Liberty takes Big South women’s title

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CONWAY, S.C. (AP) -- The top-seeded Liberty women's basketball team got a big boost before the Big South championship game from an unlikely source - Liberty's men's team.

About three hours before the Lady Flames hit the floor at the HTC Center to play seventh-seeded Longwood, they learned that the men completed a four-game run through their tournament to win a Big South title despite coming into the week with 20 losses. Liberty's women weren't about to disappoint a campus suddenly primed for a double-dose of March Madness and followed up with a 54-45 victory Sunday night, their fifth straight tournament title.

''Seeing that the men had defied all odds, it gave me a lot of extra energy,'' Liberty's Brittany Campbell said. ''All of us were, 'Let's do this. Let's have a double championship.'''

It happened before, the last time the men made the NCAA in 2004. Now, both squads will wait out NCAA selections with something to cheer about.

''It's a beautiful feeling,'' said Devon Brown, the women's tournament MVP.

Tolu Omotola scored 16 points for Liberty (27-6), which will carry a 14-game win streak into its NCAA tournament site. It's the Lady Flames' 15th NCAA trip in the past 17 years.

The Liberty men won four games in six days, capped by an 87-76 upset over Charleston Southern. They watched the women from behind the basket, then joined the celebration after the school's second title. All the players, men and women, posed for photos on the court before the Lady Flames cut down their nets.

Omotola had nine points to spark a 17-8 run to start the second half as the Lady Flames took control. Longwood (14-19) had cut a 15-point lead to 53-45 in the final seconds, but got no closer.

Ashley Rininger had 10 points, while Brown grabbed 13 rebounds for Liberty.

Coward had 14 points to lead Longwood, which struggled with its shooting throughout. The Lancers' high-scoring guards Daeisha Brown and Crystal Smith, who came in averaging better than 27 points a game combined, finished with just six points on 2-of-23 shooting.

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Liberty takes Big South women's title

Conservatives warmly welcome U.S. libertarian Ron Paul in Ottawa

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Americas foremost libertarian, Ron Paul, received a standing ovation Friday from Canadian conservatives gathered for an annual conference, after a speech that advocated the abolition of central banks, income tax and social programs.

But on the sidelines of the networking conference, sponsored by the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, some Tories noted that Mr. Pauls views were disconnected from the more moderate Canadian conservative movement and the nation in general.

A survey released at the conference indicated Canadians still count on government to handle the economy.

Were not Americans in that sense [Canadians] regard government as a positive force, said longtime conservative pollster Andre Turcotte, adding that the public is looking for more innovative ways of service delivery.

Few Conservative parliamentarians attended Mr. Pauls morning speech, in which he encapsulated his views on the primacy of individual liberty and the problems with current economic models all centred on the concept of government getting out of the way of peoples lives and the free market.

Mr. Paul formerly a Republican leadership candidate and congressman is an opponent of centralized monetary policy, government support for industry, federal social programs and the regulation of illicit drugs. At home, he has advocated for the abolition of the federal Health and Education departments.

Wouldnt it be correct to assume that the fruits of your labour are also yours to keep? Mr. Paul said, interrupted by applause.

My goodness, that would be a challenging thought. What does that mean? There wouldnt be any income tax? Thats right, we wouldnt have income taxes, because it would be your money. Then everyone would start worrying then how would you pay for the government? Well, why dont we have a lot less government and we wouldnt have to worry about that. Thats what Id like.

Preston Manning, the former Reform party leader and host of the conference, later asked Mr. Paul questions but did not challenge his views. Much of the conference agenda was dominated by guests associated with the more libertarian Reform party-Canadian Alliance side of the Tory family.

But the current Conservative government under Stephen Harper has heavily branded its stimulus project the Economic Action Plan as the cornerstone of the governments agenda. Its skills programs, funding for seniors and snowmobile clubs, and various industrial subsidies would appear antithetical to Mr. Pauls non-interventionist policies.

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Conservatives warmly welcome U.S. libertarian Ron Paul in Ottawa

Falkland Islands : Residents’ views

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10 March 2013 Last updated at 06:05 ET

Residents of the Falkland Islands are preparing to vote in a referendum on 10 and 11 March to decide whether to remain an overseas territory of the United Kingdom.

The move has been condemned by Argentina which claims sovereignty over the islands.

BBC News has spoken to Falkland Islanders to see how they think the referendum will pan out and what impact it might have on UK-Argentine and UK-Falkland ties.

I'm a sixth or seventh-generation Falkland Islander; I've lived here all my life.

My father is a Falkland Islander and my mother moved here just before the war broke out, when my father served in the resistance.

The referendum is vital - it will show Argentina and the world that the islanders can chose their own future and political status.

Argentina tries to garner support around the world for its claim to the islands but the referendum will make their argument difficult to back.

There is a misconception in Britain resulting from the latest census which said that the majority of residents identify themselves as Falkland Islanders.

But for us it's like people in Wales and Scotland identifying themselves primarily as Welsh and Scottish, then British second.

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Falkland Islands : Residents' views

Falkland Islands to choose in referendum: Britain or Argentina?

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Bill Poole stands in the Falklands capital of Stanley beside posters calling for a "yes" vote to remain British in a referendum Sunday and Monday. Great Britain has held the islands since 1833. (Tony Chatter, AFP/Getty Images)

LONDONOn Sunday and Monday, the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands, a wind-swept, sparsely populated archipelago that was a final way station for early 20th-century explorers like Ernest Shackleton en route to the icy wastes of Antarctica, will go to the polls in a referendum on the islands' future.

A total of 1,672 eligible voters vastly outnumbered by the islands' estimated population of 1 million penguins and 700,000 sheep will be asked to answer yes or no to a straightforward proposition:

"Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?"

The alternative would be to begin a transition to Argentine control, perhaps by a period of shared sovereignty, as Argentina has suggested. The vote comes three decades after Argentina tried to settle the issue by force, invading the islands and losing a 10-week war with Britain that cost the lives of 255 British and 649 Argentine soldiers, sailors and airmen, as well as three civilians on the islands.

For those inclined to a wager, the referendum is a lead-pipe cinch. The majority of the islands' residents are British citizens, and local pundits expect the vote for retaining the status quo will run a few points short, if that, of 100 percent.

About the only uncertainty is whether the fog that sweeps over the Falklands will ground the aircraft that carry the ballots from eight separate islands to Stanley, the capital.

The benchmark is a 2002 referendum in Gibraltar, another British dependency, where the vote for retaining the British link or accepting a new status tying the isthmus on which Gibraltar stands to Spain was 98.5percent. That, too, was not much of a cliffhanger because many of those eligible to vote were of British descent.

For Argentina and Britain, the 1982 conflict was a shock enough to lead, in time, to the collapse of the Argentine military junta that mounted the invasion, and to propel Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in deep political trouble at home when the war gave her an opportunity to play the "Iron Lady," to a second election victory in 1983.

The hope, sustained for years after the war, was that both countries would put the bitterness behind them and build a relationship on interests like trade that pragmatists on both sides saw as more important than the Falklands.

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Falkland Islands to choose in referendum: Britain or Argentina?

Falkland Islands hold referendum on disputed status

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- People living in the Falkland Islands are voting in a referendum on their political status on Sunday and Monday at a time of heightened tensions between Argentina and Britain over their sovereignty.

The two countries went to war over the territory, known to the Argentinians as Las Malvinas, in 1982 after the then-military government in Argentina landed troops on the islands.

According to the Falklands legislative assembly, the vote is intended to affirm islanders' desire to remain a self-governing territory of the United Kingdom and to reject claims of ownership by Argentina.

The question put to voters is: "Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?"

The two-day referendum is supported by the British government.

But the Argentinian Embassy in London said in a statement Friday that the referendum had no legitimacy, characterizing it as "a further attempt by the British to manipulate the question of the Malvinas Islands."

Because the area around the Falklands is the subject of a sovereignty dispute, it argues, "the United Kingdom has no right to alter the legal status of these territories, not even under the guise of a hypothetical 'referendum.' "

Argentina's president condemns 'colonial rule'

In January, Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner wrote an open letter, published in the UK press, in which she called on Britain to hand back the islands and accused it of blatant colonialism.

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Finding Heaven on Earth in the Cook Islands

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The search for heaven on earth is a quest that many travellers undertake.

Until a few weeks ago, however, I didn't realize it was as simple as booking a flight to the Cook Islands in the South Pacific.

While on a catamaran tour of the lagoon at Aitutaki (the second most visited island in the Cooks), we stopped at a tiny sandbar, which many locals call Heaven.

Gentle ripples of water from the turquoise lagoon lapped at the shore. Powder-soft white sand sparkled under the sun. There seemed no doubt about it - this was definitely one place where Mother Nature got it right.

The sense of solitude and serenity here seemed almost mystical; our catamaran captain had taken the boat to a nearby island called One Foot, leaving us alone on the sandbar in the middle of the lagoon.

If heaven were a place on Earth, this could well be it.

It was so peaceful and perfect that I wished everyone could experience a moment like this, here on Heaven - not all at the same time, of course. The sandbar is less than a hectare in size.

I don't know when we would have felt ready to leave this sandy slice of bliss, but it was hunger that eventually drove us toward One Foot. We simply waded 200 or so metres through waist-deep warm water to reach the uninhabited island, where the boat's crew had a barbecue lunch waiting.

Over the years, the remote One Foot Island has become known for being home to one of the world's smallest post offices. When a captain lands on the island, he will open the post office "hut" to sell postcards to his passengers and give them a unique stamp on their passports.

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Finding Heaven on Earth in the Cook Islands

Walker inches into health care reform

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Taxpayers in Wisconsin should be encouraged that Gov. Walker has finally put his toe into reform waters for the delivery of health care to state employees.

Now, as part of the budget process, Gov. Walker is proposing that the Group Insurance Board that handles health care budgets for 65,000 state employees be required to offer a consumer-driven health plan (CDHP). Study after study over the last decade since Health Savings Accounts were created show that savings of 20% to 30% result when incentives and disincentives are put into place.

High deductible plans, offset by a Health Savings Account (HSA), give funds to employees to use for health care and makes them responsible for managing the money. Almost immediately, inappropriate and excessive utilization drops like a rock.

No more does an employee call an ambulance when they dont need one. Its a $1500 ride, or more. No more do they use an emergency room when they dont need one. No more do they demand a brand-name drug when a generic would work.

This is proven, audited, non-debatable stuff. Ten years ago, it was a risk to install a CDHP program. No more. Just do it.

About half of all private payers have done it, including almost all of the health insurers for their own workers and health providers for their employees. Youd think they, of all payers, would know the territory.

One small governmental entity has shown the way. The West Bend School District went self-insured years ago, then bid out its network needs, then went CDHP and now is putting in its own on-site clinic. Its in the vanguard in learning from the private sector payers about what works and being a fast-follower.

Result? It is delivering first class health care for less than $10,000 per employee. Thats half of what many districts are playing for fully insured plans.

Think about the numbers. At a savings of $10,000 per employee and about 1000 employees, it is saving the taxpayers $10 million per year.

The district is giving raises; it has found funds for deferred maintenance; it found $5 million in reserves to put against a $25 million bond program for school construction.

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Walker inches into health care reform

Health care cuts from vaccinations to research

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Sequestration spares Medicaid and almost all of Medicare, but automatic cuts to other federal health care programs will make it more difficult for low-income Americans to get maternal and infant care, vaccinate their children, and receive treatment for mental illness.

The federal government gives states tens of millions of dollars in grant money for health services each year, and all of those programs are subject to sequestration cuts.

In addition, Washington will be funneling less public health and research money to states because of automatic cuts to federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health.

Overall,sequestration is designed to cut about $85 billion from federal spending in the remainder of the federal fiscal year, which ends in October. About half of that total will come from a 5 percent across-the-board cut in discretionary domestic spending, which will affectmany federal grants, safety-net programs and research initiatives. The other half will come from an 8 percent cut in defense spending.

It's still unclear how much federal health-care money each state would lose as a result of the sequester. But critics say it wont be long before people start feeling the impact.

"I dont know what the smartest approach would have been to deficit reduction," says Michael Fraser, CEO of the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs, "but its not this."

One agency bracing for the cuts is the Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA), which pays for many maternal and children's health programs. In 2011, HRSA disbursed $7 billion to the states, with a high of $827 million going to California and a low of $20 million to Vermont, according to the Trust for Americas Health, a nonpartisan group that advocates for public health improvements.

Sequestration will cut $365 million from HRSAs budget. According to Fraser, that money would have been spent on screening newborns for genetic conditions; immunizing uninsured and underinsured children; and tobacco cessation programs for pregnant women, among other things.

The HRSA cuts will also reduce the funding to 7,000 community health centers. The centers, which are located in every state and every territory, provide health care to people living in communities that are poor or geographically isolated.

States also rely heavily on Mental Health Block Grants, which the federal government distributes through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. That agency is losing $168 million in the sequester. Those grants finance a variety of community-based mental health and addiction programs. According to Federal Funds Information for States (FFIS), in 2012, California received the most in federal mental health block grants at $57.4 million, while Wyoming received $491,000, less than any other state.

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Health care cuts from vaccinations to research

Prudential receives Innovation in Reducing Health Care Disparities Award

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NEWARK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

The National Business Group on Health has honored Prudential Financial, Inc. (PRU) for their ongoing commitment to reducing health care disparities in the workplace and for supporting a diverse workforce. The company was recognized with the 3rd Annual Innovation in Reducing Health Care Disparities Award at the National Business Group on Health's 2013 Business Health Agenda conference held in Washington, DC.

In presenting the award, Helen Darling, President and CEO of the National Business Group on Health, commented: We are very pleased to honor Prudential for their relentless efforts and innovative approaches to reduce health care disparities. More and more companies understand just how important it is that their health care benefit programs meet the needs of a culturally diverse workforce. Prudential recognize that by addressing health care disparities, they are improving the value, quality and effectiveness of the health care services their employees receive.

Prudential's commitment to health is closely aligned with its commitment to diversity and inclusion. A one size fits all approach to health won't work. It's important to understand how differences like race, gender and lifestyle may be influencing well-being and figure that into our care strategies for employees and their dependents," says Dr. Andrew Crighton, Prudential's chief medical officer. "We're encouraged in our efforts by this recognition and honored to be acknowledged in this way.

Since 2006, Prudential's Health & Wellness team has been analyzing health disparity data trends to help increase the efficacy of its health programming. The company requests that its partners keep them apprised of their efforts to decrease disparities and help identify opportunities to do greater good within its population. In 2011, Prudential launched its Healthy Diabetic chronic disease program. The company selected diabetes because of the incidence and ramifications of the disease within its population, the modifiable nature of the disease with targeted interventions and because its health disparity data showed a disproportionate incidence of the disease among some groups within its population. The goal of the program was to enhance the client/nurse relationship with individualized and focused coaching toward helping the clients achieve glycemic control (A1C<7%) decreasing their risk of complications from the disease, and toward empowering them to make healthy life style changes through appropriate referrals and education.

We know that health disparities affect all employers, and that failure to address them will seriously hurt the health, productivity and quality of life of their employees and dependents. The leadership team at Prudential understands the importance of reducing health disparities and we strongly encourage other employers to follow the lead of these leading organizations in addressing the issue of health care disparities, Darling concluded.

About the National Business Group on Health: The National Business Group on Health is the nation's only non-profit organization devoted exclusively to representing large employers' perspective on national health policy issues and providing practical solutions to its members' most important health care problems. The Business Group helps drive today's health agenda while promoting ideas for controlling health care costs, improving patient safety and quality of care and sharing best practices in health benefits management with senior benefits, HR professionals, and medical directors from leading corporations. Business Group members, which include 65 Fortune 100 companies, provide health coverage for more than 50 million U.S. workers, retirees and their families. For more information, visit http://www.businessgrouphealth.org.

About Prudential Financial: Prudential Financial, Inc. (PRU), a financial services leader with approximately $1.060 trillion of assets under management as of December 31, 2012, has operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Prudentials diverse and talented employees are committed to helping individual and institutional customers grow and protect their wealth through a variety of products and services, including life insurance, annuities, retirement-related services, mutual funds and investment management. In the U.S., Prudentials iconic Rock symbol has stood for strength, stability, expertise and innovation for more than a century. For more information, please visit http://www.news.prudential.com/

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Prudential receives Innovation in Reducing Health Care Disparities Award

GPNZ/Snap: UFB Provider Selected for Primary Health Care

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Media Release

12 March 2013

Smart Connectivity: Ultra-Fast Broadband Provider Selected for Primary Health Care

General Practice New Zealand (GPNZ) is delighted to announce that it is partnering with award-winning telecommunications provider Snap to implement a range of Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) based services to general practices and primary care networks across New Zealand. The services will be available to GPNZ networks and their affiliated general practices with the intention of offering the services to the wider health community from mid 2013.

The Smart Connectivity service will start to become available from April 2013. Smart Connectivity will offer health providers a range of internet, hosted telephony and video services at competitive prices. UFB will be available locally when the fibre optic infrastructure is installed as part of the Governments $1.5 billion investment in UFB that is being governed by Crown Fibre Holdings. A key driver of the programme is the development of a network of shared services and information, encouraging improved collaboration between a number of different health entities.

The implementation of UFB will be a significant enabler for implementation of new services supporting integration across a range of health providers said Dr Richard Medlicott, who was part of the evaluation team.

The Snap service will be launched under the Smart Connectivity brand of the Patients First programme that delivered the very succesful GP2GP Electronic File Transfer tool.

Snap has many years experience in providing services in the New Zealand health sector, supporting a number of District Health Boards and primary care networks. Snap has gained an enviable reputation by offering innovative, leading edge solutions that embrace new technologies, such as corporate fibre, VDSL, and now UFB fibre services said Fiona Thomson, CEO at GPNZ.

The health sector is a priority for Snaps UFB rollout. Our aim is to improve access to information and encourage the use of common systems across multiple health providers. Improved connectivity will allow centralised solutions to be embraced for more effective and effcient patient care, reducing the costs and burdens of legacy systems and technology, but also ensuring that New Zealand continues to deliver a world class healthcare service. Snap is incredibly excited to bring its UFB-based Smart Connectivity suite of services to the health sector with GPNZ and its member networks said Mark Petrie, CEO at Snap.

UFB services are now available in initial suburbs in over 20 cities and towns nationwide, and our partners are actively prioritising health facilities such as general practices in deployment, said Graham Mitchell, CEO of Crown Fibre Holdings, the company established by the Government to manage its investment in UFB. So its fantastic to see a leading industry group such as GPNZ encouraging their members to take advantage of UFB. Id like to congratulate Snap on winning the opportunity to help make this happen.

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GPNZ/Snap: UFB Provider Selected for Primary Health Care

Another View How Medicare’s low prices drive up health care costs

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Steven Brill's recent Time magazine cover story, "Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us," is an extraordinarily well-reported look at medical pricing, demonstrating that high health-care prices have little relationship to underlying cost. For many commentators, the much lower prices paid by Medicare suggest an obvious solution to our health-care problems - "Medicare for all." There's only one problem with this "obvious" solution: Medicare has been a primary driver of the explosion of health-care costs in the United States despite - and perhaps because of - the low prices it pays.

Over the past decade, Medicare's spending per beneficiary has risen at roughly the same rate as spending for privately insured patients. Medicare's supporters have a simple explanation: Americans are living longer, and this is driving up the program's costs. But Medicare's own data say that a much more important factor is the growing intensity of use: more demand for care at every age.

In the mainstream of our health-care debate, this growth in seniors' demand is considered organic - a need to be fulfilled. But this extraordinary growth in volume is better understood as a provider reaction to the perverse incentives of low prices. Faced with buyers focused on volumes - such as private insurers - the health-care industry prices high; when dealing with buyers focused on prices - such as Medicare and Medicaid - the focus shifts to raising volumes, especially of more-costly procedures. Both strategies demonstrate the industry's enormous market power.

Medicare beneficiaries get a lot of health care, and these amounts grow every year. In 10 years, the number of CT and MRI scans per beneficiary more than doubled; hip replacements increased by 36 percent between 1997 and 2007. One out of three Medicare beneficiaries now has at least one surgery in the year of his or her death; even 20 percent of 90-year-olds do! The average 75-year-old is on five prescription drugs. Here's a fact you rarely hear about Medicare: Annual spending just on those in excellent or very good health was an astonishing $5,437 per person in 2008.

If you have relatives who are Medicare beneficiaries, you've probably experienced the medicalization of senior years - the perverse fate of the healthiest generation of seniors in history. But although the past years have seen a slew of insider accounts discussing the rise in unnecessary tests, diagnoses and even treatments far beyond any benefit to the patient, little awareness of the harm inflicted by growth in medical volume has seeped into policy debates.

The explosion of "care" under Medicare is an assault on the very bodies of our seniors. Health care is often a real benefit, of course, but all of it involves physical costs in side effects, recovery periods and the risk of error. An extensive survey by Medicare's inspector general noted that one in seven hospital admissions of a Medicare beneficiary resulted in an "adverse event" from care; an unbelievable 1.5 percent - translating to 15,000 patients per month - experience an "event" that contributed to their death.

It's difficult to hear that pricing policy may drive the very nature, and not just the cost, of health care, but "diagnosis creep," the substitution of expensive drugs for cheaper ones and an increasing number of more expensive procedures seem like common yet subtle responses to Medicare's efforts to manage by price. Medicare claims that hospitals and other institutions actually lose money - an average of 4.5 percent of their reimbursements - on services provided to Medicare beneficiaries and have suffered such losses every year since 2003. Yet the number of hospitals taking Medicare patients has grown in every one of those years. Why? And what explains all those ads targeting Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries if those programs are such tough customers?

Brill referred several times in his Time article to the "protection" Medicare offers its beneficiaries from high prices. But the massive expansion of care unleashed by Medicare's perverse incentives means that just the tiny sliver of care paid directly by seniors - at the low prices established by Medicare - now accounts for a higher share of their income than before Medicare existed.

Single-payer advocates contend that other nations have managed to better control health-care spending - volumes and prices - by enforcing a true budget for cost. But any review of how our Medicare system actually works illustrates why a single-payer system would be so difficult here: Our government has a pervasive inability to say "no." Only in the United States is public health care an unbudgeted entitlement: Our government promises to pay for any care seniors need and providers respond by relentlessly expanding the definition of need. It's no coincidence.

Medicare is a major source of votes and campaign contributions, both of which reinforce our politicians' unwillingness to address exploding volumes. The program's low administrative costs aren't an accomplishment; they're a refusal to discipline excess care, even dangerous care. The program's low prices are a mirage. As any businessperson knows, with enough market power - not to mention political power - you can always make it up in volume.

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Another View How Medicare's low prices drive up health care costs

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Keynote Speaker: Glen Hiemstra • Presented by SpeakInc • The Futurist – Video

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Keynote Speaker: Glen Hiemstra bull; Presented by SpeakInc bull; The Futurist
Recognized Expert in Preferred Future Planning Glen Hiemstra is the founder and owner of Futurist.com. Glen is dedicated to disseminating information about t...

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Keynote Speaker: Glen Hiemstra • Presented by SpeakInc • The Futurist - Video