recession
Rx Help Gives Assistance to Maine Citizens Impacted by Recession
In order to help out folks that are without insurance and financially-struggling residents get the medication that they desperately need, there is an growing community awareness that there are programs that supply rx access for free or practically free. Because of the state’s unemployment rate now at a record high, the importance of these programs is magnified. There are companies that give a one stop result to more than 850 patient assistance programs that help people who are are with no personal medical insurance or stressed financially.
So far, those programs have helped tens of thousands of workers find out if they possibly will qualify for help for prescriptions free or discounted prescription medication. This is very useful news, for at this time there are more consumers out of work than ever before over the most recent 22 years. People who qualify for assistance from the participating prescription assistance programs have access to more than 2,425 brand-name and generic medicines. Workers in search of relief from one of those companies may call a toll-free number to speak to a qualified representative or access the company’s web site. It merely takes roughly 5 to 20 minutes to find out if you or a patient you might know may well qualify for free or discounted prescription drugs.
At a moment in time when state job loss is the highest in not quite two decades, several support plans has turn out to be an important link for a increasing quantity of residents. Millions of Americans have been added to the unemployed rolls over the most recent several months and there might be a sharp boost in the number of our citizens losing healthcare insurance benefits. Millions of people are in need of prescription drugs assistance including people who need prescription medicine to battle such incapacitating chronic diseases as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and asthma. As a rule patients who need assistance need it for more than one prescription medication. This might produce quite a puzzling process because of all of the paperwork that has got to be finished, physician’s permission obtained and substantiation of earnings submitted.
Prescription assistance organizations relieve the patient of all of that irritation by acting as the individuals advocate and performing all of the tasks. These organizations charge a small fee for their service but it is well worth it. Typically these organizations will match up everything involving you, your doctor of medicine and the drug companies. It could take somewhere from 3-9 weeks for the person to get your drugs so you have got to apply early.
Environmental Reasons for Recycling Gold
If you were to be able to collect all of the gold which has been mined and extracted from the planet since man began searching for this precious metal, you would have a cube of gold some 22 meters (about 70 feet) along the side – imagine all the gold found since time began is just a cube 70 feet by 70 feet by 70 feet – that fits in a very small office building or a large house.
Shifting, mining, blasting, dissolving in acid, land clearance, people clearance, tons of earth, toxic pollution of billions of gallons of water, and the eradication of numerous species of plant and animal life – all of these things are required in order to extract that relatively small amount of gold.
That doesn’t even count the amounts of energy that have to be used to power all these activities.
The environmental cost of mining and extracting gold is simply fantastically, enormous – which is one reason it is currently trading at $900 an ounce!
Fortunately, there is a simple and very easy-win for those who are environmentally conscious and also want to be rewarded for their green efforts – recycling gold and other precious metals costs a fraction of what it does to extract it from the ground. The vast bulk of the carbon footprint has already been created in getting the gold mined and worked into rings, necklaces, bracelets and other jewelry items.
With a combination of severe recession causing people to look for ways to raise extra money and at the same time, savvy investors looking to invest in gold because the stock market is not a safe place to invest anymore – the price of gold is now historically high and sellers are getting top dollar on their pieces.
Using the following numbers from a “prodcutive” mine, here is how you work out the environmental impact of producing just one little ounce of gold
30 tonnes of ore are required
400 tonnes of earth are required to be shifted to extract the 30 tons of ore
3,000 Kw of electricity are required
4,000 gallons of water are used
Remember – all this just to produce one ounce of the bright shiny stuff!
Though the vast majority of the world’s gold has been extracted since 1910 (all those California gold rushes helped settle the American West but they contributed a tiny drop in the ocean for the world’s gold reserves), it is thought that 85% of the total reserves are still in the ground. While “new” gold is mined worldwide, gold is found on every continent, there is a growing recognition that mining gold is an extremely highly polluting activity and yet so much extracted gold is readily available and sitting in bullion deposit centers such as Fort Knox, KY or the Federal Reserve Bank of New York simply doing nothing!
Recycling existing gold is clearly a very green and very profitable exercise and if ever there was an environmentally sound, win-win situation, selling old gold is definitely it!
UK Government Introduces “Stealth Tax” on Green Energy
The world has officially gone mad. While on one hand we’re facing a dire recession, on the other the cost of basic amenities like gas and electricity is skyrocketing. The poorest in society, often the elderly, are often also the most vulnerable in terms of their health. They are the ones who need to be able to stay warm the most in winter. Yet they are increasingly unable to pay their rising gas bills to stay warm.
We constantly hear advertising campaigns by multinational oil companies as well as government departments talking about Green, Renewable Energy. It is hyped up as the answer to all our troubles. You can save money and save the world at the same time – its just perfect. With this mantra on their lips, they win votes and build wind farms, supposedly for our benefit.
However the latest initiative by the UK government reveals the truth behind this egalitarian rhetoric. The “Renewable Heating Incentive” is a plan to build more wind turbines and solar panels to replace fossil fuel energy sources. Yet it’s not the energy corporations who are going to foot the bill for this. It is going to be the bill payer who has to pay for this! The aim of the proposal is to have a tax, or ‘levy’ on those energy companies who use fossil fuels. But these energy companies then plan to pass the charges on as increased gas and electricity bills.
Electricty prices increased by 26% over the last year, and gas prices by 59%. This meant that millions had to think twice about switching on their portable heaters. In the midst of increasing poverty, the “go green” banner has been used as a solution for families to ease hardship by paying less for energy bills. Yet this idea will fly in the face of that logic, by punishing society’s poor. Ultimately what will happen is only the more well off households will realistically be able to afford making the required ecological energy improvements and switch to green energy. But if you can’t, and resort to using fan heaters or oil filled radiators to warm your house when the temperatures drop, you’ll be hit with higher energy bills. The same will be true even if you factor in the low interest loans scheme that is supposedly aimed at making it more affordable for people to go greener. It’s unlikely that a family that is already struggling to pay their gas and electic, not to mention interest on existing debts, will be willing to take on more debt, whetever the interest rate may be. If the introduction of university student loans have taught us anything, its that offering low interest loans only make these schemes more appealing to the middle classes.
Is this not an unfair situation? Far better would be taxing the energy companies directly and getting hold of a tiny fraction of their trillions of dollars of profit.They could then use this significant sum to subsidise green refubishment on lower income houses, so that they can benefit from reduced heating bills. It would be great to hear what people think about this issue.
