The Ides of March means the “middle of March”, and before Shakespeare told us to be beware of it, the Romans considered it the day to settle all debts.
The Ides of April?
The Ides of March means the “middle of March”, and before Shakespeare told us to be beware of it, the Romans considered it the day to settle all debts (or the start of a new year). Maybe it makes more sense today for us to be beware of the Ides of April, our IRS debt-settling date. There may be other historical parallels for us with Shakespeare’s s story. Apparently there were 60 Senators in the 44BC conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar, , and four years later Octavian, the eventual winner of the ensuing civil wars, executed 300 of the senator class who supported his opposition, the brother of Mark Anthony.
Daylight Savings Time
In 1781 Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay exhorting the French to save their candle energy by getting up earlier in the day and using the daylight, and we have been arguing about Daylight Savings Time ever since. The U.S. instituted DST in 1918 to save energy during WWI , and in 1919 our farmers worked hard to stop it in order to “let the dew dry off the grass before their chores” and because the cows “did not want to return to the barn while the sun still shone brightly”. For a brief period during WWII we went to DST all year long (“War Time”), again to save energy. By the way, a 2017 study showed that switching to DST decreased our electric energy consumption by all of 0.3% (presumably by less use of incandescent lights in the evening and less prime-time TV watching).
In the 2000’s the case against DST is based on the increase of traffic fatalities, medical errors, and heart attacks in the days immediately after the time change; all presumably due to us being less awake and alert during the day. Clearly it is the disruption of our circadian rhythms, the change in our timely routines, and not the actual time zone that is the culprit. Getting rid of the time change and staying on DST year round would eliminate that problem. The Massachusetts legislature has considered switching to Atlantic Time (one hour earlier) for the whole year, but “who really wants all those kids going to school in the dark all winter.”
Seems like the debate over DST is a very distant one from our discussion of the pros and cons of solar panels, windmills, nuclear plants, social media, and election integrity, but “who am I to blow against the wind” of current warnings of a possible civil war in our future, eg. the “Ides of November?
Immigrant Health Care Insurance
My last blog headlined last year’s 21 million new subscribers in Obamacare, many of them through the healthcare marketplaces established by Obamacare. That prompted a few comments and questions about how many of new subscribers were immigrants. Undocumented immigrants can NOT buy health insurance through the healthcare marketplaces and undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid in most states (California is the only state offering coverage to undocumented immigrants as of January 1, 2024).
As of 2023, half (50%) of undocumented immigrant adults and one in five (18%) lawfully present immigrant adults report being uninsured compared to less than one in ten naturalized citizen (6%) and U.S.-born citizen adults (8%). Documented immigrants can get health insurance through their employers, Medicaid, or the healthcare marketplaces. Working immigrants have added billions of dollars to our economy. “Immigrants added $2 trillion to the U.S. GDP in 2016 and $458.7 billion to state, local, and federal taxes in 2018.”
Since 2015 (corr. 2015) Immigrants actually make up about 18% of the American workforce – about 75% of farmworkers are immigrants. With a growing number of uninsured in their states, those that refused the federal subsidy of Medicaid expansion under Obamacare are now reconsidering that stance.
HUB's LIST of medical fun facts 