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Showing posts from October, 2014

Will Work: Caring for Myself, Family and Country

Americans have yet to address healthcare efficiency as a priority. Health care reform offers an enormous potential for boasting the economy's prospects. If we can emulate Canada and only spend 11% of GDP on health care we would save $950 billion a year. [1]   In the last five years I have been taking care of all aspects of my Dad’s affairs.     The estimated economic value of unpaid work by some 42 million family caregivers in 2009 was $450 billion according to AARP. ...the total Medicare spending in that same years was $509 billion ...nearly $ 3 trillion was estimated in lost wages, social security benefits, private pension for men over fifty caring for their parents. Met-life estimates roughly $350k for woman and $284K lost for man for a typical fifty -years and over caring for their parents. [2]   Due to being self-employed just a few hours a week has allowed me insight as my father’s advocate.    A large part of my father’s life was devoted to bettering the heal

Climate Intelligence?

Recently a friend of mine asked me to talk to another friend about climate change.  Friend X, a highly educated individual does not believe that humans impact our weather.   So my response was three-fold.  First, I would challenge friend X to see what our military has observed in the last few years.  Secondly talk to the other experts where roughly 97% of the scientific community agreed on such a thing in the past.   Finally, let’s see what the insurance and financial industry experts say about this warming.  Several years ago a number of retired generals and security experts presented national-security study. Using the military's risk-assessment practices, 11 retired generals and admirals issued a report saying that climate change creates massive instability around the world. " The impacts of climate change will be huge — deserts move north, coastal areas threatened, the dislocation of people ," said retired Adm. T. Joseph Lopez, who commanded peacekeeping fo