Cornice Cox to Louise Westbrook, Historical Letter, 1932

Bentonville, N. C.
                                September 12, 1932
 
Dear Louise,
I am writing to let you know I got an invitation to Mr. And Mrs. Walter Giddings' chicken fry at Mrs. Mary Stevens' home, Wednesday night, September the fourth tenth. Grace, Emma, and Lester are invited and she said to please see that Mary Britt got there. Well I guess if nothing happens to keep me away I will be at your house before very late. The very time we said something about going over there isn't it?
    What have you been doing this morning? I have been picking cotton and guess I will this evening.
    How many time I have thought of you since last night. It seems you are ever on my mind. I really do love you and I can't help it, that is if I wanted too.
    Doesn't it seem really fally today? It is so much cooler than usual that it makes me want to go trampling through the woods with a gun on my shoulder. There are two seasons that I especially like to roam over the woods and study nature. They are Spring and Fall. I, as you know, am a great lover of things pertaining to nature and I enjoy studying them and learning more of them. Do you like nature, flowers, birds and insects? Do you ever walk over the woods in the springtime when the trees are blooming (sending forth numberless quantities of bright colored flowers perfumed with sweet nectar.) The bees are humming busily gathering and storing pollen and honey for the storm days of winter, the birds are building their nest to rear the oncoming flock, did you ever experience these thing? Oh, what a joy it would be to just stroll over the woods and be alone with you in God's great world of nature. How we could plot and plan for the future.
    Well I guess that you will think I have gone crazy, but if that is crazy, I have always been insane.
    Until Wednesday night.
 
                    Love,
                     Cornice

Lester Cox, Historical Letter, 1944:

Letter from:
Pfc. Lester E. Cox
Co. L148 Inf. Apo 37
C/o P. M.
San Francisco, Calif.    

July 17^th, 1944

 

Dear Cornice and family,

    How is all the family to night? If it is as hot there as it is here, you are trying to find a cooler place. It gets cool enough here after about eight o'clock at night so it is pleasant. After about two days of hot sunshine without rain it gets almost unbearable through the middle of the day. Though we could have many days at anytime without rain. I don't know whether or not I have told you how much of a rainfall there is here or not. Any way it is a hundred and twenty inches. A lot of swamp and jungle all along the coast and mountains inland.
    Well I didn't finish this last night so it's Tuesday night. The lights in our tent has give out. So just write when I can get a light.
    Cornice I received the pictures yesterday which you sent. I think they were very good. The children have grown so much I want hardly know them when I get back if it's another two years. Jerry looks to be plenty large for his age right on. Why didn't you send me one with Louise? I had a letter from Vera the other day, said she would send some as soon as she could get them made. I always like to get pictures from the ones I think a lot of.
    Cornice I never told you much about how things were while we were on New Georgia. Now we are allowed to tell about most anything that happened there. It was about the worst of anything I have been through with. From the time we started until we left New Georgia things were bad. We left Guadalcanal on the fourth of July and started for New Georgia and driving the night our company was attacked and I saw a naval battle. Could see the shells from the time they left the gun until they passed out of sight. After that we were fired at from shore-batteries. Were supposed to land before light and the naval battle caused us to be late finishing unloading. Our Bn. Mission was to set up a roadblock on the Manda and Baroka Trail. And had a battle there! The island is almost swamps along the coast and mountains inland. And jungle so thick that it was almost impossible to see the sun for days at a time. Rashings were the biggest trouble. We started out with two day rations. The jungle was so thick that it was almost impossible to have a ration drop from planes. I think it was on the eleventh day we got a few drops from plane. Part of the time six men had to do with one D-bar for a day, which was a bar of chocolate that weighted four ounces. Less than an ounce a man per day. That wasn't much for a man climbing mountains and wading swamp. One swamp we crossed took two days to cross, part of the time I would slip off roots and logs and would sink in from knee to waist deep in mud. Three miles a day was very good traveling through such terrain. After doing that then read in the paper where the fellows back in the states are striking for higher wage. Doesn't make one feel any too good. For eleven days I don't think I had over eleven hours of sleep. We were in the jungle for fifty-eight days before I had a chance to change clothes, so you may know a little about how I felt. Supposed I weighted over a hundred and fifty pounds when we went in and when we came out to rest the fifty-eighth day I would imagine I weighted about one hundred and fifteen pounds.
    The Marines got the credit for what we did. Our Bn. Was attached to the Marines at that time, and I hope it never is again. Cornice you may see in the Smithfield Herald sometime that I have been awarded a Bronze Star, Combat Infantry Badge, Good Conduct Medal and Asiatic Pacific Ribbon and Gold Star. You are the only one I have wrote about it.
    Cornice how is your crop doing since there has been plenty of rain? Is your tobacco good as last year? Guess you are having to barn tobacco by now. I used to think cropping tobacco was hard work but would be glad to be helping you now.
    How many acres of corn do you have this year? Is all the Rose low grounds in corn this year?
    Do you want to buy the Rose place this fall or wait another year? I would like to see some of the Westbrook low grounds sowed in beans, with a ton of lime, two hundred lbs. of potash and four hundred lbs. of phosphate per acre. If I owned Chester's part I would try about ten acres like that. Do you think it would make any beans?
    You have been asking me to tell about things all I could. Do you want to know any more? I don't like to think about things over here anymore than I can help.

    Hope this finds all well. Best of luck and happiness! Love to all, Your brother,

Lester

Profits To Die For!

The Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, almost died on the vine from a disease known as "mythical-political drivel" by which it never maintained a majority public trust. As the ACA sputters to become implemented, one of the main drawbacks is that in the infinite wisdom of its crafters, significant medical cost reduction, or control, was not (or could not be) ensured in the grand framework. But you have to give the crafters much credit because they achieved a feat that had failed for over half a century --- even though imperfect and notwithstanding the industrial medical complex's money monopoly who actually had the upper hand in its forming.

 

Steven Brill's Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us brings to light the medical complex's drawstrings that bids medical cost in an ever-increasing part of the national GDP, now headed toward 20%.  It is the convolutional yoke, in part, strangling our national economy. Brill, the founder of Court TV, seems to pull no punches, squarely putting blame where it falls. (His introductory video to the article should be found at the bottom of first page.)

If you've looked at a hospital bill (hope you haven't had one), did you understand it, all the little high priced itemizations? Being indecipherable, most people instantly glance to the bottom line, the thousands of dollars on the "Total Due" line. Surprised or not, what other things in life can you think of that you buy without knowing beforehand what the cost will be?

Brill, through the documentation of the many real-life medical bill cases he tracked, helps us understand why medical cost is so high and growing. You can quickly grasp the possibility of an estimated 700,000 people in the U. S. becoming medically bankrupted annually, per a study Harvard Law and Harvard Medical School did. You'll learn how MD Anderson Cancer Center, a nonprofit hospital, makes millions of dollars annually with a 26% profit margin, net profits many large corporations envy. And should I say, would be considered profits to die for? And that's after the CEO and top administrators collect salaries in the millions.

Even though hospital administrators lament that they can't make it on Medicare payment schedules, in many cases it is their sustaining revenue. (Even though Brill doesn't give examples of a financially besieged hospital, no doubt there are those smaller communities which hospitals struggle to keep above deficit line. And here is where some of my respected hospital-associated friends might take exception.) Brill says, "By law, Medicare’s payments approximate a hospital’s cost of providing a service, including overhead, equipment and salaries." But hospitals have something called the "Chargemaster," a grossly inflated pricing schedule. It's kind of what some of us in business used to call "premium billing," you pay on time you get significant discount. However, with the Chargemaster schedule --- premium billing takes on a totally different meaning. It's used to exorbitantly price every "little and big item" from your Tylenol pill - to room and the cat-scan equipment rendering your test.

From the Chargemaster schedule, Medicare, Medicaid, and Insured customers get whopping discounts, either by law or in the case of the medically insured their commercial carrier, such as Aetna, negotiates a much lower price. Those caught without medical coverage, a young person dropped from a parents policy, those who can't afford COBRA at loss of employment, those in poverty, or the insured person whose bill runs over limits of coverage, have to deal with the Chargemaster, generally without an advocate to reduce the price. They are left in an insurmountable financial pit, which many times results in bankruptcy.

Another important point Brill makes is that technology and the lack of competitive market forces have not reduced the cost of expensive medical equipment. Comparatively, most all of the technological improvements for such as TVs, computers, and other appliance over the last several years have decreased in price.

Brill, determines that doctors are not the recipient of excessive profits, nor are insurance companies necessarily a part of the problem. He references our local Spanish owned Grifols plant in Clayton, North Carolina, where human plasma is used to make Flebogamma, a sterilized solution that is intended to boost the immune system. He says, "In Spain, as in the rest of the developed world, Grifols’ profit margins on sales are much lower than they are in the U.S., where it can charge much higher prices. Aware of the leverage that drug companies — especially those with unique lifesaving products — have on the market, most developed countries regulate what drugmakers can charge, limiting them to certain profit margins. In fact, the drugmakers’ securities filings repeatedly warn investors of tighter price controls that could threaten their high margins — though not in the U.S."

Brill ends with suggested solutions, such as taxing 75% on the amount over $750,000 that CEOs of nonprofit hospitals make. But he has little hope that the industrial medical complex's economic-debilitating forces have a chance for corrections needed. Now with the ACA Framework in place, our congress has an opportunity to work together to do the right things in amending and tweaking that framework to improve all it merits, including the essential cost control elements. You think they can do that? Yes, I do, but only with the mind's-eye fixed on ethical behavior,  unrestrained of the industrial medical complex's stronghold.

It's a long article, size of a short book, 59 full pages on attached document, but worthy of your time. Read from the Time's link or as attached herewith. (The highlights and border block-offs are all mine.)