Optimism

When I graduated high school I was awarded the optimist award and the other day while at home I looked over the optimist creed and it really moved me so I'll share it with you!

Promise Yourself

To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet.

To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.

To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.

To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best.

To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

No Fear

I had a really good day today, and everything went so smoothly at work. It was actually the first day that Jason was not invading my thoughts. I was on the mark as I should be, sharper than a tack and my work was actually enjoyable instead of a chore or work. I had so much energy and no I didn't have a second cup of coffee or a energy drink which is so bad for me."I Know". Yet, coffee and Monster became my best friends during my residency with all the hours I was working.

Today seemed to go by so much faster and I was happy,content and productive. Today my smile was real and I know it showed. It has taken a few days since I let everything go Saturday at the cemetery, since I took down all pictures of Jason and boxed up his jersey's he wore and his letter man's jacket even the fake roses from the convenience store (just Because) since I returned home. They are all boxed up now  where they should have been years ago. I still have everything in case I should want to look at them, but I won't be wearing his jersey's to sleep in anymore. It will be a while before I open up those boxes ( I promised myself a year).

Well enough about that. I am just happy being me. I am looking forward to a long, loving and productive life without any ghost in it. I really looked myself in the mirror and I saw me Amber, not the broken Amber, but the Amber I was before. My Identity I claim. I am Amber Nicole Wilson. I am not broken but strong and I shall show no fear. I am the girl my parents raised. No more sorry's shall you hear from me, for that is a sign of weakness. I am invincible, I am woman hear me roar....

    

15 most beautiful American cars of all time

We like to think our cars are good-looking, and some of them really are. However, there's a big difference between a pretty car and a timeless design that transcends mere automotive beauty to be considered a work of art. With that in mind, we combed through history to identify the 15 most beautiful American cars. You'll notice that only one late-model car makes this list. We wanted to include newer cars as well, but cars of the past few decades didn't measure up, and today's cars have yet to pass the test of time. Take a look and let us know if we missed any.

1935 Duesenberg SJ Short-Wheelbase Roadster

It's hard to pick just one Duesenberg for this list, but the short-wheelbase SJ roadsters of 1935 are classically beautiful and have well-documented pedigrees. Also known as the SSJs, only two of these cars were built. One was owned by Gary Cooper, and the other was loaned to Clark Gable. The short wheelbase helped balance their proportions and create a sporty look to go with Duesenberg's already stately design. The bold chrome grille, wire wheels, external exhaust and flowing lines made these cars prime examples of the best of 1930s design.

1933 Pierce-Arrow Silver Arrow

The 1933 Pierce-Arrow Silver Arrow was a car ahead of its time. In fact, the company claimed "it gives you in 1933 the car of 1940." Without front pontoon fenders, Phil Wright's wind tunnel-influenced design hinted at the envelope-body look that wouldn't take full effect until the late 1940s. The faired-in headlights and lack of running boards were also a nod to the future, and the laid-back, V-shaped radiator was especially sleek. Priced at an exorbitant $10,000, only five models of this dream car were produced.

1935 Auburn 851 Speedster

Designer Gordon Buehrig had a shoestring budget to update the 1935 Auburn lineup, and he did an amazing job with it. A slick new grille complemented the pontoon fenders, and prominent exhaust pipes belied the supercharged straight-8 engine that lurked beneath a bold hood. Part of the Supercharged Eight lineup, the Speedster was at the top of the range, with a price of $2,245. It featured classic sports car proportions, with a miles-long hood and a short deck that sported a new boattail design.

1940 Lincoln Zephyr Continental Convertible

Conceived by Edsel Ford and drawn up by stylist E.T. Gregorie, the Continental started life as a customized Lincoln Zephyr that Edsel drove while on vacation. A production model soon followed. It was also based on the Zephyr, but it had no running boards and was chopped and channeled, resulting in a long, low look. Coupe and convertible body styles were offered, both with an external rear tire that would come to be known as a "continental spare." The Continentals of 1940 and '41 were the most attractive, thanks to their split-wing grilles and rounded fenders.

1940 Packard Darrin Super Eight One-Eighty Victoria Convertible

In the 1930s, Howard "Dutch" Darrin made a splash customizing Packards for Hollywood stars, and in 1940 Packard made his creations part of the official production lineup. A 4-door convertible Victoria and a 2-door convertible sedan were offered, but the Victoria, with its signature "Darrin dip" at the trailing edge of the doors and cut-down windshield, was more sculpted. A lack of running boards also created a clean look. The Victoria sold for $4,593 — almost twice the price of the Club Sedan from the same model series.

1953 Buick Skylark

The 1953 Buick Skylark was a luxury 4-seat convertible designed by General Motors design chief Harley Earl. The windshield and convertible cloth top sat four inches lower than other Buick convertibles, giving it a low and elegant look. Exaggerated character lines along the sides hinted at the pontoon fenders of a decade before, and the whole look was set off by the coolest rolling stock of the time: Kelsey-Hayes wire wheels on wide whitewall tires.

1953 Studebaker Starliner Coupe

Studebaker redesigned its lineup for 1953, putting the pontoon fender look in the rearview mirror for good. In fact, the new Studebakers' low, lean, envelope body design was years ahead of its time. The range included six coupes, but the best-looking of the bunch was the pillarless Regal Starliner. Known as the "Loewy coupes" for Studebaker design chief Raymond Loewy, the cars were actually designed by Bob Bourke, but Loewy championed the design to management. The '53 Studebakers are widely considered among the best designs of the decade.

1956 Continental Mark II

Ford separated Continental from Lincoln in 1956 in an effort to make it the company's top division. The lineup consisted of just one car, the sensuous Continental Mark II. Developed by the Special Projects Division headed by William Clay Ford, the Mark II used a "cowbelly" chassis that draped the body over the axles, keeping the roofline low and creating a sleek, sexy look. The Mark II sold for a then-astronomical $10,000, but Ford lost money on every one. Fewer than 3,000 were sold in 1956 and '57, and Continental rejoined Lincoln for 1959.

1957 Chrysler 300C

The low, wide and unadorned design of the "Forward Look" 1957 Chryslers designed by styling guru Virgil Exner sent Ford and GM designers back to their drawing boards to update their 1959 models. The best of the bunch was the 1957 Chrysler 300C, with its prominent fins and strong, simple grille. At a time when cars bristled with chrome and used two- and three-tone paint as part of the design, the 300C had little chrome and wore its design well with a monotone look.

1961 Lincoln Continental

The work of seven designers, including Lincoln styling boss Eugene Bordinat, the 1961 Continental earned a design award from the Industrial Design Institute — a rare honor for an automobile. The slab-sided look was elegantly simple, and it would attract the attention of President John Kennedy, who used them for his transportation. Four-door sedan and convertible body styles were offered, both with suicide-style rear doors that opened at the front. The look caught on. More than 25,000 Continentals were sold in 1961, pushing Lincoln ahead of Chrysler's high-end brand, Imperial.

1963 Buick Riviera

Originally conceived as a Cadillac by GM design chief William L. Mitchell, the Riviera became a Buick, bringing a sense of style to what had become a stodgy brand. Mitchell borrowed the sharp roofline from custom English bodywork of the 1950s, but the entirety of the design was unique and a definite departure from the chromed, finned beasts of the '50s. Touted as a personal luxury coupe, the Riviera sold all of its allotted 40,000 units in its first year.

1963 Chevrolet Corvette

Among the seven generations of Corvette, the C2 generation of 1963 to 1967 is widely regarded as the best-looking. The first of the Sting Rays, the 1963 Corvette was the work of Bill Mitchell, GM's vice president of design. The car was offered as both a coupe and a roadster, but the split-window coupe is one of automotive history's greatest designs. The split rear window was part of a boattail-style rear end that borrowed from the past while looking thoroughly modern. The center bar intruded upon rear visibility so it was eliminated after one year, making the '63 coupes highly collectible.

1966 Pontiac GTO

The GTO is one of America's favorite muscle cars, and its stunning good looks are one reason why. Several model years were attractive, but the '66 was the best of the bunch. A 1966 redesign gave the car a Coke bottle look, a classic automotive styling cue. The '66 "Goat" was offered as a hardtop coupe, a post coupe and a convertible, and the coupes featured an attractive flying buttress rear roof line. While the 1967 GTO had the same basic look, we prefer the '66 for its louvered taillights.

1970 1/2 Chevrolet Camaro

The 1969 model may be the most iconic Camaro, but the '70 1/2 featured the most inspired design. The swoopy lines and fastback roof were influenced by European cars — specifically, the Ferrari GTO — giving Camaro the profile of the sporty coupe it was always meant to be. The details were also outstanding. The Ferrari-inspired taillights worked well with the design, and the Jaguar-inspired rectangular grille opening looked especially good on the Camaro RS, which featured a split bumper.

LAST OF THE 15..

2012 Fisker Karma

Crash standards and aerodynamic considerations have homogenized the look of most modern cars, but the Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid stands out for its unique appearance. Although a 4-door sedan, it has the long hood, short deck and wheels-to-the-corners stance of a classic sporty coupe. Designed by former BMW and Aston Martin stylist and company namesake Henrik Fisker, the Karma was named 2012 Design of the Year by Automobile magazine. Unfortunately, Fisker is on the verge of bankruptcy and we will likely never see another Karma.

Why older people work: For money

Being old enough to collect a Social Security check doesn't necessarily mean being able to afford living expenses without a job.At 76, Robert Scheidly gets up at 2 a.m. for his daily four-hour newspaper route. His wife, Anna, 72, coordinates operations at a warehouse one day a week and applies for jobs the rest. "I was hoping that by this age we would be able to maybe enjoy going to visit his or my brothers or sisters," said Anna, a former receptionist and bookkeeper. "But we both really need to work in order to make ends meet."

The Scheidlys' story is increasingly common. As those older than 65 become the nation's fastest-growing workforce demographic -- increasing at five times the pace of younger workers -- the primary reason cited for continuing to punch the clock is money. Surveys consistently reveal this to be the case, even though seniors often find work to be fulfilling and may forget that money was their primary motivation.

"The reasons can change as people experience going to work," said Caitrin Lynch, an associate professor of anthropology at Olin College and the author of "Retirement on the Line: Age, Work and Value in an American Factory." A lot of people can't disentangle that," she said, "even if their initial motivation may have been that, 'I need to pay for heat in the winter.'"

The statistics are sobering:

• More than half the nation's workers are at risk of being unable to maintain their standard of living in retirement, according to research from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Nearly two-thirds of low-income households are at risk.
• For most families with members over 65, Social Security constitutes the bulk of household income, even though Social Security was never meant to do such heavy lifting. For those in the middle third of the income scale, it provides 71% of income; for those in the bottom third, 88%.
• According to the Social Security Administration, 34% of the workforce has no savings set aside for retirement.
• Social Security income averages just under $16,000 per year for those ages 65 to 74, less for those past 75.
• In 2020, nearly a quarter of Americans over the age of 65, or 22.6%, are projected to be in the workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared with 11.8% who worked in 1990.
• Like millions of Americans, the Scheidlys had always been frugal, and they had always worked. Robert was a welder until his factory shut down in 1987, then a minister."We lived hoping that we could retire, but we didn't set anything aside because we used what we got, mainly to raise a family," Anna Scheidly said. "Some people would say that it was our fault because we didn't plan right, but you do the best that you can in the situation you are in."According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, two-fifths of families with seniors are like the Scheidlys, with expenditures outweighing income in retirement. And the recent economic turmoil isn't to blame -- at least not fully.

• Yes, the stock market crash depleted individual retirement plans. The housing crash sucked the value from many people's greatest asset. And for some, the recession added the financial burden of supporting younger relatives.
• But these factors merely exacerbated trends that have been in the making for 20 to 30 years, say experts. The typical working lifetime has expanded as wages have fallen, and a great share of jobs available are less demanding physically. Meanwhile the shift away from company pension plans has put the onus on workers to save for retirement.
• In just one generation, the shift away from pensions has been dramatic. In 1983, 88% of workers were enrolled in a private or public employer pension plan. In 2010, only 31% were, according
•  to the Center for Retirement Research.
  

The Doctor Won't See You Now. He's Clocked Out...

ObamaCare is pushing physicians into becoming hospital employees. The results aren't encouraging.

Big government likes big providers. That's why ObamaCare is gradually making the local doctor-owned medical practice a relic. In the not too distant future, most physicians will be hourly wage earners, likely employed by a hospital chain.

Why? Because when doctors practice in small offices, it is hard for Washington to regulate what they do. There are too many of them, and the government is too remote. It is far easier for federal agencies to regulate physicians if they work for big hospitals. So ObamaCare shifts money to favor the delivery of outpatient care through hospital-owned networks.

The irony is that in the name of lowering costs, ObamaCare will almost certainly make the practice of medicine more expensive. It turns out that when doctors become salaried hospital employees, their overall productivity falls.

health system. A recent survey by the Medical Group Management Association shows a nearly 75% increase in the number of active doctors employed by hospitals or hospital systems since 2000, reflecting a trend that sharply accelerated around the time that ObamaCare was enacted. The biggest shifts are in specialties such as cardiology and oncology

Estimates by hospitals that acquire medical practices and institutions that track these trends such as the Medical Group Management Association show that physician productivity falls under these arrangements, sometimes by more than 25% (more on this below). The lost productivity isn't just a measure of the fewer back surgeries or cardiac catheterizations performed once physicians are no longer paid per procedure, as ObamaCare envisions. Rather, the lost productivity is a consequence of the more fragmented, less accountable care that results from these schemes.

Once they work for hospitals, physicians change their behavior in two principal ways. Often they see fewer patients and perform fewer timely procedures. Continuity of care also declines, since a physician's responsibilities end when his shift is over. This means reduced incentives for doctors to cover weekend calls, see patients in the ER, squeeze in an office visit, or take phone calls rather than turfing them to nurses. It also means physicians no longer take the time to give detailed sign-offs as they pass care of patients to other doctors who cover for them on nights, weekends and days off.

Most hospitals exacerbate these strains by measuring the productivity of the physician practices they purchase in "Relative Value Units." This is a formula that Medicare already uses to set doctor-payment rates. RVUs are supposed to measure how much time and physical effort a doctor requires to perform different clinical endeavors.

Medicare assigns each clinical procedure a different RVU and then multiplies this figure by a fixed amount of money to arrive at how much it will pay a doctor for a given task. A routine office visit has an RVU of about 1.68, while removing earwax has one of 1.26. Setting a finger fracture rates a 3.48.

This system misses all of the intangible factors that help gauge the quality and efficiency of the care being delivered. It focuses physicians on the wrong goals for promoting health, such as how well they code charts to capture higher-value "units."

Hospitals are beholden to the RVU system only because that is how they get paid by the government. Data from the Medical Group Management Association shows that physician productivity in these employed relationships, measured simply by RVUs, declines up to 25% compared with independent practices. The Advisory Board ABCO -0.47% Company, a health-care consulting firm, estimates that when hospitals last went on a physician-acquisition binge in the late 1990s, productivity fell by as much as 35%. Those arrangements mostly failed, and the hospitals divested the stakes they had in individual doctor practices. The physicians went back to practicing out of their own offices.

All of this reduced productivity translates into the loss of what should be a critical factor in the effort to offer more health care while containing costs. Yet hospitals aren't buying doctors' practices because they want to reform the delivery of medical care. They are making these purchases to gain local market share and develop monopolies. They are also exploiting an arbitrage opportunity presented by Medicare's billing schemes, which pay more for many services when they are delivered at a hospital instead of an outpatient doctor's office.

This billing structure exists because hospitals are politically favored in Washington. Their mostly unionized workforces give them political power, as does their status as big employers in congressional districts.

ObamaCare pushes this folly largely based on a naive assumption that models that worked well in one community can be made to work everywhere. President Obama has touted "staff models" like the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania and the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota that employ doctors and then succeed in reducing costs by closely managing what they do. When integrated delivery networks succeed, they are rarely led by a hospital. ObamaCare seeks to replicate these institutions nationwide, even though their successes had more to do with local traditions and superior management. That's hard to engineer through legislation.

:Note by the author.

Am I scared you damn straight I am scared. Not everyone in the public spectrum has very little knowledge of what is happening with health care. I hear people say with what I pay those doctors they are getting rich. But, I ask next time you get a bill from your insurance provider to please read it. Here is an example.

The doctor charges a certain amount, but never receives the amount the bill was for. The doctor must except what the insurance will pay them. But, then there is a write off, but who receives the write offs but the insurance company at the end of the year. This HMO insurance has been in effect since the Clinton Administration. Now with Obama care this will be putting doctors out of private practice and working in hospitals the way I do. Truth be known I was always going into practice with my pediatrician Dr. Steve when I became a fellow, but he is making cut backs at his office and couldn't afford me. 

All my life I heard if you want a job that will never down size and one that you will always have a future pick the medical profession. I have to tell you if you have picked medicine as a get rich profession you have picked the wrong career. You are going to have to be here practicing medicine because you love it and  for the money. It is a shame you go to school all your life and when it is almost your turn to make the money it's not there. It is a crying shame when banks, car dealerships and brokers on Wall Street can get bail outs to keep there plush salaries and the doctor who save your lives have to squabble with a insurance over treatment or a surgery for there patient.  

Please Tell me what you see wrong with this situation?