Fried butter a hit at State Fair of Texas... future cardiac patients at the Fair this week.

Go for the churn: Fried butter a hit at State Fair of Texa News for Dallas, Texas Dallas Morning News Breaking News for Dallas-Fort Worth Dallas Morning News: "Indeed, butter makes everything better.

Robin Lacy (left) and Nicole Whittington were among the first to sample Abel Gonzales Jr.'s Deep Fried Butter on Friday, the opening day of the 2009 State Fair of Texas. That was the consensus Friday at the State Fair of Texas, as scores of fairgoers eagerly devoured Deep Fried Butter, the new food generating globs of buzz across the country.
Shortly before 10 a.m., as the fair began its 24-day run, LuAnn Bergman of Dallas was the first customer to Butter up. She bit into a crispy, golden ball of garlic-flavored butter goodness."

40 year old Black Pacu in Queens, New York.... I always thought they look a lot like piranha.

Big fish eat little fish," says the wisdom of the city. Meet Buttkiss, the black pacu who has eaten more than 175,000 fish during his residence in Queens. “We feed him twenty-five goldfish every other day,” says Steve Gruebel, the owner of Cameo Pet Shop in Richmond Hill. You do the math. He’s been in the shop continuously since 1970, becoming a Richmond Hill landmark in that time.

Why hasn’t he been sold already? “We actually sold him in 1968 to a Holocaust survivor named Kurt Emerick. The fish was about two inches long at that time. But he got so big he was knocking things over in Kurt’s fishtank. Kurt didn’t like that. He was a perfectionist. So he brought him back here in a bucket. Later Kurt got hit by a bus on Metropolitan Avenue and died. But the fish is still here. I had just gotten back from Nam and I decided to keep him.”

The fish has some personality too. Named after the famed linebacker Dick Butkus (though Steve corrected my spelling to "Buttkiss"), he will come to Steve's hand because he knows that's where the food comes from. “You can see the marks on the top of his head. He’ll bang on the top of the tank when he’s hungry.” Pacus are in the piranha family. The New York Aquarium did not get back to us when we asked whether or not the fish could possibly be that old, but residents of Richmond Hill swear the fish has been there the whole time, in the same 75-gallon tank. When I walked around the block to go to the (excellent) Alfie’s Pizzeria, Louie, Alfie’s son, said, “That fish! That fuckin’ fish! Is that fuckin’ fish unbelievable or what? When we’re all dead and gone that fish will still be there.”

I got this in the mailbox and realized that lots of my family and friends use this technology...

This gives us something to think about with all our new electronic technology.

GPS
A couple of weeks ago a friend told me that someone she knew had
their car broken into while they were at a football game. Their car was
parked on the green which was adjacent to the football stadium and
specially allotted to football fans. Things stolen from the car included
a garage door remote control, some money and a GPS which had been
prominently mounted on the dashboard.

When the victims got home, they found that their house had been
ransacked and just about everything worth anything had been stolen.

The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then
used the garage remote control to open the garage door and gain
entry to the house. The thieves knew the owners were at the football
game, they knew what time the game was scheduled to finish and so
they knew how much time they had to clean out the house.. It would
appear that they had brought a truck to empty the house of its contents.

Something to consider if you have a GPS - don't put your home
address in it. Put a nearby address (like a store or gas station) so you
can still find your way home if you need to, but no one else would know
where you live if your GPS were stolen.

MOBILE PHONES
I never thought of this.......

This lady has now changed her habit of how she lists her names on
her mobile phone after her handbag was stolen. Her handbag, which
contained her cell phone, credit card, wallet... Etc...was stolen.

20 minutes later when she called her hubby, from a pay phone telling
him what had happened, hubby says 'I received your text asking
about our Pin number and I've replied a little while ago.'

When they rushed down to the bank, the bank staff told them all the
money was already withdrawn. The thief had actually used the stolen
cell phone to text 'hubby' in the contact list and got hold of the pin
number. Within 20 minutes he had withdrawn all the money from their
bank account.

Moral of the lesson
Do not disclose the relationship between you and the people in
your contact list.

Avoid using names like Home, Honey, Hubby, Sweetheart, Dad,
Mom, etc....

And very importantly, when sensitive info is being asked through texts,
CONFIRM by calling back.

Also, when you're being text by friends or family to meet them
somewhere, be sure to call back to confirm that the message came
from them.

If you don't reach them, be very careful about going places
to meet 'family and friends' who text you.

How about a Flat Rate Solution for Healthcare

First Draft - Friday, September 18, 2009

I am getting tired of the stalemate in Congress and the Senate over healthcare or health insurance reform. To me it so simple.

When I was buying a car last month, the salesman told me to budget 13% of my gross income, no more, no less.

We want to argue over what healthcare should cost. Why not just agree that we budget 13% of a working person’s gross income goes to making the car payment, which is a reasonable amount for budgeting for healthcare or health insurance. Thirteen percent for a car. Thirteen percent for healthcare.

Who should collect it?
Who do we have collecting taxes in this country?
Who will take it out of your pay check every month? That person should make the deductions and send it to the U.S. Treasury.

If you make $13 a hour, you should be paying $1.70 for healthcare ($304 per month). If you are making $7 a hour, you should be paying 91 cents for healthcare per hour ($168 per month) If you make $50 a hour, you should be paying $6.50 for healthcare per hour ($1,170 per month).

If that does not sound fare to you then, we play with tax credits.

Go back to the car payment analogy. Let’s decide that to provide for reasonable healthcare we need to max out the amount each month.
One person, making $33,000 a year, could make a car payment of $4290 a year or $357 a month. Same amount as a car payment. What that will pay for needs to be determined, but I am going to set that as the budget amount.

If you are single, that is what you pay for health insurance.

If you are a couple of people, both earning an income, the amount goes up by double - $715.

If you have a child or a dependent, or just a partner that is NOT working, it gets tricky. Healthcare services for ONE person are the same regardless of the age or size of the person. One person is one person, and they are going to use the minimum $357 of services for healthcare. Solution? Ask the taxman.

If you are a couple, married, not married, working or not working, does not matter. The government matches the working person’s income for ONE healthcare payment of $357 per month. If there is one person work, that is TWO units.

Where does that money for the EXTRA unit come from?
TAXES, that other thing that comes out of your paycheck each month. That guy making $33,000 a month still pays taxes to the tune of 23% a month, or $7590 a year or $632.50 a month. The existing tax pocket pays for the missing amount each month, if needed, if not needed, you get a tax credit at the end of the year.

You are a couple with only one person working in the household. No problem. Your existing taxes pay for that person. Your aging parent is living with you: their social security pays $357 for their medical needs.
You have one or two children, with just one income earner. No problem, we hit the tax pocket for the extra health units. More than two? Ask the taxman.

Someone needs to go to work, maybe. Don’t expect a tax refund.

That guy is making $33,000 and paying in for healthcare and taxes ($4290 plus $7790) or $12,080 a year or $1,006 per month for medical coverage of himself/herself and his/her partner and their two dependents. Might not be paying for the national defense or the interstate highway system, but at least that person is paying for healthcare for the whole family.

What does that buy?
That needs to be determined yet, but that car payment of $357 is the SAME amount he pays for every person in the family to a maximum of $1,006 per month.

Who collects this money?
The same person that collects your taxes will collect your healthcare payment (lets not call it a tax…).

Who pays for the healthcare insurance package?
The same person that pays your grandmother each month: Social Security.
Social Security will now collect for your so called retirement benefit and for your healthcare benefit.

Who pays the insurance company?
Social Security pays them for the standard U.S. Healthcare Policy the amount of $357 a month per person per month.

What does the working citizen or working non-citizen get for that amount per month?
That minimum package of care is yet to be determined by a bill in Congress.

Non-citizen worker?
IF you are paying into the Social Security fund, you get health benefits from Social Security. If not you have to go some where else, but if you show up at a county hospital, they are going to sell you the U.S. Healthcare Policy and contact your employer. We might need to ADD a group of IRS collection agents to enforce the collection of Social Security and Tax funds.

How does this affect my employer ?
They don’t have to offer health insurance. They get out of the health insurance business and leave it to the government and insurance companies. They simply do what they are doing now: collect the revenue for the IRS to pay social security. If they are NOT doing that much now, then the IRS will investigate why they are not collecting wage taxes and healthcare and Social Security funds.

Who pays my medical bills at the doctor’s office?
That remains to be determined by a bill in Congress.
Doctors seem to work it to be a single payer so they can eliminate all those staffers working the insurance paperwork (43% administrative cost by some estimates) and that would be Social Security.

What about Medicare and Medicaid?
They would not exist anymore. Might save some tax money there. Might not. It would roll into Social Security and not fall on the States and Counties. You would not be taxes locally for healthcare benefits for the elderly , retired, infirmed, disable or kids without health insurance.

Won’t this destroy our healthcare system as we know it today?
No.
Your employer will save money and do nothing new with existing staff.
Your employer will not be paying you in health care benefits, they could pay you MORE money or hire MORE people or INVEST more. Your employer will stop trying to eliminate older workers, because it increases their health insurance rates. Your employer will be MORE COMPETITIVE in the world market, with healthier, more productive workers.

Your doctor will save money and do nothing new with reduced staff.
Your hospital will save money and do nothing new with reduced staff.

You will still be REQUIRED to pay for healthcare, social security, and taxes.
You might get paid more. You might not. IF you did not have healthcare before the bill in Congress passes, you will have it now. You will have to pay for it, so you might see that come out of your paycheck each month. You will have to work harder to pay for it. There is no free lunch.

Why will I be required to pay for it?
At one level, it is the same reason you are supposed to be paying taxes and social security benefit payments now.
At another level, it broads the base of insured people for insurance companies to get paid by and to spread out the benefits and risks over.
As a group of people, there is only one percent ( fact check) chance that someone will die of cancer and heart disease. It goes up or down for a specific person. If everyone is insured, the total costs of healthcare for a single individual goes down.


And, your health insurance companies will still be around getting rich.
It is still to be determined by a bill in Congress, but why wouldn’t they.
They will still be getting $357 per month per working person.
NOW, they will be paid for ALL working persons.
The payment will be guaranteed by the U.S. Treasury through the Social Security Service. The market for insurance will be bigger. The risks of payment will be reduced.
The risk of insuring an individual will be spread over the entire working population.


Using that car payment analogy once again, my Rich Uncle never pays for a NEW car.
Why? you ask.
He told me the other day that if I were to SAVE and INVEST that car payment of $357 per month in something that earned a compounded, interest rate of 5% (good luck with that one!) for 30 years, I would have $1.2 million dollars. Your health insurance company is going to make money and still pay all the medical bills, that is their job and role in life. God bless America.

Ranch Security and Gove-mint Authority

An Iowa State Trooper stops at a farm in rural Iowa and talks with an old
Farmer. He tells the Farmer, "I need to inspect your farm for illegally grown drugs."

The old Farmer says, "Okay, but don't go in that field over there".
The Trooper turns red and verbally explodes saying, "Mister, I have the
authority of the State of Iowa with me."

Reaching into his rear pocket and removing his badge, the Officer proudly displays it to the Farmer. "See this badge?!!

"This badge means I am allowed to go wherever I wish, ON ANY LAND, no questions asked, or answers given!! Have I made myself clear?? Do YOU understand?!!?"

The old Farmer nods politely and goes about his chores. Later, the old
Farmer hears loud screams, and sees the Trooper running for his life and
close behind is the Farmer's bull. With every step, the bull is gaining
on the Trooper. The Trooper is clearly terrified.

The old Farmer immediately throws down his tool's and runs to the fence, yelling at the top of his lungs..... "YOUR BADGE !! SHOW HIM YOUR BADGE!!

The issue of how much Healthcare or Health Insurance Costs in USa

Healthcare or Health Insurance Costs are rising in the USA.

How about a Flat Rate Solution for Healthcare Costs and Payment?

1) The current average for health insurance is $13,000 per year for a family of four.

That is 1,083 per month. That is a house payment!

2) The current median family income makes $50,000 per year.

That is 4,117 per month. That is one 1/4 of the monthly income!

3) WHAT WOULD BE THE AMOUNT THAT WE COULD REQUIRE EVERYONE TO PAY FOR HEALTH INSURANCE? How about a car payment a month?

The average USA car payment is $378 over 63 months. The average family car payment is about $560 per month. The advice for buying cars is NOT TO DO MORE THAN 13% of your income in car payments per year... for $30,000 that is $325 per month or $3,900 per year ... for $50,000 that is $542 per month or $6,500 per year.

Why 13% of your income: Let’s say that you invested $378 every month, instead of making car payments from age 30 to age 65 (35 years). If you average a rate of return of 12 percent (which was doable), your money will grow to $2.4 million. Do you still want that car?

However that tells you that the Health Insurance company is making money!

4) Hey look at my Doctor's bill for last week: I was charge $488 for a doctor's visit and a complete set of lab work... AFTER THE 30% DISCOUNT for paying with CREDIT CARD OR CASH. $400 a month is what I should be paying in health insurance/health care or $4,800 a year. I just need a job paying $39, 923 a year to pay for it and the car.

Healthcare or Health Insurance should cost USa 13% of their income per month per person, with your taxes making up the difference to equal $400 per month person to a public or private healthcare insurer.

If you make $13 a hour, you should be paying $1.70 for heathcare ($304 per month). If you are making $7 a hour, you should be paying 91 cents for heathcare per hour ($168 per month) If you make $50 a hour, you should be paying $6.50 for healthcare per hour ($1,170 per month).

At the current rate the average cost of healthcare will increase by 300% if we DON'T DO ANYTHING.





WASHINGTON - A national advocacy group says health insurance premiums rose five times faster than earnings in Illinois from 2000 to 2009.

The report released Thursday says, on average, the annual insurance premium for a family paid by employers and workers rose from $7,220 to $13,397. That's an increase of nearly 86 percent.

The workers' portion rose at an even steeper pace.

Meanwhile, the median earnings of Illinois workers rose just 17 percent, from $26,806 to $31,414.

The report comes from Families USA, a group working to expand health care coverage. The group based its findings on federal data.

Congress is considering several bills that aim to restrain costs. But benefits consultants have said if any reform is passed this year, it won't have a major effect for a few years.

------

On the Net: http://www.familiesusa.org/

------


Facts on the Cost of Health Insurance and Health Care

Health care spending continues to rise at a rapid rate forcing businesses to cut back on health insurance coverage and forcing many families to cut back on basic necessities such as food and electricity and, in some cases, shelters and homes.

Experts agree that our health care system is riddled with inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management and inappropriate care, waste and fraud. These problems increase the cost of medical care associated with government health programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and health insurance for employers and workers and affect the security of families.



National Health Care Spending

National health spending is expected to reach $2.5 trillion in 2009, accounting for 17.6 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). By 2018, national health care expenditures are expected to reach $4.4 trillion—more than double 2007 spending.1

National health expenditures are expected to increase faster than the growth in GDP: between 2008 and 2018, the average increase in national health expenditures is expected to be 6.2 percent per year, while the GDP is expected to increase only 4.1 percent per year. 1

In just three years, the Medicare and Medicaid programs will account for 50 percent of all national health spending. 1

Medicare's Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund is expected to pay out more in hospital benefits and other expenditures this year than it receives in taxes and other dedicated revenues. In addition, the Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) Trust Fund that pays for physician services and the prescription drug benefit will continue to require general revenue financing and charges on beneficiaries that will grow substantially faster than the economy and beneficiary incomes over time. 2

According to one study, of the $2.1 trillion the U.S. spent on health care in 2006, nearly $650 billion was above what we would expect to spend based on the level of U.S. wealth versus other nations. These additional costs are attributable to $436 billion outpatient care and another $186 billion of spending related to high administrative costs. 3

Employer and Employee Health Insurance Costs

Over the last decade, employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have increased 119 percent. 4

Employees have seen their share of job-based coverage increase at nearly the same rate during this period jumping from $1,543 to $3,354.4

The cumulative increase in employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have raised at four times the rate of inflation and wage increases during last decade. This increase has made it much more difficult for businesses to continue to provide coverage to their employees and for those workers to afford coverage themselves.4

The average employer-sponsored premium for a family of four costs close to $13,000 a year, and the employee foots about 30 percent of this cost.4

Health insurance costs are the fastest growing expense for employers. Employer health insurance costs overtook profits in 2008, and the gap grows steadily. 5

Total health insurance costs for employers could reach nearly $850 billion by 2019. Individual and family spending will jump considerably from $326 billion in 2009 to $550 billion in 2019.6

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that job-based health insurance could increase 100 percent over the next decade.7 Employer-based family insurance costs for a family of four will reach nearly $25,000 per year by 2018 absent health care reform.7

The Impact of Rising Health Care Costs

Economists have found that rising health care costs correlate with significant drops in health insurance coverage, and national surveys also show that the primary reason people are uninsured is due to the high and escalating cost of health insurance coverage.8

A recent study found that 62 percent of all bankruptcies filed in 2007 were linked to medical expenses. Of those who filed for bankruptcy, nearly 80 percent had health insurance.9

According to another published article, about 1.5 million families lose their homes to foreclosure every year due to unaffordable medical costs.10

Without health care reform, small businesses will pay nearly $2.4 trillion dollars over the next ten years in health care costs for their workers, 178,000 small business jobs will be lost by 2018 as a result of health care costs, $834 billion in small business wages will be lost due to high health care costs over the next ten years, small businesses will lose $52.1 billion in profits to high health care costs and 1.6 million small business workers will suffer “job lock“— roughly one in 16 people currently insured by their employers.11

References

1. Siska, A, et al, Health Spending Projections Through 2018: Recession Effects Add Uncertainty to The Outlook Health Affairs, March/April 2009; 28(2): w346-w357.
2. A Summary of the 2009 Annual Reports, Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees, 2009.
3. McKinsey & Company, Accounting for the Cost of U.S. Health Care – A New Look on Why Americans Spend More. McKinsey & Company, 2007
4. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Employee Health Benefits: 2008 Annual Survey. September 2008.
5. McKinsey and Company. The McKinsey Quarterly Chart Focus Newsletter, “Will Health Benefit Costs Eclipse Profits,” September, 2004 and updated by Eric Jensen, Senior Fellow, McKinsey and Company at National Coalition on Health Care Forum on National Health Care Reform and Its Potential Impacts on New York, May 27, 2009.
6.Health Reform: The Cost of Failure. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, May 2009.
7. Congressional Budget Office, “Taxes and Health Insurance,” February 29, 2008.
8. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The Uninsured: A Primer, Key Facts About Americans without Health Insurance. 2009. April 2009.
9. Himmelstein, D, E., et al, “Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a National Study, American Journal of Medicine, May 2009.
10. Robertson, C.T., et al. “Get Sick, Get Out: The Medical Causes of Home Mortgage Foreclosures,” Health Matrix, 2008.
11. The Economic Impact of Healthcare Reform on Small Business, Small Business Majority, June 2009.

-----

http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml

Cancer, health insurance, bankruptcy

17:31 GMT +00:00

Cancer, health insurance, bankruptcy
Posted :
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/09/cancer_health_insurance_bankru.cfm
Categories:Health care
COMPLAINTS have been made around the blogosphere of late, including, quite astutely, by my colleague here, that too much bandwidth is being devoted to ridiculing the rantings of crazy people, and not enough to saying useful things about important stuff. Point taken. So, apropos of not very much, let's talk about cancer, and its relationship to health-insurance systems. What country's health system does the best job of treating people who get cancer? And if we change America's health insurance system, how might that affect things?

The best international comparison we have, published in the British Medical Journal in 2008, shows that in the 1990s, America had the best survival rates for breast and prostate cancers, while France and Japan had the best survival rates for colon and rectal cancers. The overall cancer survival rate was highest in America. Note that the data reflect cancers that were diagnosed between 1990 and 1994, when far fewer European women received regular mammograms; today, women in France, the Netherlands, and Sweden are more likely to have had a mammogram in the last two years than American women. (And beware of professional propagandists like Betsy McCaughey who say cancer survival rates are far better in America than in "Europe": she is using a 47-country definition of Europe that includes Poland, Hungary, and other poor Eastern European countries. In comparisons with countries like the Netherlands, France and Sweden, with incomes and health systems closer to America's, the differences shrink radically, and in some cases the European countries come out on top.)

So, what about how this treatment gets paid for in American and Europe? Well, in France, there's a modest co-pay for most health services and products. But not for cancer. If you get cancer, treatment is free. Insurance covers it. That's why they call it "insurance".

In America, on the other hand, it depends. A 2006 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health found that 25% of cancer patients and their families had used up "all or most" of their savings paying for treatment; 11% said they had been unable to get health insurance again afterwards; 6% said they had actually lost their insurance because of having cancer. In all, 12.5% had been uninsured for at least some of the time since they were diagnosed. Better hope that doesn't happen to you: 46% of them reported they had at some point been unable to pay for necessities like food, housing, or heating. Overall, 10% of cancer patients said they had maxed out their insurer's cap on total reimbursements, meaning they had to start paying for everything themselves.

This is the system that explains America's high level of medical bankruptcies. Another Harvard study released in May found that in 2007, 65% of personal bankruptcies had involved high medical bills. Most of those people had insurance. But even with insurance, their annual out-of-pocket medical bills averaged over $17,000. Yup, that'll do it.

So, where would you rather get cancer? In America, you have a modestly better chance of surviving most cancers for 5 years. But there's a 1 in 4 chance you will lose your life savings and a 1 in 10 chance you will have to beg for food or rent, while in France, the whole thing will cost you nothing. What'll it be? But wait: why are we even asking this question? Why don't we just change our insurance system to fix the payment problem, but keep our great treatment system? We could eliminate rescission and lifetime caps on coverage, mandate that insurers have to ignore pre-existing conditions so that a cancer diagnosis doesn't mean you can never get insurance again even if you're cured, and use government subsidies so people who are too rich for Medicaid can still afford insurance, and nobody has to blow their kids' college fund on chemotherapy. In other words, we could do what the House health-insurance reform bill does! How is insuring everyone, and making sure that "insurance" actually means insurance, going to make cancer treatment in America worse? Are cancer-treatment centres all eager to preserve a situation in which their patients may abruptly lose insurance coverage and have to mortgage their house to afford drugs? Is someone really going to argue that in order to have the world's best cancer-treatment system, we need to arbitrarily bankrupt a million or so unsuspecting saps every year? That our treatment outcomes are so great because of our fine insurance system? Surely no one could take that claim seriously.