Friday, March 28, 2008

rising health care prices

Problem:

Health care costs Americans too much money. Prescription drug costs.

Possible Solutions:

Import drugs from Canada

Government funding for middle class medical care

Laws on prescription drug costs

Lowering insurance costs

Prevention ideas- flu vaccine. Measles vaccine

Prevention thru free clinics. Include free vaccinations, free tests

Wellness programs. Discounts in insurance if employees take certain classes or meet certain criteria.

Health Care Costs Americans too Much Money

Health care spending is at the highest point in our nation’s history and continues to rise at an alarming rate. Depending on where people work, employers pay for some health care costs. This is a very good service, but the amount business’s pay sometimes doesn’t pay for as much as some people need. Another issue is the rising prices prescription drug costs. If the government doesn’t start paying for some of the middle class’s medical costs, everyone who isn’t rich or poor will no longer seek medical help and eventually die off.

Most businesses now pay for some health care for most employees. Bigger companies pay more than smaller companies, and jobs like management or CEO’s will get better health care than say a factory worker.

A big contributor to the rising health care prices is prescription drugs. “Prescription drug spending now makes up 10% of health care costs and continues to rise.” (www.kff.org)

According to the National Coalition on Health Care; “In 2007, health care spending in the United States reached $2.3 trillion, and was projected to reach $3 trillion in 2011. Health care spending is projected to reach $4.2 trillion by 2016.”

Word number 499, word number 500.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Goal Statements

1. Critical Reading- Critical reading can best be described as annotating an article or re-reading something you don't at first understand. I believe I demonstrated critical reading strategies in my research paper. I first found websites and books dealing with my topic. I then read through them, and took notes on important sentences or chapters. I also annotated some of the websites by printing them out, highlighting and underlining them. Another example of critical reading would just be when (sometimes if) I am reading the text book and I don't understand a sentence or paragraph. Instead of just saying, whatever, I re-read the section to better understand it.

2. Rhetorical Approaches- I really don't remember what rhetorical approaches are. So I'm going to say I met this goal by writing my blog.

3. Appropriate Technique- I don't necessarily follow the perfect technique model when writing a paper. I usually just start writing a bunch of garbage and eventually make it into a formal paper. I guess you could say I demonstrate revision because I have to go back through the paper and fix all of the mistakes in grammar or whatever else. In class we had to hand in many different drafts of our paper before it was actually due. I don't really plan anything out for my papers, I just throw things out there and hope they end up making sense.