Sour mood

47 million Americans lack health insurance, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute.

The number of Americans lacking health insurance rose by nearly 8.6 million to 47 million from 2000 to 2006, with children and workers from every income level losing coverage, a new report said on Thursday.
The increase was "driven primarily by the continued erosion in employer-provided health insurance," said the report by the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute.
In 2006, 2.3 million fewer Americans received health benefits from their employers than in 2000, the report said, noting the decline does not take the population increase into account.
Nearly 60 percent of the nation's children are covered by the insurance provided by their parents' employers, but 3.4 million fewer children had benefits in 2006 compared with 2000.
"Public health insurance is no longer offsetting these losses," said the report by the nonpartisan think-tank.

Is it any wonder that people are so unhappy today? Pretty much since Bush took office, the national mood has been in a downward spiral. Why? The war, for one. It was supposed to last six months. You know, a cake walk, rose petals thrown at our feet, etc. All bullshit.
The surplus that Clinton left us? The promise of finally starting to chip away at our national debt that has been spiraling out of countrol since the Reagan years? All gone. Instead, we are spending hundreds of billions every year on the Iraqi boondoggle while Republicans, at the same time, insist that we can’t afford comparatively tiny increases in domestic spending back home.
It does not compute. You can’t continue to support spending hundreds of billions in Iraq year after never-ending year, while telling us that we can’t afford to fix problems at home and expect the nation’s mood to do anything but bottom out.