Nationalized health care in America is a good initiative because it covers everyone, increases available funds and provides basic healthcare facilities. Throughout one’s lifetime a person will become ill or injured and require medical treatment. America is the only industrialized nation without an nationalized health care system. The need for some form of health care insurance regulation is required to help keep costs down; the problem also extends to the actual treatments and facilities. The United States should have a nationalized health care system based on the best examples of our fellow governments.  Our health care system based on capitalism is slowly forcing low to medium income families out of health care.Canada has a heavily nationalized health care system in which the doctor receives a fee per visit or service and is unable to charge the individuals when the public health insurance is used. The Canadian system is what most Americans think of when talk of nationalized healthcare is brought forward. The Canadian system is great in that everyone has access to health care; where it has drawbacks is that there is a lack of doctors compared to the demand for some services creating a waiting period for medical treatment. This period of waiting has caused many individuals to seek care outside of the national system; most recently the Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams was treated within the United States for heart surgery. Greenland’s health care system is a free medical service primarily funded through taxation similar to Canada’s. The system in use has nursing stations in settlements and hospitals in every town. Native’s use of the system is free and even foreigners visiting can receive free treatment.India’s health care system is run at the local state or territorial government level with allowances for private institutions. Government hospitals provide treatment at taxpayers’ expense which includes some of the best hospitals within India and provide essential drugs free of charge. The state run hospitals are often underfinanced and understaffed forcing many individuals to seek treatment at private facilities. India’s health care infrastructure contains some entities that meet or exceed international quality standards; and is seeing an increase in medical tourism where foreigners are going to India to receive treatment at the same quality level or higher for a lower cost basis. Germany’s health care system is the oldest nationalized health care system beginning in 1883 and has evolved over the last one hundred years to be better for individuals and keep costs down.America should avoid an entirely government run health care system. Our system of government has consistently shown a lack of management skills for large scale programs such as social security.  America presently has some of the best private research hospitals in the world and if these hospitals were to go to government management we would lose research potential.  In some regions and cities hospitals have had difficulties remaining open from lack of funding and would find benefits in being government run.  The current health insurance system is broken in that if a person suffers from chronic long term conditions insurance is either denied or offered at a higher cost. Insurance premiums increase based on the perceived higher medical risk group; the government uses Medicare to help the senior citizens maintain medical coverage and even these premiums are increasing.  Individuals who shop for lower premiums each year leave these high-risk groups and enter new groups; the original group’s premium continues to increase as the overall risk factor for the group rises making the premiums too high for continued use. Medical tourism in America is increasing sending the currency our country needs to correct itself to other parts of the world for surgical procedures, medicines, and dietary supplements.America should turn to a multi-tiered health care system which combines government with private health care. A government program in which a base percentage of each person’s paycheck is placed it into an individual’s health account. Twenty percent of the amount taken should be held by the government and placed into a group pool to help finance those who are unable to afford the basic level insurance package. This individual’s health account can then be designated to pay a choice of health insurance programs chosen among both government insurance options and private options. Over time with proper management these accounts could build surpluses to continue to pay insurance premiums on into retirement. Private insurance would need to remain competitively priced with the government packages to receive customers. In addition to the government subsidized insurance programs a system of clinics, hospitals and regional specialty hospitals should be setup to provide affordable treatment. Private institutions would need to be relatively affordable in order to stay competitive with the government run institutions.

When he was out from under the car he just laid there dazed and I picked him up and hopped into the car and took him to the nearest vet since ours is about thirty minutes away. He was bleeding from his chin but nothing else noticeable.

Well we got him to the vet and he was already starting to act himself again but we took him to get checked anyways. After waiting to hear if there was any major damage we found out the he appeared ok except for the scraped chin and maybe some bruising on his left side. The wanted to run xrays(almost $300) and also keep him for observation overnight($80) and give him pain killers($40) and antibiotics($80) to the tun of $511.64 and included the $27 exam fee.

By the time they gave us the estimate he was already walking around and wanting to jump off the table or jumping on us. We decided to just pay the exam fee and monitor him ourselves and make sure there was no blood in his urine or stool, the vet suggested we use betadine to keep the wound clean. When we got back home we contacted a friend of ours who is a vet’s assistant to ask her advice and she suggested we give him some baby aspirin(Buffered aspirin) for any pain and use some polysporin ointment since she knows how fussy our dog can be sometimes and how betadine works, she also wanted to make it clear that this is just a suggestion and not medical advice. So we went and spent about $25 on baby aspirin and polysporin ointment and used that on him.

We gave him the baby aspirin following this charts advice.
Note: This is not medical advice.
Weight of dog in pounds (or kilograms) Number of tablets each 12 hours mg
8 lbs (3.6 kg) 1/2 baby aspirin or less 40 mg
16 lbs (7.2 kg) 1 baby aspirin 80 mg
32 lbs (14.4 kg) 1/2 adult or 2 baby 160 mg
48 lbs (21.6 kg) 3/4 adult or 3 baby 240 mg
64 lbs (28.8 kg) 1 adult or 4 baby 320 mg
80 lbs (36 kg) 1 1/4 adult or 5 baby 400 mg
96 lbs (43.2 kg) 1 1/2 adult or 6 baby 480 mg

In the past we have given him a benadryl for a bee sting following her advice since we were camping together and his poor chin was so swollen that time.

I am happy to say that it has been almost four days now and he is perfectly fine, unfortunately he still has no fear of the street, and still will try and run out into it if we don’t have him on a leash, which we do keep him on a leash outside of the house. There are some medicines out there that we take over the counter that dogs can take and even some for cats but they are not necessarily the same since some of what are safe for dogs are poisonous to cats.

It was a scary time and I think if we had taken him to our vet I believe she would have given close to the same since she is one of those country vets that has no issue using the less costly alternatives, still probably wanted the xrays but she would understand. I would have prefered to get the xrays and have better confidence myslef but what they want was rediculous.

If you have an Xbox 360 you probably already know you can watch your Netflix online content through it on your tv. But what about Hulu  and if you have a Playstation 3 or Wii what can you do. Aside from getting an HTPC and dealing with all of that there are cheaper and maybe a little easier way. With such programs as Tversity, Boxee, or Playon you can watch Hulu and many other internet tv free providers on your tv. There are also devices like Roku out or coming out that provide watching Netflix on them and an expanding content providers.

Tversity turns your computer into a multimedia server. It is a free program and there is a Pro version which is currently free but you can pay a fee to get a license also if you like the program. Tversity Pro adds the ability to stream Hulu video and alot of other internet media providers to a UPnP capable device such as an XBox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii among other devices. From some testing I found that Tversity streams files on your hard drive seamlessly while the Hulu streaming is a little choppy. Tversity also serves up your audio, video and picture content to these devices if they have the capability.

Playon from Mediamall is similar to Tversity in that it is also a multimedia server. With this program you have a 14 day trial before you have to pay $39.99 for it but if you wait you can catch a $10 discount on it. Hulu streams fairly well and I didn’t see any choppyness, one current bug which many people have reported and I experienced is the Hulu black screen of death as some are calling it when it goes to a black screen as a pause but never recovers and requires restarting the whole video, mediamall says they are working to correct this issue. Through plugins you can add additional content providers and there are currently many out there.

Boxee is a free program to run on your computer and control the different content providers in one application. I have not tried this program yet but it in order to display on your tv you need to hook up your computer to the tv.

I am sure there are more options out there and more extender type devices. Do some shopping around and you should be able to find your best deal for your situation.  I totally believe that through these options you can replace your cable tv as long as you maintain a broadband or high speed internet service.

You just have to pay shipping and handling. These are nice little books and I have always admired them. Since I tend to take a ton of digital pictures and never print them out this is a good idea.

This is a great way to save money, help out your neighbors and still get things done. Have a circular saw you are willing to lend post it up there, got a ladder post it, need a vacuum do a search. It is a good thing to do and help build a better community, along with allowing you to better network.

I would say abut 80% of the shirts I wear I have gotten for free. They are either promotional shirts for one company or another, or shirts I got from work for one milestone or another. 2-3% are shirts I have that are still in relatively good condition from high school some 13-14 years ago kindof amazing to me. The rest are shirts I either bought over 8 years ago or have recieved as presents from family and friends for christmas or birthdays.

Pants are a different story I seem to buy about 1-2 pairs a year, I normally try to get good quality pants but that gut of mine seems to be expanding a little bit each year. A few of these have been presents but I primarily buy my pants.

Socks and underwear I tend to buy a package about once a year. I still have many socks that I have had for years, and the same goes for my boxers.

I think you can say I am a really frugal person when it comes to clothing, what I do buy I tend to buy on sale and decent quality. And what I don’t buy I got for free.

Now what I do is pay half of each bill each payday. This doesn’t sound like it would do much but it does help even out the expenditures and then I know for sure what is left in the account is excess to be used for things as groceries and gas. One thing you will want to make sure of is that you are paying the proper amounts. You will also get about an extra months payment made each year since 26 paydays equate into 13 paired payments.

It is nice knowing I have each of my bills paid biweekly, I do suggest rechecking the amount owed at least quarterly, especially for those bills that are based on usage. When I set up all of mine I rounded up to the next dollar, and on some I actually set it to $5 over each pay period, which is great for making sure the bills is paid but also leads to having money basically sitting at the payees bank accounts and not yours. I recently went through and checked to make sure I had everything current and found on some accounts I had a full months payment and then some as credit, and on another they sent me a letter to stop sending in payments and that they would tell me when to start sending payments again since I wound up paying a years worth of service in credit how did that happen you may wonder is well it was a bill I got bimonthly and I had accidentally set it up to pay the full amount biweekly.

If you have debt that you are paying off and it is et to a yearly schedule this will get you and extra months payment made each year, and with the changes in laws that have come out relatively recentlyfor most debt types this means an extra months payment torwards the principal directly instead of interest like companies used to do if you didn’t designate. 

One nice thing about this is after it has been established for awhile and if you have credits, not necessarily a good thing, and you need some extra money one pay period you could set the bank to skip a payment to those payess that you have at least one pay period amount of credit ahead and use that extra money for what you need.

Now with a CD ladder you are attempting to capture the higher interest rates and also maintain some liquidity of your funds. This is just another tool for your quest for income streams.

So can you play games and still make money, sure you can, just don’t expect to get rich fast. To really have a chance of winning at these you need to have a good knowledge of the stock market and the time to make day trades. But these are also really good learning tools since they are based off of the stock market and you don’t have to invest any money to play around with the stocks.

You are in effect buying yourself a piece of farmland and letting someone else farm it for you as you lease it to them. From looking over their site it seems that you would get about a possible 5% return on the investment. You do lose liquidity of the money but you also gain an annual income from the property. You can also take out loans against the property if you need to.

So if you want another investment to help round out your portfolio and you have the minimum investment amount required this may be for you.