Americans

In today’s extended edition of the Health Care News Podcast, Dr. Gerard Gianoli joined Health Care News Managing Editor Michael Hamilton to help set Americans straight on legitimate reasons for disgruntlement with our nation’s health care system–and utterly bogus ones.

New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan signed into law on April 5 House Bill 1696 to modify and renew through 2018 the state’s Medicaid expansion program under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which state lawmakers first adopted in 2014.

Fracking has dramatically lowered the cost of gasoline and natural gas, giving single people more resources to find a potential partner and relieving financial tension for people in established relationships. Who knows how many eHarmony accounts have been funded with cash left over from cheap fill-ups and how many divorce lawyers were never hired when suddenly making ends meet became less of a struggle.

The latest public health panic is over a disease most Americans (even doctors) have never heard of. Zika virus disease (ZVD) is carried by the same mosquito, Aedes aegypti, as other Third World diseases, including dengue and chikungunya.

Turkey: Thursday is, of course, Thanksgiving. A holiday which celebrates our inconceivable good fortune and tremendous bounty. Most of us celebrate our good fortune – by joining with family and friends to consume massive amounts of bounty.

Polls show most Americans believe air pollution (1) has been steady or rising during the past few decades, (2) will worsen in the future, and (3) is a serious threat to people’s health. Despite the impression created by government bureaucrats, environmental lobbyists, and the media, air quality in the United States is the best it has been since before the Industrial Revolution and is continuing to improve. Environmentalists and regulators paint a false picture of the nation’s air quality to pad their budgets and increase their power.

Behold Mark Cuban – a wildly successful entrepreneur. He in 1995 co-founded Broadcast.com – and in 1999 Yahoo! way overpaid $5.7 billion for it. Ever since, Cuban has in Donald Trump-like fashion built himself into a brand – The Entrepreneur. Like Trump, he loves embodying the pursuit of professional victories. Like Trump, he turned his doing-business-vision into a high-ratings network television show (well, Trump turned his into two).

Will the FCC create an Internet “Do Not Track” list like the FTC created the “Do Not Call” list enjoyed by three quarters of Americans?

The carnival in Rio de Janeiro from February 13 through the 17th was one heck of a party. It was celebrated by the locals, plus an estimated one million visitors, complete with fabulous parades, street parties and balls. Brazil is blessed with some great beaches, the most famous of which is Ipanema, thanks to the 1962 bossa nova classic “Girl from Ipanema”.

“When reporters forfeit their credibility by making up stories, sources, or quotes, we are right to mock them. When their violations are significant or repeated, they should be fired,” says Charles Lipson, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. “Demanding honest reporting has nothing to do with the reporter’s politics, personality, or personal life. It is about professional standards and our reasonable expectations.”

At some point between Thanksgiving and December 1, the federal government made history, as the value of outstanding U.S. Treasury securities exceeded $18 trillion—that’s an 18 with 12 trailing zeroes. At some point, such numbers begin to lose their meaning because the amounts exceed most people’s ability to comprehend.

As this is being written, all fifty states have freezing weather and nearly a month before the winter solstice on December 21 some northeastern cities are buried in record-setting snowfalls

Americans recently celebrated Independence Day—the day the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence and announced the 13 American colonies regarded themselves as sovereign states no longer part of the British Empire and subject to its rules and taxes.