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3% wealth tax on over $10 million euros in asset holdings in France proposed by the Socialists and accepted by Lecornu's new government in France. Similar tax proposals to this one could raise in the range of $27 billion, that combined with other action could provide France the resources needed for its economy and for new infrastructure and tackling cost of living concerns of the people of France.

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France moves to a mandatory health pass for most activities as cases rise 150% from 7000 last week to 18,000 week of July 20.

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Germany, the UK and Canada offer additional models for health care insurance that vastly improve results for dollar spent over the dysfunctional U.S. model. Here Jamie Daw take a look at the German social health insurance system which dates back to hte period of Bismarck in 1884. The German system is funded through progressive taxation which charges for healthcare based on incomes not on health needs.

About 100 nonprofit health insurers provide insurance and all Germans are required to have health insurance. Contributions to sickness funds are centrally pooled and allocated using a formula to insurers. Insurers can only charge small out of pocket fees limited to 2% of income annually. Sickness funds combine market power to negotiate lower prices.

Administrative and governance costs are 3% in Canadian system and 5% in the German system. 

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The NYT gives a graphic visual that shows what is in the biggest climate bill in history. The bill reduces health care cost, changes taxation of corporations paying little or no tax, and invests in renewable energy. It also reduces the deficit by $300 billion. Common sense approaches such as Medicare negotiating with pharmaceutical companies for medicines it buys for the public are also put into law - an egregious fault of the way politics was distorting fairness in America is corrected, saving taxpayers about $100 billion that is then invested in tackling climate change and assisting clean manufacturing of renewable energy.

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Doctor are suffering from a "demoralization syndrome" says Eric Reinhart, physician at Northwestern University. He sites one study that shows universal access to health care in America could have prevented at least 338,000 deaths during the pandemic. Overwork comes from physicians retiring from the healthcare workforce in large numbers. In 2021 117,000 physicians retired and only 40,000 physicians joined the workforce. Another 20% will retire in 5 years. Burnout itself comes from a realization that the system is failing its people and you are working within it without the social and cultural narratives that supported previous generations of physicians. It is these narratives of honesty and service that are the essential parts of the human condition that are lacking without access to good health care for all the people and the education to promote good health.

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RFK Jr popular for health agenda MAHA, to make America Healthy Again, supports Republican candidates facing tough elections because of cost of living pressures. Republicans launch an all out effort to keep majorities in the House and the Senate to preserve the DJT agenda on immigration, on world trade, on infrastructure building, and on foreign policy/defense. This includes working to keep Hormuz open, find alternative oil supplies, and reducing the cost of living pressures ordinary Americans feel.

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This NYT report shows the extent of frustration with delay, dispute and denial as a practice in the US health insurance industry. Much of the comment in social media focused on this frustration. Between 2020-22 the number of denials doubled to 25% for UnitedHealthcare in its handling of claims by patients.

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Added sugar is the big culprit in the way we age, and in our general health, the diseases we get. This is not just about obesity, its about metabolic health- getting only the amount of sugar that is good for us. Unknowingly if we are not careful, not checking labels and without any advantage we end up taking added sugar when we eat packaged foods. About 70% of packaged foods contain this added sugar. Most adults in the U.S. and other countries get 17 teaspoons of added sugar a day or twice the 9 teaspoons that is recommended for men and three times the 6 teaspoons a day recommended for women. For children the recommended limit is 3 teaspoons. Just by being a bit careful and removing this added sugar from our diet we can enjoy much better health. It is not giving us much because we can still have some sugar in healthy natural foods, in fruits and vegetables, and a smaller amount of plain sugar. After the first couple of days of a change one may not even notice this. By so much has our sugar intake grown particularly with packaged foods, that a small change can bring big results in health and healthy living style. ...

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Italy and France have implemented vaccine passes. The health pass in France has helped to reverse the trend of waning vaccinations. In the two weeks after the vaccine health pass was made mandatory in France for cafes, transport and restaurants, the vaccinations for second dose increased by 6 million and the vaccination for first dose increased by 5 million. In Italy vaccinations increased by 200%.

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Schools, shops, restaurants, cafes and offices are reopening and people are getting back to work and outdoors. What are the ways to reduce chances of getting the coronavirus and what is the latest advice from public health experts.  More attention is now being given by CDC and other experts to the aerosols, the smaller particles that are airborne that can spread the virus to people unawares in breathing, talking and singing activities. larger droplets come down to the ground, smaller droplets can be airborne for hours. This makes masks wearing very important, call it essential protection. Air filtration and proper ventilation is also important. What about social distancing? Experts now say 6 feet is good, 10 feet is better. This is from Joseph Allen director of the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard School of Public Health. No magic number but 6-10 feet or more is good for safety. Can one start expanding one's social circle? The fewer contacts the better says Dr. Allen. You can he says expand the circle but this depends a lot on how serious the other family is in taking precautions. Are elevators risky? If one can one should take stairs but do not board a crowded elevator unless the lobby is more crowded. Do not touch buttons, if you do use elbow or use sanitizer from your shirt pocket after pressing. This is where mask is essential. Here a tip is useful. Talking does not help as talking emits 10 times the particles than when you are quiet and this is true for small spaces such as elevators. Continual talk is not a good idea such as a long time spent talking, here watch that habit of getting into long conversations face to face.  Is it good to take a summer vacation. Here the answer is yes, as no one really knows how the winter will be. And remember outdoors is good for renewal of health, and one can look for places that are not crowded where the 10-12 feet or more can be easily done. One tip here is to take your own food and supplies from home so there is no need to go to crowded restaurants. Swimming in a lake or ocean is fine. Camping outdoors is fine and actually a good idea if you are with your own family. Try to use an empty restroom and one that is clean and wear the mask. While camping keep the 6-10 foot rule with people outside your immediate family, do not share food and drinks and try not to touch each other's supplies, and sanitize your hands or wash if you do. When hiking keep the mask in your pocket so you can wear it when you see others passing on trails. In hotels skip the cleaning service, in a rented property ask the owner to keep the windows open before you arrive, and put a day or two between your coming and the last person who rented the place. Renting a car is tricky allow a couple of hours to elapse between you and the last rental, open windows. Public restrooms. Always wear a mask many are poorly ventilated. Open the door without use of hands if possible,or use a paper towel to open and discard. Do not use air dryers. Is it safe for your house cleaning person to return. Keep the windows open to let in fresh air. Make sure your cleaner wears gloves. And all should wear masks. How to visit grandparents? Experts advise keeping visits outside and wearing masks when not 6-10 feet apart. Anyone not feeling healthy should avoid the visit. And bathrooms should be sanitized after people leave even wait a day if there is another bathroom. Experts advise against sharing food and buffet type meals. Ten feet distance is better than six feet. Can one use a gym? Here the advice is to exercize outdoors or at home if one can. It says be cautious unless your gym is limiting the number of people or spacing the equipment adequately. Ask about open windows, air filtration systems, ventilation.  This is excellent advice from experts with the latest information. Over the last few months from March to May most of the information was during lockdown, and a lot can be forgotten or seen as not necessary as things return to normal, as shops schools and cafes, office reopen, and cases remain steady and under control. Being vigilant is good for safely navigating this period through the summer and into winter till a vaccine is found. It is also about being a good civic minded person aware of one's own responsibilities, as when all take safety seriously and practice it everyday, it builds another layer of protection for everybody- because it creates a safer environment for all.     ...

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The US House of Representatives voted 245-189 in favor of repealing the health care law. Only 3 Democrats joined the entire Republican caucus in voting for repeal, compared to 34 Democrats who voted in March 2010 against the health care law. This is a largely symbolic move as the Democrat controlled Senate will not consider the repeal, and even if it did the President would veto it. Republicans favor some aspects of the health care law which allow children to be on the parent's insurance till age 26, and a ban on insurers denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Opinion polls show 46% of respondents opposed repealing and eliminating the law, and 45% favored repealing it. The health care issue ranks third among the economic issues important to respondents, behind unemployment and reducing the federal budget deficit.

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The place is Spain, see adjacent article on places within Spain. If you know Spanish that is an added advantage to talk to the locals. It has changed over the years. In the 1990's one could go to Madrid and freely walk out of the Puerta de Atocha main train station there with little traffic. Over the years after the financial crisis Madrid and Spain suffered. Under PM Pedro it has recovered. Yet it is not the same with international tourism from China, India, US having made visits crowded and less friendly. There is the garbage can index for tourism that tells you something is wrong when garbage cans are overflowing- it happened as tourism jumped to France in the last 2 decades- with garbage overflowing outside Notre Dame before renovation. (After 1993 Japan removed all garbage cans from streets.) About 100 million tourist visited France in 2024 and 80 million to Spain. It brings $100 billion in tourism receipts to Spain and about $80 billion each for France and UK, so that it is a key source of revenue for countries. How to make trips that avoid the rush - careful planning for season and month, finding the right places depending on one's interests nature, history, science, or other, and avoiding tours as there are plenty of resources to do it on one's own, finding right places to stay and visit, using local transport, tram and speed trains in Europe, giving enough time for each place, talking to locals and taking a lesson on Rocket languages online which uses locals and practices word pronunciation so you sound like a local. ...

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Krugman talks about the misunderstandings and the whole lot of misinformation that comes from advertising and political commentary. With one man telling a Congressman at a town hall meeting: "keep your government hands off my Medicare." In apolitically charged atmosphere this makes rational decisions in acalm thoughful environment difficult or impossible- when the influence of lobbying by the health care industry and the influence of interests on behalf of patients and other interests have already created a difficult situation.

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Satya Nadella - "we have to get society's permission" for what is done with AI. Nadella has an approach to AI to keep each company's human knowledge capital separate from AI, as its most valuable component of its operations. In the world he visualizes AI frontier models OpenAI, Gemini(Google) and Anthropic's Claude won't just keep saying they will use up all the resources they can use leaving little for education, healthcare and public services or infrastructure, and keep saying it will destroy all entry level and other white collar jobs, and the world will put up with that. His approach is to bring AI at a cost level that is much lower,including incorporating Chinese models for cost effectiveness. And at the same time making AI supplement each company's human capital working side by side so that jobs can be enhanced not destroyed willy nilly, in a careless random, disorganized way whether people like it or not because a few frontier AI models and their companies (Google, Anthropic and Open AI) have decided to do that. Nadella's thinking is worth listening to and reading about as it offers the first intelligent approach to making AI do what we want it to do for healthy societies. After all the destruction in world trade by shipping out supply chains by the US and Europe, after uncontrolled migration, after the loss of manufacturing and the good jobs that went with it, and the decision to reverse this and regain manufacturing and supply chains under both US presidents Biden and DJT, Nadella is right to conclude that society will not tolerate any more losses, and society is determined to retrieve losses from past mistakes. By preserving each company's human capital independent of AI Nadella is calling on individual leaders at all startup, midisized and large companies to have a clear idea of their precious human capital and set up AI independent of it at the company level to work alongside human capital. We at Lyrarc think this will give better results than no conscious approach that allows willy nilly the AI frontier models to shrivel the company's human capital and do what they are clearly incapable of doing in our view, which is to run companies or the principal functional areas of societies such as healthcare, transportation and public services. That even though Nadella does not say this is going to look good at first, then lead the company to catastrophic consequences of losing control of its own individual company's future and lead it to make huge mistakes that will be costly to correct and cause much damage to the Nation and its people. This is anew proposition that Nadella makes and should be grasped for a new approach, and constructive confrontations on this issue of how to incorporate AI at each company's level for hundreds of thousands of companies, alongside separate and supplementing the core strength of human capital, not displacing it to cause huge problems in future years. A company bereft of its human capital is a company bereft of what gives it life and vitality. ...

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The children's commissioner in the UK says the internet is a powerful and positive resource, but social media is a negative force from which children need protection for mental health that is fast and effective. Anne Longfield was responding to the comments of the NHS head Simon Stevens who stated that the web giants are "fuelling" a crisis and should come under tough scrutiny. Many experts see social media as a negative force, especially for children. Not taken up yet is the crisis in reading and reading comprehension that leaves about half of children in schools and students in high school without adequate reading skills- with about half of school children not meeting the reading comprehension requirements of the ACT test for 2016. Social media and smartphones have cut into reading time in schools, in ways that were never anticipated with iPads for reading not making a difference. The problem is of global dimensions requiring educational leaders across the world to come together in a movement for global literacy.   ...

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Controlling health costs from noncompliance by diabetes patients results in cost savings upto $33,000 per patient for GE. GE's new diabetes Health Plan with United is intended to improve compliance and reduce cost.

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Einer Elhauge, professsor of law and founding director of the Petrie-Flom Center in Health Law Policy at Harvard University, says there are limits to Congressional powers under the Commerce clause such as enacting a law requiring Americans to eat broccoli. If the health care law required all Americans to subject themselves to health care this would be the case. But the law only requires all to buy insurance so that insurance can cover the costs of healthcare for all. He points to the "necessary and proper clause" as also authorizing the health care mandate. That clause gives Congress the power to pass laws that are "rationally related" to execution of constitutional powers, such as criminalizing the interference with mail, on the basis of the constitutional power to setup post offices. In this case the health care law mandate is related to the constitutional power to regulate premiums and prohibit rejecting the sick, says Elhauge.

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Providing health insurance to the roughly 50 million people that are uninsured costs some $120 billion ayear. This will hae to be paid for through limiting the tax deduction on employer provided health insurance (something Obama campaigned against), or cost reduction in the bloated cost structure for health care in the country. But the same health care providers who committed to cost reduction in arecent conference at the White House are lobbying against some measures that reduce cost.

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How companies like United Health are lobbying aggressively to shape the new helathcare legislation to their benefit. BW says the health insurers like United Health, Aetna and Wellpoint are already winning through clever and effective lobbying of Congress. Former Senator Tom Daschle works as aconsultant for United Health. Senator Conrad who has led aeffort to replace the public plan with nonprofit medical cooperatives, which would be a weaker competitive threat to insurers, is also influened by the insurers. United Health's CEO Helmsley and its person working with Congress on healthcare Simon Stevens met with Conrad on June 4. When lawmakers in Congress cite consulting group Lewin Group, that 88 million or 56% of those with employer provided coverage would desert private insurance for a government run program, they are quoting acompany owned by United Health. The Congressional Budget Ofice says these numbers are too high. United Health has used savy presentations on how to cut costs, and help Blue Dog and other Democrats articulate their positions, to gain influence in shaping the plan to their interests. United Health thus counts a lot with Matheson, and Mike Ross of Arkansas, who are prominent with the 52 Blue Dog Democrats. and with Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. And United Health put together an effective lobbbying group, even hiring the chief of staff of House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer. ...

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During the years 2002-2008 the growth in doctors per thousand people at about 1.5, and hospital or clinic beds per thousand people at 3, are essentially flat. See graph. Figures from China's Ministry of Health. Now the State Council, China's cabinet is giving details on a $120 billion plus initial phase of a revamp of the country's health care system. Its a big step for China. A construction surge by 2011 is to give every village a medical clinic, and every county at least one hospital. Under this plan state subsidies for insurance premiums will aim at giving at least basic coverage to 90% or more of China's 1.3 billion people. For 30 years since China moved to a more capitalistic type system health care costs have been borne by the people, and these cost made access to health care difficult for a large number of people. These are steps to rebuild the social safety net in China in this crisis.

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Aryna Sabalenka describes her experience with the death of her father and going though it by keeping on playing tennis, and then with the loss of aclose friend finding that this no longer worked. An injury gave her time to pause to take care of her mental health. This has helped her regain the confidence in her game. This situation is something we all face keep going through a emotional crisis with the loss of a parent or family member, then thinking that the best way is to continue with whatever we are doing. Then something else happens, a health crisis or more stuff to tackle, and this time it makes sense to pause to give oneself time to recover. This is important to come back with the right frame of mind, the feeling of health and wellbeing essential for the next step. 

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Wealth and people migration in the US in 2020 is shown in this WSJ report. Latest IRS data released for 2020 shows migration of taxpayers and adjusted gross income from states in the midwest, on the eastern and western seaboard to states in the southern US and to mountain states in the west. Some of this is a result of the pandemic lockdowns and the shift to remote work which means that the trend for migration will continue for 2021 and 2022. The shift in income was as follows-Florida  23.7 billion, Texas $6.3 billion, Arizona $4.8 billion, North Carolina $3.8 billion, South Carolina $3.6 billion, Tennessee $2.6 billion, Nevada $2.6 billion, Colorado $2.3 billion, Idaho $2.1 billion, Utah $1.3 billion.  The biggest losses came from New York -$19.5 billion, California -$17.8 billion, Illinois -$8.5 billion, Masachusetts -$2.6 billion, New Jersey -$2.3 billion, Maryland -$1.9 billion, Ohio -$1.4 billion, Minnesota -$1.2 billion, Pennsylvania -$1.2 billion, Virginia -$1.1 billion. WSJ says the tax burdens in the southern and mountain states in the west are low. In four states there is no state tax- Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Nevada. By comparison says WSJ states losing wealth and population have high state taxes for property and income. Schools, quality of life and cost of living are also major considerations, with remote work opening up the opportunities to seek a better life in other states which offer more space for working at home.   ...