As U.S. struggles with health reform, the Amish go their own way - Yahoo News

 

While practices vary by community, most Amish fund their health care through a system that merges church aid, benefit auctions and negotiated discounts with local hospitals - promising quick cash payment in exchange for lower rates.

"The way they come together to pay for health care is amazing," said Jan Bergen, chief operating officer at Lancaster General Health. "It's a tithing. Their sense of responsibility extends beyond themselves and to the community."

As U.S. struggles with health reform, the Amish go their own way - Yahoo News

As U.S. struggles with health reform, the Amish go their own way - Yahoo News

 

But it is not the idea of health insurance the Amish reject - the close-knit communities essentially insure themselves.

"We have our own health care," said a retired Amish carpenter, who like other Amish interviewed for this story, asked that his name not be used because of a traditional aversion to publicity and bringing attention to oneself.

"They (hospitals) give you a bill," he said. "If you can't pay it, your church will."

As U.S. struggles with health reform, the Amish go their own way - Yahoo News

Feds spend up to $14.5 billion annually on animal testing | The Daily Caller

 

According to an analysis of government data, the National Institutes of Health spends between $12 billion and nearly $14.5 billion on animal testing every year. According to NIH documents, about 47 percent of research grants have an animal research-based component. This number has been fairly stable over the last decade.

Feds spend up to $14.5 billion annually on animal testing | The Daily Caller

A Very Small Place in Hell - The New York Sun

 

We’ve always liked a trick question about the end of the war. When the 94th United States Congress finally pulled the plug on free Vietnam, how many American combat troops were still there? We once guessed something on the order of 100,000. It turns out that when the Congress pulled the plug on Vietnam, the number of our U.S. combat troops in Vietnam was zero. When, in the 1974 elections, the Democrats widened their majority in the Congress and then, in the spring of 1975, finally defied President Ford and ended support for the free Vietnamese, the number of uniformed Americans of any kind was but dozens, mostly embassy guards.

A Very Small Place in Hell - The New York Sun

Lee Harvey Oswald in the Soviet Union - WSJ.com

 

Oswald thought he had ventured to the Soviet Union in the service of some ideology or cause, but that was a lie he told himself. In Russia, Oswald hoped to find what his mother had never provided for him: a home, a stable landscape of friends and neighbors, buildings, routines, ideas, vocabularies. He thought that he wanted to do battle with the capitalists. "In the event of a war, I would kill any American who put a uniform on in defense of the American government," he wrote to his brother—but the security organs knew what he really wanted.

Lee Harvey Oswald in the Soviet Union - WSJ.com

Where's sense of crisis in a 17% government shutdown? | WashingtonExaminer.com

 

I asked a Republican source on the Senate Budget Committee for an estimate. This was the answer: "Based on estimates drawn from CBO and OMB data, 83 percent of government operations will continue. This figure assumes that the government pays amounts due on appropriations obligated before the shutdown ($512 billion), spends $225 billion on exempted military and civilian personnel, pays entitlement benefits for those found eligible before the shutdown (about $2 trillion), and pays interest costs when due ($237 billion). This is about 83 percent of projected 2014 spending of $3.6 trillion."

Where's sense of crisis in a 17% government shutdown? | WashingtonExaminer.com

Articles: Here Comes the Sun: Global Warming and the Perversion of Science

 

The sun is now at the peak of solar cycle 24, which was slow to begin and is relatively weak compared to its predecessors.  This cycle is similar to Number 5, which ran from the late 1790s into the 1800s, a time known as the Dalton Minimum.  That period featured unusually cold temperatures worldwide.

Articles: Here Comes the Sun: Global Warming and the Perversion of Science