Off shore oil drilling

Spent a good deal of time looking at solar and wind for the house after a friend alerted me to the fact that even Costco is selling the stuff.

The ongoing debate about whether we should drill for oil off the coast of North Carolina is eerily similar to the less-often-debated issue of end-of-life health care. We spend a hugely disproportionate amount of health care dollars on the last few weeks of people's lives.

Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly, spends nearly 30 percent of its budget on beneficiaries in their final year of life. Slightly more than half of Medicare dollars are spent on patients who die within two months.