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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bacchus_ii who wrote (203808)	9/21/2006 2:30:15 AM
From: geode00	Respond to of 281500

US Healthcare = mediocre & expensive. Geez. It's time for universal healthcare. msnbc.msn.com U.S. gets bad grade on health care scorecard Americans pay most, but only get mediocre care, report says WASHINGTON - The United States spends far more on health care than any other country but gets only mediocre care in return for its investment, according to a report released Wednesday. The U.S. national average score on 37 separate measures of health care falls far short when compared either to a few centers of excellence within the country, or to other countries, the report from the Commonwealth Fund found. “Overall, you will see ... that the United States scores poorly — an overall score of 66 (out of 100),” Cathy Schoen, senior vice president for research and evaluation at non-profit health-care research foundation, told a news conference.... There is one area where the United States comes in first, compared to other countries. “We are by far and away the leader on costs,” Schoen said. Americans spend 16 percent of gross domestic product on health care — double the median for all industrialized countries. But the United States scores 15th out of 19 developed nations on deaths from causes that are easily prevented if timely medical care is provided, such as heart attacks. France scores the best, with 75 deaths per 100,000, while the United States weighs in with 115 per 100,000. Only Ireland, Britain and Portugal score worse." ==================== No kidding.

To: bacchus_ii who wrote (203808)	9/21/2006 10:46:22 AM
From: Sam	Respond to of 281500

Warriors and weapons win battles. But staff sergeants and supply lines win wars. The Mahdi Army controls Sadr City, the massive Shi'ite slum in eastern Baghdad that holds half the capital's population. But even more important, perhaps, it holds sway in the heavily Shi'ite southern provinces, and as Sadr knows well, that gives him a strategic position from which to bring the U.S. military to a standstill. Patrick Lang, former head of human intelligence collection and Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, explained why in an important analysis in the Christian Science Monitor July 21: U.S. troops must be supplied by convoys of trucks that go across hundreds of miles of roads through this Shi'ite heartland, and the Mahdi Army and its allies in the south could turn those supply routes into a "shooting gallery." Lang notes the supply trucks are driven by South Asian or Turkish civilians who would immediately quit. And even if the U.S. military used its own troops to protect the routes, they would vulnerable to ambushes. "A long, linear target such as a convoy of trucks is very hard to defend against irregulars operating in and around their own towns," he wrote. It would not require a complete cutoff of supplies to make the U.S. position untenable. A significant reduction in those supplies would begin a "downward spiral," according to Lang.