plant, and 700 to pack a public hearing, said Branch 3 President David Grosskopf. They deluged USPS with feedback in its online survey.
They lined up the support of their state reps and city council; they got neighboring town councils to pass […]
This was just announced, and it means that the former states of the Confederacy and other Red states have all decided that females are a subordinate gender and politicians not women have control of womens’ bodies. So be prepared Florida like Texas and the other Confederacy and Red states are going to see more maternal mortality, and more horror stories of women and pubescent girls dying because they cannot get the medical attention that they need. We will also see increasing female medical deserts, as primary care and OB/Gyn specialists leave their practice because they are under legal threat if they provide proper care.
Credit: Politico
Florida voters have rejected a ballot initiative that sought to expand abortion rights and eliminate the state’s ban on after six weeks of pregnancy, The Associated Press projected. The defeat hands a significant win to Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Republican leaders who vowed to defeat it.
The voters rejected Amendment 4, which sought to roll back most of the state’s restrictions to the days before the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. The results mean the state’s ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, which DeSantis sought ahead of his failed run for president, will remain in place.
DeSantis vowed to defeat Amendment 4 alongside dozens of other anti-abortion Republicans who believed the measure was dangerous for women and children. DeSantis and other Republicans used state resources to defeat the amendment, including creating public service announcements that the campaign behind the measure said were false.
Brett Kelman, and Anna Werner, Contributing Writers - Med Page Today | KFF Health News | CBS News
Stephan:
Whoever heard of having to get a second opinion on dentistry? Well, now it appears greed is a growing cancer in the dental community as this medical report describes.
Credit: MedPage Today
Becky Carroll was missing a few teeth, and others were stained or crooked. Ashamed, she smiled with lips pressed closed. Her dentist offered to fix most of her teeth with root canals and crowns, Carroll said, but she was wary of traveling a long road of dental work.
Then Carroll saw a TV commercial for another path: ClearChoice Dental Implant Centers. The company advertises that it can give patients “a new smile in as little as one day” by surgically replacing teeth instead of fixing them.
So Carroll saved and borrowed for the surgery, she said. In an interview and a lawsuit, Carroll said that at a ClearChoice clinic in New Jersey in 2021, she agreed to pay $31,000 to replace all her natural upper teeth with pearly-white prosthetic ones. What came next, Carroll said, was “like a horror movie.”
Carroll alleged that her anesthesia wore off during implant surgery, so she became conscious as her teeth were removed and titanium screws […]
Here is some very interesting good news about aviation travel. Currently, aircraft are major polluters strongly an negatively impact Earth’s atmosphere. As this article describes it aircraft design is about to change from the winged tube design of the last century to some quite radically different and, most importantly, a much less polluting design.
Blended wing passenger aircraft could allow for new interior layouts, while slashing carbon emissions. This rendering shows a design by San Diego-based Natilus, which says its Horizon plane will carry about 200 passengers while producing half the emissions of current Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 aircraft. Credit: Nautilus
Spurred by increasing global demand for air travel, aviation emissions have been rising faster than those from rail, road, or shipping in recent decades. Solutions to invert the trend are slow-dripping: Sustainable Aviation Fuel, which can cut emissions on a flight by 80% when produced and used correctly, could represent two thirds of the reduction in emissions needed for aviation to reach its net-zero goal by 2050. But, it’s in short supply and in the best case scenario, SAF will have accounted for just 0.53% of all jet fuel use in 2024, a far cry from the levels required to make an impact.
While airlines and regulators scramble for ideas to decarbonize the industry, some engineers are suggesting that an entirely new type […]
Jedidajah Otte, Staff Writer - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
What I notice, every time I go into a grocery store are the outrageous prices. Nine dollars for a cantaloupe, $4.99 for Organic Romaine lettuce. I am so thankful for my wife Ronlyn’s master organic biodynamic gardening skills. She grows everything except citrus, so we only have to buy chicken, fish, and shrimp — we do not eat mammals — nd some spices, and things like soy sauce. It saves us thousands of dollars each year. As a result I understood the point this article is making. Because we are a society whose only social priority is greed, I don’t know how anyone living on minimum wage or social security makes it, and I think that is one of the main reasons Americans as a society are so unhappy. That and the grotesque rigging of the U.S. tax structure. We are essentially a neo-medieval country, with a small privileged population of rich and uber-rich, and a majority population of what amounts to peasants.
Experts say the US economy is the ‘envy of the world’, but Americans are not feeling it. Illustration: Marcus Peabody/Guardian Design
Experts seem to agree the US economy has been on the upswing in 2024. A wave of new jobs, robust consumer spending, lower interest rates, falling inflation, impressive levels of business investment and record Wall Street highs has made the US economy “the envy of the world”.
But many Americans appear to feel very little of that.
Jim White, 62, an aquaculture specialist from North Carolina, said he has “given up [on] going out”.
I’ll never own a home. A new car is unthinkable,” he said. “The economy is slowly making the rich richer. Everyone else is sinking.”
White is among dozens of people from all over the US who shared with the Guardian how they feel about the economy.
While some expressed general optimism about stabilizing levels of inflation and reported doing well economically, scores said inflation continued to be financially crippling, with their incomes not even remotely keeping up with soaring costs for housing, food, childcare, insurance, healthcare, fuel, subscriptions and […]
Why, as I noted in the previous comment, have food prices become grotesquely elevated? Here is the explanation and, just as I said, it is al about greed. Very little is happening in the U.S. as a major trend that fosters wellbeing. Oh sure, there are local activities and organizations that try to foster wellbeing. But they are not national trends. The only national trend, and it is manifested in a wide spectrum of ways, is greed for profit. It has destroyed our social wellbeing as a country.
The price of a bag of coconut-cashew granola at Whole Foods jumped last year from $5.99 to $6.69. Why that happened defies simple explanation.
The granola maker, Wildway Foods, said the cost of making the cereal hasn’t gone up that much, and that it isn’t pocketing more profit. It jacked up the price, it said, in large part to offset fees that piled up from a little-known link in the supply chain: grocery distributors. There were charges for processing grocery promotions, others for potential spoilage and still more related to alleged shipping glitches.
George Milton, who runs a hot sauce business in Austin, Texas, said consumers are frustrated because it isn’t clear to them why many food prices are so high. “Is that price gouging or costs going up for distributors or retailers or farmers? I have no idea,” he said. “Nobody does.”
Mina Tadrous, PharmD, PhD1; Katherine Callaway Kim, MPH2,3; Inmaculada Hernandez, PharmD, PhD4; et al, - Journal of the American Medical Association
Stephan:
Yet another scientific report on the inferior quality of the American illness profit system, this time in comparison with Canada. I hope that if Kamala Harris wins the Presidency tomorrow, and I strongly hope that is the case, that a citizen movement can be activated to create a universal birthright single payer healthcare system such as exists in all the other developed democracies in the world. We significantly inferior healthcare, not because of the physicians and nurses, but because the whole U.S. system is based on greed.
Key Points
Question How frequently are reports of drug-related supply chain issues associated with drug shortages in the US vs Canada?
Findings In this cross-sectional study, there were 104 reports of drug-related supply chain issues that occurred from 2017 to 2021 in both countries. Within 12 months of the reported supply chain issues, 49.0% were associated with drug shortages in the US compared with 34.0% in Canada.
Meaning Drug shortages were less frequent in Canada compared with in the US after drug-related supply chain issues were reported in both countries. These findings inform ongoing policy development and highlight the need for international cooperation between countries to curb the effects of drug shortages and improve the resiliency of the supply chain for drugs.
Abstract
Importance Drug shortages are a persistent public health issue that increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both the US and Canada follow similar regulatory standards and require reporting of drug-related supply chain issues that may result in shortages. However, it is unknown what proportion are associated with meaningful shortages (defined by a significant decrease in drug supply) and whether differences exist between Canada and the US.
Objective To compare how frequently reports of drug-related supply chain issues in […]
Craig D. Newgard, MD, MPH1; Amber Lin, MS1; Jeremy D. Goldhaber-Fiebert, PhD2; et al, - Journal of the American Medical Association
Stephan:
Yet another fact-based assessment of the inferior quality of America’s illness profit system. As this research paper in JAMA report, “Our results suggest that more than one quarter of deaths among children receiving emergency care in the US may be preventable through ED pediatric readiness. The magnitude of benefit is explained in part by the time to death among children who die after presenting for emergency care. Among children presenting to EDs who died within 1 year, death most commonly occurred at the initial ED and often within hours of arrival.” What very few Americans know is that a large percentage (between 20%-40%) of ERs are not owned by the hospitals in which they are located. Instead, they are owned and operated by private equity financial corporations Note also that for less than $12 per child these private equity ERs could be upgraded to care properly for children, but the equity firms, caring only about profit, aren’t spending that money.
An emergency room awaits patients. (Getty/monkeybusinessimages)
Key Points
Question What are the state and national costs of raising all emergency departments (EDs) to high pediatric readiness and the potential number of lives saved?
Findings In this cohort study of 4840 EDs across the US, 842 (17.4%) had high pediatric readiness and the annual cost to reach high pediatric readiness was $207 335 302, ranging from $0 to $11.84 per child by state. An estimated 2143 pediatric lives may be saved each year through universal high ED pediatric readiness.
Meaning These results suggest that raising all EDs to high pediatric readiness would potentially save thousands of pediatric lives each year, with modest financial investment.
Abstract
Importance High emergency department (ED) pediatric readiness is associated with improved survival among children receiving emergency care, but state and national costs to reach high ED readiness and the resulting number of lives that may be saved are unknown.
Objective To estimate the state and national annual costs of raising all EDs to high pediatric readiness and the resulting number of pediatric lives that may be saved each year.
Design, Setting, and Participants This cohort study used data from EDs in 50 US states and the District […]
