Healthcare district honors 2015 Health Care Heroes, provides update on Fallbrook Hospital situation

Thursday, January 29th, 2015 Issue 05, Volume 19.

At the Fallbrook Healthcare Districts (FHD) Community Collaborative Breakfast, held Jan. 25 at Fallbrook Library, two individuals were named Health Care Heroes for 2015 and an update was provided on the current state of affairs concerning Fallbrook Hospital. Approximately 82 people attended the event.

FHD administrator Vi Dupre gave a review of the purpose and process of the Health Care Hero program, now in its seventh year and it was announced that this years honorees would be Ramiro Gonzalez and Teddie Borges.

FHD director Howard Salmon spoke about the selection of Ramiro Gonzalez for the award.

It was stated that for the past seven years Gonzalez has taken care of his father, who became a quadriplegic after falling from a ladder. In assuming the 24-hour care, Gonzalez also has had to care for his mother, who has significant medical issues.

Gonzalez not only cares for his parents, but takes them to their medical appointments, does the shopping, prepares the meals, does the laundry, and maintains the home.

To do this, he had to give up his job and the benefits of income and accumulation of social security benefits. He was described as a person whose "hard work and compassion is what comprises his life, every day, every hour."

His neighbors and others have said he is "pleasant and positive, a kind and gentle man."

Fallbrook Healthcare District director Barbara Mroz spoke about the presentation of Teddie Borges as a Health Care Hero 2015.

Borges works at the Adult Daycare Center (The Club), operated by the Foundation for Senior Care. The center provides a place for people who are memory-impaired, suffering from dementia, Alzheimers disease, or who have sustained an injury and need encouragement and social interaction.

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Healthcare district honors 2015 Health Care Heroes, provides update on Fallbrook Hospital situation

What You'll Really Spend on Health Care in Retirement

Hero Images/Getty Images Doctor discussing prescription with senior patient

For older Americans, figuring out how much youll need to save for future health care costs is the toughest part of retirement planning. The bills are not only daunting, but hard to predict. Now two recent studies from the Kaiser Family Foundation provide useful data that can serve as real-world benchmarks for your future health care expenses.

You already know Americans are living longer, and that health care spending is rising along with our life spans. To see how that increase varies over time, one Kaiser study, The Rising Cost of Living Longer, breaks down Medicare spending into its main componentssuch as hospitals, doctors and drugsand measures how much Americans spend on these services at different ages.

Those between the ages of 65 and 69, who represent 26% of traditional Medicare beneficiaries, account for only 15% of program expenses in 2011, the most recent year for which data are available. (The study does not include Medicare Advantage plans). People between the ages of 70 and 79 comprise 32% of Medicare beneficiaries and 30% of spending.

Among the oldest Americansthose age 80 and abovethe health care taxi meter runs up its largest charges, Kaiser found. These seniors represented 24% of Medicare beneficiaries but generated 33% of program expenses.

Below you can see the breakdown in spending by category for three different ages70, 80 and 90. As Americans age, the demand for hospital, nursing, in-home care and hospice services climbs.

Those are scary numbers, but the real issue for retirement planning is how much of that spending will be coming out of your own pocket. Another Kaiser study, How Much Is Enough, details the amounts older Americans spend on bills for health insurance premiums and uncovered health care expenses at different ages.

People between the ages of 65 and 74 spent $4,020 out of pocket on average in 2010 (he year analyzed by the study). Those between 75 and 84 spent $5,245, while those 85 and older spent $8,191more than twice as much as younger seniors. On average, 42% of all out-of-pocket spending was for insurance premiums and 58% for uncovered health care expenses, including long-term term care (the biggest chunk, at 18%), medical providers, drugs and dental costs, which Medicare does not cover.

Will your retirement health care spending match these averages? Probably not. Medicare insurance plans differ, and no one can precisely forecast your future health or longevity. That said, even a rough guide can be a useful planning tool. So take a look at your own health care plan and see what coverage it provides for these common medical charges. Consider the likelihood for each type of expense, as well as the average Medicare costs by age, to come up with an estimate of the savings you might need to fund these costs.

To prepare for that spending now, take a look at the sources of your retirement income. If you have a health savings account, do everything you can not to touch it now but let its tax-advantaged balances accrue. It is an excellent vehicle for funding future medical expenses with no adverse tax consequences. Ditto for a Roth IRA, which lets your money grow tax free. For more tips on planning for retirement health care costs, check out MONEYs stories here, here, and here.

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What You'll Really Spend on Health Care in Retirement

Panel Unanimously OKs Bill Easing Employee Health Care Count

In a rare show of bipartisanship over President Barack Obama's health care law, a Senate committee voted unanimously Wednesday to exclude veterans from the 50-worker threshold that triggers required coverage for employees under that statute.

The Senate Finance Committee vote was 26-0, a departure from the usual party-line fights over Obama's showcase 2010 law.

Yet senators' comments suggested that party-line battling over many aspects of the statute and other laws could erupt when the measure reaches the full Senate. Lawmakers described potential amendments ranging from restoring expired tax credits to paying veterans a $10.10 hourly minimum wage to exempting additional workers from the 50-employee threshold.

"We should consider other categories of Americans who also should be relieved of this job-killing provision," said Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa.

Despite repeated pledges by Republicans now running Congress to repeal and replace the health care law, Democrats said the committee's actions Wednesday were an acknowledgment that such efforts were going nowhere. Obama has promised to veto any congressional effort to dismantle the law.

"Senators do not make changes to laws that are going away," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Obama's law is gradually phasing in a requirement that companies with at least 50 workers offer health coverage to their employees. The Senate bill would let employers exclude from that count veterans who receive health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs or the military.

Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said the bill "will help our nation's veterans find needed jobs" and encourage small businesses to hire them.

Democrats said they shared that goal but doubted it would have much effect.

"It really won't have much impact either way, other than somebody's talking point," Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said afterward.

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Panel Unanimously OKs Bill Easing Employee Health Care Count

Obama seeks $215 million for personalized medicine effort

The centerpiece of President Obamas new precision medicine initiative would be a massive database containing the genetic profiles, medical histories and other data of a million or more willing Americans.

The effort, which federal officials said would partly include pooling volunteers from existing studies into a single project, is aimed at helping doctors and researchers better understand the complicated mechanisms underlying any number of illnesses.

This research will dramatically advance our knowledge of diseases, how they originated and how we may prevent or treat them, said Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

Obama plans to outline the idea Friday morning at the White House in front of academics, researchers and drug-industry officials. It is part of a broader initiative to bolster precision medicine, which tries to tailor treatments and preventive measures based on individuals makeup.

It holds the potential to revolutionize the way we approach health in this country and, ultimately, around the world, Jo Handelsman, associate director for science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told reporters before Fridays announcement. Precision medicine is about moving beyond [the] one-size-fits-all approach to medicine and, instead, taking into account peoples genes, their microbiomes, their environments and their lifestyles.

President Obama told a gathering of Democratic lawmakers that he welcomed Republicans who are talking about addressing income inequality and poverty.

As part of that push, the president plans to ask Congress for a $215 million investment when he unveils his annual budget request next week.

About $130 million of that would go to the NIH to develop the national database, which would protect patients identities but allow researchers to share reams of genetic data. The Food and Drug Administration and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology would receive $10 million and $5 million, respectively, to evaluate and fast-track new innovations and build the technological infrastructure to share data securely. Another $70 million would go to the National Cancer Institute to scale up research into more and better treatments for specific types of cancer.

Proponents of the approach often point to advances in the cancer field as an example of the promise of precision, or personalized, medicine. In recent years, the FDA has approved numerous drugs that can target specific types of the disease effectively.

The push toward more targeted therapies in recent years also has led to breakthroughs for other diseases, including hepatitis C and cystic fibrosis. Kalydeco, approved by the FDA in 2012, targets the underlying genetic cause of cystic fibrosis for a small subset of patients with a specific mutation.

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Obama seeks $215 million for personalized medicine effort

Obama proposes 'precision medicine' to end one-size-fits-all

WASHINGTON (AP) President Barack Obama is calling for an investment to move away from one-size-fits-all-medicine, toward an approach that tailors treatment to your genes.

The White House said Friday that Obama will ask Congress for $215 million for what he's calling a precision medicine initiative. The ambitious goal: Scientists will assemble databases of about a million volunteers to study their genetics and other factors such as their environments and the microbes that live in their bodies to learn how to individualize care.

As Obama put it in his State of the Union address, he wants the U.S. "to lead a new era of medicine, one that delivers the right treatment at the right time."

Also called personalized medicine, this is a hot but challenging field in medical research. It's yielded some early results.

For example, it's becoming more common for patients with certain cancers to undergo molecular testing in choosing which drug is their best match. People with a rare form of cystic fibrosis now can choose a drug designed specifically to target the genetic defect causing their illness. Some medical centers, such as the Mayo Clinic, have opened "individualized medicine clinics."

But only recently has the cost of genomic sequencing dropped enough, and the computer power of medicine increased, to make it possible for large-scale pursuit of the approach, said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, which will lead the initiative.

The hope is to "harness the power of science to find individualized health solutions," Collins said.

In the short term, precision medicine holds the most promise for cancer because scientists already know a lot about the molecular signatures of different tumors, Collins said.

Details of the initiative still are being worked out, but the NIH plans to use some large genomic studies already under way as well as new volunteers, he said.

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Obama proposes 'precision medicine' to end one-size-fits-all

U.S. proposes effort to analyze DNA from 1 million people

The United States has proposed analyzing genetic information from more than 1 million American volunteers as part of a new initiative to understand human disease and develop medicines targeted to an individual's genetic make-up.

At the heart of the initiative, to be announced on Friday by President Barack Obama, is the creation of a pool of people - healthy and ill, men and women, old and young - who would be studied to learn how genetic variants affect health and disease.

Officials hope genetic data from several hundred thousand participants in ongoing genetic studies would be used, and other volunteers recruited to reach the 1 million total.

The near-term goal is to create more and better treatments for cancer, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), told reporters on a conference call on Thursday. Longer term, he said, the project would provide information on how to individualize treatment for a range of diseases.

The initial focus on cancer, he said, is due partly to the lethality of the disease and partly because targeted medicine, known also as precision medicine, has made significant advances in cancer, although much more work is needed.

The president has proposed $215 million in his 2016 budget for the initiative. Of that, $130 million would go to the NIH to fund the research cohort and $70 million to NIH's National Cancer Institute to intensify efforts to identify molecular drivers of cancer and apply that knowledge to drug development.

A further $10 million would go to the Food and Drug Administration to develop databases on which to build an appropriate regulatory structure; $5 million would go to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology to develop privacy standards and ensure the secure exchange of data.

The effort may raise alarm bells for privacy rights advocates who in the past have questioned the government's ability to guarantee that DNA information is kept anonymous. They have expressed fear participants may become identifiable or face discrimination.

SEQUENCING 1 MILLION GENOMES

The funding is not nearly enough to sequence 1 million genomes from scratch. Whole-genome sequencing, though plummeting in price, still costs about $1,000 per genome, Collins said, meaning this component alone would cost $1 billion.

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U.S. proposes effort to analyze DNA from 1 million people

Genetic screening for workers: A panacea or a pandora's box?

To retain and attract top talent, a quarter of UK businesses would extend health screening into genetic testing but fear of legal repercussions is an inhibiting factor for 76% of employers

With the price of full DNA testing plummeting, and in anticipation of personalised medicines fine-tuned to a patient's genetic make-up, one in four (24%) UK businesses say that they are likely to extend health screening into genetic testing as they strive to retain and attract top talent, a new survey has found.

UK businesses could soon offer employees a complete readout of their genetic blueprint, and hence unprecedented insight into their current and future health, but, amidst all the excitement, Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC, Vice President of the Patients Association and former Chair of the Human Genetics Committee, urges businesses to consider the wider implications, suggesting that genetic screening of employees may be more of a Pandoras box than a panacea.

More than 600 UK business leaders were questioned for the Astellas Innovation DebateTM 2015, which on Thursday 29th January brings together a panel of world-renowned experts at The Royal Institution of Great Britain to discuss the implications of the revolutions in DNA and data for our health.1

Currently, one in four (24%) business leaders say they would offer full genetic screening to their employees though this rises to nearly a third (29%) in the IT and banking sectors, where talent often seems in short supply. But most employers (76%) the fear of legal repercussions is an inhibiting factor.

Of employers who said that their business would be unlikely to offer genetic screening to employees, 43% said they might reconsider their view in the future if better legislation were introduced to protect the rights of employers (19%) and employees (24%). 16% said they would re-consider their view if the results of genetic testing could serve to reduce the cost of key person insurance, while a further 16% said that businesses would need access to advice on dealing with employees found to be at higher genetic risk of developing serious illness. Only 5% said they might choose to offer genetic screening if their business could access genetic data from test results.

European legislation prohibits businesses from gaining access to their employees genetic data, and most businesses (72%) support this principle. Despite that, one in five bosses (22%) admitted that an employee who revealed his/her greater genetic risk of serious illness would consequently also run a greater risk of redundancy and become less eligible for promotion.

Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC, a panellist at the Astellas Innovation Debate Vice President of the Patients Association, and former Chair of the Human Genetics Commission, where she successfully pushed for a moratorium on access to genetic records for insurance companies and persuaded the Government to make it a criminal offence to test DNA without an individuals consent, commented:

Of course its a testament to mankinds ingenuity that genetics and technology are combining to bring the prospect of personalised medicine much closer. But knowing the facts about our genes can also bring challenges. For example, our genetic information could be misused by insurers, who could over-interpret the information in our genes, wrongly suspect we are susceptible to some disease, and so not provide us with the kind of insurance we need. Similarly, if an employee shared some genetic information with his or her boss that indicated a higher risk of, say, cancer or a neurological disease, as this survey shows the employee would be at higher risk of discrimination in the workplace in the form of redundancy or being passed over for promotion. This in turn leaves the employer vulnerable to accusations of discrimination. And then, on a personal level, employees might well need professional support if they become distressed at the prospect of a disease that they might or might not develop.

Some US technology companies are offering employees DNA screening to identify the risk of cancers, and holding out the promise of personalised treatment based on their genetic make-up should they need it. However, I would urge UK businesses not to follow suit certainly not without thinking very carefully about the wider implications to them and their employees. It is not just a matter of potential discrimination and lawsuits, but also of the health benefits to those being tested. Of course, we all recognise the importance of screening people with a family history of certain diseases and rare genetic disorders as the 100,000 Genomes Project is currently doing but there is little benefit to widespread genetic testing if it cant tell you when or even if you will develop the disease.

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Genetic screening for workers: A panacea or a pandora's box?

A Futurist's Forecast For Latest Business Trends in the Affinity Benefits Industry

Tampa Bay, FL (PRWEB) January 30, 2015

As the closing keynote speaker for this year's Professional Insurance Marketing Association (PIMA) Conference global futurist Jack Uldrich aims to help PIMA members understand how technological trends, business forces and social media are merging to create fresh and innovative opportunities in the affinity market.

Uldrich's keynote for the event, "The Big AHA: How to Future-Proof Your Business Against Tomorrow's Trends will address the cutting edge trends in technology, including advances in mobile payments, the Internet of Things, "Big Data," peer-to-peer lending, wearable technology, artificial intelligence and collaborative consumption.

With his keen ability to hone in on relevant trends, Uldrich is tremendously adept at custom designing his message to each individual audience. He also offers powerful, constructive guidance for leveraging rapid technology-driven change into a competitive advantage. His captivating style blended with humor and anecdotes, along with timely and provocative insights (e.g., "Will Google Insure the Future?") motivates audiences like PIMA to embrace the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead and help them achieve their mission of thriving in a dynamic market place.

"The pace and scale of tomorrows change begs the obvious question: How does a business leader prepare for a constantly changing future? The answer can be found in a simple acronym: AHA. It stands for: Awareness, Humility and Action." Says Uldrich and this, in addition to covering the top technological trends, will be the jumping off point for his keynote.

Uldrichs bestselling and award-winning books include: Foresight 20/20; Unlearning 101: 101 Lessons in Thinking Inside-Out the Box; Higher Unlearning: 39 Post-Requisite Lessons for Achieving a Successful Future; and Jump the Curve: 50 Essential Strategies to Help Your Company Stay Ahead of Emerging Technologies. Among his many insurance based clients are: Fireman's Fund Insurance, the CAS (Actuarial Society), and Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter Society (CPCU.)

Parties interested in learning more about Jack Uldrich, his books, his daily blog or his speaking availability are encouraged to visit his website. Media wishing to know more about either the event or interviewing Jack can contact Amy Tomczyk at (651) 343.0660.

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A Futurist's Forecast For Latest Business Trends in the Affinity Benefits Industry

Taherul Islam Khan, Ex member of Parliament, Freedom Fighter,BNP leader – Video


Taherul Islam Khan, Ex member of Parliament, Freedom Fighter,BNP leader
Alhaj Taherul Islam Khan (Manik) (ex-member of parliament), Who was born in 1943 in a village called Rohadaha, Chandan baisha of the District Bogra. He was the AGS of Dhaka College in the year...

By: Barrister Tanim Khan

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Taherul Islam Khan, Ex member of Parliament, Freedom Fighter,BNP leader - Video