By Julia Pastor Whilst we were preoccupied with the evacuation of passengers and crew from a Dutch cruise ship due to an outbreak of a pathogen known as hantavirus, a new Ebola epidemic was confirmed in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We learnt that hantavirus is transmitted by rodents, that it can be fatal, but does not have pandemic potential. Ebola, however, is an old…
Nick Ottens (Atlantic Sentinel) | The Commonwealth Fund, a century-old foundation dedicated to improving health care, places the United States behind Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom in its latest report. The Netherlands and Norway share first place. America is the world’s top innovator of new medications and treatments. The best medical schools are in the United States. The country spends…
NEW YORK | You are going to hear it more than often. It is called individual mandate: citizens required to purchase health insurance, or face a penalty. It is the Gordian knot of Obamacare, the new US Health law. And it is also the essence of both the Netherlands health system (it has been since 2006) and the Swiss (since 1994). In that regard, the US is trying to imitate…
NEW YORK | Respected subscribers, my inbox is on fire. Democrat’s Campaign managers Jim Messina and Jen O’Malley, Vice President Joe Biden… even Michelle Obama wrote me in the last two days. It is clear. Unofficial, but clear: Democrats campaign is on. And everybody agrees the main theme is going to be… The Economy. But there is going to be a whole of juicy political battles surrounding another subject, one…
NEW YORK | It’s a catastrophe, experts say: about 1.2 million US students drop out every year and this imposes a huge cost on the whole economy. “Many of these schools [with high dropout rates] are in the inner-city and are made up of blacks and Latino students who are not graduating at great rates. This increases the level of poverty, it increases crime, it increases the incarceration rate. 80…
NEW YORK | Can a government compel citizens to purchase basic health insurance? For President Obama, it should, indeed. For all Republican candidates, this would be a clear violation of individual rights. The US Supreme Court agreed on Monday to take up the case of President Barack Obama’s landmark health care reform in March. By June, the nation’s 9 top justices -viewed as one of the most conservative benches in…