BEST Wither Boss Battle! | Minecraft: Islands of Junara 2 | Ep.32, Dumb and Dumber – Video

Posted on by


BEST Wither Boss Battle! | Minecraft: Islands of Junara 2 | Ep.32, Dumb and Dumber
Minecrafting FTW! Top quality Minecraft videos: mods, PvP, adventure, survival, maps, Tekkit, Feed the Beast, and much more on our own private Server. Join u...

By: YouAlwaysWin

See the article here:

BEST Wither Boss Battle! | Minecraft: Islands of Junara 2 | Ep.32, Dumb and Dumber - Video

CSU Channel Islands names Gayle Hutchinson provost

Posted on by

CSU Channel Islands has named an administrator from Chico State University its next provost and vice president for academic affairs.

Gayle Hutchinson, dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Chico State, will take over the job this summer. The provost oversees the universitys academic programs.

Hutchinson was not available for comment Wednesday afternoon.

She succeeds Dawn Neuman, who plans to return to the classroom at Channel Islands, where she will teach botany.

Hutchinson was selected from among five finalists. As part of the selection process, the university hosted receptions at which the public could ask the finalists questions. The candidates also met with faculty members, students and key administrators.

Hutchinson received her bachelors degree in physical education and a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She received her masters in teaching analysis and curriculum development from Columbia University.

In 2005, Hutchinson participated in the American Council of Education Fellows Program, which prepares people to serve in administrative positions in universities.

Excerpt from:

CSU Channel Islands names Gayle Hutchinson provost

Spread of Catholic health care raises barriers to care choices

Posted on by

Commentary: When it comes time for you to die, who should get to decide what medical services and options are available? Whether youre Catholic or not, the U.S. Bishops may have the biggest say.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union of Washington

Religiously affiliated hospitals in Washington state servce much of the population. Click to enlarge

Tue, Jul 5, 2 a.m.

Meeting in Bellevue, the bishops take a firmer line on physician-assisted aid-in-dying laws and make allegations about abuses that are not supported by the experience in Oregon and Washington.

The freedom to die in peace has been much in the news of late. When an 83-year-old manshotfirst his dying wife and then himself in a Pennsylvania hospice, distressed commenters speculated that local law left him with no better options. The wife was bedridden, in a unit for people who have less than six months to live, and Pennsylvania has noDeath with Dignityprovisions like those in Washington and Oregon.

Washingtons Dignity Act was championed by former Gov. Booth Gardner, who himselfdiedlast month after a protracted fight with Parkinsons disease. Several years ago, I hosted a small gathering in which the former governor battle, through the debilitating veil of his illness, to explain why the issue was so important to him. His effort said more than his words ever could.

The legal rights Gov. Gardner championed are in place in Olympia, and a new Seattle Cancer Care Alliance study shows that the state's Dignity Act is an option that can work well for patients and physicians. But recent events make it clear that the battle is far from over.

Early in March, when a California nurse refused to perform CPR on a dying 87-year-old, her decision created a nationalfirestorm. The Washington State Health Care Association hastened to assure us that nothing like that could happen here. Vice president Wendy Gardner at Merrill Gardens, which runs 24 care facilities across the state,told the Seattle Times, We always start CPR. I made a note to self: Tell the kids to ship me out of state when my time is getting close, to someplacenotcalled Merrill Gardens.

Two years ago, I scheduled a routine colonoscopy through Seattles Polyclinic and was horrified when the pre-operative paperwork informed me that the Polyclinic does not honor patients end of life directives. The staff explained that this is because they are an outpatient surgery facility. Are you saying that your statusobligatesyou to violate my wishes orallowsyou to violate my wishes? I asked. They couldnt say. Time was short, and I went through with the procedure but started transitioning my care away from the clinic. If there is one thing that is absolute for me it is this: my body is my own.

Here is the original post:

Spread of Catholic health care raises barriers to care choices

Obama health care budget: cover uninsured, trim Medicare, hike tobacco taxes

Posted on by

By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's new budget offers Medicare cuts to entice Republicans into tax negotiations, while plowing ahead to cover the uninsured next year under the health care law the GOP has bitterly fought to repeal.

But the biggest health consequences of any new proposal in Obama's plan could come from nearly doubling the federal tobacco tax. If enacted by Congress, it could make young people think twice about the cigarette habit.

Unveiled Wednesday in a flurry of numbers and details, the health care provisions of the 2014 spending plan will touch every American family, and businesses large small throughout the economy.

The budget for the Health and Human Services department would rise 5.4 per cent to nearly $950 billion, roughly one-fourth of all federal spending. Aging baby boomers swelling the Medicare rolls and coverage for the uninsured under Obama's signature law keep pushing health care spending higher.

On Medicare, the president sought to tap the fiscal brakes. His plan offered about $400 billion over 10 years in cuts, a bid to draw Republicans into negotiations to reduce government debt. It amounted to single-digit percentage points trimmed from Medicare spending, but for seniors individually and for businesses like hospitals and drug companies, there could be substantial consequences.

Obama has previously offered most of the Medicare cuts, but failed to gain political traction. Some proposals such as hiking premiums for upper-income beneficiaries clearly enjoy Republican support. But it's uncertain how far Obama can get. The president has said he won't ask beneficiaries to pay more without tax hikes on upper-income earners that Republicans are loathe to concede.

Powerful advocacy groups like AARP, along with most congressional Democrats, are dead set against cutting Medicare benefits.

Upper-middle class and well-to-do seniors would pay higher monthly premiums for outpatient and prescription drug coverage, a significant expansion of a policy already in effect. The current premiums would be boosted, and the share of beneficiaries exposed to the higher rates would keep growing until it reaches one-fourth of all those in the program. Now, only about 6 per cent of Medicare recipients pay higher "income related" premiums.

Newly joining Medicare beneficiaries would face several charges that will not apply to established retirees. These include a $100 copayment for home health services not preceded by an in-patient stay.

Follow this link:

Obama health care budget: cover uninsured, trim Medicare, hike tobacco taxes

Health Care Spending Growth Back below 4 Percent; Nearly One in Nine Jobs Lie in Health Sector

Posted on by

ANN ARBOR, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

National health care spending in February 2013 grew 3.9 percent relative to February 2012, a falling rate that returns it to the record low levels seen annually in 2009 2011, and below our estimate of 4.3 percent for 2012. Meanwhile, despite the recent pattern of historically low spending growth, the health sector now accounts for nearly 1 in 9 total U.S. jobs, a new all-time high at 10.74 percent.

While health care price growth rose to 1.7 percent in February 2013 compared to February 2012, two-tenths above the January 2013 reading, this was still the second lowest rate since 1.3 percent growth recorded in December 1997. The 12-month moving average price growth at 1.9 percent in February 2013 is the lowest since the same figure recorded in November 1998.

Health care employment rose by 23,000 jobs in March 2013, barely below the 24-month average of 24,000, but economy-wide employment rose by a disappointing 88,000, well below forecasts of approximately 200,000.

These data come from the April Health Sector Economic IndicatorsSM briefs released by Altarum Institutes Center for Sustainable Health Spending. The briefs, covering health care spending, utilization, prices, and employment are at http://www.altarum.org/HealthIndicators.

Health spending has remained at about 18 percent of gross domestic product since mid-2009, but health employment continues to slowly increase as a share of total employment, said Charles Roehrig, director of the Center. Expanded coverage under the Affordable Care Act should push these figures upward, but an improving economy will push in the other direction as non-health spending and jobs accelerate. We look forward to tracking how these forces play out.

The health spending share of the gross domestic product was steady at 18.0 percent in January 2013, up from 16.4 percent at the start of the recession in December 2007. Implicit per capita health care utilization averaged 1.3 percent growth over the last 12 months.

Altarum Institute (www.altarum.org) integrates objective research and client-centered consulting skills to deliver comprehensive, systems-based solutions that improve health and health care. Altarum employs more than 400 individuals and is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Mich., with additional offices in the Washington, D.C., area; Atlanta, Ga.; Portland, Maine; and San Antonio, Texas.

Read the original post:

Health Care Spending Growth Back below 4 Percent; Nearly One in Nine Jobs Lie in Health Sector

The Reason Health Care Is So Expensive: Insurance Companies

Posted on by

As Congressional budget battles heat upor roll along, depending on your time perspectivethe cost of health care in America receives a lot of attention. Unfortunately most of the discussion is largely off the mark about where the preventable, unnecessary costs really are. Yes, there is certainly over treatment, particularly of people in their last days of life. Yes, doctors under a fee-for-service arrangement do have financial incentives to do too much, and the fear of malpractice can lead to overtesting and overtreatment. As the recent article in Time by Steven Brill illustrated, pricing of medical care is neither invariably transparent nor sensible. And it would certainly be nice if care were better coordinated across functional specialties.

But the thing that few people talk about, and that no serious policy proposal attempts to fixthe arrangement that accounts for much of the difference between health spending in the U.S. and other placesis the enormous administrative overhead costs that come from lodging health-care reimbursement in the hands of insurance companies that have no incentive to perform their role efficiently as payment intermediaries.

More than 20 years ago, two Harvard professors published an article in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine showing that health-care administration cost somewhere between 19 percent and 24 percent of total spending on health care and that this administrative burden helped explain why health care costs so much in the U.S. compared, for instance, with Canada or the United Kingdom. An update of that analysis more than a decade later, after the diffusion of managed care and the widespread adoption of computerization, found that administration constituted some 30 percent of U.S. health-care costs and that the share of the health-care labor force comprising administrative (as opposed to care delivery) workers had grown 50 percent to constitute more than one of every four health-sector employees.

What remains missing even in the discussion of the enormous administrative burden is not just how large, both in absolute dollars and as a percentage of health costs, it is, but also how few incentives there are for insurance companies to stop wasting their and everyone elses time. Most large employers, including mine, Stanford University, are self-insured, which means they pay for their own medical claims. These large employers invariably hire health insurance companies to administer their health-care dollars, doing things such as paying claims. Employers typically reimburse the insurers the amount of money they pay out to health-care providers plus a percentage of these costs. In Stanfords case, we pay Blue Shield 3 percent of the amount, about $3 million a year. (Note that the overhead costs of Medicare are less than one-third as much at slightly less than 1 percent.)

Because insurers are paid a fixed percentage of the claims they administer, they have no incentive to hold down costs. Worse than that, they have no incentives to do their jobs with even a modicum of competence. To take one small personal example, I have reached the age of Medicare eligibility but, because I continue to work full time, have primary health insurance coverage through my employer. Blue Shield, of course, wants to be sure it doesnt pay for any claim it doesnt have to, so I was asked to attest to the fact that I have no other insurance. No problem there, except such attestations seem to be required on almost a monthly basisrequiring my time on the phone (and on hold) with Blue Shields customer service, an oxymoronic term if there ever was one, and also requiring my doctor and laboratory to call me, call Blue Shield, or both, and thus also waste their time and resources.

This story and the many others of the same sort but even worse, magnified across the millions of people subjected to private health insurance companies, is why American health care costs so much and delivers so little. Unless and until we as a society pay attention to the enormous costs and the time wasted by the current administrative arrangements, we will continue to pay much too much for health care.

View post:

The Reason Health Care Is So Expensive: Insurance Companies

Human Genetic Engineering: A Very Brief Introduction

Posted on by

April 9, 2013

Rayshell Clapper for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

What, Why and How?

What exactly is human genetic engineering (HGE or HGM)? Its a simple question with a complex answer. According to the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals (ARHP), HGM is a process by which scientists and medical professionals alter the genetic makeup, or DNA, in a living human cell. Ideally, HGM would be used to fix defective genes that cause diseases and other genetic complications.

In one method of altering the genes of living cells, scientists insert a new gene into a virus-like organism. This organism is then allowed to enter the cells and insert the new gene into the genome. Human genetic engineering uses two applications to do this: somatic and germline. It is important to note the distinction between these two applications.

Somatic engineering (from the Greek word soma, which means body) targets specific genes in specific organs and tissues without affecting the genes in the eggs or sperm (depending upon the gender of the person). The aim of this type of human genetic engineering is to treat or cure an existing condition. It does not alter the individuals entire genetic makeup as a report for the Genetics and Public Policy Center explains.

The other type of human genetic engineering is germline, which targets the genes in eggs, sperm, or embryos in very early stages of development. This means that the genetic modifications that take place affect every cell created afterwards in the developing embryos body. Germline HGM also means that the modifications are passed on to all future generations if the individual goes on to have offspring. Obviously, germline HGM tends to be more controversial because the introduction of the gene alters future reproduction, whereas somatic HGM only affects the individual on which it is performed.

Finally, cloning can be considered as a third method of HGM. The US Department of Energys genomics website explains that there are three main types of cloning: recombinant DNA technology or DNA cloning, reproductive cloning, and therapeutic cloning. DNA cloning is the transfer of a DNA fragment from one organism to a self-replicating genetic element in order for the DNA to replicate itself in a foreign host cell. Reproductive cloning, on the other hand, is used to generate an organism that has the same nuclear DNA as another currently or previously existing organism (think of Dolly the sheep). Finally, therapeutic cloning also known as embryo cloning involves the production of human embryos for use in research.

The Controversy

On February 13, 2013, experts debated whether the US should ban specifically prenatal engineering. Livescience.com reported about this debate over HGM as the concern turned from empowering parents to give their children the best start possible to creating designer babies who may encounter genetic problems as a result of the genetic engineering of humans.

View original post here:

Human Genetic Engineering: A Very Brief Introduction