The United States spent approximately $2.2 trillion on health care in 2007, or $7,421 per person.

Annually, federal and state governments pay 75% of the $56 billion in uncompensated care provided to the uninsured.

At least 46 million Americans are uninsured, more than 85% of whom are in working families. Without wellness and preventive care, families suffer and their care drives up costs throughout the system.

28 million uninsured Americans are small business owners, employees, and their families.

On average, small businesses pay up to 18 percent more than large firms for the same health insurance policy.

Since 2000, employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have more than doubled.

As a result of crushing health care costs, American businesses are losing their ability to compete in the global marketplace. The burden is particularly heavy on small businesses.

Without comprehensive health insurance reforms, family premiums are projected to increase an average of $1,800 each year.

In 2007, 60% of bankruptcies were reported to be related to medical costs.

Since the recession began, an estimated 4 million additional Americans have lost their health insurance - and are currently losing coverage at an average of 10,680 workers each day.

The economic consequences of uninsurance are enormous, with an estimated lost productivity of roughly $76 to $152 billion in a year.

Premiums will continue to skyrocket. Our deficit will continue to grow. And, insurance companies will continue to profit by discriminating against sick people.

Reform will provide more stability and security to every American.

If you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of high-quality, affordable coverage for yourself and your family. If you have health insurance, like your doctor and your health care plan, you do not have to change anything.

Coverage stays with you whether you move, change your job or lose your job, so you are not forced to stay in one job, or limited in job options.

Reform means bringing skyrocketing health care costs under control, which will mean real savings for families, businesses and our government.

It will cut hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies that do nothing to improve care, but everything to improve their profits.

More tax dollars would go directly to caring for seniors instead of enriching insurance companies, not only helping to provide for today’s seniors but also ensuring the survival of Medicare for tomorrow’s seniors. It will reduce the amount our seniors pay for their prescription drugs and eventually close the donut hole.

Routine checkups, preventive care and screening tests, like mammograms and colonoscopies will be covered. Diagnosing diseases, like breast cancer and prostate cancer early saves lives and money.

Insurance companies will not be able to discriminate against Americans because of pre-existing illness or condition, refuse to cover a specific illness or condition or charge a higher premium. The will not be able to deny coverage because of your medical history, or drop your coverage if you get sick. They will not be able to water down your coverage when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year, or in a lifetime. A limit will be placed on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick.

Knowing all this, my question is, if we repeal ObamaCare, then what?

Sincerely,

Laurie Thorn

Harford, PA

It steals in silently, making not a sound; it is undetectable. Then it makes off with the most precious possession you have, not all of it, just an unmissed tiny portion. And it does this day-after-day. It is the perfect thief, committing the perfect crime.

That thief is radioactivity and that precious commodity is your life burglarized, bit-by-bit that adds up. For some their lives will end prematurely by days, for others by years.

This stealthy killer is streaming across the Pacific in wind and water from Fukushima, Japan, to the western U.S. and beyond. It is Japan's unwanted legacy of the tsunami that shattered four of its nuclear power plants 30 months ago and it's getting worse.

Japan's prime minister called the situation “urgent” and ordered the government to intervene following an admission by the privately owned Tokyo Electric Power Company that the situation in Fukushima had deteriorated. beyond its control.

For all of the hi-tech wizardry that makes-up a nuclear power plant, it is simply another way to boil water. The nuclear-heated water turns a steam turbine that generates electricity. The heat in the radioactive pellets contained in fuel rods that power a nuclear facility is ferocious. Even the heat from spent rods that are no longer needed must be controlled by submerging them in a storage pool of cooling water.

But if the cooling water fails and the fuel rods are exposed to air, they could spontaneously ignite releasing their radioactive pellets. The temperature of the freed uranium pellets would quickly soar to a hellish 4,200 degrees Fahrenheit, about half as hot as the surface of the Sun.

The same is true for the active fuel rods in a live nuclear reactor. If the nuclear heat is not collared, the fuel rods will torch through its 8-inch thick steel containment vessel, drip down to the concrete floor of the reactor building, knife through that, and into the earth. That's what happened in Fukushima---the China syndrome in triplicate.

No, the molten pools of uranium won't sizzle through to China. They will diffuse into amorphous masses when they contact an aquifer. Here they will be flashed-steamed, venting at the surface to create a volcanic landscape of radioactive fumaroles. This appears to be happening right now.

“A lot of the cracking came up in the ground, massive steam is coming up,” said a Fukushima plant employee.

Not surprising since the disabled power plants sit right atop a freshwater aquifer. Radioactive elements have already penetrated this vital aquifer that flows south, 135 miles to Tokyo where it supplies drinking water to its 13 million inhabitants. The radioactivity in Tokyo's water now exceeds the safety standards for infants to drink.

In Fukushima, forty percent of the children have radiation-induced thyroid problems. This can stunt their growth, cause mental retardation, and cancer.

There is yet a more alarming prospect. Water runoff used to cool the fuel rods is causing the ground that supports the disabled reactors to subside. This threatens to topple reactor building No. 4, which already lists at a precarious angle.

Building No. 4 contains 1,535 spent fuel rods. Each rod weighs 660 pounds and is an unwieldy 15 feet long. These fragile rods must be removed by a manually operated crane from the unstable building and transported to another cooling pool.

The operation is fraught with danger. But to do nothing is to gamble that a minor earthquake won't send the tilted building and its 500 tons of fuel rods crashing 100 feet to the ground. This could make all that has gone before seem like party time.

If building No. 4 crashes, the radiation released could be 14,000 times that of the Hiroshima A-bomb blast. “The whole northern hemisphere is at risk of becoming largely uninhabitable,” said U.S. Army General Albert Stubblebine.

While the rods are being removed, Japanese workers must continue to flood the three reactors with 300 tons of cooling water every day. They cannot stop.

Meanwhile, 800 tons of “hot” water from leaks, spills, groundwater, and runoff, is discharged daily into the ocean. While above the crippled reactors a miasmic cloud of radioactive steam wafts skyward, later to precipitate as tainted rain on the stricken nation.

The EPA has reported radioactive showers in at least eight states including Pennsylvania. This has caused 14,000 U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after Fukushima, according to the International Journal of Health Services. No such epidemiological study has been done in Japan.

The melt-downs at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were calamities. But the melt-throughs at Fukushima are catastrophes. For two-and-a-half years they have defied all efforts to contain them.

And there is absolutely no indication than anyone on either side of the Pacific knows how to staunch the lethal flow of life-shortening radioactivity that now encircles the entire northern hemisphere.

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA