There is no place in a healthy relationship for sarcasm.

Some may excuse their sarcasm suggesting they are just kidding, or they don't really mean it, or they were just giving their spouse a "bad time."

The truth is, both the giver and receiver of sarcasm are well aware of the meaning and underlying purpose in it. It is a rather passive aggressive way of criticizing; being rude in a more "acceptable" way, subtly hurting another while maintaining room for denial.

Regardless of what one wants to call it, regardless of how one wants to minimize it, regardless of how one wants to pretend there is no meaning behind it, sarcasm leaves a sting.

Thomas Caryle once wrote that, "sarcasm is the language of the devil."

He understood that their is a subtle cruelty to sarcasm that hurts and leaves its mark.

In a healthy relationship, sarcasm should not exist.

If there are issues in a relationship that need addressing, they should be addressed, worked on, discussed. They should be dealt with, with openness, care, and concern.

They should not be harbored and repressed only expressing themselves in inappropriate ways either by lashing out with criticism or sarcasm.

If your relationship is filled with your expressions of sarcasm, best explore what is behind the need for the sarcastic comments and expression.

Once one comes to terms with their own need for responding with sarcasm, she/he can find more appropriate and healthy ways to address whatever it is that is bothersome.

Sarcasm is a sign of intelligence.
Most dumb people can't use or understand sarcasm.

Facts on the Cost of Health Insurance and Health Care

Health care spending continues to rise at a rapid rate forcing businesses to cut back on health insurance coverage and forcing many families to cut back on basic necessities such as food and electricity and, in some cases, shelters and homes.

Experts agree that our health care system is riddled with inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management and inappropriate care, waste and fraud. These problems increase the cost of medical care associated with government health programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and health insurance for employers and workers and affect the security of families.

National Health Care Spending

National health spending is expected to reach $2.5 trillion in 2009, accounting for 17.6 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). By 2018, national health care expenditures are expected to reach $4.4 trillion—more than double 2007 spending.1

National health expenditures are expected to increase faster than the growth in GDP: between 2008 and 2018, the average increase in national health expenditures is expected to be 6.2 percent per year, while the GDP is expected to increase only 4.1 percent per year. 1

In just three years, the Medicare and Medicaid programs will account for 50 percent of all national health spending. 1

Medicare's Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund is expected to pay out more in hospital benefits and other expenditures this year than it receives in taxes and other dedicated revenues. In addition, the Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) Trust Fund that pays for physician services and the prescription drug benefit will continue to require general revenue financing and charges on beneficiaries that will grow substantially faster than the economy and beneficiary incomes over time. 2

According to one study, of the $2.1 trillion the U.S. spent on health care in 2006, nearly $650 billion was above what we would expect to spend based on the level of U.S. wealth versus other nations. These additional costs are attributable to $436 billion outpatient care and another $186 billion of spending related to high administrative costs. 3

Employer and Employee Health Insurance Costs

Over the last decade, employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have increased 131 percent. 4

Employees have seen their share of job-based coverage increase at nearly the same rate during this period jumping from $1,543 to $3,515.4

The cumulative increase in employer-sponsored health insurance premiums rose at four times the rate of inflation and wage increases during last decade. This increase has made it much more difficult for businesses to continue to provide coverage to their employees and for those workers to afford coverage themselves.4

The average employer-sponsored premium for a family of four costs close to $13,400 a year, and the employee foots about 27 percent of this cost.4 Health insurance costs are the fastest growing expense for employers. Employer health insurance costs overtook profits in 2008, and the gap grows steadily. 5

Total health insurance costs for employers could reach nearly $850 billion by 2019. Individual and family spending will jump considerably from $326 billion in 2009 to $550 billion in 2019.6

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that job-based health insurance could increase 100 percent over the next decade.7 Employer-based family insurance costs for a family of four will reach nearly $25,000 per year by 2018 absent health care reform.7

The Impact of Rising Health Care Costs

Economists have found that rising health care costs correlate with significant drops in health insurance coverage, and national surveys also show that the primary reason people are uninsured is due to the high and escalating cost of health insurance coverage.8

A recent study found that 62 percent of all bankruptcies filed in 2007 were linked to medical expenses. Of those who filed for bankruptcy, nearly 80 percent had health insurance.9

According to another published article, about 1.5 million families lose their homes to foreclosure every year due to unaffordable medical costs.10

Without health care reform, small businesses will pay nearly $2.4 trillion dollars over the next ten years in health care costs for their workers, 178,000 small business jobs will be lost by 2018 as a result of health care costs, $834 billion in small business wages will be lost due to high health care costs over the next ten years, small businesses will lose $52.1 billion in profits to high health care costs and 1.6 million small business workers will suffer “job lock“— roughly one in 16 people currently insured by their employers. 11

Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies
By Theresa Tamkins, CNN, June 2009
This year, an estimated 1.5 million Americans will declare bankruptcy. Many people may chalk up that misfortune to overspending or a lavish lifestyle, but a new study suggests that more than 60 percent of people who go bankrupt are actually capsized by medical bills.

Bankruptcies due to medical bills increased by nearly 50 percent in a six-year period, from 46 percent in 2001 to 62 percent in 2007, and most of those who filed for bankruptcy were middle-class, well-educated homeowners, according to a report that will be published in the August issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

"Unless you're a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you're one illness away from financial ruin in this country," says lead author Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., of the Harvard Medical School, in Cambridge, Mass. "If an illness is long enough and expensive enough, private insurance offers very little protection against medical bankruptcy, and that's the major finding in our study."

Woolhandler and her colleagues surveyed a random sample of 2,314 people who filed for bankruptcy in early 2007, looked at their court records, and then interviewed more than 1,000 of them.

They concluded that 62.1 percent of the bankruptcies were medically related because the individuals either had more than $5,000 (or 10 percent of their pretax income) in medical bills, mortgaged their home to pay for medical bills, or lost significant income due to an illness. On average, medically bankrupt families had $17,943 in out-of-pocket expenses, including $26,971 for those who lacked insurance and $17,749 who had insurance at some point.

Overall, three-quarters of the people with a medically-related bankruptcy had health insurance, they say. ....
Full Article: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/05/bankruptcy.medical.bills/

A recent report by the New America Foundation's health-policy program estimates that the cost of doing nothing about health care, including poor health and shorter lifespan of the uninsured, is well above $200 billion a year and rising. That's enough to cover the uninsured and still have some left over for other public-health needs.

Health-insurance inflation will continue to outpace wages; the average cost of an employer-sponsored insurance plan for a family would reach $24,000 in 2016, an 84 percent increase from today. At least half of U.S households would need to spend more than 45 percent of their income to pay for insurance -- while the coverage itself would be sparser. Health costs would further undermine the ability of U.S. manufacturers to compete internationally, threaten the stability of U.S. jobs, and deepen the burden on local, state, and federal budgets

Activists and advocates might focus on access, outcomes, and equity. But "what's really moved health care to the forefront is costs," said Drew E. Altman, president and CEO of the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, summing up months of Kaiser public-opinion research. "It's an economic issue. The combination of health-care costs on working people with other economic burdens -- mortgage, rent, fuel -- are just devastating."

"There's a growing sense of crisis that health care will be unaffordable ... and that the little insurance we have will be increasingly worthless," said Dr. Elliott Fisher, one of the main forces behind the Dartmouth Atlas, the bible of U.S. health-care irrationality. "And there's a sense of crisis about public health, about the need to refocus the system on prevention, on health promotion, on the growing burden of chronic disease."

GOP healthcare plan isn't about helping the uninsured
November 8, 2009 By David Lazarus
Among other things, the proposal would actually increase the number of people without health insurance over the next decade. But it allows the Republicans to say they offered a cheaper alternative.

Republican lawmakers issued their own healthcare reform plan the other day, and you'd have to look hard to find a more cynical document purporting to represent the best interests of the American people.

How does the GOP plan fail at addressing our core problems of 47 million people lacking coverage and runaway medical costs? Let us count the ways.

First off, the plan actually increases the number of uninsured over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. By 2019, the CBO estimates, we'd have no fewer than 52 million non-elderly people without health coverage.

The Republican plan would allow insurers to cross state lines in offering their policies but would exempt them from many consumer-protection laws outside their home state.

Insurers would still be able to deny coverage to people with preexisting medical problems.

Employers wouldn't have to offer health insurance to workers.

Lower-income people would receive no additional assistance buying coverage for their families.

Needless to say, there's no mention of a public insurance option.

Perhaps the sole merit to the Republican reform plan is its price tag -- $61 billion over 10 years. But considering that it does virtually nothing to address current problems, and in some ways only makes those problems worse, taxpayers might wonder what exactly they're paying for.

"This doesn't do much to accomplish the goals that most people have for healthcare reform," said Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a Washington think tank.

"At the top of that list has to be getting more people covered, and this wouldn't do that."
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Funny that they never had significant problems till the US interfered in the region.

Yeah and demanded full payment in gold bullion in exchange and btw that aid also went to Germany until 1942.

After meeting with them (Pakistani government officials) he was taken to a major Pakistan-based Afghan refugee camp so he could see for himself the atrocities committed by the Soviets against the Afghan people. About that visit, Wilson later said:

"That was the experience that will always be seared in my memory, was going through those hospitals and seeing, especially those children with their hands blown off from the mines that the Soviets were dropping from their helicopters. That was perhaps the deciding thing... and it made a huge difference for the next 10 or 12 years of my life because I left those hospitals determined, as long as I had a breath in my body and was a member in Congress, that I was going to do what I could to make the Soviets pay for what they were doing!"