OFFBEAT MAIL

Next week, General Motors is expected to file bankruptcy protection, a move that appeared to be inevitable but has to be done after it has failed to come up with the appropriate solutions to the on-going problems that beset the company. Of course, it was not a welcome news for the United Auto Workers union whose thousands of members are expected to be out of job for a long while. Until the sad fate of the auto companies are resolved in due course, a large number of auto workers and their families will be like floating in the clouds of doubts. In fact, those auto dealers who were unexpectedly closed due to these unfolding events could only heave in disgust considering that thousands of workers would be out of work, adding to the already double digit unemployment rate in the country's labor markets. What happened to GM and Chrysler was unexpected. This only goes to show that American automakers are really in a quandary as to what to do in order to break the spell that now hounds th...

At least, some 48 million United States residents do not have health insurance. This is not to include others who are insured but do not have sufficient health coverage to free them from the exorbitant medical expenses incurred when they are admitted to private hospitals for emergency purposes. The problem will get even much worse once the U.S. Congress deliberates and approves the huge budget cuts on Medicaid that the federal government had envisioned for the period covering this year until 2012, says a think-tank policy report. It is expected that it will take a serious toll on millions of patients whose only option is to avail of free medical benefits from the government.The new proposal, now being deliberated in the U.S. Congress, will allow the transfer of Medicaid funds totalling $24.7 billion over the next five years and $60.9 billion in the next ten years from the federal budget to the state coffers, says the Center on Policy and Budget Priorities. The Center is one of the nat...

It's hard to believe when President Barack Obama said during a healthcare summit held at the White House recently about the plan of the United States government to import at least 500,000 foreign nurses to fill up the current shortage that now beset most hospitals across the country. President Obama's positive announcement was in response to a healthcare industry executive's report in the same summit whereby she underscored the strong need to hire foreign nurses, in close consultation with the immigration authorities, owing to the sagging quality of patient care in some hospitals and nursing facilities across the country. Resources for the hiring program could be taken from the recent stimulus economic package approved by President Obama. At this juncture, some of the State governments have already availed their share of the stimulus package, while others have continued to ignore the federal government's call for them to do the same. Healthcare industry observers have c...

There is something that keeps bothering me as I write this article. This is particularly true with the present recession that plagues the United States economy, whose wide-ranging impacts on the rest of the world is beyond compression. Albeit, it was at least good that President Barack Obama was able to prod US legislators to approve one of the biggest stimulus bills the United States has ever had without so much fanfare. As the implementing guidelines on how the billions of money could be distributed are still being worked out, I couldn't help but be amused at how the money, especially for the automakers' bailouts are being considered, in order to help the American automakers lessen their operational sufferings in light of the present economic situation in America, wherein tens of thousands of workers have now been given their pink slips because their employers could no longer afford to sustain their salaries. What is surprising, however, in this kind of economic situation is ...

Isabel Segal (not her real name), a young mother of three who works as a nursing assistant for a home care company in Long Beach, California, says she petitioned her parents way back many years ago, but failed. Despite her repeated explanations on the great advantages of living in America, her parents refused to bite her offer. According to her, all they could say is that they are contended and happy to live in the Philippines. Sison's parents decision to stick in their homeland contradicts to what other Filipinos are hankering as manifested by the long queue at the American Embassy in Manila. The same experience happened to Sonia Sabarre, a retired nurse in Chicago, who successfully petitioned her late mother to come to America in the 70s. Her mother did come and stayed for a few months. But the biting winter and windy breeze, not to mention the alienation that she experienced while alone at home, had all contributed to her mother's longing for home. Eventually, she did and...

It's a jigsaw puzzle as to why the Philippines continues to import rice from neighboring countries like Thailand and Vietnam. I understand that farmers in these two neighboring countries are being supported by their governments. This is in stark contrast to that of the Philippines where the local farmers are left to fend for themselves. Farm inputs like fertilizers are not subsidized by the government so that many poor farmers are left with no choice but to borrow money from usurers in order to catch up with the farming season, which normally comes twice a year in provinces where ricefields largely depend on rainfed water, rather than the irrigation system. While some agriculture officials are hell bent on sticking to their earlier stance that the country needs to import millions of tons of rice due to rice shortage, officials at the Philippine Rice Institute in Nueva Ecija were on the opposite side of the coin. They said there is no rice shortage in actual terms. The primary reaso...

Again, it shocked me to read about the Philippine government's impending plan to import rice from neighboring Asian countries. And I honestly believe there are two valid reasons why the country has initiated plans to import this staple from countries that only learned their rice technology from the International Rice Research Institute ( IRRI ) in Laguna , Philippines. One of the reasons could be that the local farmers did not produce as much rice because they could no longer stomach the high costs of inputs like fertilizers, which should be subsidized by the government but could not because it wanted to help the businessmen rather than the poor farmers. The other reason is that it is much cheaper to import rice and sell them in the local market rather than boost local production which is more expensive. Of course, it is not the fault of the local farmers if they could not sell or produce more rice considering that the National Food Authority ( NFA ) always wanted to buy their pro...