Enlarge/ A woman watches white flags on the National Mall on September 18, 2021, in Washington, DC. Over 660,000 white flags were installed here to honor Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19.
Americans spend an exorbitant amount of money on health care and have for years. As a country, the US spends more on health care than any other high-income country in the world—on the basis of both per-person costs and a share of gross domestic product. Yet, you wouldn’t know it from looking at major health metrics in years past; the US has relatively abysmal health. And, if anything, the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the US health care system’s failures relative to its peers, according to a new analysis by the Commonwealth Fund.
Enlarge/ Health care spending of high income-countries by share of GDP.
Compared with other high-income peers, the US has the shortest life expectancy at birth, the highest rate of avoidable deaths, the highest rate of newborn deaths, the highest rate of maternal deaths, the highest rate of adults with multiple chronic conditions, and the highest rate of obesity, the new analysis found.
“Americans are living shorter, less healthy lives because our health system is not working as well as it could be,” Munira Gunja, lead author of the analysis and a senior researcher for The Commonwealth Fund’s International Program in Health Policy and Practice Innovation, said in a press statement. “To catch up with other high-income countries, the administration and Congress would have to expand access to health care, act aggressively to control costs, and invest in health equity and social services we know can lead to a healthier population.”
Dying young
Overall, the analysis paints a grim picture of how much catching up the US has to do. In terms of life expectancy, the US has trailed its peers for years but took a nosedive during the pandemic, while other countries fared better. In 2020, the average life expectancy at birth in the US was 77 years, three years lower than the average for high-income countries. The next lowest life expectancy among high-income countries was from the UK, which had a 2020 life expectancy at birth of 80.4 years.
Provisional data for 2021 suggests US life expectancy fell nearly a full year further, from 77.0 years to 76.1 years. Relatedly, the US had the highest rate of deaths from COVID-19 in 2020 compared with its high-income peers and was among the lowest of its peers in rates of COVID-19 vaccination.
In a particularly shameful set of statistics, the US continues to have the highest infant and maternal mortality rates of any other high-income country. In 2020, there were 5.4 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in the US, while the average among high-income countries was 4.1 infant deaths. In Norway, there were 1.6 deaths per 1,000 live births. The health care system is also failing mothers. In 2020, there were 24 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, about 2.5 times higher than the average for high-income countries. The country with the next highest maternal mortality rate was New Zealand with 13.6 per 100,000 live births.
Enlarge/ Rates of infant and maternal mortality among high-income countries.
With many US states now rapidly turning back the clock on reproductive rights and maternity care, the US’s appallingly high rates of infant and maternal deaths are expected to worsen.
Beyond pregnancy, Americans are dying from other conditions that are treatable or preventable at a rate far higher than those seen in all other high-income countries. In 2020, 336 US deaths per 100,000 people were avoidable, while the average among high-income countries was just 225 deaths per 100,000. The rate of avoidable deaths has been rising in the US since 2015, the analysis notes.
Sicker
That tracks with the finding that Americans are more likely than their high-income-country peers to have multiple chronic conditions. In 2020, 30.4 percent of US adults said that they had previously been diagnosed with two or more chronic conditions in their life. Among other high-income countries, no more than a quarter of adults reported having two or more chronic conditions. America’s high obesity rate may play into that discrepancy. The US has a higher obesity rate than any other high-income country. In fact, it’s nearly two times higher than the average of its peers.
While Americans are dying young from avoidable conditions, they’re also spending an exorbitant amount on health care. The US spent 17.8 percent of its GDP on health care in 2020, nearly twice as much as the average of 9.6 percent among high-income countries. On a per-person basis, it outspent its peers, paying nearly $12,000 per person via government insurance programs, private insurance coverage, and out-of-pocket costs. The country that came the closest to US spending was Germany, with a little over $7,000 per-person spending.
The data hints that these high prices are discouraging Americans from getting the care they need, potentially feeding into the country’s high rates of chronic conditions and avoidable deaths. In the analysis, the US had among the lowest rate of doctor visits, with just four per year. The average was 5.7. The US also has one of the lowest rates of practicing physicians per 1,000 people—2.6 per 1,000, while the average is 3.7.
The US was the only high-income country in the analysis that does not guarantee health coverage. People in most other high-income countries have guaranteed health coverage with the option of buying supplemental private coverage.
Has the us population been taken hostage and subjugated by the police yet? The police and their unions have threated any elected official that dares indicate any oversite of police brutality or even make police officers liable for their actions just like any other person. The police in large cities are gangs, infiltrated by white supremacists, and right-wing political operatives that enforce a repressive conservative fascist ideology against the public who want to move to a more accepting progressive society. Hugs.
New York City has agreed to pay more than $20,000 each to hundreds of individuals who were trapped by police and attacked with batons and pepper spray during a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx.
According to documents filed in federal court on Tuesday evening, the city and the NYPD reached a proposed settlement to compensate anyone who was corralled by police during the infamous June 4 crackdown, which took place at the height of the protests against the police killing of George Floyd.
The settlement, which still must be approved by a judge, is believed to be the largest-ever per-person payout for a class action lawsuit arising from a mass arrest, according to Alison Frick, an attorney for the named plaintiffs who brought the class action lawsuit.
“It’s highly unusual,” said Martin Stolar, a civil rights attorney who is not involved in the case. “It shows me that the city is making an admission that there was substantial wrongdoing on the part of the department, and rather than going to trial where they risk judgment of a higher amount, they agreed to a settlement.”
Roughly 300 protesters were marching along 136th Street and Brook Avenue when they were blocked on both sides by walls of heavily-armored NYPD officers, a tactic known as kettling. Officers proceeded to attack the group with batons and pepper spray, before arresting an estimated 278 people. Among those trapped were medics, legal observers and journalists, including those reporting for Gothamist and WNYC who may be eligible for compensation.
A subsequent report from Human Rights Watch found cops acted “unprovoked and without warning, whaling their batons, beating people from car tops, shoving them down to the ground, and firing pepper spray in their faces.” The group accused the NYPD of “serious violations of international human rights law.” They described the police response, which was overseen by high-ranking department officials and primarily carried out by the NYPD’s controversial Strategic Response Group, as a “serious violation of international human rights law.”
Under the terms of the settlement, anyone who was present for the kettling will be eligible to receive $21,500. An additional $2,500 will be awarded to each person who was arrested. The city is expected to pay an estimated $6 million to participants in the Mott Haven protest, in addition to attorney’s fees arising from the case.
Frick said the settlement is expected to be finalized by a judge in October, with victims likely receiving compensation before the end of the year.
“It was a pre-planned and premeditated assault,” Frick told Gothamist. “This is a historic settlement and we feel very confident the court will approve it.”
Emily Janakiram, a protester arrested in Mott Haven, described her reaction to the settlement as “shock and awe.” She recalled spending hours in a jail cell, surrounded by other protesters who were bloodied and bruised, wondering why they had been arrested for a peaceful demonstration..
“I’m glad to see there’s some kind of accountability being handed out,” she said. “But it’s bothersome that it’s being paid for by the taxpayer and it’s not coming out of the NYPD’s budget, which is what we were trying to draw attention to at the time.”
In an unattributed statement on Wednesday, the NYPD said the protest came during a “challenging moment for the department,” as officers attempted to balance demonstrators’ first amendment rights with what the agency referred to as “wide-scale rioting” and destruction.
The settlement does not include an admission of wrongdoing by the NYPD, whose leadership under former Mayor Bill de Blasio vigorously defended police actions on the night of the protest. On the day after the protest, former NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said the police response was “executed nearly flawlessly,” describing the protest leaders – including well-known Bronx community organizers – as “outside agitators.”
On Wednesday, though, the agency said it had “re-envisioned” its policies and training procedures around large-scale demonstrations after receiving recommendations from several outside agencies.
De Blasio and Shea did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Samantha Max contributed reporting.
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“A Republican state lawmaker in Alaska stunned his colleagues this week by making the case for the potential economic benefits of fatal cases of child abuse. State Rep. David Eastman’s comments went viral after he spoke at a hearing concerning traumatic childhood experiences and how they affect the child over the course of their lives.”*
Hello everyone. Here are the screenshots of the stories I want to read and then I have a story to tell everyone. Notice the open tabs.
But what I really want to talk about it four days ago a woman I have done computer work for in the past. She knew I had pulled back from helping people during Covid but she had hired someone to help and things were worse and now she couldn’t even get online and her computer refused to respond to the keyboard. She said she did not know who to call and I said I would help. I went to her home and I got angry at the story she told me. She was being scammed. A couple years ago during Covid her old computer died and she wanted to just get an inexpensive computer to do her family genealogy hobby and a couple other things, but she really did not spend much time on it. The couple is in their 80s. The computer person sold her a really old poor laptop, A Toshiba Satellite L505D-S5983. I came with windows 7 so the computer person sold her windows 10 at a profit. Then the computer person set the computer up with an anti-virus. I looked up the company and it has a good reputation, but one thing I noticed was the product was sold as a business product so covered a lot of computers in your business setup. I noticed the price was reasonably low for that kind of deal but again the company had good reviews and ratings. When I was telling the woman this she asked me the price and I told her, a little over $33 dollars. From the look on her face I knew something was wrong. The computer person she had bought the computer from who set it up was charging her over $50 dollars for the security software. Also the woman paid a fee to the computer person so that if the computer had an issue the computer person would fix it but again a cost, a reduced cost because of the repair deal but still a cost. Then because of the problems the computer person let slip that they had remote access to the computer and complete control over it. The woman who called me was angry and upset, she did not want this and know what to do. She was being legally scammed which she stopped any business relationship with that computer person because if I couldn’t repair her computer she would replace it or just go without. I explained to her I could reset it and get her functions back while removing the remote control set up the other person had installed. I explain the computer had a small AMD dual core processer so was going to be easily over loaded and that was why after starting the keyboard seemed not to be working because the computer simple need a lot of time to get to the new commands. There was too much happening at start up that was set up by the other computer person and the remote software, plus the security software was set to do complete scans and do updates when the computer started taking all the resources. Yesterday Ron and I got the laptop and accessories she wanted me to fix. Before I connected it to my systems, I backed up the data on the computer to two different separate drives. After making sure it was backed up I reset windows still offline. That took all day yesterday. Then this morning I went through the settings and privacy of the system, and only when I was sure as I could be I connected it to my set up putting it online. I then reset windows from the cloud. The download was quick but the computer is stressing to install windows and is at 26% moving very slowly.
It makes me angry that people think nothing of taking advantage of older people who live in an old mobile home park just trying to have something when everything costs so much these days. I ask why someone would try to milk these people of their very few dollars. I told her I would do my best to take care of their computer needs like I did before Covid. But they have had enough and are selling their home. The hurricane Ian really frightened them. I am investigating if windows defender is a good option for a security system anti-virus software. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 
