I am so sorry I didn’t discover this sooner in order to save those who have already consumed Halloween candy. If you have any leftover throw it out NOW and get thee to an exorcist posthaste.

The following was originally a blog post by Kimberly Daniels on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcast Network but has since been removed.  The original text can still be found by clicking the read more link below.

During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.

I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.  (emphasis added by me) read more

Huffington post did a cute of satire on the dangers of candy.

A study conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance found that 45,000  deaths, each year, are associated with lack of health insurance.

On 9/11 when approximately 3,000 lives were lost in a terrorist attack we were outraged.  Where is the outrage over the 45,000 Americans who lose their lives each year.  Is it because they die quietly without 24/7 news coverage?  Is it because disease, and not terrorists, took their lives?  We should all be outraged that what is supposed to be the greatest country in the world allows its people to die in this way and be doing whatever we can to make it stop.  Instead we have a slew of people spouting all kinds of lies and using scare tactics to keep the status quo.  Why?  Is it ignorance, greed, or something else?

Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance, according to a new study published online today by the American Journal of Public Health. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.
The study, conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance, found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.  read more

After you watch this video you might want to mosey on over to Republicans in Congress where you can read about and watch multiple videos of some of the most outrageous lies coming out of the mouths of the right that you might want to keep an airsick bag handy while you’re there.

I heard a sound byte of Pat Robertson saying that gays don’t want the right to marry, they just want to ruin the sanctity of marriage (You can see video here).  That guy is so amazing, not only is he a candidate for the Guinness Book for holding the record of the highest number of stupid things uttered out loud in public, he also possesses psychic abilities (a gift from god no doubt) to know what is in the minds of others.  Silly me, I thought the gay marriage issue was about a group of people being denied civil rights and it turns out they just want to ruin our country by getting married.

I started thinking about the irrational and ignorant fears some people have regarding gays.  Just a few:

• their agenda is to turn straight people gay – leave a comment if you have been converted from straight to gay by a gay person
• they will molest our children – straight men (or women) NEVER molest children
• if they marry it will ruin the moral fiber of our christian nation – gay couples are living together as married couples now and this has affected your life exactly how?

Then it occurred to me that the ban should not be on gay marriage but on heterosexual marriage.  It would seem, and I think statistics would prove, that the vast majority of gay people were born of straight parents (married or not).  So if the Pat Robertsons of the world want to eliminate the abomination of gays then he needs to campaign against straight marriage.

For more stupidity check out Stupid Pat Robertson Quotes.

When would NOW be the time to once and for all enjoy total abundance and true wealth financial, relationally, mentally, physically and spiritually…

You really do have the power within you (regardless of what everyone else does) to create the life you desire and deserve.

So says James Arthur Ray, author of The Secret.  Ray, a new age guru claims you can attract wealth and success by putting out the right thoughts and energy.  For ten thousand bucks each, a bunch of his suckers followers participated in an event, including several hours in a large sweat lodge where several people became very ill and three, so far, have died.  The deaths are being investigated as possible homicides, though I don’t know why because according to Ray’s teachings you receive what you want by putting it out there, so to speak.  Based on that one could only assume that some of the participants in the sweat lodge were suicidal,  and others had the desire to become very ill.  And as for Ray, he apparently was concentrating on getting in big trouble with the authorities.

Ray isn’t the first one to make piles of money writing books, creating dvd’s, holding seminars, and making similar claims and probably won’t be the last.  The people that fall for follow these crooks gurus, to me, are no different than those who believe in a god.  Simply put, the bible was the first self help book and, by far, still has the biggest following.

I’m just saying.

He said he doesn’t exist.

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Quick everyone there’s a fight on the playground.  That’s kind of what it feels like with the ongoing  discourse on my last posts:  A Child’s Prayer and Tea Party..

Even though the posts were not directly related to health care reform that is what the ongoing debate, mostly between Phil and Michael, has become.

Phil made a point that I have heard many times; that those without money or health insurance can go to the emergency room.  Do these people NOT understand routine health care is not the purpose of emergency rooms?  The word emergency should be their first clue.  ERs used in this way are driving up the costs of actual emergency treatment and the cause of having to wait six or more hours to be seen by an ER doctor.

This morning I read an OP-ED by Nicholas D. Kristof who outlined a very sad scenario that should not and would not exist if the health care industry had not gotten so out of control.  David Waddington needed a kidney transplant due to a genetic disorder.  The best match would be one of his two sons.  Unfortunately the doctor advised against the sons being tested as a match because they had a fifty percent chance of developing the same disorder and the testing would reveal this fact, making them un-insurable under our present health care system.

Many of our legislators, media pundits, and citizens seem to be suffering from cranial rectal inversion…wouldn’t it be great if a cure, for this condition, was discovered and it was accessible to all those suffering from it.  The symptoms are the inability to understand, interpret, and relate reality without wildly absurd distortion so pathetic it’s funny.  I know, it’s not nice to laugh at the handicapped but with some of the crazy statements being made by those suffering from CRI, it is hard not to.

In the following article, How Other Nations beat the US on health care, by T.R. Reid he outlines systems that are in place in other countries.

As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care system, we’ve overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions: the rest of the world.

All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they’ve found ways to cover everybody — and still spend far less than we do.

I’ve traveled the world from Oslo to Osaka to see how other developed democracies provide health care. Instead of dismissing these models as “socialist,” we could adapt their solutions to fix our problems. To do that, we first have to dispel a few myths about health care abroad:

1. It’s all socialized medicine out there.

Not so. Some countries, such as Britain, New Zealand and Cuba, do provide health care in government hospitals, with the government paying the bills. Others — for instance, Canada and Taiwan — rely on private-sector providers, paid for by government-run insurance. But many wealthy countries — including Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland — provide universal coverage using private doctors, private hospitals and private insurance plans.

In some ways, health care is less “socialized” overseas than in the United States. Almost all Americans sign up for government insurance (Medicare) at age 65. In Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, seniors stick with private insurance plans for life. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is one of the planet’s purest examples of government-run health care.

2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.

Generally, no. Germans can sign up for any of the nation’s 200 private health insurance plans — a broader choice than any American has. If a German doesn’t like her insurance company, she can switch to another, with no increase in premium. The Swiss, too, can choose any insurance plan in the country.

In France and Japan, you don’t get a choice of insurance provider; you have to use the one designated for your company or your industry. But patients can go to any doctor, any hospital, any traditional healer. There are no U.S.-style limits such as “in-network” lists of doctors or “pre-authorization” for surgery. You pick any doctor, you get treatment — and insurance has to pay. Canadians have their choice of providers.

As for those notorious waiting lists, some countries are indeed plagued by them. Canada makes patients wait weeks or months for nonemergency care, as a way to keep costs down. But studies by the Commonwealth Fund and others report that many nations — Germany, Britain, Austria — outperform the United States on measures such as waiting times for appointments and for elective surgeries.

In Japan, waiting times are so short that most patients don’t bother to make an appointment.

3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.

Much less so than here. It may seem to Americans that U.S.-style free enterprise — private-sector, for-profit health insurance — is naturally the most cost-effective way to pay for health care. But in fact, all the other payment systems are more efficient.

U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing.

France’s health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada’s universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money.

The world champion at controlling medical costs is Japan, even though its aging population is a profligate consumer of medical care. On averag, the Japanese go to the doctor 15 times a year, three times the U.S. rate.

They have twice as many MRI scans and X-rays. Quality is high; life expectancy and recovery rates for major diseases are better than in the United States. And yet Japan spends about $3,400 per person annually on health care; the United States spends more than $7,000.

4. Cost controls stifle innovation.

False. The United States is home to groundbreaking medical research, but so are other countries with much lower cost structures. Any American who’s had a hip or knee replacement is standing on French innovation. Deep-brain stimulation to treat depression is a Canadian breakthrough. Many of the wonder drugs promoted endlessly on American television, including Viagra, come from British, Swiss or Japanese labs.

Overseas, strict cost controls actually drive innovation. In the United States, an MRI scan of the neck region costs about $1,500. In Japan, the identical scan costs $98. Under the pressure of cost controls, Japanese researchers found ways to perform the same diagnostic technique for one-fifteenth the American price. (And Japanese labs still make a profit.)

5. Health insurance has to be cruel.

Not really. American health insurance companies routinely reject applicants with a “preexisting condition” — precisely the people most likely to need the insurers’ service. They employ armies of adjusters to deny claims.

If a customer is hit by a truck and faces big medical bills, the insurer’s “rescission department” digs through the records looking for grounds to cancel the policy. The companies say they have to do this stuff to survive.

Foreign health-insurance companies, in contrast, must accept all applicants, and they can’t cancel as long as you pay your premiums. The plans are required to pay any claim submitted by a doctor or hospital, usually within tight time limits. The corollary is that everyone is mandated to buy insurance, to give the plans an adequate pool of rate-payers.

The key difference is that foreign health-insurance plans exist only to pay people’s medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.

U.S. system has elements of all

In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really “foreign” to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them.

For Native Americans or veterans, we’re Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we’re Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we’re Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we’re Burundi or Burma: In the world’s poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can’t pay stay sick or die.

This fragmentation is another reason that we spend more than anybody else and still leave millions without coverage. All the other developed countries have settled on one model; we’ve blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess.

Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has “the finest health care” in the world. We don’t.

In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.

Given our remarkable medical assets — the best-educated doctors and nurses, the most advanced hospitals, world-class research — the United States could be, and should be, the best in the world. To get there, though, we have to be willing to learn some lessons about health-care administration from the other industrialized democracies.

T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post reporter, is the author of “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.”

A friend emailed this so I thought I’d share.

Dear God,

This year, please send some clothes for all those poor ladies in Daddy’s computer.
Amen.

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