Link Salad, Just Because

[chris_gerrib]

I'm a bit cranky this morning, due to an (entirely avoidable) snafu with Rotary. So here's some links with comments.

1) You may have heard that oil and gas prices are going up. Well, it's not because we're not doing the "drill, baby drill" thing - The number of rigs in U.S. oil fields has more than quad­rupled in the past three years to 1,272, according to the Baker Hughes rig count. Including those in natural gas fields, the United States now has more rigs at work than the entire rest of the world.. The real story is (a) pumping oil from shale is more expensive than sand (b) China is buying more oil so (c) the era of cheap oil is over.

2) Daniel Larson, no flaming liberal, points out that Rick Santorum doesn't understand what 'environmental stewardship' means. Like the link says, stewardship, "necessarily involves limiting and restraining our desires so as not to exhaust or waste what has been entrusted to us. Viewed that way, we are here to care for the earth and for one another, and in so doing serve the Creator Who made both."

3) No, Virginia, you can't get free health care in an emergency room - Last year, about 80,000 emergency-room patients at hospitals owned by HCA, the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, left without treatment after being told they would have to first pay $150 because they did not have a true emergency.

4) From Paul Krugman: Last week the European Commission confirmed what everyone suspected: the economies it surveys are shrinking, not growing. It’s not an official recession yet, but the only real question is how deep the downturn will be. Government austerity does not restore confidence, and "restored confidence" does not result in economic growth. In other news, water is wet.

5) Here's an interesting theory about why we're still arguing about birth control in 2012. This is explicitly presented without comment or (necessarily) agreement.

Comments

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

My brother is a GP at a small regional hospital, and works at the clinic. There are only four doctors in town currently, and since two are dividing their time between the clinic and the hospital, there's a lot of time when there's not a doctor in the ER at all. So people showing up at the ER with a cold is a real problem there (drags out the doctor who's doing rounds, or the one that's on call), particularly when they call the ambulance to take them in. The clinic is pretty much a free clinic, BTW (it's mostly medicare funded), so there's no reason not to go there in a non-emergency situation.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

I absolutely don't dispute the idea that people shouldn't go to the ER unless they (reasonably) think it's an emergency. What irritates me is when people who are against Obamacare say "we do have free health care - go to the emergency room."

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

You're right....the two really shouldn't be linked. Like apples and oranges.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, in the UK people, for the most, part wouldn't even dream of turning up at A&E (Accident and Emergency aka ER) for something that wasn't a) an accident or b) an emergency, because you'd just phone your GP to see them... also in socialist, rationed Britain I've never waited more than a day to see my GP when I needed to, usually I get in the same day.

Now, in private, in the USA, I've often had to wait.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Yes...it's a very different system. ;o)

My husband called last Friday and got an appt with our GP for the end of March ;o)