Economic charts/graphs and discussions

The following are some sites that generate
Charts/Graphs, on , or discuss
the Economic situation.

07/31/09 , Last Update

Charts and Graphics

Dshort.com gives me {Doug Short. a retired first wave boomer with a Ph.D. in English from Duke. } a chance to combine several interests — economics, web design, and pro-bono financial counseling. I'm also a contributor to the Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement subscription service.

Visualizing Economics is an economics web site started in 2006 by Catherine Mulbrandon. I believe design can contribute to public debates by creating information-rich, easy-to-understand graphics revealing the meaning of data without hiding its complexity.

Political Interaction sites

There are a growing number of sites that allow use, the citizens to "help" interact with our political leaders. The following is a list of these,

Set priorities of the Adminstration

• White House 2 lets you set your own priorities for the United States

Develop you own bills

• Open Government -- This online brainstorming session, open from May 21st to 28th, 2009, will enable the White House to hear your most important ideas relating to open government.
• WikiGov (TBD)

Allocate the National Budget

• Budget hero seeks to provide a values- and fiscal-based lens for citizens to examine policy debates during this election year.
  

HealthCareUS-3

1) VOUCHERS -- Each person gets a yearly voucher to pay for the actuarial cost of their basic Health Care that can be used to purchase Health Insurance from any conforming health care insurance vendor.

• The actuarial cost = The median cost based on the risk factors, e.g. Age, Weight, Gender... for the person and the area in which the person lives, to provide the health care for that individual
  
  
• A conforming vendor = An insurance company who will accept all people and provide full payment for the covered treatments.
  
  
• Note: The Government, e.g. Medicare will be the default vendor but the vouchers will be augmented, primerally by having the goverment provide centrallized billing, payment, approval free, so that the other insurers will be able to make a reasonable profit from just providing equivalent service and can increase their profit by providing extras such as:
  

• Additional insurance -- Coverage for additional services can be offered at additional charges.
  
• Reduced medical treatment costs -- Any savings will be shared 50% 50% by the patient and the insurance company, see 2)
  
• Wellness support -- Any improvement in the patients risk factors will lead to a 50% - 50% savings for the first 5 years to the insurance company and the patient, and after that 50% to the patient.
  
• etc.
  

2) SAVINGS -- Any savings in treatment costs will be shared 50/50 by the patient and the insurance company.

• The patient and the insurance company can negotiate with the medical provider to obtain less expensive (equivalent) treatment,
  
  
• Such negotiation may be done with medical providers within the area, or by getting the treatment in other less costly areas throughout the world from certified facilities.
  
  
• Any savings will be shared by the patient and the insurance company so that both have "skin in the game", while still assuring that no one is denied treatment.
  
  
• Similarly: The insurance company can pay for wellness services, e.g. Weight Reduction, Cholesterol Drugs... and any reduction in risks will be shared for 5 years even if the patient enrolees in another plan. After 5 years the patient continues to be rebated 50% of the risk savings.
  

3) ADMINSTRATION -- The Government will offer to do all the Record Keeping, Billing, Paying, Results collection, etc. at no charge.

• This will be a mechanical process which will, in no way determine the HealthCareUS policies
  
  
• This is estimated to currently cost the insurance companies 10-30% of their costs and thus will be a "hidden" subside to the independent insurers.
  
  
• Obviously, if the insurance company has negotiated a different rate, they can get a rebate from the medical provider to be shared with the patient.
  
  
• Any rebates will be reported to the government to be used to adjust the median costs for next year's vouchers.
  
  
• This will centralize the Doctors billing and approval for the HealthCareUS procedures so that the Doctors paper load is decreased.
  
  
• The results of the procedures will also be reported to the government so that the Cost/Benefit for various procedures can be computed by them or other interested parties.
  
  
• This will also allow the quality of medical care can be made available to the insurers and the patients so that they can determine which providers to support.
  
  
• If an insurance company is accepting HealthCareUS vouchers then it must at least report the costs and results of their services.
  

4) COVERAGE -- The procedures covered by the HelthCareUS will be determined as those that have highest benefit within the amount of money allocated by the government/tax payer.

• Note: Any additional procedure can be covered by additional insurance or by direct payment for the patient, as is done now
  
  
• Note: Any plan must determine which procedures they will cover, so does HealthCareUS, but in this case, those procedures are determined by the amount of money that we democratically determine to spend and then by the procedures that are most cost effective, rather than by some bureaucrat or CEO.

5) GRANDFATHERING -- Any current plan will be "grandfathered" in except that the tax benefit will be limited to the Voucher amount and any tax benefit over 50% of the voucher will be available only if the current plan provides at least the coverage of the HealthCareUP plan.

Also see:

• Toward a 21st-Century Health Care System: Recommendations for Health Care Reform, Arrow...
• Why markets can’t cure healthcare - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com
  
• Uncertainty and the welfare economics of health care - Kenneth Arrow
  
• Vote: YES or NO , results , poll comments (please use the WeMatter area)
  
• HealthCareUS (12/08/2008),
  
• HealthCare goals (08/09/2007)
• A Comprehensive Cure: Universal Health Care Vouchers, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, R. Fuchs, - The Brookings Institution 07/01/2009
  
• Signing On to an Obama 'Dream'." - WSJ 05/12/2009
  

National Sunshine

Promote national sunshine (Preliminary) 0.1

Resolved: Until all Bills, Amendments, and Laws are posted days before they are discussed, voted on, or signed, I will contribute $4.00 a month to the opposition.

Background: The current national administration and representatives had committed that they would not take action on laws until they were posted 2-5 days on the internet. This commitment has been violated. This is important is it gives "We the People" a chance to understand the details of these potential laws and comment on them to our representative BEFORE they become law. Obviously not all bills will be read and understood by each of us, but the Internet allows them to be analyzed by the internet crowd and thus giving us a chance to see the implications of these bills.

Action: In order to give us this power, each Bill, Amendment, and Law must be available in FINAL form, on the internet, early enough so that it can be analyzed. I would prefer that they be available 7 days before they are officially discussed, voted on, or signed, thought the administration has proposed 2-5 days. Since they committed to post the bills and have not, I will contribute $1.00 to the opposition of the President and each of my Representatives, $4.00 in all, each month until there is a BINDING rule and the rule is followed. I suggest that others also follow this policy to show how important we feel it is that we can see what is being passed in our name soon enough that can have some effect on the laws.

Reference: For further information please see:

Petition site {TBD}
Pledge site {TBD}

HealthCareUS

Health care

1) - Vouchers -- Provide Health Care insurance vouchers for every American, roughly $5,000 to allow them to purchase a basic coverage.

1) Details -- The vouchers will be set at a level so that they will pay for the cost of providing treatment at median costs for all the procedures that are authorized. Of course this coverage is for basic treatment and does not cover all possible procedures, luxuaries (private rooms, etc.) which can be covered out of pocket or by extra cost insurance. By default the vouchers will be handled by the government, USHC e.g. Medicare, but can be transfered to aemployer or insurance company who offers similar or improved insurance.

2) - Opt-in -- Requre that all insurance companies, hospitals, Doctors, etc. either Opt-in to covering all and accepting the coverage for the defined treatments or accept no vouchers or payment under the systems and post a notice that they are not in the USHC system.

2) Details -- The insurance company can opt-in to compete with the USHC system if they feel they can offer the same or better service to all patients due to their added efficenty, better nogotiating skills, perhaps better pro-active care, etc. Note: Any insurance company can pay for pro-active care and will collect 100% of the estimated savings if the patient goes to another provider. Similarly the Doctor can either offer to treat the covered procedures at the median level of payment, or opt-out and have these procedures paid for by the patient or by insureance that is not accepting vouchers.

3) - Shared Savings -- If the patient can get the treatment for less from a certified provider, then they and the insurance company splits the savings.

3) Details -- This allows the patient to get treatment fully covered, or negotiate with the provider, in the area, in some other state, or even abroad, and get less expensive treatment and split the savings with the instrance providor. Thus the patient has some "skin in the game" giving him a reason for controlling the price of the treatments. Similarly the insurance company is encurraged to point the patient to less expensive treatment, while still allowing the patient full freedom to choose their own doctor. Note: This will allow competation not only within the local area, but also between other areas in the country and the world, if they can offer equivalent treatments.


Obliously, all the technical improvements that lead to more cost effective treatment and better patient information will be included.

Firefox Add-on (1)

Social & Comminications

• StumbleUpon lets you "channelsurf" the best-reviewed sies on the web. It is a collaborative surfing tool for finding and sharing great sites.
  
• iMacros was designed to automate the most repetitious tasks on the web. If there’s an activity you have to do repeatedly, just record it in iMacros. The next time you need to do it, the entire macro will run at the click of a button!
• Email This! will send your recipient the link, title, & highlighted text of the page you are viewing using GMail, Google Apps GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail and Stand-Alone Mail Clients like Outlook Express, Thunderbird, & More
• Fleck allows you to add Notes and Bullets to websites. You can then share these annotated pages with other people.

Browse Feeds, News & Blogging

• Rovr fetches posts from your favorite blogs about whatever you're browsing, showing summaries you can open in-place to read posts right on the page they’re about. Blogrovr also suggests popular items AND lets you Twitter about any site you're on too.
• Trailfire allows you to mark pages that you find interesting by leaving notes right there on page. These notes are linked together into trails that you organize any way you want that can be shared with others. -- June 25, 2007 — 12 KB
• Tags everywhere: shows related Del.icio.us tags on top of plain sites.
  In some cases extension shows related tags clouds below every item of sites list of some popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN-Live.com) and web2.0 news (Digg and Reddit).
• In the News: Highlight text in Firefox, right-click to see the latest related news stories. Mouse over any of the headlines to see a brief summary of the story. Click on any of the stories to have it open up in a new tab.— September 29, 2006 — 3 KB

Browse Photos, Music & Videos

• DownloadHelper: downloads the video directly on your file system from YouTube, MySpace, Google videos, DailyMotion, Porkolt, iFilm, DreamHost and others.

Browse Alerts & Updates

• Sparky is a free FireFox browser plugin built by Alexa,
  * Website Traffic Trend information -
  * traffic information including Reach and Rank -
  * Related Links for each page— July 18, 2007 — 46 KB

Search tools

• deliGoo: searches on the sites, indicated in your del.icio.us bookmarks. With its help you can find the necessary page according to any phrase or word, which it contains, deliGoo can create on your demand custom search engines on any del.icio.us tag.— September 15, 2007 — 14 KB
• SearchWords: (*) Assign keywords to your search engines for quick and easy access to all of your search engines without using the search bar and without having to switch from your current search engine.
  

UI tools

• MileWideBack: (*) back in the browser history by clicking on the left border of the window,forward by right-clicking , middle-click to close the current tab, or rotate the mouse-wheel to cycle through your current tabs. (For optimal usability, please make sure that your window in maximized.) — October 21, 2006 — 3 KB

Rss readers (Bookmarks)

• Brief makes reading RSS feeds as easy as it gets
  

HealthCare

Objectives of a Health Care system (HCS)

1. Universal "critical" treatment -- There are a number of deseases/treatments that we, as a society do not want to have un-treated, either because not treating them is not compasient or because not treating them will probably harm society. The HCS should ensure that these are treated.
   
2. Take advantage of Market for Pricing and Selection -- The Free Enterprise market is effective at ensuring that the cost of services is related to their benefits and thus any HSC system should allow the Market to encurrage people to reduce their "over utilization" of the system by charging them for the services and rewarding them for choosing the more inexpensive ways of getting the service that they need. Conversely the market shoulld be used to encurrage the service delivorers to be economical in their practice while also permitting them to offer a verity of services and convieniences as their end customers will pay for them.
3. Encurage preventive care and healthy behavior --
   
4. Information Technology application -- Computers, the Internet, etc. probably can be effectively used to reduce the costs, medical errors, and increase the job satisfaction by, say: 10%. The HCS system should have a program for a reasonably funded prject to develop the 'best of class medical IT techniques, an environment for profitizing their use, and ensuring that the barriors to their implication are eliminated.