America's Growing, Severe Doctor Shortage | D Day for Vatican Nuns | Dire News Coral Reefs Update
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Anne is reading …
2012 Election
Gallup reports that a majority of Americans would vote for a well-qualified atheist for president. This is the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 1958, when only 18 percent answered affirmatively about voting for a nonbeliver.
America’s Doctor Shortage
It’s good news that President Obama’s health care law will extend insurance coverage to more than 300,000 people by 2014. Yet another critical problem undercuts the American health care system. Estimates are than in 2015 America will have 62,900 fewer doctors than needed.
Without the new health care law, the US will have a shortage of over 100,000 doctors by 2025, much of it regional and city specific. Fewer than half of primary care clinicians were accepting new Medicaid patients in 2008, making it more difficult for the poor to gain treatment.
Other issues driving the future of health care in America include physicial compensation. Fewer doctors are choosing to become primary care doctors due to an average compensation of about $200,000 a year. Specialist make twce that much. Further complicating the medical care equation is the fact that younger doctors on average work fewer hours. And one third of America’s doctors are 55 or older and nearing retirement. Read on at the New York Times.
Catholic in America
CA Prop 8 Archbishop
The Vatican and America’s Catholic bishops are center stage this week, on multiple fronts. The new archbishops of San Francisco is a staunch gay-marriage foe, writes the San Francisco Chronicle.
The Vatican has named Salvatore Cordileone who played a key role in the passage of Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage in California, an archbishop. Prop 8 was overturned by a US District Court judge in 2010. In Feb 2012, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel affirmed the decision, declaring Popr 8 unconstitutional. The case is being appealed to the US Supreme Court.
D Day for American Nuns
The Leadership Conference of American nuns till meet in St. Louis this week, in a group decision about how to respond to the scathing critique issued against them this spring by the Vatican. The nuns will decide whether to cooperate with the three bishops appointed by the Vatican to supervise the overhaul of their organization, in an act of obedience.
The power struggle between the nuns and bishops has been building for decades.
“I admire religious men and women,” Cardinal Levada, the former head of the church’s doctrinal office, said in an interview with The National Catholic Reporter. “But if they aren’t people who believe and express the faith of the church, the doctrines of the church, then I think they’re misrepresenting who they are and who they ought to be. Read on at New York Times.
Anne of Carversville
Milou Van Groesen | Alique | Vogue Netherlands July/August 2012 | Riches of the Reef
This Vogue Netherlands editorial prompted us to update our several articles on the perilous state of the world’s coral reefs.
See all new fashion and style editorials.
Science & Governments Debate Doomed Future for Coral Reefs
Why are governments and environmentalists airbrushing the dire state of the world’s coral reefs, asks Roger Bradbury writing an op ed for the New York Times. Reality is that the world’s coral reefs — the nurseries of tropical coastal fish stocks — are zombie ecosystems, crushed under the weight of overfishing, ocean acidification and pollution.
