Wendell Potter: Fresh Evidence That Health Insurers Value Profits Over People

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Fresh-Evidence-That-Health-by-Wendell-Potter-110801-372.html

August 1, 2011

By Wendell Potter

Three of the biggest health insurers have announced quarterly earnings in the past few days. If Americans were able to eavesdrop on what executives from those firms tell their Wall Street masters every three months, they would have a better understanding of why premiums keep going up while the number of people with medical coverage keeps going down.

It only takes three words, when you get right down to it, to describe the real MO of those folks: profits over people.

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"Ken Sofer" - World Reacts to Debt Ceiling Debacle: "Irresponsible," "Worst Kind of Absurd Theatrics"

Saturday 30 July 2011

by: Ken Sofer, ThinkProgress [3] | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/world-reacts-debt-ceiling-debacle-irresponsible-worst-kind-absurd-theatrics/1312035874

The rhetoric over raising the debt ceiling has become increasingly harsh as Democratic and Republican congressional leaders trade barbs back and forth. But as the U.S. inches closer to defaulting on its debts for the first time in history, criticism of Congress is starting to come from beyond our own borders. From France and Germany to China and India, countries around the world are angry that American politicians play with the possibility of a U.S. default like a yo-yo with little regard for the international economic system that depends on American solvency.

Despite China's traditional preference of staying out of the domestic affairs of other nations, senior Chinese officials' frustrations are growing louder and louder. Stephen Roach, the non-executive chairman of Morgan Staley Asia, said senior Chinese officials told him [4] the debt ceiling debte in the U.S. is "truly shocking." "We understand the politics," a Chinise official said, "but your government's continued recklessness is astonishing." And newspapers around the world are voicing discontent with Congress's handling of the debt ceiling:

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Dean Baker: US Debt Deal -- How Washington Lost the Plot

Published on Monday, August 1, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/aug/01/us-debt-deal-washington-unemployment

Politicians and the media are obsessing on debt, deficit and cuts, but the real story is a stalled economy and rising unemployment

by Dean Baker

President Obama and the Republicans in Congress have finally worked out a deal over the debt ceiling. It appears as though the Republicans got most of what they wanted: big cuts to domestic spending and no tax increases.

On the plus side, social security and Medicaid appear to be largely intact, although the deal commits Congress to set up another one of those dreadful "bipartisan" commissions, and some cuts to Medicare are on the table. The main qualification for being chosen as a member or staffer for this commission will be that you were too ignorant of the economy to notice the $8tn housing bubble whose collapse brought on the current crisis. Fortunately, Washington has no shortage of policy wonks who fit this description.

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Michael Bader: How We Can Inspire People to Care About Social Change and Feel Good About Themselves in the Process

By Michael Bader, AlterNet
Posted on August 1, 2011, Printed on August 2, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151868/how_we_can_inspire_people_to_care_about_social_change_and_feel_good_about_themselves_in_the_process

If the Wisconsin struggle between the unions and Governor Walker showed us anything, it was that the needs that animate people around progressive causes are not simply needs for money or financial security. The need for community and its accompanying feeling of belonging and the need to connect with something larger than the self, the need for meaning, were every bit as important in generating the special enthusiasm and emotional engagement seen for weeks in and around the state capitol in Madison.

This has been the experience of the Left for generations. Movements that engaged people at a deep level had the most staying power and the most impact. At this level, people are motivated by a range of needs other than those for economic security, including needs for meaning, connectedness, recognition, and agency.

Unfortunately, despite evidence that this is so, progressives are often blind to the importance of these needs.

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"Stephanie Nebehay" - Going into hospital far riskier than flying: WHO

Thu, Jul 21 2011

By Stephanie Nebehay

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/21/us-safety-idUSTRE76K45R20110721?WT.tsrc=Social%2BMedia&WT.z_smid_dest=Twitter&WT.z_smid=twtr-reuters_health&feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews

GENEVA (Reuters) - Millions of people die each year from medical errors and infections linked to health care and going into hospital is far riskier than flying, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.

"If you were admitted to hospital tomorrow in any country... your chances of being subjected to an error in your care would be something like 1 in 10. Your chances of dying due to an error in health care would be 1 in 300," Liam Donaldson, the WHO's newly appointed envoy for patient safety, told a news briefing.

This compared with a risk of dying in an air crash of about 1 in 10 million passengers, according to Donaldson, formerly England's chief medical officer.

"It shows that health care generally worldwide still has a long way to go," he said.

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New Study Links Mountaintop Removal To 60,000 Additional Cancer Cases

Alternet.org  July 28, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/640652/new_study_links_mountaintop_removal_to_60%2C000_additional_cancer_cases/#paragraph3

Among the 1.2 million American citizens living in mountaintop removal mining counties in central Appalachia, an additional 60,000 cases of cancer are directly linked to the federally sanctioned strip-mining practice.

That is the damning conclusion in a breakthrough study, released last night in the peer-reviewed Journal of Community Health: The Publication for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Led by West Virginia University researcher Dr. Michael Hendryx, among others, the study entitled “Self-Reported Cancer Rates in Two Rural Areas of West Virginia with and Without Mountaintop Coal Mining” drew from a groundbreaking community-based participatory research survey conducted in Boone County, West Virginia in the spring of 2011, which gathered person-level health data from communities directly impacted by mountaintop mining, and compared to communities without mining.

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Rebecca Solnit: Hope -- The Care and Feeding Of

By Rebecca Solnit
Posted on July 31, 2011, Printed on August 1, 2011
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175424/

By Rebecca Solnit

Recently, Nelson Mandela turned 93, and his nation celebrated noisily, even attempting to break the world record for the most people simultaneously singing “Happy Birthday.” This was the man who, on trial by the South African government in 1964, stood a good chance of being sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead. Given life in prison instead, he was supposed to be silenced.  Story over.  

You know the rest, though it wasn’t inevitable that he’d be released and become the president of a post-apartheid South Africa. Admittedly, it’s a country with myriad flaws and still suffers from economic apartheid, but who wouldn’t agree that it’s changed?  Activism changed it; more activism could change it further.

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch, who’d amassed a vast media empire, banked billions of dollars, and been listed by Forbes as the world’s 13th most powerful person, must have thought he had it made these past few decades.  Now, his empire is crumbling and his crimes and corrosive influence (which were never exactly secret) are being examined by everyone. You never know what’ll happen next.

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Robert Reich: Ransom Paid

Monday 1 August 2011

by: Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog [3] | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/ransom-paid/1312207122

Anyone who characterizes the deal between the President, Democratic, and Republican leaders as a victory for the American people over partisanship understands neither economics nor politics.

The deal does not raise taxes on America’s wealthy and most fortunate — who are now taking home a larger share of total income and wealth, and whose tax rates are already lower than they have been, in eighty years. Yet it puts the nation’s most important safety nets and public investments on the chopping block.

It also hobbles the capacity of the government to respond to the jobs and growth crisis. Added to the cuts already underway by state and local governments, the deal’s spending cuts increase the odds of a double-dip recession. And the deal strengthens the political hand of the radical right.

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Agence France-Presse: Record High Radiation at Crippled Japan Nuke Plant

Published on Monday, August 1, 2011 by Agence France-Presse

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gzGzh5NrnkAitKXG3RWWammnNihQ

TOKYO — Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said Monday it had monitored record high radiation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant crippled by the March 11 quake and tsunami.

TEPCO said radiation levels reached at least 10 sieverts per hour near the debris left between the number one and number two reactors of the plant at the centre of the ongoing nuclear crisis.

The previous record was three to four sieverts per hour monitored inside the number one reactor on June 3.

"Three plant workers were exposed to a dosage of four millisieverts while they were monitoring radiation," a TEPCO spokeswoman said. "We are still checking the cause of such high levels of radioactivity."

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CNBC: Insurance Industry Grapples With Impact Of Climate Change

Published on Monday, August 1, 2011 by CNBC

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43672850

As a surge in catastrophic weather events leads to billions of dollars in claims, climate change may pose the insurance industry’s biggest problem — and profit potential.

An unusual onslaught of floods in Mississippi, tornadoes in the Midwest, drought and wildfires in Texas and earthquakes abroad has wiped out hope of much profit for many insurance and reinsurance companies this year.

That’s nearly five times the first-half average since 2001, and the oftentimes costly hurricane season is just getting underway.

Although the damage has been worse than expected, the industry has plenty of capital set aside to weather the losses — barring the occurrence of more off-the-charts disasters, which insurers and reinsurers say may or may not be linked to global warming.

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