Health reform is a sticky and complicated issue, and we here at Biodrux are not interested in taking sides. But to help you wade through the confusion and make your own decisions, here are a few explanations and definitions, made as unbiased as we could muster.

Why Reform?

Recent polling suggests that 8 out of 10 Americans are happy with their health care, so why change it? The U.S. spends more per person on health care than any other industrialized nation. In the neighborhood of 87% more. This often goes unnoticed because the bulk of the cost is taken care of by employers, and people never see the money they are losing. In the end, your boss has to pay you $10 an hour instead of $13 because he shells out $6,000 a year for your coverage. It’s income you’re spending before you even see it.

Despite all this money being thrown around, we rank 38^th in the world in life expectancy. Seriously, your chances are better in Singapore. And let’s not talk about infant mortality rates.

Why reform? Because we pay too much and get too little.

So Why Not Reform?

If all the numbers say we should change, why are people against it? Well, in general they’re not. Some think this isn’t the right time for reform, others think we’re trying to change too much too fast, and others simply think that the changes being proposed will make things worse than they already are.

So when you hear about people trying to “stop healthcare reform,” it is more likely that they are trying to stop THIS health care reform.

Buzz Words to Know:

Obamacare

Despite his name being attached to it, President Obama did not actually write these bills. Instead, he gave a list of eight things he wanted to see in health care reform, and then let congress write the legislation. Here are the eight principles given to congress:

• Assure affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans

• Remove obstacles to coverage for people with pre-existing conditions

• Maintain coverage in the event of job loss or change

• Safeguard families from bankruptcies related to health expenses

• Guarantee choice of doctors and coverage plans

• Shrink long-term cost increases in health care for businesses and the government

• Improve quality of care and patient safety

• Invest in preventive care and wellness

Public Option

This has been the king of all controversial issues in the recent health reform debate. The term public option refers to a government run and subsidized alternative to private health insurance companies. Think of it like this: you need to buy socks, so you go to the mall. They’ve got socks at Macy’s, they’ve got them at JC Penny. And then one day the Public Option department store opens up, and starts completing with the big private companies.

If you’re a republican, you probably see this as a bad thing, because the public option store gets its money from the government and can sell socks for dirt cheap, running the other companies out of business and eventually forcing everyone to buy government socks. But if you’re a democrat you might see the new store as a good thing, because stores have been over charging people for socks for years, and this kind of government assisted competition is needed to keep Nordstrom from swindling us.

Exchanges / Marketplace

Part of the new plans involve setting up a marketplace where insurers must compete against each other, just like our sock shopping trip we took a minute ago. Consumers would be able to see the care and costs of different plans easily, without pages of paperwork. To enter the marketplace, plans would have to meet certain specific standards (some existing plans will be “grandfathered in,” meaning that they will be allowed without the requirements. However, insurance plans are always changing, and once these grandfathered plans begin to change on their own they will have to meet government standards).

Not everyone will qualify to shop in the marketplace. It is intended for people who don’t have a plan through their job.

Want more? Check back later for part two!

FCC Disclosure: JBNI Biodrux is the Producer of this blog and 33+ Curiously Effective Herbal Naturaceuticals Including “LEITZIN” for Deeply Vibrant Emotional Empowerment and Fountin for Severe Menopause Sufferers.

Online Sources:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34609984/ns/health-health_care/

http://health.howstuffworks.com/health-care-reform5.htm

Consumers all over the United States may have noticed a recent trend in restaurant and fast food menus: information.

In the past year, several states and counties (in places such as California, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Oregon just to name a few) have passed or tried to pass legislation geared at helping Americans make more informed choices about what they eat by requiring chain restaurants to put calorie counts right on the menu. Which means you will already know about those 8 grams of saturated fat when you bite into your Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Croissan’wich.
The new laws are geared towards chains only, so Mom and Pop Diners and fancy high end restaurants won’t be bothered. While some say this is just big government babysitting, and people don’t want their meals ruined by facts, others attest that in this age of skyrocketing obesity people need to be informed.

I know what you’re thinking. You already know fast food is bad for you. You already know restaurant portions are huge in this country. But choices are made by specifics, not general knowledge. For example, did you know that a Quizno’s Tuna Melt has more calories than the Bacon Sub? And sure you can guess a Big Mac has more calories than the classic cheeseburger, but did you know it has less than a chocolate shake?

If these facts surprise you, you’re not alone. In a recent study in Washington State only 10% of people correctly guessed the Tuna Melt. And let’s face it, if you’re already at Quizno’s and both sandwiches cost the same and you like bacon just as much as you like tuna, wouldn’t this little insight sway you into savings an extra 600 calories?

The bottom line is that people are still going to eat what they want to eat. And people will still go out to fast food places and chain restaurants. But these days most Americans are so separated from the food they eat they don’t know where the calories are coming from. After all, a raspberry lemonade had got to be better for you than a Pepsi, right? Wrong.

My suggestion is that if nutritional menus are popping up in your area, don’t get sticker shock. We’ve passed the law here in King County, WA and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve started to use them the same way I use the menu prices. If I look at the $1.50 for Root Beer by itself, all I can think of is how I can get the same amount at Safeway for 59 cents. Instead I compare the $1.50 Root Beer to the $1.25 Iced Tea, and suddenly I’m in charge of my money again. I’m not wasting a dollar, I’m saving a quarter. Self delusional? Maybe. But I’m at a restaurant because I want to be there, not because it’s economical.

And you can do the same thing by comparing calories and picking the option that’s slightly better for you. Sometimes all you have time for is McDonald’s, and if that’s the case you might as well go for the lesser of two caloric evils.

And in that regard, the US Government is here to help.

Online Sources:

http://www.cspinet.org/new/200311051.html

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/387456_menulabeling12.html

www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

By now even the most casual internet user will have stumbled upon an article or twelve casually throwing around words like “theory” or “hypothesis” or “law.” I myself have often found people disregarding legitimate science with the claim, “That’s just a theory, it hasn’t been proven.”

Well I have news for you kids: Science doesn’t prove anything.

In fact, science is the business of proving things wrong. Science is all about facts, which are true observations of the world. Let’s take gravity for example.

It is a fact that if I hold a ball out in front of me and let go of it, it will travel directly towards the ground. I can do it in the real world and see very clearly that it is true. That’s a fact.

From this I can make a hypothesis, which is an educated guess. I can guess that because my ball test always has the same results when I do it, it is likely to be that way for everyone else too. But I haven’t seen everyone do the ball test, and I haven’t tried to vary the circumstances much. It’s just my educated guess based on my own tests. It can’t be proved right, but it could be proved wrong by any one observation of a ball behaving differently.

Now let’s say a bunch of other people perform their own ball tests, all over the world. They do it in different seasons and at different times of day. Some people even record observations that other objects fall to the ground when you let go of them.

Before long we have a law. A scientific law generalizes a group of observations. There is no evidence to dispute our hypotheses that objects will fall straight to the ground (unless they are somehow hindered, such as people catching them), and we are therefore able to predict what will happen when we drop things. Still, all you need is one example of something else happening to prove our law wrong.

image via www.rawfish.com.au

So now we have the Law of Gravity, a name which we have arbitrarily chosen because it needed a title. We start to discuss the reasons behind this and we come up with a relationship between mass and distance. When we group these hypotheses together and summarize them we get a theory. A theory attempts to explain the evidence, and is valid so long as there is no evidence to dispute it.

In short, a theory uses hypotheses and laws to support an answer to the question, “Why?”

So:

A fact is the ball falling to the ground.

A hypothesis is the educated guess that it will keep doing that.

A law is a scientific agreement that we have never observed any other behavior from falling balls, and can therefore rely on it.

A theory is an explanation for why balls fall.

That wasn’t so hard, was it? Just the scientific method and a lot of balls, which is all Isaac Newton had anyway.

The important thing to remember is that these terms aren’t interchangeable, and none of them are “proof.” Science doesn’t really do proof, because proof implies that there is absolutely no way you are wrong. Science merely draws logical conclusions based on observable facts.

So the next time someone disregards something because it’s “just a theory” and “there’s no proof,” kindly suggest they try throwing themselves off a bridge. After all, there’s no real proof that they’ll fall.

Online Sources:

http://wilstar.com/theories.htm

http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistry101/a/lawtheory.htm