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DEALBREAKER.COM

A Wall Street Tabloid

• Gotta’ know what your favorite soulless moneymonger is up to in the wee hours of the morning?
• Interested in learning how the man behind the curtain really operates?
• Curious who’s making deals with the devil to “beef” up a roaring cashflow?
• Wonder if the people who bathe in vats of legal tender are really any classier than the rest of us?

Well wonder no more my cherished Basement dwellers. Dealbreaker is here to answer the call. If the call is from a socially unconscious super elitist high-profit banker with gold ingots stuffed in his socks and a desperate need for a serious reality check.

(It’s the “check” that gets his attention.)

Is it a bull market? A bear market? A holy-cow-how-did-the-American-dollar-sink-lower-than-Canadian-wallpaper market? Let Gordon Gekko point the way, and all shall be revealed. At least, all that is smarmy, pretentious, pompous, overbearing, elitist, and at least seven times too highly pleased with itself.

Go check it out.

We’ll catch you on the flipside.

Or should we say the backside?

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In a follow up to our August 1st post President Bush would like the world to know he still doesn’t think universal healthcare for children is a priority for the wealthiest country in the world (that would be U.S.). This despite the fact that according to a 2006 CNN report the U.S. has the second worst newborn death rate in the developed world, behind only Latvia. That’s small Baltic nation for those of us who also got C’s in Geography.

This is no surprise to anyone who has followed the president’s domestic policy regarding affordable healthcare for middle and low income families. Eight states - NJ, MD, AZ, CA, IL, NH, NY and WA - have already joined together in a coalition that is currently suing the Bush Administration for creating new federal rules that prevent them from even using their own state funds to make up for what the federal government refuses to provide.

The states object to rules issued by the Bush administration in August that make it harder for them to provide coverage to children in middle-income families by limiting the total income of families who participate.

The states suing accuse the administration of overstepping the federal government’s authority to set income limits for participants in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program…
[NJ Governor] Corzine told reporters that health insurance coverage for 10,000 poor children in his state is at stake.

“We frankly don’t understand the administration’s position,” he said.

New Jersey’s program, called FamilyCare, provides free and low-cost health care, immunizations, hospitalization, lab tests and X-rays, prescription drugs, dental and mental health services to 122,525 children and 89,050 adults. It costs the state $480 million per year, with $312 million paid for by the federal government.

Other governors expressed similar frustrations with the new policy.

“These barriers imposed by the Bush administration mortgage both the fiscal and health future of our nation,” Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said.

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer said the legal challenge was necessary.

“It sends a powerful and compelling message when the U.S. Congress, states across the nation and the public are so clearly committed to ensuring that families have access to affordable health care for their children.”

While fellow Republican presidential candidates continue to spread the myth that the U.S. has the best medical care system in the world, the World Health Organization actually compared healthcare between the world’s nations in 2000. The U.S. was ranked 37th, and has not improved its standing since. More recently, the Commonwealth Fund, a well-regarded international program dedicated to improving healthcare, reported that in a survey completed in May, the U.S. ranked last in a comparison of the world’s most “advanced” industrialized nations - behind Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The primary difference is that all other industrialized nations provide universal health coverage for all of their citizens.

Meanwhile, the U.S. doesn’t even provide health coverage to all of its children. While American media focuses on atrocities that occur in other parts of the world, one out of every six children right here in the U.S. live in poverty. These are the same children who the President expects to pay for their own health insurance, and who will be denied coverage as a direct result of the presidential veto. Politics as usual means that international organizations devoted to caring for malnourished, undereducated, and impoverished children, such as the Save the Children Coalition, are forced to focus much of their relief efforts on the United States, the wealthiest nation in the world.

It’s time for Americans to stop following the politics of wealth and start asking the obvious questions: Who benefits from denying insurance coverage to poor children? Why do pharmaceutical companies have more than three Washington lobbyists for every Congressperson and Senator? Why does the wealthiest nation in the world fail to provide even the most basic forms of care for its very own citizens?

Universal Healthcare is an idea whose time has come. In fact, it came and went a long time ago in every other industrialized nation in the world. With elections coming up, Americans can no longer afford (literally) to tow the party line. We need to stand up for ourselves, our neighbors, and - most importantly - our children.

Read More:

The Commonwealth Fund

Drug companies are the top “healthcare” lobbyists - not doctors or patients

Why are pharmaceutical companies funding smoking bans?

American Healthcare Reform

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Calling all slackers who had HBO in the 80’s - one of the most fantagasmically awful movies ever put to film is now showing on the Universal HD network. I have absolutely NO idea what could possibly manage to be improved by showing this film in even more pulsing slimy detail, but I have it on good authority that if you indulge in the same pastime that roughly half of Americans have according to American Demographics, then you will probably enjoy an evening spent strolling down amnesia lane with Liam Neeson and the rest of the gang in Krull.

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