Health care in America

United States of america healthcare is provided by a diverse array of individuals and legal entities. Individuals are offered inpatient and outpatient services by commercial, charitable, or governmental entities. The healthcare system is not fully-publicly funded but is a mix of public and private funding. In 2004, private insurance paid for 36% of personal health expenditures, private out-of-pocket 15%, federal government 34%, state and local governments 11%, and other private funds 4%.

Health care Services
"Ambulatory care" refers to health care delivered without a stay in the hospital; most health care in the United States occurs in the outpatient setting. "Home health care services" are generally nursing enterprises, but are usually ordered by physicians. Private sector outpatient medical care is provided by personal care physicians (specialists in internal medicine, family medicine, and pediatric medicine), subspecialty physicians (gastroenterologists, cardiologists, or pediatric endocrinologists are examples) or non-physicians (including nurse practitioners and physician assistants)
Facilities of Health care
There are for-profit hospitals, which are usually operated by large private corporations and there are nonprofit hospitals, which may be operated by county governments, state governments, religious orders, or independent nonprofit organizations. Hospitals provide some outpatient care in their emergency rooms and specialty clinics, but primarily they exist to provide inpatient care. Hospital emergency departments and urgent care centers are sources of sporadic problem-focused care. "Surgicenters" are examples of specialty clinics. Hospice services for the terminally ill who are expected to live six months or less are most commonly subsidized by charities and government. Prenatal, family planning, and "dysplasia" clinics are government-funded obstetric and gynecologic specialty clinics respectively, and are usually staffed by nurse practitioners.
Health care : Medical products, research and development
Companies provide medical products such as pharmaceuticals and medical devices. The nation spends a substantial amount on medical research, mostly privately funded. As of 2000, non-profit private organizations (such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) funded 7%, private industry funded 57%, and the tax-funded National Institutes of Health supported 36% of medical research in the U.S. However, by 2003, the NIH provided only 28% of medical research funding; finance from private industry increased 102% from 1994 to 2003. Research and development for applications is primarily done in commercial labs, while the government and universities fund the majority of general research.

Education in America

Education in the United States is provided mainly by government, with control and funding coming from three levels: federal, state, and local. School attendance is mandatory and nearly universal at the elementary and high school levels (often known outside the United States as the primary and secondary levels). At these levels, school curricula, funding, teaching, and other policies are set through locally elected school boards with jurisdiction over school districts. School districts are usually separate from other local jurisdictions, with independent officials and budgets. Educational standards and standardized testing decisions are usually made by state governments.
The ages for compulsory education vary by state, beginning at ages five to eight and ending at the ages of fourteen to eighteen. A growing number of states are now requiring school attendance until the age of 18.
Students have the options of having their education held in public schools, private schools, or home school. In most public and private schools, education is divided into three levels: elementary school, junior high school (also often called middle school), and senior high school. In almost all schools at these levels, children are divided by age groups into grades, ranging from Kindergarten (followed by first grade) for the youngest children in elementary school, up to twelfth grade, which is the final year of high school. The exact age range of students in these grade levels varies slightly from area to area.
Post-secondary education, better known as "college" in the United States, is generally governed separately from the elementary and high school system.

Visual arts in America

Visual arts America refers to the history of painting and visual art in the United States. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, artists primarily painted landscapes and portraits in a realistic style. A parallel development taking shape in rural America was the American craft movement, which began as a reaction to the industrial revolution. Developments in modern art in Europe came to America from exhibitions in New York City such as the Armory Show in 1913. Previously American Artists had based the majority of their work on European Arts. After World War II, New York replaced Paris as the center of the art world. Since then many American Movements have shaped Modern and Post Modern art. Art in the United States today covers a huge range of styles.
Most of early American art (from the late 18th century through the early 19th century) consists of history painting and portraits. Painters such as Gilbert Stuart made portraits of the newly elected government officials, while John Singleton Copley was painting emblematic portraits for the increasingly prosperous merchant class, and painters such as John Trumboulpoo were making large battle scenes of the Revolutionary War.
America's first well-known school of painting, the Hudson River School, appeared in 1820. As with music and literature, this development was delayed until artists perceived that the New World offered subjects unique to itself; in this case the westward expansion of settlement brought the transcendent beauty of frontier landscapes to painters' attention.
The Hudson River painters' directness and simplicity of vision influenced such later artists as Winslow Homer (1836-1910), who depicted rural America, the sea, the mountains, and the people who lived near them. Middle-class city life found its painter in Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), an uncompromising realist whose unflinching honesty undercut the genteel preference for romantic sentimentalism. Henry Ossawa Tanner who studied with Thomas Eakins was one of the first important African American painters.
Controversy soon became a way of life for American artists. In fact, much of American painting and sculpture since 1900 has been a series of revolts against tradition. "To hell with the artistic values," announced Robert Henri (1865-1929). He was the leader of what critics called the Ashcan school of painting, after the group's portrayals of the squalid aspects of city life. Soon the ash-can artists gave way to modernists arriving from Europe, the cubists and abstract painters promoted by the photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) at his 291 Gallery in New York City.

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During the 1950s abstract painting in America evolved into movements such as Neo-Dada, Post painterly abstraction, Op Art, hard-edge painting, Minimal art, Shaped canvas painting, Lyrical Abstraction, and the continuation of Abstract expressionism. As a response to the tendency toward abstraction imagery emerged through various new movements like Pop Art, the Bay Area Figurative Movement and later in the 1970s Neo-expressionism.
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Television & Broadcast in America

The United States has a decentralized, market-oriented television system. Unlike many other countries, the United States has no national broadcast programming services. Instead, local media markets have their own television stations, which may be affiliated or owned and operated by a TV network. Stations may sign affiliation agreements with one of the national networks. Except in very small markets with few stations, affiliation agreements are usually exclusive: If a station is an NBC affiliate, the station would not air programs from ABC, CBS or other networks.
However, to ensure local presences in television broadcasting, federal law restricts the amount of network programming local stations can run. Until the 1970s and '80s, local stations supplemented network programming with a good deal of their own produced shows. Today, however, many stations produce only local news shows. They fill the rest of their schedule with syndicated shows, or material produced independently and sold to individual stations in each local market.
The major commercial television networks in the U.S. are NBC and CBS, which date to the early days of television (in fact, they both began in the 1920s as radio networks), and ABC, founded, also as a radio network, in 1943. In big cities, affiliates of these networks almost always broadcast in the VHF band, which, in the days before cable became widespread, was premium real estate.
Major-network affiliates run very similar schedules. Typically, they begin weekdays with an early-morning locally produced news show, followed by a network morning show, such as NBC's Today, which mixes news, weather, interviews and music. Syndicated programming, especially talk shows, fill the late morning, followed often by local news at noon (Eastern Time). Soap operas dominate the early afternoon, while syndicated talk shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show appear in the late afternoon. Local news comes on again in the early evening, followed by the national network's news program at 6:30 or 5:30 p.m., followed, in the Central Time zone, by more news.

Architecture in America

Architecture America includes a wide variety of architectural styles over its history. Architecture in the US is regionally diverse and has been shaped by many external forces, and can therefore be said to be eclectic, something unsurprising in such a multicultural society.
The USA is a relatively young country, and the overriding theme of American Architecture is modernity, with the 20th century skyscraper as its ultimate symbol.
The oldest structures on the territory that is now known as the United States were made by the Ancient Pueblo Peoples of New Mexico. The Tiwa speaking people have inhabited Taos Pueblo continuously for over 1000 years.
When the Europeans settled in North America, they brought with them their architectural traditions and their construction techniques in building the oldest buildings in America. Construction was dependent upon the available resources: wood and brick are the common elements of English buildings in New England.
Spanish exploration of the American southwest began in the 1540s. The conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado crossed this dry region in search of the Pueblo Indians' mythical cities of gold. The Pueblo people built houses of adobe, a sun-dried clay brick, held together with exposed wooden beams. Their cubic form and dense arrangement gave villages a singular aspect which would be emulated by the Americans (Pueblo Style). One can imagine the disappointment of the conquistador in the face of these modest, unadorned structures, but under their roofs the temperature remained constant and cool.
The Georgian style appeared during the 18th century and Palladian architecture took hold of Williamsburg, Virginia. The Governor's palace, built in 1706-1720, has a vast gabled entrance at the front, which is adorned by a small lantern hanging from the banister. It respects the principle of symmetry and uses the materials that are found in New England: red brick, white painted wood, and blue slate used for the roof with a double slant. This style is used to build the houses of plantation workers and the rich merchants living on the Atlantic coast.
Public architecture (19th Century)
In 1776, the members of the Continental Congress declared the independence of the Thirteen Colonies. The Treaty of Paris (1783) recognized the existence of the new republican country, the United States of America. Even though it was a break with the United Kingdom on the political stage, English influences continue to mark the buildings constructed in this part of the world. Public, philanthropic and commercial controls grew in parallel with the growing demographics and territorial extension.
Greek revival style attracted American architects working in the first half of the 19th century. The young nation, free from Britannic protection, was persuaded to be the new Athens, that is to say, a foyer for democracy.
The federal capital building in the United-States is a good example of uniform urbanism: the design of the building was imagined by the Frenchman Pierre Charles L'Enfant. This ideal of the monumental city and neoclassicism is taken up by the supporters of the City Beautiful movement. The White House was constructed after the creation of Washington DC by the congressional law of December 1790. After a contest, James Hoban, an Irish American, was chosen and the construction began in October 1792. The building that he had conceived was modeled upon the first and second floors of the Leinster House, a ducal palace in Dublin, Ireland which is now the seat of the Irish Parliament.
Skyscrapers
The most notable United States architectural innovation has been the skyscraper. Several technical advances made this possible. In 1853 Elisha Otis invented the first safety elevator which prevented a car from falling down the shaft if the suspending cable broke.
Elevators allowed buildings to rise above the four or five stories that people were willing to climb by stairs for normal occupancy. An 1868 competition decided the design of New York City's six story Equitable Life Building, which would become the first commercial building to use an elevator. Construction commenced in 1873. Other structures followed such as the Auditorium Building, Chicago in 1885 by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan. This adopted Italian palazzo design details to give the appearance of a structured whole: for several decades American skyscrapers would blend conservative decorative elements with technical innovation.
Another feature that was to become familiar in twentieth century skyscrapers first appeared in Chicago's Reliance Building, designed by Charles B. Atwood and E.C. Shankland, Chicago, 1890 - 1895. Because outer walls no longer bore the weight of a building it was possible to increase window size. This became the first skyscraper to have plate glass windows take up a majority of its outer surface area.

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Culture , art, music & cinema

USA or America is a culturally diverse nation, home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values. There is no "American" ethnicity, as nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries. The culture held in common by the majority of Americans is referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Western European migrants, beginning with the early English and Dutch settlers. German, Irish, and Scottish cultures have also been very influential.Certain Native American traditions and many cultural characteristics of enslaved West Africans were absorbed into the American mainstream.
The development of the culture America: music, cinema, dance, architecture, literature, poetry, cuisine and the visual arts, has been marked by a tension between two strong sources of inspiration: European sophistication and domestic originality.
American music is heard all over the world, such as through MTV, Channel V, VH1 and by singers such as Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Madonna, Whitney Houston, American movies and television shows can be seen almost anywhere, and American movie actors and actresses are widely. This is in very stark contrast to the early days of the American republic, when the country was generally seen as an agricultural backwater with little to offer the culturally advanced world centers of Europe and Asia. At the beginning of her fifth century, nearly every major American city offers classical and popular music; historical, scientific and art research centers and museums; dance performances, musicals and plays; outdoor art projects and internationally significant architecture. This development is a result of both contributions by private philanthropists and government funding.
One way that American culture differs from that of similar countries is that American culture exhibits a tendency to hybridize pop culture and so-called high culture, and generally questions normative standards for artistic output.

Transportation in America

Transportation in America is facilitated by well-developed road, air, rail, and water networks. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation: "Transportation’s vital importance to the U.S. economy is underscored by the fact that more than $1 out of every $10 produced in the U.S. gross domestic product is related to transportation activity. This includes all aspects of transportation, including the movement of goods and the purchase of all transportation-related products and services as well as the movement of people." Employment in the transportation and material moving industry accounted for 7.4% of all employment, and was the 5th largest employment group in the United States America.
Passenger transportation is dominated by a network of over 3.9 million miles of highways (almost entirely constructed and maintained by state and local governments) which is pervasive and highly developed by global standards. Passenger transportation is dominated by passenger vehicles (including cars, trucks, vans, and motorcycles).
Air Transport : An advanced air transportation network utilizes includes 5,000 paved runways. Public airports are usually operated by local governments. There are over 200 domestic passenger and cargo airlines and a number of international carriers. Private aircraft are also used for medical emergencies, government agencies, large businesses, and individuals.
Rail Lines : The intercity rail network is smaller than its historical peak, and has shifted emphasis toward cargo as faster air transport has come to dominate long-distance passenger travel. Intercity passenger rail is sparser than in other developed countries, and has been taken over by the quasi-governmental National Railroad Passenger Corporation.
Mass Transit : Most medium-cities have some sort of local public transportation. Larger cities tend to have mass-transit systems, usually including subways or light rail. About one in every three users of mass transit in the United States and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders live in New York City and its suburbs.
General Transport : Most cargo transportation in the United States is by water, road, rail and pipeline; planes are commonly used only for perishables and premium express shipments. Usually cargo, apart from petroleum and other bulk commodities, is imported in containers through seaports, then distributed by road and rail.

Law in America

Law enforcement in the United States is primarily the responsibility of local police and sheriff's departments, with state police providing broader services. Federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have specialized duties. At the federal level and in almost every state, jurisprudence operates on a common law system. State courts conduct most criminal trials; federal courts handle certain designated crimes as well as appeals from state systems.
Among developed nations, the United States has above-average levels of violent crime and particularly high levels of gun violence and homicide. Some scholars have associated the high rate of homicide with the country's high rates of gun ownership, in turn associated with U.S. gun laws which are very permissive compared to those of other developed countries.

Law in U.S.A

The law of the United States america was originally largely derived from the common law system of English law, which was in force at the time of the Revolutionary War. However, the supreme law of the land is the United States Constitution and, under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, laws enacted by Congress and treaties to which the U.S. is a party. These form the basis for federal laws under the federal constitution in the United States, circumscribing the boundaries of the jurisdiction of federal law and the laws in the fifty U.S. states and territories.
Federal law
originates with the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to enact statutes for certain limited purposes like regulating interstate commerce. Nearly all statutes have been codified in the United States Code. Many statutes give executive branch agencies the power to create regulations, which are published in the Federal Register and codified into the Code of Federal Regulations. Regulations generally also carry the force of law under the Chevron doctrine. Many lawsuits turn on the meaning of a federal statute or regulation, and judicial interpretations of such meaning carry legal force under the principle of stare decisis.

State law
The fifty American states are separate sovereigns with their own state constitutions and state governments. They retain plenary power to make laws covering anything not preempted by the federal Constitution, federal statutes, or international treaties ratified by the federal Senate.
Nearly all states started with the same British common law base, with the notable exception of Louisiana; Louisiana law has always been strongly influenced by the French Napoleonic Code. The passage of time has resulted in enormous diversity in the laws of the states. State courts have expanded the old common law rules in different directions (through their traditional power to make law under the doctrine of stare decisis), and state legislatures have passed various statutes expanding or overriding many judge-made rules
Criminal law
In the arena of criminal law, all states have somewhat similar laws in regard to "higher crimes" (or felonies), such as murder and rape, although penalties for these crimes may vary from state to state.
For public welfare offenses where the state is punishing merely risky (as opposed to injurious) behavior, there is significant diversity across the various states. For example, punishments for drunk driving varied greatly prior to 1990. State laws dealing with drug crimes still vary widely, with some states treating possession of small amounts of drugs as a misdemeanor offense or as a medical issue and others categorizing the same offense as a serious felony.

Politics

Politics of the US America takes place in a framework of a presidential republic, where by the President of the United States is head of state, head of government, and of a de facto two-party legislative and electoral system. The federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments, with the Supreme Court balancing the powers of each.
The executive branch is headed by the President and is independent of the legislature. Legislative power is vested in the two chambers of Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Judicial power is exercised by the judicial branch (or judiciary), composed of the Supreme Court and lower federal courts. The judiciary's function is to interpret the United States Constitution as well as the federal laws and regulations. This includes resolving disputes between the executive and legislative branches. The federal government of the United States was established by the Constitution. American politics has been dominated by two parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, ever since the American Civil War, though other parties have also always existed.
Major differences between the political system of the United States and that of most other developed democracies are the power of the Senate as the upper house of the legislature, the wide scope of power of the Supreme Court, the separation of powers between the legislature and the executive government, and the dominance of the two main parties - the U.S.A being one of the world's developed democracies in which third parties have the least political influence.

Economy in US

The United States America has a capitalist mixed economy, which is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity. The economy of the United States is the world's largest national economy. Its gross domestic product (GDP) was estimated as $13.8 trillion in 2007. The U.S. economy maintains a high level of output per person (GDP per capita, $46,000 in 2007, ranked within the top ten highest by most sources). The U.S. economy has maintained a stable overall GDP growth rate, a low unemployment rate, and high levels of research and capital investment. Major economic concerns in the U.S. include national debt, external debt, entitlement liabilities for retiring baby boomers who have already begun entering the Social Security system, corporate debt, mortgage debt, a low savings rate, and a large current account deficit. In 2008, seventy-two percent of the economic activity in the U.S. came from consumers.
The economic history of the United States has its roots in European settlements in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The American colonies progressed from marginally successful colonial economies to a small, independent farming economy, which in 1776 became the United States of America. In 230 years the United States grew to a huge, integrated, industrialized economy that makes up over a quarter of the world economy. The main causes were a large unified market, a supportive political-legal system, vast areas of highly productive farmlands, vast natural resources (especially timber, coal and oil), and an entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to investing in material and human capital. The economy has maintained high wages, attracting immigrants by the millions from all over the world.

State capitals

List of the state capitals of the 50 United States,Note that the word "capitol" refers to the building and not the city. The state capital in each state is the political center of the state and is the location of the state legislature, government, and governor of the state:
Alabama - Montgomery, Alaska - Juneau, Arizona - Phoenix, Arkansas - Little Rock, California - Sacramento, Colorado - Denver, Connecticut - Hartford, Delaware - Dover, Florida - Tallahassee , Georgia - Atlanta, Hawaii - Honolulu, Idaho - Boise, Illinois - Springfield, Indiana - Indianapolis, Iowa - Des Moines, Kansas - Topeka, Kentucky - Frankfort, Louisiana - Baton Rouge, Maine - Augusta, Maryland - Annapolis,, Massachusetts - Boston,, Michigan - Lansing, Minnesota - St. Paul, Mississippi - Jackson, Missouri - Jefferson City, Montana - Helena, Nebraska - Lincoln, Nevada - Carson City, New Hampshire - Concord, New Jersey - Trenton, New Mexico - Santa Fe, New York - Albany, North Carolina - Raleigh, North Dakota - Bismarck, Ohio - Columbus, Oklahoma - Oklahoma City, Oregon - Salem, Pennsylvania - Harrisburg, Rhode Island - Providence, South Carolina - Columbia, South Dakota - Pierre, Tennessee - Nashville, Texas - Austin, Utah - Salt Lake City, Vermont - Montpelier , Virginia - Richmond, Washington - Olympia, West Virginia - Charleston, Wisconsin - Madison, Wyoming - Cheyenne.

US States

U.S. state is any one of the fifty subnational entities of the United States that share sovereignty with the federal government (four states use the official title of commonwealth rather than state). Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. However, state citizenship is very flexible, and no government approval is required to move between states (with the exception of convicts on parole).

National capital :

Washington, DC has been the national capital of the United States since 1800.

In 32 of the 50 U.S. states, the state capital is currently not the state's most populous city.
The dates listed in the following table indicate the year since which the current capital has continuously served as the sole capital. In nine states, as noted below, the current capital had served as capital previously, but one or more other cities were capital in the interim.
Also, the states that are italicized denote that the capital city is not in a metropolitan area:

State Capitals city of the Fifty States

Alabama - Montgomery
Alaska - Juneau
Arizona - Phoenix
Arkansas - Little Rock
California - Sacramento
Colorado - Denver
Connecticut - Hartford
Delaware - Dover
Florida - Tallahassee
Georgia - Atlanta
Hawaii - Honolulu
Idaho - Boise
Illinois - Springfield
Indiana - Indianapolis
Iowa - Des Moines
Kansas - Topeka
Kentucky - Frankfort
Louisiana - Baton Rouge
Maine - Augusta
Maryland - Annapolis
Massachusetts - Boston
Michigan - Lansing
Minnesota - St. Paul
Mississippi - Jackson
Missouri - Jefferson City
Montana - Helena
Nebraska - Lincoln
Nevada - Carson City
New Hampshire - Concord
New Jersey - Trenton
New Mexico - Santa Fe
New York - Albany
North Carolina - Raleigh
North Dakota - Bismarck
Ohio - Columbus
Oklahoma - Oklahoma City
Oregon - Salem
Pennsylvania - Harrisburg
Rhode Island - Providence
South Carolina - Columbia
South Dakota - Pierre
Tennessee - Nashville
Texas - Austin
Utah - Salt Lake City
Vermont - Montpelier
Virginia - Richmond
Washington - Olympia
West Virginia - Charleston
Wisconsin - Madison
Wyoming - Cheyenne

United States of America

United States of America (U.S.A or US) is a constitutional federal republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to its east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait, and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The United States also possesses several territories, or insular areas, scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific.
The United States is a federal union of fifty states. The original thirteen states were the successors of the thirteen colonies that rebelled against British rule. Most of the rest have been carved from territory obtained through war or purchase by the U.S. government. The exceptions are Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii; each was an independent republic before joining the union. Early in the country's history, three states were created out of the territory of existing ones: Kentucky from Virginia; Tennessee from North Carolina; and Maine from Massachusetts. West Virginia broke away from Virginia during the American Civil War. The most recent state, Hawaii, achieved statehood on August 21, 1959. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the states do not have the right to secede from the union.
The states compose the vast bulk of the U.S. land mass; the only other areas considered integral parts of the country are the District of Columbia, the federal district where the capital, Washington, is located; and Palmyra Atoll, an uninhabited but incorporated territory in the Pacific Ocean. The United States possesses five major territories with indigenous populations: Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; and American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific. Those born in the territories (except for American Samoa) possess U.S. citizenship.