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America Is Declining At The Same Warp Speed That's Minting Billionaires And Destroying The Middle Class

CJ Werleman | AlterNet | May 5, 2014

America has the most billionaires in the world, but not a single U.S. city ranks among the world’s most livable cities...America looks increasingly like a Third World nation, and now new data shows America’s intellectual resources are also in decline...

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Coronavirus and the Recurring Mistake of Fighting the Wrong Wars

By Kim Bellard | March 3, 2020

What do the coronavirus and Navy ships have in common? For that matter, what do our military spending and our healthcare spending have in common? More than you might think, and it boils down to this: we spend too much for too little, in large part because we tend to always be fighting the wrong wars.I started thinking about this a couple weeks ago due to a WSJ article about the U.S. Navy's "aging and fragmented technology." An internal Navy strategy memo warned that the Navy is "under cyber siege" by foreign adversaries, leaking information "like a sieve." It grimly pointed out...

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Dispatch from Denmark

By John D. Halamka, MD | October 12, 2016
 

Denmark is a remarkable country of 5 million people with a robust social support system. Healthcare is provided for life as part of being Danish. If you lose your job, generous unemployment benefits provide for the ongoing well being of you and your family. Income inequality is among the lowest in the world (see the world mapped by income inequality below). When people gather together in Denmark, there is a sense of common purpose and shared experiences. The Danish call this “hygge” or coziness. I spoke about the experiences of the Meaningful Use program, the evolving US reimbursement system, and the quest for innovation - especially in the areas of social networking for healthcare, mobile, analytics, and cloud hosting...

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I'm OK -- You, Maybe Not So Much

By Kim Bellard | November 28, 2016

It is widely agreed that competition, or lack thereof, in health care is a problem.  The Wall Street Journal recently showed how Viagra and Cialis prices seem to move -- up, of course -- in lockstep. USA Today found Walgreens charging 1237% more than Costco, for the same drug.  Economists like Martin Gaynor have been discussing problems with competition in health care for years. The Harvard Business Review just published a lengthy article on the problem. But, it turns out, we may be ignoring an important competition that has real impacts on our health: with each other...

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The Growing Diet Divide Between Rich and Poor in America

Anna Vlasits | STAT | June 21, 2016

Much has been written about the growing income inequality in the United States. But another kind of gap is also widening between us, and it’s at the dinner table. Overall, Americans are eating better. In the decade leading up to 2012, the number of people eating a poor diet fell from around 56 percent to under 46 percent. But if you separate people out by income, it’s a different story. High-income Americans are eating better than ever while the low-income group has improved much more modestly...

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The Happiest Countries In The World

Alexander E.M. Hess, Thomas C. Frohlich and Vince Calio | USA Today | May 10, 2014

Switzerland's residents are the most satisfied with their lives for the second consecutive year, according to the Better Life Index released last week. The study, published annually by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), reported that United States failed to crack the top 10 for the fourth consecutive year, while neighbors Mexico and Canada did...

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Why Robert Reich Cares So Passionately About Economic Inequality

Paul Solman | PBS Newshour | October 15, 2013

Friday night's NewsHour featured about six-and-a-half minutes of an interview with newly minted movie star Robert Reich, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. We thought some folks might be interested in the entire discussion and therefore are presenting it in two installments, edited slightly for ease of reading.

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