Tue, Sep 11 2007
HOW FAST WILL THIS GET SQUASHED?
Call me cynical, but burning water, which covers 70% our planet, would quickly put the oil and gas people out of business. So I'm thinking, this will be the last we hear about this, just like we have heard nothing more about the easily farmable biofuel algae discovered last year...
Did I mention the oil companies made mind-bogglingly huge record-breaking profits *again* this year?
Radio frequencies help burn salt water
ERIE, Pa. Associated Press - An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the "most remarkable" water science discovery in a century.
John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.
The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.
Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations.
The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.
The discovery is "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years," Roy said.
"This is the most abundant element in the world. It is everywhere," Roy said. "Seeing it burn gives me the chills."
Roy will meet this week with officials from the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense to try to obtain research funding.
The scientists want to find out whether the energy output from the burning hydrogen — which reached a heat of more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit — would be enough to power a car or other heavy machinery.
"We will get our ideas together and check this out and see where it leads," Roy said. "The potential is huge."
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THE SOLUTION TO THE HEALTHCARE PROBLEM? DON'T GET SICK.
Just like the oil companies, these clowns are making record profits, raising their prices, and not providing a spec of better service. In fact, service is getting worse. Kind of like the watered-down gas they sell you during peak consumption periods, so you pay more for less.
Health insurance premiums rise 6.1 pct.
Associated Press - Health insurance premiums paid by workers and their employers rose an average of 6.1 percent this year, outpacing inflation and pay increases and taking a bigger chunk out of families' budgets, according to a new survey.
Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance for the average family topped $12,000 — with employees picking up about one-fourth of that cost — although the increase in premiums slowed for a fourth straight year.
Insurance costs probably will rise again next year, according to the survey released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care research organization that annually tracks the cost of health insurance. Many of the more than 3,000 companies surveyed said they planned to make significant changes to their health plans and benefits, and nearly half said they were very or somewhat likely to raise premiums.
This year, premiums reached an average of $12,106 for a family of four, with workers paying, on average, $3,281 of that. Premiums to cover a single person cost $4,479, with employees paying $694. The portions both families and single people pay in premiums has nearly doubled since 2001.
The companies reported that premiums for families increased 6.1 percent, on average. That's the lowest growth rate since 1999, when premiums rose 5.3 percent and cost an average of $2,196 for individuals and $5,791 for families. Health care premiums rose 7.7 percent last year, when individuals paid an average of $4,242 and families paid $11,480.
This year's slowdown doesn't mean much when it outpaces wages, which rose an average of 3.7 percent, and inflation, which went up 2.6 percent, said Drew Altman, the foundation's president and CEO.
Since 2001, the cost of premiums has gone up 78 percent, far outpacing a 19 percent increase in wages and 17 percent jump in inflation.
"It just shows health insurance is becoming increasingly unaffordable for working people and many businesses in our country," he said.
That rising cost, coupled with the fact that it is outpacing inflation and wage growth, is pushing companies and employees to forgo insurance, Altman said. And that's why the number of uninsured Americans continues to rise, he said. The Census Bureau estimates 15.8 percent of Americans were uninsured last year, up from 15.3 percent the year before.
Health insurance companies continue to see higher profits, but premiums keep going up because costs rise each year, said Gary Claxton, vice president of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Kaiser. And much of that is because, through the years, the health care system produces more tests, procedures and products that can treat more people, and all of that costs more, he said.
Some 158 million people have health insurance through their employers. Sixty percent of companies offer health insurance to their employees, about the same as last year but down from 69 percent in 2000.
The larger a business, the greater the chance it offers health insurance. Though premiums may be similar for smaller and larger companies, smaller ones have higher deductibles, Kaiser says, and their administrative costs for plans may be higher because there are fewer employees over which to spread the costs. Nearly all companies with 50 or more employees offer coverage, with firms with more than 200 employees particularly stable over the years. But only 45 percent of firms with three to nine employees offer health care, down from 57 percent in 2000.
It's frustrating to know that premiums keep rising each year, but dropping or reducing coverage is not an option, said Jack Ross Williams, who owns four vehicle emissions testing sites called Smog 'N Go around Elk Grove, Calif.
He said he'd rather keep copays for doctor visits and drugs stable at $20 than switch to a lower-priced plan and skimp on coverage for the dozen employees who get insurance through his company. But that means the employees who enroll in the company's HMO also feel the pinch because they split premiums equally with the company. For September, premiums for single employees ranged from $232.46 to $312.74.
"I guess we're both biting the bullet," Williams said. "My employees that want to keep it, they have to pay more every year. And I absorb half of that cost as well, so we do it jointly."
Many companies, like Williams', are just going to keep on paying and not cancel plans, the Kaiser survey said. Only 3 percent of respondents said they planned to drop coverage next year. Five percent said they planned to limit eligibility, though the survey did not ask them how they would do that.
But more companies are looking at changing benefits, whether by adding lower-cost insurance options or shifting more costs to employees, according to the Kaiser survey and another that was recently released.
Preliminary results of the Mercer Health & Benefits survey of 1,557 employer plans shows more than half of the respondents planned to shift costs to employees through higher premiums, deductibles, copays or out-of-pocket maximums.
The companies said that if they made no changes to their plans from this year, their costs would go up on average 9 percent next year.
The New York-based human resources consulting firm said given those changes, next year's increase to premiums is expected to be 6.7 percent.Tue, Sep 11 2007
WHERE DO I SIGN UP TO BE A BUSH CRONIE?
Our view on income inequality: Decoy on tax fairness
USA Today - When we last checked in on the beleaguered billionaires who manage hedge funds and private equity firms, they were fighting the good fight on behalf of the American worker. The money managers were arguing that if they are forced to pay income taxes as others do, the real loser would be the pension funds that finance the retirements of teachers, firefighters and such.
Now they'd have you believe they are also fighting for women- and minority-owned businesses. Everyone will benefit, the managers assert, if only Congress rejects a plan to tax their compensation at the top income tax rate of 35%, rather than at the 15% capital gains rate that now benefits them, thanks to a loophole in tax law.
Never mind that last year, the income of the top 25 hedge fund managers averaged $560 million. Or that their plea for tax relief proves that greed knows no bounds.
You'd think this would be an easy call — a pain-free revenue raiser at a time of massive federal deficits. But in Washington, where well-financed lobbyists hold sway, it is not.
This particular assault on the treasury is led by the Private Equity Council, which represents firms such as the Blackstone Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Its lobbyists apparently concluded that the pension angle alone was not sufficient (perhaps because the main public pension trade association disavowed it). So it did what lobbying organizations tend to do when they are under siege. It created another lobbying group.
The Access to Capital Coalition is an archetypal Washington institution: an ad hoc lobby masquerading as a broad-based coalition. Its purpose is to point out that private equity money flows not just to fat cats but also to small businesses, some of which are owned by women and minorities.
The fact is, the asset managers want to pay a lower tax rate than middle class Americans, who generally fall into the 25% and 28% brackets, and a much lower rate than other business executives and highly skilled workers, who pay the 35% rate.
Taken in a vacuum, tax hikes on businesses can be economically harmful. But Congress would use money collected from the private equity managers to eliminate or reduce the alternative minimum tax, a dreadful levy that grows automatically, ensnares millions of Americans of lesser means and makes long-term planning difficult.
Slick lobbying campaigns notwithstanding, this is a trade-off that would make the tax code a little simpler, and a lot fairer.Tue, Sep 11 2007
NOW LET'S SEE... WHO WAS IN CHARGE WHEN STANDARDS WERE FIRST RELAXED?
It takes literally decades for drugs to be approved for public use. That means that for folks to start getting sick from crappy drugs in the late 90's, the FDA approval process for those drugs has to have started in, oh, say, the early 80's...
Help me out here - who was in charge of the FDA and its standards and practices back then? Who slid happily into bed with Big Pharma? Anybody? Reagan? Bush Sr? Bueller? Anybody?....
U.S. reports of drug reactions triple
CHICAGO, Associated Press - Reports of dangerous side effects and deaths from widely used medicines almost tripled between 1998 and 2005, an analysis of U.S. drug data found.
The number of deaths and serious injuries from prescription and over-the-counter drugs climbed from 34,966 to 89,842 during the study of reports to the Food and Drug Administration.
Potent narcotic painkillers including Oxycontin, sold generically as oxycodone, were among 15 drugs most often linked with deaths in the study. Drugs frequently linked with serious nonfatal complications included insulin, the arthritis drugs Vioxx and Remicade, and the antidepressant Paxil.
The report adds to recent criticism of FDA oversight on drug safety, including its handling of serious problems connected with Vioxx, which was removed from the market in 2004.
"This growing toll of serious injury shows that the existing system is not adequately protecting patients and underscores the importance of recent reports urging far-reaching legislative, policy and institutional changes," the authors said.
The analysis appears in this week's issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. Its authors are Thomas Moore and Michael Cohen of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a nonprofit educational group that analyzes drug safety issues; and Dr. Curt Furberg of Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
They analyzed excerpts of reports on serious side effects received by the FDA between January 1998 and December 2005. A total of 467,809 serious complications were found. Reported deaths nearly tripled, rising from 5,519 to 15,107.
A disproportionate number of complications occurred in elderly patients. Women were more often victims than men, 55.5 percent compared to 45.5 percent. Children were involved in 7.4 percent of the problems.
The FDA issued a statement saying it is aware of the growing number of reported problems and takes them seriously, but the reason for the increase "is not completely known."
"While some of this has to do with the increasing number of prescriptions, there are clearly other factors responsible for this increase, such as the increase in public attention to drug safety, and use of the Internet to make it easier for the public to submit," Dr. Gerald Dal Pan of the FDA's surveillance and epidemiology office said in the statement.
Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican and frequent FDA critic, said the report is another indication that the FDA's review of drugs already on the market "must be rigorous and timely."
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