posted 08-13-2009 09:18 PM                  

For the 2009 fiscal year, the base budget rose to $515.4 billion. Adding emergency discretionary spending and supplemental spending brings the sum to $651.2 billion.[1] This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance and production (about $9.3 billion, which is in the Department of Energy budget), Veterans Affairs (about $33.2 billion), interest on debt incurred in past wars, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which are largely funded through extra-budgetary supplements, about $170 billion in 2007). As of 2009, the United States government is spending about $1 trillion annually on defense-related purposes.

posted 08-14-2009 08:37 AM                  

E-mails from public overload House Web site

Aug 13, 2:29 PM (ET)

By ANNE FLAHERTY

WASHINGTON (AP) - Amid a boisterous debate on health care reform, people flooded members of Congress on Thursday with so many e-mails that they overloaded the House's primary Web site.

Technical support issued a warning to congressional staff that the site - - may be slow or unresponsive because of the large volume of e-mail being sent to members.http://www.house.gov

Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the House's chief administrative officer, which maintains the Web site, said traffic data was not available and could not be released without the lawmakers' consent.

But anecdotally, he said, the spike in e-mail volume was widely believed to be a result of the health care debate.

"It is clearly health care reform," Ventura said. "There's no doubt about it."

Lawmakers are in their home districts this month for the August recess, where a populist backlash has emerged in some quarters against President Barack Obama's plan to reform the nation's health care system.

Democrats are trying desperately to regain control of the debate, with the White House posting a new Web site designed to dispel what it called "the misinformation and baseless smears that are cropping up daily." House Democratic aides have set up a health care war room out of Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office. It is designed to help lawmakers answer questions about the legislation.

Ventura said the last time he saw such a significant slow-down in the system was in January, shortly before the House passed an $819 billion bill to stimulate the economy.

Ventura said new technology called "load balancing" is in place to try to handle spikes in volume. So far, the House Web site remains available to the public.

In particular, people are heavily using a link on the site called "Write Your Representative," which helps a voter track down their representative by plugging in their zip code.

posted 08-14-2009 01:28 PM                  

Don...

quote:

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Originally posted by Don McCormack:
From someone who works in the Canadian Health Care System

I worked in a University Hospital and Medical School
(McMaster University) for for close to 40 years....
http://cellometrics.com/links.html

Would I go to a Canadian Hospital for all my care, You Bet

If I enter a hospital up here does it cost me any money, No
if you have a Health Card (Canadian Citizen)

How do you get a Health Card, you apply for it, and they send it in the mail

Do I pay for Drugs, No, if I'm in Hospital

Yes, if not, (Out Patient) but usually you have a drug, Dental plan
thought your Work as a benefit (taxable),

If your not working, You can apply to a government based
system which is based on your income or lack of....(Trillium Drug Plan)

http://www.health.gov.on.ca/english/public/pub/drugs/trillium.html

Are there waiting times for some tests...Yes, in some cases
If the wait becomes to long....here they might send you to
a border hospital for that test, and the province picks up
the cost of the test...That don't happen very often anymore.
http://www.health.gov.on.ca/transformation/wait_times/providers/wt_pro_mn.html

Drugs are less expensive in Canada, because the government
took the drug companies to task and negotiated (increased Patent
protection (years)Profits to the Drug companies and the cost dropped,
something the US should do, if the Drug lobby doesn't cut them off

There are two types of doctors up here...the ones who opt in
and get paid , based on what test, service etc
which is made up of a technical and a professional component
the cost of doing the test or service and the professional
for reading the test or service

Then there are the doctors, who chose to opt out of the
"Government Plan (OHIP)and bill the patient directly and the patient
would have to send that bill in to OHIP and in most cases it would
pay most or what the opted in doctors would be paid and the
rest is picked up by the patient....because that doctor
wants more than the government is willing to pay...

In All Cases, YOU pick your doctor....in smaller towns
and way up north, harder to find..less doctors want to
practice in out of the way places because they like to be
connected with large hospitals, more patients, more money
All ways hard to find a Family Doctor for the same reasons.

In Canada, Health Care is a Provincial responsibility
and partially funded by the federal government
(Never enough,says the Province)

Do I know anything about the US system..Nope,
But I do know the Ontario system very well indeed.

From a Canadian perspective,

Don McCormack

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