Flu season is nearly upon us, and the good folks at the New York City Health and Mental Hygiene are providing the population with free access to the influenza vaccine. However, while there are over 8.3 million people in New York City proper, there is only a grand total of five free walk-in clinics operated by the city – one for each borough, or one clinic per 1.7 million people. In practice, this turns out to mean that it takes roughly four hours for a person to get a flu shot.
I arrived at 9 am at the clinic on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. The place had been open for an hour, and the line was already a hundred and fifty people long.
I spent the next three hours in line. Arguments broke out over line etiquette. A rat ran through the crowd. Every 20 minutes we shuffled forward en masse as another group was taken indoors. At last I was called, and with renewed vigor I strolled inside and down to the basement … where we were told to sit in chairs. Another half an hour passed.
A custodian cleaning the nearby bathrooms peered at us. “You know, y’all could just head to a Duane Reade or a Walgreen’s or somewhere and get this same shot right now! Fifteen dollars!”
“Twenty-five,” replied a Russian lady.
“Okay, okay, 25,” said the custodian, smiling. “Still, that’s not so much.”
Flu shot! Get your free flu shot!
Finally a female police officer coralled us into the elevator to the fifth floor, and then on to another seating area where we filled out several forms and waited for our number to be called. As I sat down, I heard the nurse bark “93!” I was number 140.
An hour later, I heard my number. After a series of quick questions with an attendant (all of which I’d already answered on the forms I’d filled out), the attendant pointed, without looking, towards a door, and I entered a hallway leading to the exam rooms. And sat down to wait again.
The shot itself, when it finally came, took about a minute and a half to administer. My arm throbbed afterwards.
At this rate, if everyone chooses to save their $25 and go with the public option, for all of New York to be inoculated would take approximately 3,718.6 years. Considering that the flu virus changes annually, we’re a bit behind.
- Ned Thorne
Categories: Uncategorized
October 27, 2009 · 1 Comment
So when upwards of 80 percent of health care insurance markets are held by a single company (WellPoint, we’re looking at you, in Maine), it would seem like a matter for the Justice Department, right?
Not so fast. Health care insurance companies have been exempted from anti-trust laws because of the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, which allows for state but not federal anti-trust regulation.
It’s been a nice loophole for the insurance companies — 94 percent of US health insurance markets meet the Justice Department standards for “highly concentrated” (or, little competition). And even if Congress had the will to overturn McCarran-Ferguson, critics say this will do next to nothing, as since 1996, according to the American Medical Association, the federal government has cleared 400 mergers in health insurance. This would coincide with the time period when most Americans saw their premiums soar and services plummet.
But Congress looks ready to give it a whirl, anyway. Both the House and the Senate have approved language that will drop the anti-trust exemption, and while the insurance industry dismisses this as a temper tantrum several congressional sources tell us that “the Senate is awfully motivated.”
Right now, the move has bipartisan support. One reason might be the study recently released by the Business Roundtable, a nonpartisan group representing CEOs of major companies. It found that without “significant” marketplace reforms to reduce costs, health care costs per employee will triple to nearly $29,000 over the next decade.
Will Congress win our hearts?
Categories: Economy
Tagged: Congress, Doctors, Economy, healthcare, insurance, Justice Department, Medicare, Senate, Wellpoint
Hair Salon Blues
There are about 100,000 hair follicles on the average human head, tended by an 80,000-strong army of hair salons and barbershops in the US. African Americans, though just 12 percent of the population, account for 80 percent of this multi-billion dollar industry, according to Chris Rock’s recent documentary “Good Hair.” So I headed to 125th Street – Harlem – to see how hair salons were doing in the economic downturn.
At Oumou Express, a rental space for freelance hairdressers, most of the booths were empty. A slim man in a sharp jean jacket and suede shoes laughed and swept his hand across the space when I asked how business was going. “I work every day,” Henry Mars said, “but Friday and Saturday are the only days I do work.”
And the work needs to last. That was the message heard by Freddie Decaldeell at Barber Lounge on Premise, who said her business was “low but constant.” She recently hired three articifial hair operators to handle the demand for wigs, weaves and braids, which customers opt for to cut costs. “Braids cut down on the salon business (for real hair),” Decaldeell said.
As customer Kim was getting her black and gold braids done at Super Barber Hair Braiding & Barbershop, she told me, “Usually I’d wear my braids for maximum two months, but I leave them in at least a month longer if it’s going to cost me $100 every time.”
Despite the empty chairs at the salons, Henry Mars remains hopeful. “The days of spending are over,” he said. “Even if times are tough we don’t have to look like it. Things are going to get better. They can’t stay down forever.”
- Oli Foster
Anybody want a haircut?
Categories: Uncategorized
Hidden in a scenic, sheltered river in Cornwall in the southwest of the UK, there is a sight that shows just how bad the state of the world economy has become.
“The Fal Estuary is the barometer of world trade,” said Captain Andy Brigden, Harbor Master of Carrick who is responsible for the Fal Estuary. “When the Fal is empty of ships, trade is buoyant. When it’s full, as it is now, things are tough”.
The Fal Estuary has seen similar gluts before, during the Great Depression and the troubled economies of the 1960s, 1980s and as recently as the 1990s.
German ship-owner Claus-Peter Offen says the current glut is unlikely to change anytime soon, because of the severe downturn in trade and major over-capacity in the shipping industry. Offen predicts that one-fourth of the world’s fleet will be laid up by 2011, and world trade will not recover to early 2008 levels until 2014.
“As soon as a vessel leaves (the Fal), another vessel replaces it,” Captain Brigden says. “Some of the departing ships are lucky and find a cargo to deliver. Others are scrapped. Because of the drop-off in trade, many of these ships that are scrapped are not even a third of the way through their working lives.”
According to Captain Brigden, car carriers and container ships have been badly hit. These vessels make up the majority of ships in the estuary.
“Basically what’s happening is we are buying and selling fewer cars. So that is why we have car carrying ships here. We’re buying less goods from China, and that is why we have container ships here.”
Yet, for the Fal Estuary community, things aren’t all bad. The glut in ships has brought a small boost to the local economy. Harbor authorities charge ship-owners thousands of dollars each month for laid-up vessels. Claus-Peter Offen says that this boost is going to continue for sometime yet.
- Ed Head
Tourist attraction - the Fal Estuary this summer
Categories: Middle Class Crunch
Tagged: Cornwall, economic crisis, Economy, Great Depression, recession, Shipping, United Kingdom
For those in favor of legalizing marijuana, this week brought some welcome news. In a sharp reversal from the Bush administration, the Justice Department has told federal prosecutors to lay off the potheads – well, at least those using marijuana for “medical” purposes in those few states that actually allow medical marijuana use. But hey, every little step helps.
Pro-legalization group NORML is hopeful a tipping point may be on the horizon, maybe even within five years, Kevin Stroup, the group’s founder, told us. Polls vary widely, but a Gallup poll conducted in early October showed that 44% of respondents favored legalization. And those numbers will only increase as the population ages, Stroup said.
Yet if America decides to bring marijuana into the legal light, the marijuana movement will face another problem: the quality of the product. “It’s definitely a big concern for us what a legal (marijuana) market would look like,” NORML’s executive director Allen St. Pierre said.
Already, a large portion of marijuana on the streets is, shall we say, less than organic. In an episode of A Minute of Your Time, we take a look at illegal marijuana groves on remote public lands. These groves use toxic chemicals and pesticides that pollute the natural environment and are a health hazard to users.
Are you really chemical free?
As bad as that sounds, a regulated industry might not make things much better. One fear is that marijuana could go the way of tobacco, using a 100 or more added chemicals that up the potency and help keep the price down.
Yet even organically grown marijuana may not be good enough. There’s growing concern about environmental damage caused by marijuana cultivation. For example, some of the best mulch to grow marijuana in is made of Peruvian bat dung.
And this is “highly exploitative,” NORML’s St. Pierre said. “You have white yuppy Americans disrupting bats’ natural environments” just to get their organic marijuana.
- Ivan Weiss
Categories: Environment
Tagged: California, Drug War, Drugs, George W. Bush, Justice Department, Marijuana, Medical Marijuana, Obama, Organic Food
In 2003, I took a trip to the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan to visit my friend Tom, then serving in the Peace Corp.
On my first day in Bishkek, Tom insisted showing me, of all things, a statue of Vladimir Lenin. Only months before, the statue had proudly stood in Bishkek’s Ala-Too central square. But that summer, 12 years after Kyrgyzstan’s former ruler the Soviet Union fell, the statue was removed, replaced by an angel-woman representing Freedom.
With glee, Tom pointed to Lenin’s new home – a block away from the old one. With his iconic visionary gaze, Lenin stood toweringly straight, gesturing his hand to… the American University of Central Asia.
Democrats of the world unite!
This was my first introduction to the paradoxes of modern-day Central Asia. And as I would soon learn, it was just the tip of the iceberg.
These countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – have been caught in the crossfires of warring powers for centuries, but the ‘Stans fared particularly badly in Soviet Times. One of the struggles involved the giant irrigation system Moscow laid down in the 1960s. The idea was to divert water from Central Asia’s rivers and lakes and make the region a fertile producer of cotton and other goods.
Sadly, the system was poorly planned and inefficient, and after the Soviet Union collapsed, it fell into gross disrepair. Water sources continue to dry up to this day, and the lack of an adequate sewage system is polluting a lot of the remaining supply.
The most dramatic sign of the irrigation problems is the decimation of the Aral Sea. Located on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and once the fourth-largest inland body of saltwater, by 2005 this global landmark had shrunk to 10% of its original size.
Sailing the Aral Sea, circa 2006
Through the efforts of Kazakhstan and the World Bank, the sea has recovered somewhat in the last few years, but there’s still a ways to go.
In the most recent episode of A Minute of Your Time, we examine Central Asia’s water issues. As you’ll see, the region’s water politics makes about as much sense as placing Lenin in front of the American University.
- Ivan Weiss
Categories: Uncategorized
The Times of London is sticking by its story that Italy paid bribes to the Taliban in the Sarobi area, east of Kabul, last year while on patrol. The French took over the territory believing it was relatively quiet, and within a month suffered 10 casualties and 21 injuries.
Both the French military and the Italian government deny the report, but surely this won’t make those NATO meetings very pleasant. There was already discord among the NATO countries regarding duty in Afghanistan–we saw it firsthand in 2005, when the situation was relatively good–and although not necessarily related to the Times report, French president Nicholas Sarkozy is refusing to increase the Gallic contingent.
Great Britain, however, is–500 additional soldiers to its approximately 8,300. And Bob Shepherd, a SAS veteran and security contractor who has traveled through most of Afghanistan between 2004-2009, believes this is flawed.
So the Italians were here, the French were here--let's go there....
“You could put 40,000 in Helmund alone and it won’t make a difference,” he said. “It’s just going to mean more deaths to soldiers and more money, and right now we can’t afford it. Britain is about to implode–I don’t know how you (in the U.S.) are doing, but we can’t afford to be there.”
As for the potential to pay off the Taliban, Shepherd points out that “Mullah Omar and his people won’t negotiate with the U.S. and coalition forces, but the people below him will, as long as they get paid something. Forget a surge (like in Iraq)–you have to pay money and a lot, but the question is, how are you going to get it together, and how long are you going to do it? We’re all in tough, tough times right now.”
Categories: Middle Class Crunch · War on Terror
Tagged: Afghanistan, Bob Shepherd, Britain, cost, France, Italy
Elizabeth Rubin of the New York Times Magazine told us this time last year that the main battle in Afghanistan wasn’t the U.S. and NATO against the Taliban, but India versus Pakistan. She hasn’t changed her mind.
“We are a sideshow,” she reiterated recently.
Bob Shepherd, a former SAS soldier and author of The Circuit who spent most of 2004-2008 in Afghanistan, agrees. “There are all sorts of proxy battles, between Afghans, between countries, that make the country a huge jigsaw puzzle,” he told us.
It’s increasingly apparent the U.S. and its allies are in way over their heads, and Shepherd thinks the reasons for the war are becoming dangerously murky.
“This is the fourth Afghan war for (the British),” Shepherd said, “and we’re four-nil. Why are we still there? I haven’t heard one peep about bin Laden. I do not understand why we are there, when it is blatantly obvious to a blind man that we’re losing.”
As a private security contractor for journalists and dignitaries, Shepherd logged time in many of the areas now off-limits, such as Helmund and Paktia provinces, and observed, “I was out there almost continuously, and my movements got restricted every year. Where I could go in 2004, I couldn’t go in 2005; where I could go in 2005, I couldn’t go in 2006. In 2009, I couldn’t go outside of Kabul. People were doing it, but they were getting abducted and getting killed. I would not today take the drive from Kabul to Jalabad.
“I’d put the mortgage on my house that Afghanistan will implode.”
The question the U.S. military leaders have been asked to answer is: Can we win, and what does a ‘win’ mean?
“Right now, (the Afghan people are) jumping to the Taliban,” Shepherd said. “They are looking after themselves, and they’ll do anything to make that work. If we pay them more than the Taliban does, then they’ll jump to us. But how much is that going to cost? And how long are we going to have to pay for it?”
In our next Afghan update: How, indeed?
Good old-fashioned team work
Categories: Middle Class Crunch · War on Terror
Tagged: Afghanistan, India, Karzai, middle east, Obama, Pakistan, War on Terror
… of Johnny Walker
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently said he saw “little green shoots” of new life appearing amid the economic wreckage—the Dow Jones is creeping up to old highs, Wall Street seems confident.
But as these are the people many blame for this mess in the first place, I headed down to the Manhattan’s East Village and Lower East Side—the latter dubbed the “bargain district” – to see if Bernanke is right.
A number of bartenders told me business couldn’t be better. “When times are good, people drink,” one bar manager informed me. “When times are bad, people drink.”
One self-defined “dive bar” on Avenue A proudly advertised a happy “hour” lasting from 12-8pm. Nearby, Double Down Saloon was offering a beer and a shot for just $6 (pretty much every bar said the most popular shot was whiskey).
Another told me they decided to try an experiment. Mojitos aren’t on the happy hour menu at this establishment on Houston Street, and, the bartender said, usually they do just fine with it, serving up 15 per night. Recently, however, the $9 mojitos were offered as a $4.50 happy hour special, and the bar started selling 30 to 40 in three hours. Why? It’s not just the price, says the bartender, “everyone loves a mojito, and it’s the most alcohol for the least price.”
There are also two new types of regulars these days—a bartender at a 24-hour establishment in the East Village called them “the 2pm-er: businessmen who have just been laid off, have yet to inform their families” and “the 4pm-er: people who have spent their whole day handing out resumes.”
Evidently, there are “little green shoots” a-plenty—that is, if those “shoots” are “shots” and the color is Jameson’s.
“The most common thing I hear is ‘what’s the cheapest thing in here?’” said a young blonde bartender as she poured ice into a vat. “I usually tell them, ‘You’.”
- Oli Foster
The hot commodity at New York bars
Categories: Economy · Uncategorized
Tagged: alcohol, Ben Bernanke, Dow Jones, Economy, Greenwich Village, Lower East Side, New York, recession, Stock Market, Wall Street
There are settlements and there are settlements. Before I traveled to Israel and the West Bank, I pictured Israeli settlers as fringe Israelis who have set up temporary structures on a hilltop (of the type that international media-savvy Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kindly demolished for the cameras in July 2009). Those do exist. What I wasn’t prepared for was the concrete and asphalt, the well-maintained streets, schools, shopping centers and synagogues. They are full-fledged towns.
At the same time, Netanyahu has made it clear that he’s not about to get serious about dismantling anything anytime soon, either, despite President Obama’s repeated demands that he do just that. This attitude is in apparent opposition to Israeli law which prohibits Israelis from entering certain areas of the West Bank entirely: areas like Hebron, where a large red sign at the city limits spelled out, in Hebrew, Arabic and English, that Israelis were barred from entry except to visit the synagogue.
Unsurprisingly, the settlers don’t like this, and they’re not afraid to show it. Near the entrance to one of the main settlements we noticed a poster that depicted Obama in a keffiyeh and proclaimed him an “Anti-Semitic Jew Hater”.
There is enough such distrust and nastiness on all sides to make logical people simply walk away, and it permeates at all levels. When I arrived in Tel Aviv, a three year old Algerian stamp in my passport meant that I was detained and questioned for fifteen minutes by Israeli authorities. My colleague, Michele, who had collected stamps from old favorites like Lebanon, Libya and Afghanistan, spent four hours in their care.
Even in the West Bank we ran into trouble. We’d heard that a major Israeli checkpoint had been removed outside the town of Jericho, and went to have a look. The checkpoint was indeed gone, replaced by Palestinian soldiers, who demanded to see Michele’s passport and know what she was up to: her looks had apparently convinced them she was Israeli. Her New York driver’s license didn’t seem to help.
Eventually we made it to Jericho and took refuge from the heat in a breezy coffee shop. Over cups of thick, cardamom laced coffee, we reflected that the bulk of the money to build the settlements has come from private donations, and most of these donors are Jewish organizations based in – wait for it – New York City. For example, the Hebron Fund is located about eight miles from Film@11’s Brooklyn office.
As I reviewed footage I shot of trash-strewn nets hung above Hebron’s market streets to protect them from the settlers, and of a Palestinian house burned by settlers who wanted the residents gone, I had to wonder, what kind of people are these?
- Ned Thorne
Where's the peace, Barack?
Categories: Israel and Palestine
Tagged: Israel, middle east, Netanyahu, palestine, West Bank
