This weekend we hit the Davinci Days festival here in Corvallis. We went to the Frisbee Dog competition
We went to the Children’s Village
We saw Ladysmith Black Mambazo who were just amazing!!! And then Sunday friends came down from Portland and enjoyed the festivities with us. Here Sara and I are with all four kids
Aren’t her twins the cutest things? Except you’d never guess they are twins!
Jack loved Leapin’ Lou
And Alice could have spent the entire day at the Little Gym tent doing the circuit over and over and over again! A fun day was had by all…
Last night… not so fun. Scott was out of town and when he is gone I usually don’t sleep as well and tend to go to bed late. Last night I turned off the light at 12:30. At 1am the dog started barking. At 1:30 the wind blew the bedroom door shut. At 2am the construction down below us on the main drag really got going and was LOUD (as in even the earplugs were useless). Around 3:30 I was finally starting to fall asleep when Jack had a nightmare and crawled into bed with me. At 4am he kicked me so hard I got up and put him back into his bed. At 4:30 the dog started barking again (and she only barks when Scott is away — is she protecting us or trying to annoy me?!?!?). 5am was the last time I looked at the clock before the alarm going off at 7am. In retrospect, definitely funny… at the time, not so much… Tonight I think I’m taking my ambien and ear plugs, crawling into the guest bedroom that’s like a cave, putting a “do not disturb” note on the door and not coming out until 8am (Scott is now home)!
Would you like a peek at a couple of papers from My Mind’s Eye that we’ll be including in the August kit?
How about this one, Lucky Me Just The Girls Garden Party
And this one, Abbey Road Blossom Growing Garden
And, I just confirmed with Sassafras Lass that we will also be able to get their spanking new Sweet Treats sticker sheets for the August kit as well!!! I’m so excited about these!
Branching off onto an entirely different topic, I was watching Steven Colbert last night and his guest was Professor Aaron Carroll, a researcher on single payer health care system. The conversation really got me thinking about the health care debate.
I have no idea how the system can be reformed to make it perform more efficiently and effectively, I just believe that something needs to happen to make healthcare in this country more affordable. Currently, almost half of all foreclosures in this country are due in part to medical bills (see this link). 62% of all bankruptcy filed in 2007, were linked to medical expenses according to the American Journal of Medicine. I find those to be a terribly sad statistics. And personally, as I’m sure many of you are, I’m so tired of our health insurance premiums and co-pays going up drastically every year and seeming to get less and less for what we are paying.
After watching the segment last night I started to wonder about comparative tax rates between the US and say the United Kingdom, a country with nationalized health insurance. Many of the people I know who are opposed to a government led system say they do not want it because they don’t want the huge taxes citizens in other countries pay for government provided health care. I was curious to find out how the two compare so did a bit of digging.
Here’s what I found:
The effective average tax rate for a single earner with $77,000 in disposable income is 33.5% in the UK and 34.2% in the US. When income increase to $128,000, the tax rate in the UK increases to 39.2% and in the US to 38.2%. Essentially the tax rates are the same however in the UK, that tax burden also includes health coverage, preschool, university and maternity leave. I guess what I want to know is how the British government is able to operate so much more efficiently that the US government????
The other frequent concern I hear concerning single payer systems is that the quality of care is lower in these countries. My brother and his British wife were school teachers outside of London and her school provided them with private insurance on top of the national health care. I just checked some sites and for approximately $100 a month in premiums, a family of four can get private health insurance which will provide access to private hospitals, shorter waits, etc. Essentially, if you or your employer are willing to pay a bit more, you can sidestep those aspects of the government provided health care system.
As for comparative quality of care, the US has the most costly health system in the world yet the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. (see this link)
Anyway, those were just two of the issues that I’ve heard quite a bit of debate on and wanted to do a bit of research for myself. If anyone has anything to share, I’d love to hear it — on either side of the argument. Yes, on rare occassions I do wish I’d finished that PhD in Comparative Politics! The topic of my dissertation was the effects of globalization on the welfare state in Britain so this is right up my alley.
Again, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this policy debate — I am a researcher at heart!
Another interesting tidbit I read this morning concerned paid maternity leave (it was in Sunday’s Parade magazine). I knew that most other developed nations do have paid maternity leave whereas we do not in the U.S. What was shocking to me though was that researchers from McGill University found that 168 countries out of 173 surveyed guarantee paid maternal leave. Want to hear the only other countries besides the U.S. that don’t — Lesotho, Papua New Guinea, Liberia and Swaziland!!!! I was blown away when I read that. I wonder how paid maternity leave works though if you are self-employed. If you live outside of the US, I’d love to hear how maternity leave works in your country.
Again, as I said above, I have no idea what the solution is for any of this, I just thought I’d leave you with some food for thought tonight…
Update July 23.2009: I only heard the very tail end of the Q&A from Obama’s press conference last night so I really didn’t get much out of that. I was watching the View this morning and I thought Barbara Walter’s had a very interesting comment on the reform — regardless of which side of the debate you come down on, there still is very little information on what the changes actually will entail. I think she’s right and I for one would like to see more information being put out on that.
- I thought I’d show you one of the storage solutions that I am really happy with. I’m talking about my storage for chipboard alphas and I believe I originally got the idea from my friend Ulrika (thank you!).
