In the sneezing scenario, poll takers were far more likely to hate the state of U.S. health care. Without the sneezing, the results were more favorable to health care. Interestingly, the sneezed-in-front-of (but not upon) also thought they were more likely to get a heart attack soon, or even get murdered.

My, some effect from just sneezing (and coughing)!

Many companies are reporting their first-ever EEOC complaints springing from allegations of various forms of discrimination, usually in the workforce reduction process.

No statistics exist yet for 2009, but for 2008 overall EEOC claims jumped 28 percent from 83,000 to 95,000. Discrimination claims were likewise up by 28 percent, while retaliation claims jumped 22 percent. Retaliation, employment lawyers say, is the new lawsuit du jour.

Employees are no longer waiting for the proverbial axe to fall before filing EEOC complaints. Some are using EEOC claims as a pre-emptive strike to avoid being laid off. As one lawyer explained: “If I’m causing a fuss about something, you won’t pick me to lay off…and, if I am let go, then I’ll claim retaliation.”

The EEOC is more than happy to oblige the claimants. The agency this year has already hired 170 new field investigators to check out the claims.

‘Tis the season of “employer, beware.”

With about 12 million Latins here illegally already (maybe more), that’s a pretty big influx of Democratic votes coming down the pike, or so the thinking goes, but ask the Mexican people what the result of amnesty will be and they’ll tell you–even more illegals crossing the border.

According to a Zogby poll, 56 percent of Mexicans say amnesty will spur further border crossings, not less.

And now comes the whopper: If they could, 36 percent of all Mexicans, or roughly 39 million people, would move to the U.S. in a heartbeat.

A few million here and a few million there, to paraphrase Everett Dirksen, and pretty soon you’re talking Democratic dictatorship.

As they would say in the Obama White House, “Precisely.”

Of the 2008 total, 94 percent of the victims were male, 78 percent white and 14 percent managers. Almost half (48 percent) died from gunshot wounds.

The findings are part of BLS’s annual Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (COFI).

The United States is not the only nation with this problem. France Telecom has seen 24 of its staffers commit suicide in the past 18 months, while 13 more attempted suicide. In Japan, tabs are kept on “death by overwork” (karoshi),  and so far this year there have been 377 karoshi deaths in Japan.

At first I bought into the theory that she was done away with by a jealous lover when she tried to break off the relationship to get married, but now the New Haven, Conn., police have squished that scenario, attributing it all to workplace violence.

Then just today I stumbled on another account of Ms. Le’s murder, which included this paragraph about murder as part of the wider problem of workplace accidents and fatalities:

According to the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Health and Safety Administration, workplace violence in its most extreme form, homicide, is the fourth-leading cause of fatal occupational injury in the U.S. Statistics indicate there were 564 workplace homicides in 2005 in the United States, out of a total of 5,702 fatal work injuries.

So, nearly 10 percent of all fatalities at work are workers slaying one another? That’s a startling statistic to me. I wonder if the stats include off-site gack jobs, or if it’s just workplace-based murder. Either way, this is an alarming and shocking stat.

Time to retire.

Let’s look at the employer mandate coming under Obamacare; the mandate  says that employers must buy insurance for all their employers or pay a fine into a government pool.

Your boss is just going to suddenly start paying for your health care, right? Mostly wrong. A survey by Towers Perrin found that 87 percent of employers were ready to cut salaries or employees to pay for higher costs associated with health care; only 11 percent said they’d accept reduced profits.

That’s one way to get free health care: Get terminated and go on Medicaid. So I guess is one sense, Obamacare might be free. But at a huge cost.

Some thought it humorous, but others found it insensitive to people who were actually suffering (and even dying) from the disease. (On the flyer, the image appeared as a much smaller image, to be accurate.)

We’ll leave it up to you, dear reader, to see what you think. Let us know via comments if you approve or disapprove.

This bit of wisdom on the Germans’ part no doubt exhibits a deep-seated visceral reaction based on Adolph Hitler’s regimen of gassing away the country’s “useless eaters,” its citizens (other than Jews, who were subject to a different program) who were disabled, mentally ill or too sick or weak to work.

Meanwhile, as I noted here recently, in Great Britain QALYs are used as a yardstick to determine how much, if any, the nation’s health care system will spend on you. Presumably, if a treatment or operation will extend your life and its quality (ability to work and pay taxes, or if in retirement, live without being a drain on social resources) by a year minimum, then they’ll fork over up to $50,000 for health care. Otherwise, take two aspirin and enjoy your life–or death.

As the AHRQ notes in anticipation of fully embracing and adopting the QALY concept: “The quality adjusted life year (QALY) is a widely used measure of both quality and quantity of life that is applicable to all individuals and diseases.”

Says who? Hitler?

Sarah Palin was right to object to “death panels.” As I’ve noted all along, the Democrats’ plan for so-called health care reform is all based on the unspoken “R” word–rationing–and as Zeke Emanuel and Barack Obama have both intimated, what better place to start rationing than with non-taxpaying senior citizens?

How dare they expect a return on their Medicare and Social Security taxes–especially when they’re not even working and contributing to society (read: the federall government) anymore?

Useless eaters indeed.

Read it and weep: “Obama’s Lies About Obamacare.”

QALY stands for “Quality-Adjusted Life Year,” and it’s a concept used in British health care to determine if you’ll be allowed a certain treatment.

Say a certain operation will award you with one additional QALY, the National Health System (NHS) will pay up to £30,000 for that treatment. And no, QALY’s are not cumulative. If the treatment results in five QALY’s, you still get just £30,000 (a tad under $50,000) for your health care.

If that’s not enough to fund the operation, you get to live (or die) with whatever ails you.

The faceless bureaucratic agency that thus assigns death to British citizens goes by the impossibly oxymoronic acronym of NICE (National Institute of Clinical Effectiveness).

What’s all this got to do with you, an American?

Again the short answer: Plenty.

The reason for this is that Obama and his health care cronies/advisers are enamored of both QALY and NICE and will implement them here no matter how much they deny rationing of health care is under consideration. Just read the books by Obama’s main men in health care reform–Tom Daschle and Zeke Emanuel (yes, brother of Chief of Staff Rahm)–and you’ll see the heartlessness with which they intend to treat the elderly.

Except for their loved ones and themselves, of course, as they’ll set up a two-tiered health care system–one for the populace (we taxpaying scum) and the other for the high and mighty in government and their cronies: Nationalized, rationed medicine for us; privatized, gilt-edged care for them.

Change we can truly believe in.