http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/57states.asp

"... it is just wonderful to be back in Oregon, and over the last 15 months we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I've now been in fifty .... seven states? I think one left to go. One left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit but my staff would not justify it."

Talking with reporters at a later campaign stop, Senator Obama expressed concern that he'd recently misstated both the number of potential victims of a recent cyclone in Burma and the number of states he'd visited, saying: "I hope I said 100 thousand people the first time instead of 100 million. I understand I said there were 57 states today. It's a sign that my numeracy is getting a little, uh ..."

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/57states.asp#fgkPtOowCLTM53xv.99

57 States
Union shop since 1848
Beer Summit
anytime he doesn't have his teleprompter
"If you like your health plan you can keep it. Period!"

A good Father? Are you pals with him? How did you come to this conclusion? What evidence do you have?

A good Husband? Again, what evidence do you have of this? There are all sorts of photos with him kissing other women on the lips in front of his wife. Not sure how that makes for a good husband.

A good man? He has sealed all of his records. A good man would have nothing to hide.

A great president? OMG! what kind of meds are you on? This is the same dispshit that had the Beer summit, "if I had a son...Trayvon", refuses to call the Boston Marathon bombing a terrorist attack, bows to foreign kings, apologizes for America's greatness the world over, attacks our Constitution, gutted our military but added SWAT teams to every federal agency, crapped all over our vets and fawned all over muslim terrorist organizations. He will go down in history for being the absolute worst president in the history of the USA. His economic policies suck. His foreign policies are even worse.

About the only thing that he is good at is going on vacation, though his wife is better at that.

If you liked this then you'll want to catch the Muscle Shoals documentary on PBS that is currently airing

I read through a number of the responses. Some from Doctors Nurses ans even folks in the insurance industry. I'm not sure what your background is and what actual experience you have but I can say that without a doubt competition does indeed drive prices down.

I worked at one manufacturer that held patents to a commonly used post-op medical device. It cost us $17 to make and we originally sold it for approximately $200. Someone allowed the patents to expire and viola we had competition. Before that outfit moved to Mexico the price had dropped to $27.

Another company I was at had a nice little niche device used in the OR to keep patients warm. Our cost to produce: $3.50. We sold millions each year at $13. Once we breached the $25-30 million per year other companies took notice and started development of a nearly identical competing device. The result? Our prices dropped and so did our profit margin.

There was an article out the last few days from the NY Times regarding the cost of insulin and insulin pumps. Insulin used to be fairly cheap. Everyone made it. Now there are 3 companies that make insulin and those are patent protected since it has become a genetically designed drug. Cost of insulin is now through the roof. It works better and there are fewer reactions but it is pricey. How much does it cost to develop? Genetically designed drugs? Are you kidding with the $55 million?

I seriously doubt there are any doctors out there that are gouging their patients or taking kickbacks. It just wouldn't be worth the risk.

Now as far as corporations are concerned, I can tell you this. They are in the business to make money. Their business model is all about making money. If anyone is hoping for a cure for...well anything really, don't ever expect it to come from a corporation. Treatment provides a constant revenue stream. Cures do not. Cures do not fit their business model. For anything like that the only real hope is non-profits or the government. then again if you fill the government with ex Corporate folks I wouldn't expect much.

Chiya,

As a medical device engineer I can speak to item #2 the development costs. If you knew the costs of just validation the sealing parameters for a typical sterile pouch you would probably be floored. The same holds true of performing packaging sterilization studies, transit testing, and aging studies. It's all very expensive and required by the FDA. I am not suggesting doing away with any of that either but it is built into the cost of everything that uses sterile packaging from catheters to q-tips.

There are a lot of things that go into the high cost of healthcare.

#1 is lawsuits.

The reality is that people that genuinely need healthcare can't always be cured/fixed. But they can sue the snot out of their healthcare provider. Court costs and awards are passed on to the healthcare consumer. Remember, we live in a country where a woman won millions from McDonalds because she scalded herself with hot coffee and an illegal alien won millions from Ford because he thought cruise control was an automatic pilot.

#2 is the cost to develop new medicines and medical devices. The largest slice of this cost deals with the regulatory function of the FDA. Getting a new pill/product approved is an enormous undertaking requiring countless hours of engineering time, animal studies, human trials, sterilization studies, biocompatibility studies, etc., etc., etc.

#3 is the cost to provide healthcare to those who don't have insurance. Hospitals don't turn sick/injured people away even if they don't have insurance. It still costs money and somebody pays for it. If you are reading this far you are probably somebody.

#4 is the cost of overuse of healthcare. GP Doctors, nurses and staff get paid the same if they are mending broken bones as they do with taking care of a case of sniffles. They both take time and therefore both cost money. Some people clearly abuse their healthcare by using it way too often and for little Johnny in every time he has a wet nose.

#5 insurance companies. This falls into the "CIC" category..Cuz I Can. Insurance companies are there to make money, end of story. They will jack up your premiums to pay for all of those other items listed above because at the end of the day, they are in it to make money and will not be left holding the bag.

If you want lower healthcare costs, write Congress about Tort reform. I am sure you have seen the ads for pill X or Asbestos, or anyone of of a number things that have won BILLIONS of dollars in a legal settlement.

If you want lower healthcare costs write Congress about eliminating Illegal aliens and getting the non-insured number of people down.

If you want lower healthcare make some noise about the FDA. Why do GMO goods get fast tracked but other life saving medicines and devices get put on the back burner? It wouldn't have anything to do with all the former Monsanto (Global GMO giant) execs at the FDA would it?

At the end of the day, we have higher healthcare premiums because we have allowed it. We have been assaulted on multiple fronts and whether we are not aware or just didn't care is immaterial. The persons responsible still look at us from the other side of the mirror. It's a classic case of the frog and the pot of boiling water. The water has been warmed slowly and the frog never complained....until it was too late.

Are the EPA and BO cooking the books?

Yes, Yes they have. Look no further than the corn based ethanol and the policies put in place by both Bush and BO. For all the talk of making people pay for their own carbon footprint who exactly is going to pay for bad government policy. No one that works for the gov't that's for sure!

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/secret-dirty-cost-obamas-green-power-push-1

Everyone wants cheap plentiful energy. Ask any engineer and they will tell you that in the simplest terms it's all about BTU/$. Bio-fuels aren't competitive with fossil fuels. Neither is solar, wind, wave, etc.

I thought the real kicker in that article is that the plowing under of lands left to grow over released decades worth of carbon. All on the gov'ts desire to lower the carbon footprint.

Ronald Reagan was right about a lot of things but few things he said were truer than the 9 scariest words you'll ever hear. "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

PMS = Pack My Suitcase or perhaps more aptly Please Make Sense

You guys slay me. Close your eyes and picture Lady Justice. Got it yet? She is usually portrayed as blindfolded. Justice is blind and the Stand your ground law is not written to discriminate based on race. If there is a disproportionate number of one race that is involved in these cases then it follows that there will also be a disproportionate number of that demographic that will be on the receiving end of justice.

Keeping these case from turning into a media carnival like the zimmerman trial smacks of being responsible. I have no problem with that. When we get back (if we can get back) to media outlets reporting the news rather than manufacturing it (see Malaysia Air, CNN, et all fiasco) then perhaps it can change.

If anyone really wants to know what happened just ask the NSA, right?

"Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."

Captain John Parker
April 19, 1775

http://hawkebackpacking.com/images/pictures/north_america/massachusetts/lexington/massachusetts_lexington_12.jpg

"The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.
To explain — since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.
The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
Trin Tragula — for that was his name — was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.
“Have some sense of proportion!” she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.
And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex — just to show her.
And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion."

Douglas Adams, The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe

Sorry, it needed to be said....

Back in the late 80's when I first started using AutoCad it shipped with a full scale drawing of the solar system. This included a plaque on the lunar lander on the Moon (We came in Peace).

BTW..where was the asteroid belt between Earth and Mars? Did I blink and miss it?

Nice pix of the black squirrel. I've only ever seen one up my way in 50 someodd years and that was last year. I did the double take as it was so unusual for this area. Plenty of greys and even a few reds though the red squirrels we have are less than half the size of a grey.

One of my Grandmothers used to live alone in her later years. She had a slight hearing problem and would wear a hearing aid when people came to visit. When it was just her puttering about she would often turn it off.

One day she gets a call from a telemarketer who immediately goes into his pitch. You know the type. Barely stopping to take a breath he goes on and on for a good 4-5 minutes. At the end he asks my Grandmother what she thought.

She simply replied " I'm sorry. I had my hearing aid turned off. Could you repeat that?"

Click.

True story!