[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpkayRwxEtY&feature=youtu.be]

Also posted at my Patreon page. Sources below:

Three things going up you should, and the media should, be talking about:

Alcohol use among Americans:
http://www.alternet.org/culture/are-americans-drinking-themselves-death

Drinking is on the rise in the U.S. Precipitously. A study released this year from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation finds that heavy drinking among Americans rose 17.2 percent between 2005 and 2012. Not only are Americans drinking more, but in an increasing number of cases, they’re consuming those drinks in rapid succession. The same study found that binge drinking increased 8.9 percent nationally during the same time frame. In 2012, 8.2 percent of Americans were heavy drinkers, meaning they had one drink per day on average over the course of a month. An additional 18.3 percent of Americans that year fit the description of binge drinkers, defined by the CDC as men who have five or more drinks and women who have four or more drinks in a single drinking session.

It's women, by the way, who have largely driven these increases. In the years between 2005 and 2012, binge drinking increased just 4.9 percent among men, but jumped 17.5 percent among women. The reason for such a significant rise is likely due to changing social mores, according to Tom Greenfield, scientific director at the Alcohol Research Group, who spoke with Kaiser Health News. Men still drink more than women do, but women have narrowed the gap in recent years.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-older-women-baby-boomers-binge-drinking/

More older American women than ever are drinking — and drinking hard, a new study shows.

Most troubling was the finding that the prevalence of binge drinking among older women is increasing dramatically, far faster than it is among older men, the researchers noted.

The difference was striking: Among men, the average prevalence of binge drinking remained stable from 1997 to 2014, while it increased an average of nearly 4 percent per year among women, the researchers found.

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/al...

Alcohol-Related Deaths:

An estimated 88,0009 people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women9) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the fourth leading preventable cause of death in the United States.

In 2014, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities accounted for 9,967 deaths (31 percent of overall driving fatalities).

Economic Burden:

In 2010, alcohol misuse cost the United States $249.0 billion.
Three-quarters of the total cost of alcohol misuse is related to binge drinking.

Medical Debt and Bankruptcies:

https://www.losangelesbankruptcylawyerblawg.com/2016/04/medical-debt-rem...

Medical debt may be the single biggest factor leading to personal bankruptcy in the country. The Affordable Care Act (ACA), which began to take effect in 2014, makes health insurance coverage much more widely available to people. It does not, however, address many of the health care issues that lead to bankruptcy, such as high premiums, high deductibles, out-of-pocket costs, and external costs like missed work. It seems that wider access to insurance has not led to fewer bankruptcies. At least one report indicates that nearly 80 percent of debtors filing for bankruptcy due to medical bills have health insurance. The bankruptcy system offers solutions for people with overwhelming medical bills, and California law also offers some options short of bankruptcy.

A 2013 study found that as many as 10 million adults with full health insurance coverage would incur more medical debt that year than they could pay. This is only a small part of the 56 million adults who the study predicted would have some amount of difficulty paying their medical bills. A study of one county in Oregon found that medical debt was a factor in almost three-fourths of new bankruptcy cases in 2014. Over half of the total medical debt in that county was owed to hospitals and hospital systems, where costs can quickly skyrocket, and patients are often surprised to find bills for services that are not included in their insurance provider’s network.

http://www.salon.com/2016/08/14/the-medical-debt-crisis-the-prognosis-is...

Costly medical procedures can quickly lead to spiraling medical debt, even for households with insurance. Out-of-pocket costs are frequent contributors to credit card debt. In our survey, dental expenses were the most frequently cited as a contributor to credit card debt; of those respondents who report they experienced a dental expense, a large share said that the expense contributed to their credit card debt. This is likely due to the fact that many basic insurance plans don’t include dental coverage. Emergency room visits, though rare, frequently contributed to debt; more than half of those who reported the expense said it contributed to credit card debt. More than half of respondents reported purchasing prescription medication, and of those nearly half said that prescriptions contributed to credit card debt. Though hospital stays and emergency room visits were not frequently cited as contributing to medical debt (12 percent and 13 percent respectively), that is because few people reported experiencing them (22 percent for both). Among those who had a hospital stay or emergency room visit, 56 percent and 57 percent respectively reported that these visits contributed to medical debt.

http://www.demos.org/publication/enough-make-you-sick-burden-medical-debt

[I]n 2014, 64 million people were struggling with medical debt, the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. [...]

[E]ven the insured face a large risk of accruing medical debt. A recent survey finds that 26 percent of Americans between 18 and 64 reported problems paying medical bills, though the uninsured were far more likely to report difficulty (53 percent) than the insured (20 percent). However, of those who had medical debt, only a third were uninsured, indicating that a large share of the population with medical debt is insured. Of those with debt, 44 percent reported that it had a “major impact” on their family, with no difference between those who were insured and uninsured. A third of those with medical debt reported struggling to pay for basic necessities (food, heat or housing) because of their medical bills, and here too, there were few differences among those with insurance.

Record global temperatures for March:
https://thinkprogress.org/march-set-remarkable-global-warming-record-dfa...

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that last month set an unusual and unexpected new record for global warming.

No month before March 2017 had ever exceeded the “normal” temperature (the 1981–2010 average) by a full 1.8°F (1.0°C) — “in the absence of an El Niño episode in the tropical Pacific Ocean. [...]

An El Niño is “characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific.” El Niños generally lead to global temperature records, as the short-term El Niño warming adds to the underlying long-term global warming trend ...

So when a month sees record high global temperatures in the absence of an El Niño, that is a sign the underlying global warming trend is stronger than ever.

NOAA reports that both March and the year to date (January through March) were the “second warmest on record” for the world since global temperature records began in 1880. They were second only to 2016 which, of course, was a year marked by a major El Niño.

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