Increasing while declining.

Here is an interesting statement from the U.S. Census report on income and poverty as of 2005 (http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p60-231.pdf):

The number of people with health insurance coverage increased, while the percentage of people with health insurance coverage decreased between 2004 and 2005.

Are we breeding uninsured? Killing off the insured? The report explains (or doesn't actually):

The number of people with health insurance coverage rose from 242.4 million in 2002 to 243.3 million in 2003. Nonetheless, the percentage with coverage dropped from 84.8 percent to 84.4 percent, mirroring a drop in the percentage of people covered by employment-based health insurance (61.3 percent in 2002 to 60.4 percent in 2003). This decline in employment-based health insurance coverage essentially explains the drop in total private health insurance coverage, from 69.6 percent in 2002 to 68.6 percent in 2003.

Hmm "...decline in employment-based health insurance..." Sanitized English in which no allusion is made to the increasingly vicious business climate where every benefit given to an employee is seen as a dollar robbed from a shareholder's trust account. No, I can't account for the increase yet decline.

Pet mess

I have been following the pet food poison uproar only desultorily, mostly from an avalanche of outraged posting on various Yahoo Groups I'm on. Every day sees a new update. First it's rat poison, now it's melamine-laced Chinese gluten. Judging from the furor and the urgency with which each new poisoned brand is disclosed, I thought the landscape must be littered with grieving families sobbing over beloved dead pet carcases.

So when I read in this morning's NY Times that the body count is 16, well, here we go again. First of all, I can't believe Bush hasn't sent troops (if we have any left) to liberate China from the probably Al Qaeda-inspired animal abusers.

As a nation, we have a peculiarly skewed view of what we (well, some of us) deserve. 2.5 to 3.5 million of us are homeless (1) (including veterans of Iraq now (2)). 45 million of us have no health insurance (3), though only a few of those are wealthy enough to be able to pay for health care out of their own pockets. A woman still (as of 2005) earns about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns, showing that possession of a penis, even feigned, gooses your economic value to society up by a third. (Uh oh, I'm getting an argument from the Peanut Gallery here. A woman earns 3 quarters. A man earns 4 quarters. The extra quarter he gets is ONE THIRD, not 25%, of HER income. Urgh. I think all we females need to start crossdressing in the job market asap.)

But hoo boy, kill 16 of our pets, and, if nothing else, your stock will plummet. I don't think we really look at the things that upset us. It's much easier, I suppose, to bury ourselves in the day-to-day and worry about our pet food. I guess that seems like a battle we can actually do something about.

1. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/481800
2. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17315490/site/newsweek/ (Feb 24, 2007)
3.http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/002484.html