Some Republican “thought” and other topics

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See: in their minds, we currently have the “best health care system” ever. I wonder what measure he uses; certainly the richest among us can probably claim that. But in our country, too many people go bankrupt over treatable health problems.

According to the August issue of the American Journal of Medicine, the cost of obtaining medical care resulted in sixty-two percent of bankruptcies in 2007 – an increase of 49.7 percent from 2001. Most interestingly, patients who filed bankruptcy as the result of health care costs had health insurance.

In addition, the information that bankruptcy has caused two-thirds of bankruptcies was gathered prior to the current economic decline. The data reveals that just over sixty percent of people who declared bankruptcy had private health insurance, that most were college educated and homeowners.

Medical bills for the people without health insurance coverage averaged $26,971, and for those with insurance, medical costs leading to bankruptcy averaged $17,749 due to high deductibles and out of pocket expenses associated with co-payments and procedures not covered by insurance.

You also have the case where, under the free market system, people with pre-existing conditions often can’t get any coverage at all.

But this is the world in which the Republican political leadership lives.

Here is yet another glimpse at the Republican world:

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Gee, that sounds bad! But wait…it was the South Carolina legislature that overrode the Governor and the South Carolina Supreme Court that ruled against him:

Last week, the South Carolina Supreme Court ordered Governor Mark Sanford to apply for some $700 million in federal stimulus money. Despite his objections, Sanford has complied with the court order, but his right-wing allies in the state are now absurdly claiming that this is somehow a violation of the principles of federalism:

Oran Smith, president of South Carolina-based Palmetto Family Council, says Thursday’s ruling violates the notion of federalism.

“And it’s particularly a problem in this case because it’s related to money,” he notes. “So the question is: Can the federal government just simply buy off a state? Or use the power of the purse to manipulate a state into doing what the federal government thinks it should?

“…[T]hat’s a very dangerous precedent,” adds Smith, “and I think it’s really the reason why we fought a certain war in 1776 or so to fight against this type of thing.”

Smith obviously has no idea what he is talking about. Last month, the South Carolina legislature passed a budget that required Sanford to apply for the stimulus funds but Sanford didn’t want to and so he sued rather than accept the law. And last week the state Supreme Court ruled against him

More from the Republicans: President Obama is a “False Prophet”.

Now just why are we supposed to take them seriously?

More on other stuff

Perhaps this is one reason that our incoming college students don’t take ethics seriously: their parents don’t take them seriously.

If you wonder why I complain about some of the snowflakes from time to time: this is the level of maturity that we sometimes have to deal with:

Environment: I am NOT for this kind of recycling:

OAKLAND, Calif. — Cheese graters, handbags, fencing and recliners are just some of the thousands of consumer products that have been manufactured with radioactive metals, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) records. [...]

In some cases the products are made up primarily of the tainted materials, and in other cases it’s a small component that contaminated the products. Goods that have been found tainted with radioactive materials include:

* A China-made kitchen grater, found in a Flint, Mich., scrap plant, that was laced with the isotope Cobalt-60, giving off the equivalent of a chest X-ray over 36 hours of use.

* A 430,000-pound shipment of metal, tainted with Cobalt-60, that came from Brazil in 1998 and was used to make brackets for 1,000 La-Z-Boy recliners, giving off a chest X-ray’s worth of radiation every 1,000 hours.

* About 900 women’s handbags made in India and found in the Netherlands that had metal rings laced with Cobalt-60 on each bag’s shoulder strap.

* 500 sets of buttons made for Otis elevators in France and Sweden, using radioactive metal from India.

* Shipments of chain link fencing from India in 1991, and another shipment of tainted fencing from India a decade later.

Hat tip to William Higgins, a Naval Academy classmate and yes, a big time …..Republican.
Interestingly enough he and I agree that nuclear power has a place in the energy mix, as does President Obama.

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