The World Health Organization ranked health care quality by countries. The USA came in 37th.
The OECD ranked Infant Mortality rates per thousand for 2005: Sweden – 2.4; Japan – 2.8; Norway – 3.1; France -3.6; Germany – 3.9; Switzerland – 4.2; UK – 5.1; Canada – 5.3; Poland – 6.4; United Sates – 6.8.
If this is true (and it has that certain ring of truth about it), it is simply another example of why former commissioners Molly Henderson and Dick Shellenburger hired an attorney, years ago, to study the complex financial documents of the proposed Convention Center on behalf of county taxpayers.
Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Corbett said Tuesday: “I don’t believe we can continue” the current pension system for future state employees and teachers. At a Central Pennsylvania College ‘town hall’ meeting, Corbett said: “I don’t see how a defined benefit [system] can continue how it is. We need to look for a better, more viable” system.
The LCCCA has no authority to take additional tax revenue from the County; it is Wachovia Bank which holds a 40-year lien against “hotel tax” revenue. The trustee of the bond sale (M&T Bank) will unilaterally decide if additional funds are needed; without any action by the LCCCA board or the County Commissioners, M&T has the legal right to confiscate the Visitors Bureau’s portion of the “hotel tax”.
From the PATRIOT-NEWS OP-ED: The “health care system” isn’t really a system at all. If it were, the various parts that comprise it would work together toward a common purpose …Second, the state Legislature can revisit whether to reinstate a regulatory “certification of need” process. Under CON, before hospitals or other entities spend millions to create significant facility capacity, they must demonstrate there is bona fide need.
The PA Dutch CVB does not support an increase in the hotel tax or excise tax (currently set at 3.9% and 1.1%, respectively) for the purpose of funding shortfalls in operating expenses or debt service requirements related to the Lancaster County Convention Center.
Gil Smart in his Sunday News column “Austerity starts at home” opines: “If now is a time for national austerity, then certainly it is a time for personal austerity. It is time for individuals to spend less, cut up their credit cards and buy on the things they can afford… This ripples down the line, of course. Consumer retrenchment may inflict grievous wounds on our consumer-based economy. But the broader debate that we should be having, but aren’t, is should ours be a consumer-based economy?”
New York Times article “Insurers Push Plans Limiting Patient Choice of Doctors” offers promise for a market place correction to the abuses by Lancaster General Health in the disposition of their extraordinary profits from market dominance.
Michael Gerson in his column “Stalin has no place at D-Day memorial” states “For a period during World War II, ‘Uncle Joe’ was an ally. Roosevelt sent about $11 billion worth of war material to Stalin under Lend-Lease.”
Editor’s note: The following will facilitate understanding parallel developments concerning the Convention Center project over the course of 2006.
January
4 Lancaster County Convention Center Authority (LCCCA) board members Laura Douglas, Deb Hall, Jack Craver hold meeting at Farm & Home Center. Meeting is attended by mostly project opponents. Mayor Rick Gray, who took office only the day before, appears at the meeting and denounces opponents and supports the project. The meeting and Gray’s remarks are well-covered in the local print media.
The best hour of news every day is DemocracyNow.org. You can watch their daily show anytime during the day. It is live at 8 AM eastern time. Today they are covering the Goldman Sachs settlement, which was a great deal for Goldman despite the effort by the SEC to spin it as a great victory (Goldman steals a billion, is fined $350 million and no one goes to jail, in fact their stock value went up by more than $350 million after the deal was announced).
Wall Street’s banditry was the proximate cause of the Great Recession, not its underlying cause. Even if the Street is better controlled in the future (and I have my doubts), the structural reason for the Great Recession still haunts America. That reason is America’s surging inequality.
“…The normally reserved Cowhey got riled when he told members of the county’s Transportation Technical Advisory Committee that Amtrak recently informed him it was tripling its fee for the renovation of the Lancaster station. The county is paying for the work being done on the station along McGovern Avenue….
Note: The Watchdog has been in charge of operating over a dozen pools for up to 45 years. That is about 600 seasons. No person has ever drowned or been serious injured at any of the pools! The reason is good practices. In one morning we read how a two-year old drowned at a local unguarded apartment complex pool, despite others being present. And the second account of a near drowning with life long implications for the child at a public Manheim Township pool: