........................................................................................................................................................................................

The most visible and controversial parts of Obamacare the insurance exchanges, Medicaid expansion, requirements that individuals obtain coverage are just pieces of the law and, in the long run, may not even be the most important pieces.

The way the nation pays for health care and the kind of health care the nation will pay for are undergoing a revolution, dictated by financial pressures, common sense and changes required by Obamacare (officially known as the Affordable Care Act).

If you change the payment system, the delivery system will follow, said Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, who was in Albuquerque recently to address the New Mexico Hospital Association.

AHA board Chairman and Presbyterian Healthcare Services CEO Jim Hinton, who also addressed the NMHA, said there is a volume payment model of health care and a value payment model. Hospitals today, he said, are caught in the gap between the two approaches, still dealing with the one while trying to figure out how to implement the other.

The payment system that has dominated American health care for generations is a volume model. You pay doctors, hospitals and other providers of care for everything that they do. It doesnt take a doctorate in economics to grasp that if you pay a system for anything that it does, the system has an incentive to do as much as possible.

And it does. Hinton provides one of my favorite statistics: Almost half of all tests ordered by the system are either unnecessary or of dubious clinical value.

The value payment model, as you might guess, is designed to reward providers for doing smart things, delivering high-quality care at lower cost, and keeping patients healthier.

You may have heard the term alignment of interests in the context of health care. Insurance companies are finding that employers, who still help pay for most of the health insurance covering working-age people and their families, cant keep paying double-digit increases in premiums. Employees are finding it hard to afford their share of the coverage. But if the payment system keeps giving providers incentives to do more, regardless of the value, the providers interests do not align with those of workers, employers and insurers.

The challenge is to get everyone beating the value drum while still providing adequate and fair compensation to the people who deliver the care, because it is in no ones interest to drive health care providers out of business.

Read the original:

Health care challenge: Value vs. volume

In a world where nearly 4 billion people lack access to basic health care, the need for mobile testing using simple methods such as a single drop of blood could have momentous impacts on care. The level of individualized, near real-time care could become a reality in the developing world, as well as in many remote areas of the industrialized world. Anita Goel, M.D., Ph.D., a Harvard-MIT-trained physicist and physician, claims, technologies like our Gene-RADAR are emerging from the new field of nanobiophysics which will mobilize, personalize, and decentralize the next generation of health infrastructure, exponentially increasing access on a global scale.

Although there are significant gaps in health care around the world, there is no lack of technology in the health sector. Gene-RADAR is an iPad-sizedmobile diagnostic platform that works off of a drop of blood or saliva to deliver a real-time diagnosis ata price point makers claim are 10 to 100 times cheaper than conventional tests.

Gene-RADAR

Decentralizing Health Care

When Google was launched in 1998 it revolutionized the world and our access to knowledge about the world, by taking books, manuscripts, music, general history and information out of libraries, and into homes, information began to decentralize immediately. Like that ground-breaking endeavor, Gene-RADAR has the ability to be the first mobile device that can test for diabetes, tuberculosis, AIDS, HIV, E.Coli and even certain types of cancer in under an hour. The ability, domestically and abroad, for individuals and providers to know this information without the US-based four-walled hospital could fundamentally transform the way we understand and practice medicine.

In the United States however, this means that we must prepare the ecosystem for the kinds of shocks that could result from unleashing this kind of technology. Further, it means understanding and harnessing the power of such technology that intersects physics, nanotechnology and information technology. When there are critical gaps and limitations to what can be done in silos, the need for combining these kinds of technologies and innovations is paramount. Gene-RADAR integration means that potentially the unmet need for diagnosis is not only in the hands of those who need it, but that the costs also plummet.

Unmet Need Meets Customization

Empowering individuals to take responsibility for their own health care begins with access. By bringing Gene-RADAR to individuals, Dr. Goel believes that consumers will be more empowered to take ownership over their own health. Further, both industrialized nations and developing countries can benefit from increased access and quality of care.

Currently, Gene-RADAR is custom building apps for customers in both the developed and developing worlds and have already designed two pilot studies to run simultaneously in a large US hospital system and in Rwanda.

In the United States, Nanobiosyms goal is to use Gene-RADAR to demonstrate a mobile cost-effective and real-time solution to cut costs while delivering better patient care. This also enables the next generation of pharma, and how these changes will impact the way Americans are diagnosed and treated. What makes Gene-RADAR special, says Dr. Goel, is thatthe applications behind the platform are extremely flexible, and therefore can be customized for each partners needs, accommodating their nuances such as the user group who will be tested, the disease targets and even the site location.

Link:

Little Things Do Make A Big Difference: Globalizing Personal Health

Obama Tells Steel Company GM That His Companys Rising Health Care Costs Are His Fault
President Obama tells Millennium Steel Service GM Mihir Paranjape that his company #39;s rising health care costs are because he isn #39;t shopping effectively for coverage.

By: AIMArchives

Continue reading here:

Obama Tells Steel Company GM That His Companys Rising Health Care Costs Are His Fault - Video

Obama Signs Historic Health Care Bill

By: VOA Special English

Go here to see the original:

Obama Signs Historic Health Care Bill - Video

Poor health care in platinum mining communities. Tunatazama Productions. Bench Marks.
Podcast from Chaneng, Rustenburg, South Africa. Bua Mining Communities and Bench Marks have done a detailed study on how mining creates problems in the local community clinics. The study involved...

By: Tunatazama Bench Marks Foundation

See original here:

Poor health care in platinum mining communities. Tunatazama Productions. Bench Marks. - Video

MVP Health Care "Moments 2" TV :30 Ultra HD
Creative by Media Logic Video Production and Post - Production by Working Pictures, Inc. workingpictures.com Follow us twitter.com/workingpictures.

By: Working Pictures, Inc.

More:

MVP Health Care "Moments 2" TV :30 Ultra HD - Video

Health care in Ikemeleng, Rustenburg, South Africa. Tunatazama Production Bench Marks
Poor health care in platinum mining areas. Ikemeleng. Tunatazama Productions. Bench Marks. Podcast from Ikemeleng, Rustenburg, South Africa. One of the mining companies is currently building...

By: Tunatazama Bench Marks Foundation

View original post here:

Health care in Ikemeleng, Rustenburg, South Africa. Tunatazama Production Bench Marks - Video

Spain: public health workers call on health minister to resign
Health care workers in the Spanish capital are angry because many hospitals have experienced cuts in budgets, staff, units and equipment. The staff are confident they are doing their jobs...

By: euronews (in English)

Visit link:

Spain: public health workers call on health minister to resign - Video

Innovation in the Health Care Marketplace
BRT member organizations are leading innovators in providing health care to their employees.

By: Business Roundtable

Read more here:

Innovation in the Health Care Marketplace - Video

........................................................................................................................................................................................

WASHINGTON Millions of Americans may qualify for waivers from the most unpopular part of President Barack Obamas health care overhaul. But getting that exemption could be an ordeal.

Community groups are concerned about a convoluted process for waivers from the laws tax penalty on people who remain uninsured. Not everyone is complaining, however: Tax preparation companies are flagging it as a business opportunity.

The laws requirement that Americans carry health insurance remains contentious. Waivers were designed to ease the impact.

But while some exemptions seem simple, others will require math calculations.

Some involve sending in the application by mail and supporting documents, such as copies of medical bills, police reports, obituaries, utility shut-off notices even news articles. Consumers will have to dig up the documentation its not like filing the W-2s they get from employers.

Two federal agencies have roles, each with its own waivers and time schedules. Some people will apply directly to the Internal Revenue Service when they file their 2014 tax returns next year. Theyll use a new Form 8965.

Others can start now and seek an exemption through HealthCare.gov. If its approved, theyll get a number to put on their IRS form later on.

It will all come to a head this tax-filing season.

Hailed by Democrats as the fulfillment of historical aspirations for covering all Americans, the Affordable Care Act has turned out to have multiple issues. The debut of online insurance markets last fall became an embarrassment for the White House. It took two months to get the website working reasonably well.

Read the rest here:

Getting health care law tax penalty waiver a real chore

Virus sickens a nurse's assistant attending to an Ebola patient in Spain

Credit: CDC Global via Flickr

Ebola knows no bordersand frontline aid teams (and even one of their pets) remain in the direct line of contagion. This reality has become increasingly evident in recent days after one case of Ebola developed in Texas, triggering a massive U.S. public health response, and yesterday a nurses assistant in Spain was confirmed as the first person in the current outbreak to have contracted Ebola outside of Africa. In Sierra Leone, meanwhile, a European staffer of one aid organization was reported yesterday as having contracted the disease. The infection of health care and aid workers is not unexpected for an infectious illness that has already claimed 3,400 lives, among them 200 health workers. The midcourse of the epidemic, however, is not showing signs of infecting other countries in west Africa beyond the three where it has reached epidemic levels. Meanwhile, the U.S. and other governments are taking precautionary steps but avoiding major restrictions on travel and commerceand global health authorities are trying to tamp down any urge to panic. The Spanish patient is in stable condition, with no symptoms besides a fever.The announcement by Madrid is only the latest in a string of cases where healthcare workers contracted Ebola in the course of caring for patients, often to the astonishment of the workers themselves who wonder how they may have contracted the illness because, in some cases, they do not recall any close contact without adequate personal protective equipment. Doctors Without Borders, a key aid organization leading the Ebola response in west Africa, reported yesterday that a Norwegian staffer in Sierra Leone contracted the virus and is being sent to Europe for treatment. So far, other than a freelance NBC camera operator receiving care in Nebraska after being transferred there for care, the Dallas patient remains the only Ebola patient in the U.S. Ebola is not an airborne infection and the World Health Organization has taken pains to point out that spread of the virus via coughing or sneezing is rare, if it happens at all. The virus is transmitted via direct physical contact with infected bodily fluids, the most infectious being blood, feces and vomit. It has a 21-day incubation period although patients usually begin displaying symptoms earlier, around 10 days after exposure to the virus. There is no indication that the pathogen is mutating to become more harmful. Its genetic makeup has remained stablechanging by only a half of a percentsince the beginning of the outbreak, CDC Director Tom Friedman said today in a press conference. The new Spanish patient was working as a nurse's assistant at the Carlos III Hospital in Madrid, helping to treat a patient who had been infected in Sierra Leone and medically evacuated by Spain to its captial on September 22, only to die three days later, according to WHO. Outside of two laboratory accidents in Russia where individuals accidentally pricked themselves with Ebola-laden needles, this represents the first case of someone contracting Ebola outside Africa. Reportedly, the Spanish patient's pet dog will be euthanized as part of the effort to control spread of the infection, although evidence of Ebola transmission via dogs is not clear. There is one article in the medical literature that discusses the presence of antibodies to Ebola in dogs. Whether that was an accurate test or relevant we dont know but clearly we want to look at all possibilities, Friedman said. We have not identified this as a means of transmission. In Texas the Ebola patient is now stable but in critical condition and being treated with brincidofovir, an oral medicine developed by Durham, N.C.based biopharmaceutical company, Chimerix. The patient is on a ventilator to support his breathing and is receiving kidney dialysis. His liver function, which declined over the weekend, has improved, the Dallas hospital said, but doctors there caution that his condition could vary during coming days. So far, none of the 10 people who came into close contact with the patient nor 38 others who may have had lesser exposure have developed any symptoms of the virus. After a week of political agitation by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and others for new flight restrictions on travel out of Ebola-stricken countries in west Africa, Pres. Barack Obama on Monday announced that the U.S. government will be ramping up its screening for the virus at domestic airports and in west Africa, but details of those changes have yet to be disclosed. Were working very intensively on the screening process both in places of origin and on arrival to the U.S. and were looking at that entire process, CDCs Friedman said today, adding that the administration would make further announcements in coming days. Right now, patients in affected west African countries are screened with thermometers for fever and fill out questionnaires prior to boarding a flight. In west Africa, there are some indiciations that the virus is being contained, at least in specific areas. Fewer Ebola cases have appeared in some communities that previously had high case loads in Liberias capital, Monrovia, which Friedman said could potentially be attributed to the increase in Ebola isolation units and better burial practice protocolsyet it is too early to say whether the tide has turned. Globally this is going to be a long, hard fight, Friedman said. The enemy here is a virus.

More Ebola coverage: Ebola Doctor Reveals How Infected Americans Were Cured

Fact or Fiction?: The Ebola Virus Will Go Airborne

First Ebola Case Diagnosed in the U.S.

In-depth report: Ebola: What You Need to Know

Continue reading here:

Ebola Diagnosed in More Health Care Workers

Home health care workers and their patients rallied this morning in downtown St. Louis as their union negotiates with state officials for a higher minimum wage.

About 100 people gathered in front of the Wainwright State Office Building to ask Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon to back a proposed $11 hourly minimum wage for workers paid through the state's Medicaid program.

"Governor Nixon, raise our pay!" chants echoed throughout the morning as patients and workers took turns addressing the crowd.

A spokesman for Nixon did not immediately return a voice message seeking comment.

The Missouri Home Care Union is in the midst of collective bargaining negotiations with the Missouri Quality Home Care Council over the wage issue. Nixon appoints the council's members and his administration would be responsible for implementing the collective bargaining agreement.

The current hourly minimum wage is $7.50 but home health care workers are paid an average of $8.60, according to the union.

Medicaid pays about $15 an hour to health care agencies for the in-home care provided by attendants. But the union says only about half of that makes it way to workers while the rest is spent on administrative costs. It says an $11 minimum wage would not require the state to spend more Medicaid money on in-home services.

Michael Richards, who attended the rally with one of his attendants from Moberly, Mo., said home health care workers deserve a higher minimum wage because of their difficult work.

"If their needs can be met then those of the people they take care of can also be met," he said, adding that home health care services has greatly improved his quality of life.

This report was prepared in collaboration with Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Visit link:

Home health care workers rally in St. Louis for higher minimum wage

Get Breaking News First

Receive News, Politics, and Entertainment Headlines Each Morning.

BOSTON (CBS) All five candidates running for governor of Massachusetts met in their first debate televised in Boston Tuesday night at the WBZ-TV studios.

Republican Charlie Baker, Democrat Martha Coakley and independent candidates Evan Falchuk, Scott Lively, and Jeff McCormick faced off in a wide ranging discussion moderated by WBZ-TV political analyst Jon Keller.

Watch: The WBZ-TV Gubernatorial Debate

The candidates started off by sparring over what went wrong in the current Patrick administration and how they plan to fix it.

Gallery: Photos From The Debate

Baker and Coakley, who are locked in a dead heat according to the latest WBZ-TV-UMass Amherst poll, argued over the failures of the Department of Children and Families and the botched state Health Connector web site.

Charlie Baker and Martha Coakley at the WBZ-TV debate, Oct. 7, 2014. (WBZ-TV)

An ad by a pro-Baker super PAC that claimed Coakley opposed DCF reforms came up in the debate as well, but Falchuk jumped in criticizing them for having an argument over super PACs and not focusing enough on protecting children.

Read more:

Health Care Costs, Casinos, Gas Tax Highlight WBZ-TV Mass. Governors Debate

NEW YORK Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to eliminate health insurance coverage for most of its part-time U.S. employees in a move aimed at controlling rising health care costs of the nation's largest private employer.

Starting Jan. 1, Wal-Mart told The Associated Press that it will no longer offer health insurance to employees who work less than an average of 30 hours a week. The move, which would affect 30,000 employees, follows similar decisions by Target, Home Depot and others to eliminate health insurance benefits for part-time employees.

"We had to make some tough decisions," Sally Wellborn, Wal-Mart's senior vice president of benefits, told The Associated Press.

Wellborn says the company will use a third-party organization to help part-time workers find insurance alternatives: "We are trying to balance the needs of (workers) as well as the costs of (workers) as well as the cost to Wal-Mart."

The announcement comes after Wal-Mart said far more U.S. employees and their families are enrolling in its health care plans than it had expected following rollout of the Affordable Care Act. Wal-Mart, which employs about 1.4 million full- and part-time U.S. workers, says about 1.2 million Wal-Mart workers and family members combined now participate in its health care plan.

That has had an impact on Wal-Mart's bottom line. Wal-Mart now expects the impact of higher health care costs to be about $500 million for the current fiscal year, or about $170 million higher than the original estimate of about $330 million that it gave in February.

But Wal-Mart is among the last of its peers to cut health insurance for some part-time workers. In 2013, 62 percent of large retail chains didn't offer health care benefits to any of its part-time workers, according to Mercer, a global consulting company. That's up from 56 percent in 2009.

"Retailers who offer part-time benefits are more of an exception than the rule," says Beth Umland, director of research for health and benefits at Mercer.

Wal-Mart has been scaling back eligibility for part-time workers over the past few years, though. In 2011, Wal-Mart said it was cutting backing eligibility of its coverage of part-time workers working less than 24 hours a week. And then in 2013, it announced a threshold of 30 hours or under.

Wal-Mart, like most big companies, also is increasing premiums, or out-of-pocket costs that employees pay, to counter rising health care costs. Wal-Mart told The Associated Press that it's raising premiums for all of its full-time workers: For a basic plan, of which 40 percent of its workers are enrolled, the premiums will go up to $21.90 per pay period, up from $18.40, starting Jan. 1.

Read more from the original source:

Wal-Mart Eliminates Health Care Insurance Coverage for Most Part-Time Workers

Walmart, the nation's largest single employer, announced today it is cutting health care benefits for 30,000 part-time workers. But it's still possible for part-time employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week to receive employer-sponsored health care elsewhere.

Following Target's lead back in January, Walmart announced today that it will no longer offer health insurance to employees who work less than an average of 30 hours a week, starting Jan. 1. The decision affects 5 percent of its total part-time work force, cutting health care for 30,000 workers.

For the unemployed or employed who hope to secure company-sponsored health care, the good news is that certain companies offer that benefit to part-timers.

Whole Foods Market "team members" regularly scheduled to work more than 20 hours but less than 30 hours per week are eligible for medical insurance upon hitting certain service hour thresholds. To be considered full-time employees, employees need to work at least 30 hours per week. Part-time employees are eligible to receive other benefits, including paid time off and a 20 percent store discount. Employees who voluntarily opt to participate in the "Team Member healthy discount incentive program" could receive up to an additional 10 percent store discount, according to a Whole Foods spokeswoman. Employees select their benefits package through a company-wide vote every three years.

Stock options are also granted to all employees once they have accumulated 6,000 service hours.

Whole Foods Market also offers "gainsharing" to part-time workers, which lets them earn monthly dividends, such as "labor surplus payouts" from the excess labor budget of their individual teams.

Last year's "gainsharing" sales incentive program total was $99 million while average team member payout per hour was $0.87. The average total team member payout was $2,418.49, according to Whole Foods.

Since 1988, Starbucks, based in Seattle, has offered "a comprehensive compensation program" that recognizes and rewards employees, or "partners," the company said.

This benefits package includes "competitive" base pay, health care for eligible full and part-time partners, with an average of 20 hours per week, and equity in the company in the form of Bean Stock.

Last year, Starbucks store and non-executive employees received over $234 million in pre-tax gains from Bean Stock, a spokeswoman told ABC News.

Follow this link:

Companies That Give Health Care to Part-Time Employees

Home Remedy for Pimples Acne (With English subtitles captions in 162 Languages)
Acne is a common skin condition. Pimple lesions can appear as whiteheads, blackheads and small pink bumps called papules. Natural treatments for pimples are highly effective and less likely...

By: F3 Health Care - Cure yourself with Home Remedies

Read more:

Home Remedy for Pimples & Acne (With English subtitles & captions in 162 Languages) - Video

ThinkViral #39;s Cathy Potter featured in health care commercial
Love to see hospitals embracing social media - especially when they use our staff member! http://thinkviralkc.com.

By: ThinkViral LLC

View original post here:

ThinkViral's Cathy Potter featured in health care commercial - Video

There is Light gala video celebrating 130 years of ABHS
Learn about Aurora Health Care #39;s 130 year legacy in providing care and treatment for individuals facing from behavioral health issues in our community. Visit Aurora Behavioral Health #39;s website:...

By: Aurora Health Care

Go here to see the original:

There is Light gala video celebrating 130 years of ABHS - Video

Pharmacology Mnemonics for Health Care Students Professionals
Easy to remember Pharmacology mnemonics for medical, nursing and health care students and professionals. Download this and other presentations for FREE from Examville #39;s Study Aids section....

By: Examville

See the article here:

Pharmacology Mnemonics for Health Care Students & Professionals - Video

By Gintautas Dumcius

State House News Service

BOSTON -- With the next open enrollment period set for Nov. 15, Gov. Deval Patrick on Monday said the state's troubled health-care exchange website is fixed, at a cost of an additional $26 million to the state, bringing the federal and state total to $254 million in information technology costs.

The $254 million covers calendar years 2011 to 2015, and is $80 million higher than the original $174 million estimate to build the site, according to a Patrick administration spokeswoman. The state's share of the cost is $42 million, up from the original $16 million.

Addressing attendees of a hearing on health-care cost trends at Suffolk University Law School, Patrick said the additional $26 million is "significant," but "not the hundreds of millions or billion dollar figures that some have bandied about."

In a September report, The Pioneer Institute, a think tank critical of the state's efforts, estimated that taxpayers will have spent $600 million to implement a new health exchange, on top of $540 million for a temporary Medicaid program to insure residents who were prevented from signing up for health insurance due to problems with the website.

Patrick administration officials responded dismissively to the report after its release, and Patrick himself issued a statement condemning the report while traveling on a trade mission.

On Monday, Patrick acknowledged the site was a "terrible disappointment" during last year's transition to the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA), but said the state has enrolled more than 400,000 people in both subsidized and unsubsidized coverage programs.

Joshua Archambault, a senior fellow at the Pioneer Institute, called Monday's estimate "far too narrow."

"It is similar to a student mistaking his out-of-pocket expenses as the only expense for attending the local university," he said.

More here:

Gov: Health-care exchange website fixed