Comments on: Unemployment Rate, seasonally adjusted January 1998 to June 2009

By: EdieML

EdieML — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:01:06 +0000

As a nurse I don’t see anything really going back to the patients. I work at 3 different jobs, per diem, and I pay all of my family’s health insurance at a low income rate.
I am one of the lucky Americans. I have a warm house in winter and food, I visit numerous people that don’t even have a floor- (unless plywood counts as a floor). Can you imagine a 70-80 year old man trying to heat with wood, do you really think he has the strength to chop it?, but it happens every day in America. I’ve paid for food for some of these people. I can honestly say a good percentage of the people have learning disabilities and couldn’t hold a job, and most of them don’t do drugs or drink.
The one thing that bothers me the most in the amount of cost to the patients as well as medicare/medicaid is the medications and supplies cost. TENS units costing $350 and I bought a simple one for $50.00 (but the supplies run’s up in cost). The elderly should get a motivational cut to change their bathroom bathtub to a walk in shower. Most can’t get up if they sit in a tub, and as we age we can’t step over the side of a tub.
Incentive to prevent people from reproducing would help too. Do we really need 5 or more kids? This is putting a lot of people into assistance needs. Free vasectomies? Why not make it hip to have a vasectomy, instead of a tatoo- or offer a free tatoo afterwards. Usually you can get a woman to take birth control, at little or no cost, but obviously the maternal instinct is still there. If we could just show a baby as a cost instead of being cute (reality in life) this might cause a change. Whatever happened to responsibility of parents to raise a well behaved citizen. I see parents using 4 letter words, in front of the kids, yelling at their teachers. This has to change and we ( the public nurses, school teachers, psychologist, etc.) need more training in these area’s – or bullets to bite on. We need role models – We need people to indorse local role models all over the country.
I have had elderly people come in crying because they couldn’t afford the $600 blood pressure medication, which I can say – the bill did a number on their blood pressure. Medication is good for so much then the patient is close to an earlier death, which isn’t fair. Pain comes in different ways – I find a lot more patients in emotional pain than the physical. No amount of medications can help that -since it is quite normal to be stressed when you don’t have enough food or heat and the goverment continues to money from them. What I see day to day is third world now. The VA is treating the vets so poorly that they would be better off in jail if they want proper health care. I spent over an hour on the phone being tranfered from department to department and ended up somewhere in a Texas VA ( he was in New York) trying to get meds for one patient that was out of it for 3 months. I faxed the order after that but he still hasn’t gotten his medications.

By: Daddy wud u tell me a fairy tale pleeze | Grizzly Groundswell

Daddy wud u tell me a fairy tale pleeze | Grizzly Groundswell — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:58:13 +0000

[...] ” daddy ain’t got no job and daddy ain’t got no health care – but go to sleep little girl – cuz I’m a gonna shoot me a social squirrel for dinner…then I’ll have me some new glasses and a nice pair of shoes and ma can make you a dress out of his fine tax payer fur.” http://perotcharts.com/2009/07/unemployment-rate-seasonally-adjusted-january-1998-to-june-2009/ [...]

By: drew007m

drew007m — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:23:32 +0000

The bright spot mentioned in this article is one of the major reasons for mass job losses of late. How can the health care industry continue to add jobs when every other sector is losing jobs? It seems like health care is a complete monopoly. Every company and citizen in America sees large increases every year for health care. We, the American people, fund medical research and see no ROI, just an annual increase in premiums. All three of the major automakers have had to address health care costs for their employees.
I do not believe health care needs to be socialized, but it needs to be regulated. The main reason is that health care does not follow the typical supply and demand market structure. Health care seems to follow the government model with out-of-control expenses that are just “taxed” down to the consumer. There are companies out there that help to reduce health care companies costs. Mr. Perot founded one of these and has been very successful at it. It seems that the health care companies will take cost reductions but do not pass this on to the consumer. I would like to see a chart comparing stock prices, revenues, profit margins of health care vs every other industry in America over the past 10 or 20 years. My guess is that the health care has a pretty constant upward slope vs the rest of industry in a constant sine wave with a slight upward trend.