HERE'S TO OUR HEALTH and, hopefully, our wealth as well. This is mainly directed to US readers of this blog; the rest of you can look on and jump in with comments if you wish.
Health Insurance is back in the Senate and everybody seems to agree that something has to be done to broaden coverage and reduce the cost of health care. This is something in which we all hold a vital interest so be sure you are all boned up and tuned in. I won't bore you with facts that you probably already have thrust at you and have mulled over many times. However, one might think it a curious matter indeed that the US, the richest country in the world, as we say, allocates double the percentage (17%) of Gross National Product (GDP) as do countries with universal health insurance and yet still manages to have 47 million of population uninsured.
Seeing Michael Moore's film, 'Sicko', has a few surprises and is good back grounding. Much easier to access are the PBS FRONTLINE documentaries, Sick Around the World and Sick in America. These are readily available online (just right click on the titles to open the relevant Websites). The first reviews health insurance and health care in five capitalist countries (The United Kingdom, Japan, France, Taiwan, and Germany) and gives some idea of the variations that are possible based on the model invented by Bismark in Germany in late 19th Century.
If you want to read up on the issues, try 'Social Security, the Phony Crisis' (by Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot); these two economists are relatively easy to read and lay out the issues relating to 'saving' Medicare and Social Security Insurance really well.. They are also a good introduction to how economists think about these things. This was published in 1998 but issues have not changed significantly between then and now, putting aside the rapid increase in health care costs since then.
On a personal note, when I came to the US from Australia in 1995, I stepped out of having health insurance as a right into having none at all. I was self-employed for six months, living in Arizona, and could not afford health insurance. It was a more than a tad scary, to tell the truth, especially as I came down with a severe respiratory infection and avoided seeing a doctor on account of cost. How different from Australia where I could walk into any doctor's (or doctors') office with my little green Medicare card and be seen within the day, more often than not, within the hour.
This is not a time to be fooled by such slogans as 'socialized' medicine. With the exception of the UK system, in the capitalist counties touched on in these documentaries (plus Canada, Australia and New Zealand), all practitioners operate on a fee-for-service basis. The government does not tell them how to practice health care, as US health care insurers seem to be coming increasingly close to doing. Not insignificantly, no one is ever driven into bankruptcy by health care bills.
In health programs that follow Bismark's model, all persons are covered for health care and all covered persons have to purchase cover. A simple way of looking at this is to take the total cost of health care and divide this by the total number of purchasers to get the premium cost which, as it eventuates, is not a horrifying amount.
Apart from the obvious advantages of universal care, this spreads the risk of health care vertically over all ages and horizontally over all disorders providing the opportunity of the collection of broad data to give a picture of the total health task. In turn, this enables a progressive shift away from treating disorders when they get serious to a focus on how they can be prevented or made of less effect in the long term.Information from the broad health practice over the entire population can indicate which are the most effective treatments ('best practice"). However, this not different from from undergoing professional education and training, or later professional training courses. While this is a hope of health care planning, the general concern in most advanced health care systems is to free up practitioners to good practice while focusing on fraud and questionable or excessively costly practices.
Universal health systems are developing ways of limiting the cost of health care without compromising the health of their populations or imposing financial stress. You can find out about this in the documentaries mentioned above. Also, as in Taiwan, it is very possible to provide electronic health care histories on the entitlement card (a smart card). Is it possible to provide adequate health care for all at about 8% of GDP? Actually...Yes!
How likely is it that the US will go all the way to universal health care this time around? Not very...unless ordinary citizens take up the call for urgent and extensive change. Who, currently, gets the most benefit from the US health set up? For the answer, one would have to look at who has the strongest lobbies in Washington and that would be likely to be the health insurers and the drug companies. These provide huge sums toward politicians' 'soft money', so essential for successful electioneering here in the US. Nothing is more coveted by politicians than re-election which is why, up till now, they have the health system all should have and do not.
What are your concerns about health cover and health insurance? I'll see if I can point to answers.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
THE TAIL END OF ENERGY...
I THINK I AM ABOUT DONE with the energy dilemmas...do I hear a collective sigh of relief?
Now we know that most oil is used by folk like you and me who like to drive cars and 'light trucks'. The rest goes to the transport of goods, mostly to trucking and rail companies. At one time I thought that shifting from trucking to rail transport would be a smart move, since the efficiency of rail transport is about six times better than trucking. Unfortunately, it seems that the rail companies are not up to carrying more goods since they have not increased rolling stock. One can hardly blame them as too much capital investment that is not matched to increasing the volume of business could only reduce profits. Rail has not been able to compete with trucking so long as fuel has remained relatively low cost, nor can rail deliver door to door.
We face several dilemmas.
Under the force of the recession, transport of goods has been significantly diminished while our use of cars and trucks has remained at a lowered level. Consequently, oil reserves have tended to rise as world demand for oil has continued at a reduced level, keeping costs around $50 per barrel. An example of the effect of this is that gasoline prices are not expected to rise above $3 per gallon right through to the end of this year. It looks as if I am going to lose a side-bet that gas would cost $9 per gallon by November! This may lead to a tendency for new car buyers to return to purchasing 'gas-guzzlers'. In the face of this, at least some economists are proposing lifting the fuel tax to curb demand and increase funding for infrastructure improvement. However, drivers are unlikely to welcome this suggestion!
On the home front, natural gas prices are expected to fall through this year and over winter (here in the Northern Hemisphere). This is because the high price of natural gas sparked a frenzy of drilling, helped along by new techniques in extracting gas, so that supply has significantly increased. This will also lower the price of electricity to the degree that natural gas is used to produce electrical power. This likely will lower homeowners' incentive to effect economies, especially where these require considerable capital outlay. Likewise, the lower cost of energy is adversely affecting investment in alternative energy from wind and sun.
We seem to be caught in the 'energy doldrums'. The most likely energy enhancements will consist of picking the 'lowest fruit'; increasing power output will fall to upgrading nuclear power plants and 'decoupling' profits from power production. That will see the power suppliers encouraging lower power consumption through 'smart grids' (like sending you a message about when to run your air conditioner in summer heat), and increasing your use of power when it is plentiful and cheap (like turning on your water heater at night). To a degree, power producers will hold off, waiting to see how the wind of public policy will blow.
I think we can expect public policy to focus on infrastructure improvements and encouraging power companies to reduce consumption. Pushing alternative energy will be tricky so long as conventional power remains relatively cheap; long term, we must find a way to greatly increase the former and to store energy from these sources to make it available as needed.
As for you and me, likely we will hold off too.
Retreating to the present, I am once more back in the garden. Prior to Passover/Easter, we enjoyed the 'Springing Grass' New Moon and can expect some frosts still through to mid-May. But...things are warming up and all around the trees and shrubs are preparing to bust forth. I have joined a Master Gardner course on Tuesdays at the county center (an extension course with Cornell University, which holds the NY State Land Grant) and am finding out all about gardening in this part of the world. We took out some of the dead trees at the end of the yard and the tree fellers allowed me to use their massive chipper to get rid of quite a deal of cuttings. I now have a pile of chippings to use around the garden and some of the logs from the old trees. This enabled me to clear up a lot of leaf material and start a new compost heap.
I remain a compost enthusiast and have learned a great deal about this ancient art. My new heap is 4' x 4' (about a foot each way bigger) to retain composting heat better. A good bit of last year's product is now laid out in a new garden bed waiting to be dug in. The mower has a new spark plug and the blades are newly sharpened. I am in the process of mapping the garden so as to plan it's development, including a section for woodland environment. Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho...it's off to work we go!
How wonderful it is to spend time in the warming, sunny back yard! I have even been out cycling about a dozen times as the world is warming.
Now we know that most oil is used by folk like you and me who like to drive cars and 'light trucks'. The rest goes to the transport of goods, mostly to trucking and rail companies. At one time I thought that shifting from trucking to rail transport would be a smart move, since the efficiency of rail transport is about six times better than trucking. Unfortunately, it seems that the rail companies are not up to carrying more goods since they have not increased rolling stock. One can hardly blame them as too much capital investment that is not matched to increasing the volume of business could only reduce profits. Rail has not been able to compete with trucking so long as fuel has remained relatively low cost, nor can rail deliver door to door.
We face several dilemmas.
Under the force of the recession, transport of goods has been significantly diminished while our use of cars and trucks has remained at a lowered level. Consequently, oil reserves have tended to rise as world demand for oil has continued at a reduced level, keeping costs around $50 per barrel. An example of the effect of this is that gasoline prices are not expected to rise above $3 per gallon right through to the end of this year. It looks as if I am going to lose a side-bet that gas would cost $9 per gallon by November! This may lead to a tendency for new car buyers to return to purchasing 'gas-guzzlers'. In the face of this, at least some economists are proposing lifting the fuel tax to curb demand and increase funding for infrastructure improvement. However, drivers are unlikely to welcome this suggestion!
On the home front, natural gas prices are expected to fall through this year and over winter (here in the Northern Hemisphere). This is because the high price of natural gas sparked a frenzy of drilling, helped along by new techniques in extracting gas, so that supply has significantly increased. This will also lower the price of electricity to the degree that natural gas is used to produce electrical power. This likely will lower homeowners' incentive to effect economies, especially where these require considerable capital outlay. Likewise, the lower cost of energy is adversely affecting investment in alternative energy from wind and sun.
We seem to be caught in the 'energy doldrums'. The most likely energy enhancements will consist of picking the 'lowest fruit'; increasing power output will fall to upgrading nuclear power plants and 'decoupling' profits from power production. That will see the power suppliers encouraging lower power consumption through 'smart grids' (like sending you a message about when to run your air conditioner in summer heat), and increasing your use of power when it is plentiful and cheap (like turning on your water heater at night). To a degree, power producers will hold off, waiting to see how the wind of public policy will blow.
I think we can expect public policy to focus on infrastructure improvements and encouraging power companies to reduce consumption. Pushing alternative energy will be tricky so long as conventional power remains relatively cheap; long term, we must find a way to greatly increase the former and to store energy from these sources to make it available as needed.
As for you and me, likely we will hold off too.
Retreating to the present, I am once more back in the garden. Prior to Passover/Easter, we enjoyed the 'Springing Grass' New Moon and can expect some frosts still through to mid-May. But...things are warming up and all around the trees and shrubs are preparing to bust forth. I have joined a Master Gardner course on Tuesdays at the county center (an extension course with Cornell University, which holds the NY State Land Grant) and am finding out all about gardening in this part of the world. We took out some of the dead trees at the end of the yard and the tree fellers allowed me to use their massive chipper to get rid of quite a deal of cuttings. I now have a pile of chippings to use around the garden and some of the logs from the old trees. This enabled me to clear up a lot of leaf material and start a new compost heap.
I remain a compost enthusiast and have learned a great deal about this ancient art. My new heap is 4' x 4' (about a foot each way bigger) to retain composting heat better. A good bit of last year's product is now laid out in a new garden bed waiting to be dug in. The mower has a new spark plug and the blades are newly sharpened. I am in the process of mapping the garden so as to plan it's development, including a section for woodland environment. Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho...it's off to work we go!
How wonderful it is to spend time in the warming, sunny back yard! I have even been out cycling about a dozen times as the world is warming.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
LEFT HAND, RIGHT HAND
OIL DEPENDENCE REFLECTS the central role of motor transport in the US culture. Much the same can be said for all the developed nations. Most oil used is consumed in the transport sector. The private use of motor cars, SUVs, and light trucks forms the great bulk of this consumption. Putting this another way, the cars and pickups we ordinary folk drive about constitute the main reason for our dependence on supplies from other countries. It also means there is a sharp disconnect between the energy used for transport and other energy use.
Very little oil is used to generate electrical power. Electrical power is generated from burning coal and natural gas or from heat generated in nuclear reactors. A small amount comes from wind and solar sources. Saving power by, say, fitting energy efficient light bulbs will do nothing to ease dependence of foreign oil.
In the main, electrical power stations were built to meet relatively local needs. Over time, to handle fluctuations in demand, local grids were connected via high voltage transmission lines that also came to serve small communities. The power these networks could deliver remained closely related to demand, with new generating plants only being constructed to match increasing demand. The tendency of demand to increase above capacity occasionally caused blackouts, as also did the inability for the networks to manage transmission 'accidents' arising from decrepitude from having grown 'like Topsy'.
Oil used for transport is the left hand of energy while the right hand is the energy used in our homes, large buildings, powering industry, street lighting, and information transmission. While we might learn to use private transport less or come to use more economical vehicles, the tendency has long been for demand for electrical power to increase. For example, living in ever larger houses has increased the demand for air conditioning. Despite that it is not difficult to design and build so that little energy is needed for heating or cooling, most houses are woefully inefficient at managing internal temperature. Modern electronic devices like wide screen TVs and sound systems are energy hogs, even when seemingly turned off, as they remain in standby state so they can come back on quickly. Our reliance on the Internet and the great Web search engines demand considerable electrical power (Google reputedly has over 850,000 servers scattered around the US).
Building new power stations is no longer the easy option. Coal is the most abundant energy source in the US, enough for hundreds of years into the future. The problem is that coal-powered stations are too 'dirty' in regard to climate changing emissions, and use too much water for cooling. Carbon capture from these stations is likely to raise costs as much as 30%. Natural gas powered stations are quicker to construct and cheaper to run while being relatively 'clean' to operate; however, the US is not rich in natural gas and is already an importer of this energy source. Coal can be converted to oil or to natural gas but this is a 'dirty' process as well as costly. Nuclear power is probably the preferred option but such stations take long to construct and the power produced is fairly expensive. In any event, the electrical grid must achieve greater capacity and efficiency before much more power can usefully be generated and transmitted. Consider that, over great distances, up to 80% of power is lost by radiation. Generally, we are on the cusp and it is more likely that power suppliers will make money by encouraging less use of energy than by supplying more energy. We are entering the age of 'smart grids'.
All this casts a new light on the notion that we can shift from oil to electricity in order to maintain our current level of private transport by cars, SUVs, and light trucks. Suppose our fairy god-mother waved her wand and tomorrow half the car population had been transformed into electrically powered vehicles. Elated, the lucky owners would do their 50 or 100 miles commute and then do an overnight recharge , sucking electricity off the grid. Ideally, we would become less dependent on oil imports from the Middle-East, freeing money for internal spending and thus boosting the economy. In reality, this could have a disastrous effect as it is unlikely the power grid could support this huge increase in load; especially in summer when air conditioning comes on line. The Pickens Plan proposes that we switch cars to natural gas while we build alternate energy sources like wind and solar power, and enlarge and modernize the national electricity grid, paving the way to alternate power for cars. The transition to electric cars is likely to be slow, taking perhaps a decade to advance electric cars to a majority. Hopefully, over this period, necessary work on the national grid will have been undertaken, means to store the intermittent flow of power from solar and wind sources will have been invented, and the ability to produce renewable power greatly enhanced.
Seems as if we have painted ourselves into quite a corner. Without doubt the longer term view is likely to see the cost of energy rising, since current coal-fired power generation is the cheapest means. If the cost of electrical power rises steeply, as we saw with the rise in the price of fuel, demand will abate. We will use less either because of rising cost or because we become energy smart. In a world of finite resources and amidst the threatening dangers of climate change, Can we have our cake and eat it? I suppose the smart folk will adjust their mode of living and the rest will be adjusted by market forces.
The floor is yours...what adjustments have you tried, heard of, and can recommend? I invite you to write them as comments and the more the merrier.
Very little oil is used to generate electrical power. Electrical power is generated from burning coal and natural gas or from heat generated in nuclear reactors. A small amount comes from wind and solar sources. Saving power by, say, fitting energy efficient light bulbs will do nothing to ease dependence of foreign oil.
In the main, electrical power stations were built to meet relatively local needs. Over time, to handle fluctuations in demand, local grids were connected via high voltage transmission lines that also came to serve small communities. The power these networks could deliver remained closely related to demand, with new generating plants only being constructed to match increasing demand. The tendency of demand to increase above capacity occasionally caused blackouts, as also did the inability for the networks to manage transmission 'accidents' arising from decrepitude from having grown 'like Topsy'.
Oil used for transport is the left hand of energy while the right hand is the energy used in our homes, large buildings, powering industry, street lighting, and information transmission. While we might learn to use private transport less or come to use more economical vehicles, the tendency has long been for demand for electrical power to increase. For example, living in ever larger houses has increased the demand for air conditioning. Despite that it is not difficult to design and build so that little energy is needed for heating or cooling, most houses are woefully inefficient at managing internal temperature. Modern electronic devices like wide screen TVs and sound systems are energy hogs, even when seemingly turned off, as they remain in standby state so they can come back on quickly. Our reliance on the Internet and the great Web search engines demand considerable electrical power (Google reputedly has over 850,000 servers scattered around the US).
Building new power stations is no longer the easy option. Coal is the most abundant energy source in the US, enough for hundreds of years into the future. The problem is that coal-powered stations are too 'dirty' in regard to climate changing emissions, and use too much water for cooling. Carbon capture from these stations is likely to raise costs as much as 30%. Natural gas powered stations are quicker to construct and cheaper to run while being relatively 'clean' to operate; however, the US is not rich in natural gas and is already an importer of this energy source. Coal can be converted to oil or to natural gas but this is a 'dirty' process as well as costly. Nuclear power is probably the preferred option but such stations take long to construct and the power produced is fairly expensive. In any event, the electrical grid must achieve greater capacity and efficiency before much more power can usefully be generated and transmitted. Consider that, over great distances, up to 80% of power is lost by radiation. Generally, we are on the cusp and it is more likely that power suppliers will make money by encouraging less use of energy than by supplying more energy. We are entering the age of 'smart grids'.
All this casts a new light on the notion that we can shift from oil to electricity in order to maintain our current level of private transport by cars, SUVs, and light trucks. Suppose our fairy god-mother waved her wand and tomorrow half the car population had been transformed into electrically powered vehicles. Elated, the lucky owners would do their 50 or 100 miles commute and then do an overnight recharge , sucking electricity off the grid. Ideally, we would become less dependent on oil imports from the Middle-East, freeing money for internal spending and thus boosting the economy. In reality, this could have a disastrous effect as it is unlikely the power grid could support this huge increase in load; especially in summer when air conditioning comes on line. The Pickens Plan proposes that we switch cars to natural gas while we build alternate energy sources like wind and solar power, and enlarge and modernize the national electricity grid, paving the way to alternate power for cars. The transition to electric cars is likely to be slow, taking perhaps a decade to advance electric cars to a majority. Hopefully, over this period, necessary work on the national grid will have been undertaken, means to store the intermittent flow of power from solar and wind sources will have been invented, and the ability to produce renewable power greatly enhanced.
Seems as if we have painted ourselves into quite a corner. Without doubt the longer term view is likely to see the cost of energy rising, since current coal-fired power generation is the cheapest means. If the cost of electrical power rises steeply, as we saw with the rise in the price of fuel, demand will abate. We will use less either because of rising cost or because we become energy smart. In a world of finite resources and amidst the threatening dangers of climate change, Can we have our cake and eat it? I suppose the smart folk will adjust their mode of living and the rest will be adjusted by market forces.
The floor is yours...what adjustments have you tried, heard of, and can recommend? I invite you to write them as comments and the more the merrier.
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