US News

WENDELL POTTER: The industry has always tried to make Americans think that government-run systems are the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, that if you even consider that, you're heading down on the slippery slope towards socialism. So they have used scare tactics for years and years and years, to keep that from happening. If there were a broader program like our Medicare program, it could potentially reduce the profits of these big companies. So that is their biggest concern. [...]

You know, we have more people who are uninsured in this country than the entire population of Canada. And that if you include the people who are underinsured, more people than in the United Kingdom. We have huge numbers of people who are also just a lay-off away from joining the ranks of the uninsured, or being purged by their insurance company, and winding up there.

And another thing is that the advocates of reform or the opponents of reform are those who are saying that we need to be careful about what we do here, because we don't want the government to take away your choice of a health plan. It's more likely that your employer and your insurer is going to switch you from a plan that you're in now to one that you don't want. You might be in the plan you like now.

But chances are, pretty soon, you're going to be enrolled in one of these high deductible plans in which you're going to find that much more of the cost is being shifted to you than you ever imagined.

The oft-delayed space shuttle Endeavour will have to wait at least one more day to launch while NASA investigates whether lightning strikes near the launch pad on Friday caused any damage.

In a speech on the House floor Friday afternoon, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) attacked the idea of a public health care plan, saying “this program of ‘government option’ is being touted as being the panacea, the savior of allowing people to have quality health care at an affordable price is gonna kill people.” He used Canada and the United Kingdom as examples against the public option, claiming that those countries “don’t have the appreciation of life as we do in our society.” What is typical of politicians and many Americans who use such arguments, is that they don't do any homework.

Oh, and doesn't Broun have, ahem, publicly funded healthcare of his own?

Statistically, both Canada and the U.K. have longer lifespans and lower infant mortality rates than ours.

A couple with 16 kids has been found dead in Florida. Byrd and Melanie Billings were found shot to death Thursday night in their bedroom of their home in Beulah, FL, just west of Pensacola near the Alabama border.

In the United States, celiac disease is four times more common now than it was in the 1950's, according to a study by researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

A new survey by the Pew Research center focuses on science. While the survey says Americans like science, it also confirms, by asking scientists themselves, what we already knew: the Bush Administration suppressed any results scientific research which did not comform to its own narrow POV.

Consider this the opening salvo in the new world order for credit card firms. Before Congress passed credit card reform legislation in July, bank lobbyists repeatedly warned that the law would cost them revenue and force them to raise rates and fees on consumers. The aggressive step by JP Morgan Chase - effectively a 150 percent increase in required monthly payments -- marks one of the first major changes by a card issuer.

California, which began issuing IOUs on July 2nd, tried on Thursday to shore up confidence in those IOUs. These moves came as banks prepared to stop accepting the IOUs, after today.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the U.N. in 1948, states the following:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Apparently, conservatives may not agree.

U.S. swine flu vaccinations could begin in October with children at schools among the first in line, the Obama administration said Thursday as the president and his Cabinet urged states to figure out now how they'll tackle the virus' all-but-certain resurgence.

GOP senator John Ensign, (R-NV), 51, who in mid-June acknowledged an earlier extramarital affair with a former campaign staffer, has now admitted that his parents gave his mistress and her family nearly $100,000 "out of concern for the well being of longtime family friends during a difficult time."

It cost $150 and took about four minutes for government investigators, working in a sting operation, to make small bombs from materials they carried into high-security federal buildings that house major agencies with national security or law enforcement responsibilities..

Gov. David Paterson is naming Richard Ravitch as New York's lieutenant governor to help end the standoff in the state Senate by presiding over the chamber and breaking tie votes.

President Obama pledged during the campaign to push for overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, but has focused on the economy, healthcare, other issues since taking office.

The Obama administration will require businesses that win federal contracts to use a government electronic database system to verify that their employees have legal immigration status to work in the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Wednesday.

This image taken from a television commercial and provided Wednesday, July 8, 2009, by the Marijuana Policy Project shows Nadene Herndon of Fair Oaks, Calif.

new consumer protection agency

The Treasury Department is warning the financial services industry that it will not back down from its proposal to create a new consumer protection agency, even while lobbyists build a warchest and strategy to defeat the plan.

An employee of Lyon & Sons in Camden, New Jersey died after falling into a vat of hot chocolate on Wednesday, July 8, 2009.

Secretary of Defense during the administrations of Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, has died at age 93

Such was the assessment of a knowledgable critic: McNamara himself. The Secretary of Defense during the administrations of Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, who has died at age 93, was in his day portrayed as the most brilliant technocrat in an era when brilliant technocrats were worshipped by the media and political elites.

Michael Jackson's dermatologist said he had sedated the pop star in the past for painful medical procedures but had never given him dangerous sedatives like Propofol to use.