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It’s Tough to be a Mom in the USA

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US low score on world motherhood rankings

To be more specific, USA ranked #28 on the Save the Children Organization 2010 annual report on the best and worst places in which to be a new mother.

Countries are ranked on mother related data:  such as the risk of maternal death (1 in 4,800 for the USA, compared to 1 in 47,600 in Ireland); Female life expectancy (A pretty good 82 for the USA); female schooling; and maternity leave benefits (USA ranks dead last out of 43 developed countries).

And countries are also ranked on children related data:  such as under 5 mortality rate (8 in 1,000 kids die before their 5th birthday in the USA, compared to 3 in 1,000 for several nations such as Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Luxemborg, and even Macendonia); and schooling for children (only 61% on kids in the USA get enrolled in pre-school, compared to 100% in many places)

If only we could figure out just what those other countries are doing so well…

Other countries where fewer kids die before age 5 compared to the USA:

Developed Countries:  Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estoria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxemborg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.

Less Developed Countries:  Brunei Darussalam, Cuba, Cyprus, Israel, Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore

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Written by Kyle

May 5th, 2010 at 1:16 pm

Prosperity… It Isn’t Just For Americans Any More

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The 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index was released today.

Yeah, I never heard of it either, but evidently it’s a fairly legit operation.  And by legit, I mean neither the Democrats nor the Republicans hired them to prove how evil the other party is.

The index is based on a definition of prosperity that combines economic growth with the level of personal freedoms and democracy in a country as well as measures of happiness and quality of life.

The 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index, published on Tuesday and compiled by the Legatum Institute, an independent policy, advocacy and advisory organization, ranked 104 countries which are home to 90 percent of the world’s population.

So, obviously USA is #1, right?

No… that’d be Finland.

O.o

Finland?  You mean… the people of Finland are more prosperous than Americans?  Come on.  Really?

Well, maybe Finland is really cool and all.  So cool that they and USA were close enough that some rounding errors pushed them over the USA in a fluke runoff tie breaker or something?  Probably something like that.

Except that #2 is Switzerland, not the USA.  Friends and countrymen, we are not even in the top 5!  I’m afraid, when the next Olympics roll around, we’re all going to have to chant, “We’re number 9!  We’re number 9!”  I don’t even want to think what the giant foam hand things will look like that we’ll need to raise up in the air from the stands.  By the way, if you’ve been disconcerted lately with thoughts that perhaps Canada isn’t such a bad place after all, well chances are that you aren’t alone… they came in ranked #7 overall.

Here are the categories of the index, ordered by where the USA was ranked in each:

#1 – Entrepreneurship and Innovation
#2 – Democratic Institutions
#7 – Education
#7 – Social Capital
#8 – Personal Freedom
#14 – Economic Fundamentals
#16 – Governance
#19 – Safety and Security
#27 – Health

So um… health care.  Yeah… that old thorn in our side.  You suppose we should do something about it?

Let’s take a look at some of the countries that have better health care than the USA.  #1 is Austria.  The rest of the top 5 are Ireland, Switzerland, Singapore, and Belgium.  Hmm… what do all of these places have in common?  If you guessed “public health care”, you win the Kewpie doll!!  It’s not just the top 5, either.  The list is long and rather unvaried in terms of countries ranked higher than the USA and whether or not they provide government run health care as an option to all of their citizens.

Smarten up people.  If you want your country to one day over take such health care juggernauts as Hong Kong (#18), New Zealand (#19), Slovenia (#24), and Taiwan (#26)… maybe even one day measure up to our wacky Canadian (#22) neighbors, eh?  Then call your congressmen and let them know that you support government run, public health care options.

Or else next year, we may slip further down, past Uruguay (#28), United Arab Emirates (#29), and Hungary. (#30)

Written by Kyle

October 27th, 2009 at 1:51 pm

“Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare!”

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A lot of people are talking about health care reform lately.  Well, not just lately.  We’ve been talking about it for years.  Ok, decades.  In fact, health care has been so screwed since the invention of the insurance company, that our government had to step in and create Medicare back in 1965.

Why?

Why did we… a capitalist society, founded on the premise that so long as there’s a dollar to be made, people will step up to make that dollar in the most efficient manner possible… why did we need a government program to do the same thing that insurance companies could and should be doing?

Insurance companies do not exist to take care of you.  Their commercials may say that you’re in safe hands with them, but taking care of you does not make them money.  In fact… NOT taking care of you is the only thing that does make them money.  You pay premiums to a health insurance company under the premise that when you need health care, you can file a claim so that you won’t have to pay as much money to receive that care.

Premiums = money paid to the health insurance company

Claims = money paid by the health insurance company

Profit = Premiums – Claims

This isn’t rocket science… in fact, it’s not even algebra.  This is first grade addition and subtraction.  The only way a health insurance company stays in business is to get you to pay THEM more money for your health care than they have to pay the doctors, hospitals, etc for your health care. Flat out fact, most people would save huge amounts of money over their lifetime if insurance companies weren’t also profiting from their health care.

So why did we need Medicare?  Old people aren’t profitable.  Sorry guys and gals, you’re health is expensive.  In short… there is no profit in keeping you alive.  Your life is nothing but a loss to insurance companies, so the only one who is interested in keeping you alive is… your government.  They’re the only ones willing to operate at a loss for you.

So here we are in 2009, still talking about how screwed up our health care system is, despite the government subsidizing our most expensive citizens for the past 44 years.   The price that we pay for health insurance premiums has increased at more than double the amount our wages have increased for the past decade.  You pay 78% more now than you did in 2001, which is more than 4 times the amount that your paycheck has increased.  Health insurance companies are making record profits and the World Health Organization rates the USA’s health care at #37 in the world, just behind such leaders in health care as Dominica and Costa Rica.

When your son or daughter gets cancer, do you really want to live in the 37th best country in the world for health care?

Barack Obama is on a marketing campaign of town hall meetings, to try and convince the country that the government can help us with health care if we just give them a chance.  In a recent such event in Simpsonville, Republican representative Robert Inglis was fielding questions from the crowd.  A man, evidently sold by Satan Palin on the fact that a national health insurance program, such as what is employed at the #1 ranked country for health care, would result in socialized medicine and “death panels”, stood up to exclaim, “Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare!”

“I had to politely explain that, ‘Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,’ ” Inglis recalled. “But he wasn’t having any of it.”

Gotta love politics.

Written by Kyle

August 13th, 2009 at 12:46 pm

Posted in Abandon All Hope

Tagged with

Fatty, Fat, Fat

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Topping today’s list of breaking news that everyone already knew is the annual report on whether or not America is still fat.

We are.

Not only are we still fat, thanks to drawing it to everyone’s attention and really focusing on improving overall health… we’re even fatter than before.

“Obesity rates among adults rose in 23 states over the past year and didn’t decline anywhere, says a new report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.”

Wow.  Not a single state lost any weight.

Here’s an interesting tidbit for all you crazed smoke-Nazis out there complaining when someone lights up 100 yds off in the distance:

Studies show Medicare spends anywhere from $1,400 to $6,000 more annually on health care for an obese senior than for the non-obese.

Your turn is coming.  How long before Fried Chicken is banned in the work place?  “Welcome to Money, Inc, Ma’am, now step up on the scale to see how much your health insurance will cost.”

However, the future is not completely bleak.  Krispy Kreme may be going out of business, soon.

Written by Kyle

July 1st, 2009 at 11:39 am