Re-Gain

What is our state of mind in reforming health care today?  Crazy first comes to my mind in how we address the symptoms instead of the problem of today’s health crisis.  Health carelessness and mismanagement can be corrected only if we fully embrace wellness, prevention and wise care. Presently our economy totals 15 trillion dollars.  U.S. total healthcare expenditure is $2.7 trillion or 18 percent of GDP.  It is forecasted to reach 34 percent of GDP by 2040.  In 2010 Americans spent $1.3 trillion on health care. Multiple chronic illness cases that make of just one percent of care consume 21 percent of this total amount.  While the last 50 percent of patients account for the 2.8 percent of spending last year.  Contrary to popular opinion only 10 percent of health care dollars are spent in the last year of life.  While increased money is spent in last few months approaching death it is not the massive percentage of medical care dollars that is w...

Increasingly new scientific findings suggest that humans are impacting our planet. However, our ability to best manage the stress of these studies is becoming a huge psychic burden.   Compound this with the increasingly polarization of American politics and it safe to assume things are heating up on many fronts.   People’s passions, fears, despairs and frustrations are running high.   While  change is needed, increased fearful delay increases both the temperature and tensions. What can you as an individual do?  Cool down and become part of the solution not add fuel to this fire . Since our very foundation of freedom is directly dependent on responsible citizen action profiting from preventing further harm is paramount. How can we stimulate public support when our current economic system does not adequately reward such endeavors?  Public demand and bipartisan support are fundamental to bettering our climate with a new awareness, ingenuity! Lesse...

In these difficult economic times we need to recreate the American dream not continue not continue government waste? Especially since Uncle Sam’s fiscal year ends tomorrow. This Sunday’s September 29 th , Washington Post front page article,” Use it or Lose It, “was more than coincidental.  We cut essential social program to buy 71 new jet fighters costing almost $8 billion dollars  for what reason? As more people are feeling economic stress and another government shut-down will further cost us billions of dollars we still foster federal spending insanity. How can we promote cost reduction efforts while in the month of September in the last three years 20% of the spending happens?  For example last September the government spent $45 billion in its last fiscal week.   Back in 1981 as a recycling coordinator for the Nation’s Capital I saw a lot of stuff head south to the Lorton Landfill because “use it or lose it” promotes throwing out lots of good equipme...

Once we understand that both our finances and environment are inter-linked then we may awaken to greater prosperity.   The hidden costs of pollution, population, reckless consumption and climate change all impact our bottom line.    Extreme weather, resource depletion, energy costs, water loss and other environmental costs are reasons we incorporate environmental debts in all facets of our economic decisions.   Increased shortages in food and water are just a few of the examples.     Our culture of reckless credit card spending and denial of present environmental costs of land, water and air abuse all points to the need for sustainable solutions.   Unless we invest in landscape restoration, food production, water management, renewable energy, and stabilize our climate, all will suffer serious environmental debt.   An attitude of carefree, masters of our domain, is no longer viable.  The 2008 Wall Street financial crisis fueled by easy c...

Last week the Washington Post reported that one in four children go hungry in the U.S.   The next day several experts cited no protective financial measures have been enacted from the Dodd-Frank reforms exposing Americans to the same   vulnerabilities we suffered   before the   2008 crash.   Finally the Post reported   the wasteful   multi-million dollar Afghanistan military bases built and not used.      So what do all these things have in common?   No longer are we rational Americans, however, now rationalizing ones.   Individual gain at the expense of millions is becoming the rule not the exemption.   How long we will allow greed, and military insecurity eroding the chances for our future prosperity?   Our founding fathers wished balance ambition with ambition.   Today special interests threaten the very core of democracy.   Are we of the United States or “we the people” when a select few now command...

When years ago I started writing this blog I did so with this word to create cooperative dialogue about protection of our land.   Some people where I live in Western Virginia and the DC area were adverse to the word, “environmental,” since it was interpreted has having a very liberal agenda.   Interestingly those who call themselves conservatives can reflect what conservation is about. Today words convey many concepts. Unfortunately we spend way too little time talking about what we agree upon.    I challenge anyone below to find fault with the definition below.   It is my opinion that people of all walks on this amazing planet are for prevention, saving, preservation, best management and other definitions of conservation.   However I fully understand the exact details and practical ways to conserve are subject debate. Can we at least agree to some common ground to better invest in resources and prosperity for the future? According to this internet...

Conservation matters because our consumption exceeds twice our Earth’s carrying capacity if we continue to deplete and pollute at current rates.   Just in the United States we need to reduce our resource consumption by 80 percent. Stan Cox predicts in Any Way you Slice It, that rationing will become unavoidable.    He writes that rationing energy, water, food, medical care, and other essential due to ecological reasons.   Given time we will experience adjustments in the prices of resources and goods because of future limitations and events. The Earth’s ecosystems will force us to conserve.   Our human economy will have to cater to emerging ecological challenges or suffer the consequences.    Any Way You Slice It explores rationing today offering new possibilities to not “if” we are going to face a crisis but “what is best” to resolve our inevitable environmental economic challenges.     Today we are in a different state of war where the ...

U.S. health care costs are approaching $3 trillion dollars.   These escalating costs are threatening the future well-being of all Americans. U.S. spends per person $8,233 each year for such care. We spend more than two-and-a-half times more than most developed nations in the world, including relatively rich European countries like France, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Our very health and wellness is in peril. Such expenditures have increased ten times more than just three decades before. Ironically, we are becoming victims of our own successes since people are living longer and new innovations are more expensive.   The changing nature of illness has sparked a renewed interest in the possible role for prevention to help control costs. Ironically, we lead the world in health care research and cancer treatment. What and how can we control costs and at the same time provide care? We must reform health carelessness with renewed form of care using less. Technical adva...

It was 33 years ago I was both the D.C. and national Earth Day Coordinator. Just ten years before the term “recycling” was first introduced and we in the 20 th century began to awaken to the inter-dependence of us and our beloved land, air and water. Can we celebrate our appreciation for this planet by exercising greater care in how we exist?    How can we improve our quality of life with greater resolve?   Let’s show our love for the earth by asking how we can save resources for future generations.   Have we have seriously ignored our planet’s ability to sustain future life or helped it?   Presently we in the U.S. invest twenty percent in health care or $2.5 trillion dollars. Our world is just another extension of our greater health?   It is ironic that hundreds of trillions of dollars in other stuff while investing a tiny fraction in our very earth’s future.   In the last half decade we have double our population seriously depleting our globe...