Rampant Capitalism: A Detriment to Society in the US

Related posts:

The world's billionaires - What's wrong with this picture?

The World's Billionaires - Part II

Change We Must - A Call To Action

Since President Obama is talking about this tonight, I'd like to start off with my thoughts on health care in the US. An in depth study done by the World Health Organization back in 2000 shows the US ranked at #37 in health care. Despite arguments as to methodology of the ranking system, I think WHO's findings are pretty accurate within a margin of error (see pages 9-14). Note from the previous link that the majority of western European countries are well ahead of the US. In fact, France is rated #1. However, it is more alarming to me that even countries such as Singapore, Colombia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco rank much higher in quality of health care than the US. However, you might note that the countries who rank the highest are those with socialized health care systems: France, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Norway to name a few. You might also note that 4 out of those 5 countries are in the top 10!

Am I saying that the US should move toward socialized health care? In a word, yes! Earlier today, I heard a few doctors very publicly announce that less fortunate people should not receive the same level of health care as rich people. This was on ABC News at 6pm, folks! It could have been your doctor! Even if it wasn't, your doctor might very well share the same sentiment! Are you going to allow the greed of doctors to dictate who gets the best health care in the 21st century US? Or are you going to take a stand and say that every American deserves the same high standard of health care? Are you not tired of paying outrageous health care premiums? Even if your employer is "paying" the premiums, you are ultimately paying them. Your annual salary could realistically be 10% to 15% higher if your employer wasn't "paying" 75% to 100% of your health care premiums. That could be money in your pocket instead of lining the pockets of health insurance companies!

The bottom line is that if socialized health care is really "that bad", why do so many countries with such health care rank above the US in health care quality? Even England (UK) and Ireland are in the top 20. These countries, especially, are often ridiculed by the US for the perceived problems with their health care systems. Yet, the US ranks significantly below them. Do you know what it is that American doctors really fear about socialized health care? How much it will affect their bank accounts. That's right. Greed is what drives fear in the US as pertains to socialized health care! Would you prefer your doctor to "earn" $100K+ per year and receive the same crappy health care? Or would you rather your doctor earn $50K per year and receive higher quality health care? I vote for the latter. It should be a genuine caring for other people and not greed or perceived social status that drives people to become doctors. What about surgeons? They make the real money. $200K+ per year!! Some over $500k per year! I'd rather see them max out at $200K per year while the average surgeon makes $120K per year and provide the same or better quality service. Again, genuine care, not greed should drive people to become surgeons.

Also in recent news, it's about time that someone put some serious checks and balances on the tobacco industry. I cannot believe that this industry was allowed to grow into a multi-billion dollar machine over 60+ years before someone had the courage to call "fowl"! While the new law signed into affect by President Obama has it's flaws, I still see it as an excellent first step in the right direction. A direction heading staunchly away from rampant capitalism.

Now, if we can just follow suit with serious steps away from oil, a failing health care system, a failing education system, and a less caring society and move toward alternate, renewable energy, universal/socialized health care, an education system that's firmly rooted in the 21st century, and a society that promotes care instead of greed, the US might be able to pull itself out of the hole that it dug. Oil, as used by humans, is one of the environment's worst enemies. I will go into detail about oil and other factors and how they contribute to global warming in a future post. Right now, suffice it to say, the sooner we break all ties with oil the better the next 100 years will be for Earth and its inhabitants. As for education, according to a 2008 survey, 6 out of the top 10 universities are in the US. While 4 of them are in the UK. This alternate ranking by an independent group shows similar stats. Still, one has to ask: How many out of over 300 million people in the US get to attend these universities? About 15,500 students per year (taking the sum of the actual student count for each of the 10 universities and dividing by 10). That 155,000 people over a ten year period. Heck, let's say 200,000 over 10 years to account for growth. That's less than 1% of the current population in the US that's going to attend one of the top 10 universities in the world in the next 10 years! Perhaps more important, the US currently ranks #12 in human development in which education is a major factor. Meanwhile, our neighbor, Canada ranks #4 and Iceland ranks #1. You can find much more detailed data on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development site. However, a nice summary such as one found on the previous link seems to be a bit more elusive on that site. Nevertheless, according to a 2005 article on the CBS News site, the U.S. ranked #9 in education as per data from the OECD.

To be continued . . . .

Maximum Big Surprise - Why I Voted For Barack Obama

As I am sure many have noted, I took quite a long hiatus. This is due largely in part to my acquiring a new job back in June. Without spending too much time on the topic, let's just say that I was working a lot of overtime and then the holiday season rolled in. . . . you get the idea. Life happens.

After tearing into Barack prior to him winning the primary, it probably comes as a big surprise that I voted for him. In short, after hearing the debates, I liked Barack's ideas on the economy and health care more than those of McCain. Also, I honestly thought that Barack was the stronger debater. I am hoping that he can rebuild the bridges that GWB burned with many of our European friends. I am also helping that he can help improve our relations with Russia. If we don't improve diplomatic relations with Russia, they could become a much larger problem than Al Qaeda. Alas, that is a topic for another series of posts. In essence, I am hoping and praying that Barack will truly bring us "change we can believe in". It will be interesting to see where we are on March 31 (the end of the first quarter). I don't expect miracles with regard to the economy, but it will be nice to see some positive changes in affect.

So far, the first few days of his presidency have been relatively quiet. Hopefully, that's a good thing. I remember when Clinton first came into office. One of the first things he did was to help enact the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military; a risky gesture to do as one of your first actions in office. Hopefully, instead of doing something extreme, Barack will just improve on existing policies like No Child Left Behind and the Patriot Act. Also, I'm praying that he'll help the economy improve to be as good or better than it was between 1987 and 2000 in the next 4 years.

In closing, I'll simply thank the good lord that GWB is no longer president and hope that I made the right choice in voting for Barack.

Save money! Find the cheapest gas in your town!

With gas prices breaking $4.00 per gallon in many areas, I thought it would be helpful to bloggers and blog readers alike to offer some assistance with finding the cheapest gas in your area. You can help drive the price of gas down buy not purchasing from gas stations/companies who are charging up to $0.30 more per gallon than the cheapest ones in or near your area. Below, I have found a cool little widget with data provided by Automotive.com. You can also check prices at GasBuddy.com. From what I can tell, the widget does not provide gas prices for places like Sam's Club or BJ's. However, you can find out the prices at such places through GasBuddy.com. One helpful hint with GasBuddy.com is to make sure that you select more than just your city after entering your zip code. Otherwise, you'll only see results in that city.

It would be very easy for me to make this a political issue. In fact, I may do that in a future post. Right now, I thought it would be more useful to simply provide you with a method of finding the cheapest gas in your area.

Mark Warner says no to second seating with Barack Obama

Over the weekend, former VA governor Mark Warner made it clear that he'd rather be a U.S. senator than a vice president under Barack Obama. Mark Warner's campaign released its first advertisement indicating, in essence, that he cleaned up VA and now it's time to clean up Washington DC.

Watch the ad

To me, Mark is sending a message that he wants to restore checks and balances to the U.S. Senate and not be Barack Obama's puppet. Does Mark Warner entirely dislike Barack Obama? I'm honestly not sure. I had a hard time finding information that either confirms or denies that notion. Nevertheless, Mark Warner is well liked by many Republicans as well as Democrats. I believe that he will support legislation to balance the U.S. budget sooner rather than later and that he will help restore the system of checks and balances that is currently sorely missing in Congress today.

I voted for Mark Warner when he ran for Governor of VA in 2001. I won't deny that he made some decisions that were less than brilliant. However, I was quite impressed with him overall. Thus, he definitely has my vote for senator.