Harvard Upset Over Health Care Hikes - Obamacare - The Kelly File
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Harvard Upset Over Health Care Hikes - Obamacare - The Kelly File - Video
Gunman, One Other Person Dead In Texas VA Clinic Shooting
Source: https://www.youtube.com/user/AssociatedPress January 06, 2015 - A gunman and one other person are dead in a shooting at a veterans #39; medical clinic in West Texas. He says the shooting...
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Gunman, One Other Person Dead In Texas VA Clinic Shooting - Video
Professional Tax Software - Sigma Tax Pro Is Best
Professional Tax Software? Sigma Tax Pro at http://www.sigmataxpro.com For Professional Tax Software Sigma Tax Pro at http://www.sigmataxpro.com is the best professional tax software on the...
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Gunman, 1 other person dead in shooting at El Paso veterans clinic
The shooting happened at the El Paso Veterans Affairs Health Care System.
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Gunman, 1 other person dead in shooting at El Paso veterans clinic - Video
Home Remedies for Hydrocele
Hydrocele is the swelling of the scrotum in the testicle making it look like a water balloon. It is transparent if you shine a light through it. Generally harmless and painless but can cause...
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SINGAPORE - The year 2015 should turn out to be a good year, as far as health care is concerned - barring unexpected developments. In fact, if all goes well, it should be the start of a few good years, as the hard work of the past comes to fruition.
Bed crunch eases
First, the severe bed crunch facing public hospitals should ease this year. The shortage still exists - some hospitals still report 100 per cent occupancy on some days and patients are still being put up in makeshift waiting areas, including corridors.
But this should ease as the year progresses.
The bed crunch was exacerbated last year by the six-month delay in the opening of the 700-bed Ng Teng Fong General Hospital in Jurong. It is now scheduled to open by the middle of this year.
Changi General Hospital made good its promise to open the new 280-bed integrated building it shares with St Andrew's Community Hospital by 2014 - but with just 20 beds at the end of last month. By end-January, another 10 beds will be ready. By July, 200 more beds will be up.
With the extra beds from the two hospitals, the load on both the National University Hospital and the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital will be lighter.
In all, there should be a 10 per cent increase in public general hospital beds this year - from more than 7,200 beds to about 8,000 beds - giving all hospitals some breathing space.
Lower costs
Next, the rising cost of health care, especially for older people, will be reined in.
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Large employers are increasingly putting an end to their most generous health-care coverage as a tax on Cadillac insurance plans looms closer under Obamacare.
Employees including bankers at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and college professors at Harvard University are seeing a range of moves to shift more costs to workers. Companies are introducing higher deductibles and co-payments, rising premiums and the imposition of wellness programs that carry penalties for people who dont comply.
Requiring employees to shoulder more of the cost burden may undermine public support for Obamacare just as Congress, now firmly under Republican control, considers new ways to gut the law.
The tax takes effect in 2018, and employers are already laying the groundwork to make sure they dont have to pay the 40 percent surcharge on health-insurance spending that exceeds $27,500 for a family or $10,200 for an individual. Once envisioned as a tool to slow the nations growing health-care tab, the tax has in practice meant higher out-of-pocket health-care costs for workers.
I dont think theres any employer thats planning on paying that tax, Steve Wojcik, vice president of public policy for the National Business Group on Health, which represents large employers, said in a phone interview.
It doesnt help the company, it doesnt help the employees, it doesnt help the shareholders, he said. It doesnt really help anybody except the federal government.
The tax on Cadillac plans -- named after the luxury vehicle to denote their lavishness -- is one reason the growth in health-care premiums has slowed since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act took effect in 2010.
Last year, average family premiums rose 3 percent to $16,834, while single premiums held steady at $6,025, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Companies with a large percentage of high-wage workers paid more, with an average of $6,244 for single coverage.
Among employers with 200 or more workers, 51 percent had employees paying one-quarter or more of their premiums for family coverage last year, according to Kaisers report in September. That portion has been gradually increasing since 2011, when it was 42 percent.
Employers who have traditionally offered generous benefits to lure top professional talent, or who have conceded to demands from labor unions for better health benefits, are most susceptible to the tax, Wojcik said. Many are responding by imposing new requirements on workers and reducing their health benefits.
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Lavish Cadillac Health Plans Dying Out as Obamacare Tax Looms
Top Health Care Stocks
JNJ +2.10%
PZE +1.26%
MRK +0.74%
ABT +1.90%
AMGN +3.10%
Health care stocks were sharply higher Wednesday with the NYSE Health Care Sector Index rising 1.4% and shares of health care companies in the S&P 500 ahead 2.1% as a group.
In company news, Galectin Therapeutics ( GALT ) after the drugmaker reported positive early-stage results demonstrating its GR-MD-02 drug candidate is safe with potential for therapeutic effect on fibrosis in patients with fatty liver disease.
The Phase I trial enrolled 30 patients divided into three groups, with patients receiving four doses of up to 8 milligrams per kilogram with no serious adverse events.
The drug also "had significant effects on a relevant biomarker of fibrotic liver disease and a potential signal indicating a reduction in liver stiffness," according to Dr. Stephen Harrison, the lead investigator and the Chief of Hepatology at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas. The results justify further testing, Harrison said.
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Next time youre a patient, ask whether your health-care provider is a doctor.
On Jan. 1, New York changed the standard for who can practice medicine, putting patients at risk. It became the 19th state to capitulate to aggressive lobbying by nursing groups to let some nurses play doctor without going to medical school.
In these states, nurse practitioners can do everything primary-care doctors do diagnose, treat, prescribe and even open their own independent practices once theyve worked 20 months under a physicians direction.
That is, can legally. That doesnt mean they have the know-how. And therein lies the danger.
Dont get me wrong: Nurses are the backbone of the health-care system, and generally theyre better than doctors at educating patients and providing many types of routine care.
But their training is different, and it doesnt prepare them to do everything doctors do especially diagnosing less common conditions.
Nurse practitioners are registered nurses whove earned an advanced degree. But theyve never been to medical school; they have half the years of training a doctor gets (generally six years beyond high school, instead of 12), and they dont take the same state licensing exam as doctors.
So youll be fine if you have a urinary-tract infection or a sprain. But dont assume they have the in-depth knowledge to diagnose an uncommon illness or handle a complex problem.
Indeed, Health Maintenance Organizations cooked up the term health-care provider to blur the differences between physicians and less expensive caregivers.
Dr. Sandeep Jauhar, a cardiologist at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, criticized New Yorks law when it was enacted last April.
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Published on January 7th, 2015 | by LedgerOnline
By Diana Burmistrovich/JNS.org
One in four Jews is a carrier of one or more of the 19 known preventable Jewish genetic diseases, according to the Center for Jewish Genetics. Although Sephardic Jews and non-Jews can carry these diseases, they appear twice as often for Ashkenazi Jews as they do for the rest of the population. When both spouses are carriers for a particular genetic disease, the couple has a 25 percent chance of passing the disease on to their children.
Launched in September through the Emory University School of Medicines Department of Human Genetics, the goal of the JScreen not-for-profit health initiative is to make those statistics appear less daunting.
A carrier-screening program for Jewish genetic diseases, JScreen aims to give families with Jewish ancestry easy access to information and to provide convenient testing. Employing an easy-to-use kit, JScreen allows individuals to test for the 19 known preventable Jewish genetic diseaseswhich among others include Tay-Sachs, Canavan, and Gaucherin their own homes.
While testing for genetic disorders is nothing new, JScreens accessibility is. The kit is easily acquired through the initiatives website atwww.JScreen.org, and the test allows a saliva sample to be sentdirectly for analysis. Theprogram works closely with the individual,obtaining doctors orders when needed andproviding updates on the status of the sample until results are sent out approximately four weeks later.
Touting the initiative as community-oriented, JScreens website provides resources that aim to make couples feel comfortable in proceeding with their family-planning efforts. This includes explaining the reasons for getting tested, as well as statistics.
JScreen hopes to act as a resource for the community to do genetic testing and make a big impact in growing healthy families, JScreen spokesperson Patricia Page told JNS.org.
The program grew out of the work of Randy and Caroline Gold, who were surprised to find out that their daughter, Eden, had the genetic disease Mucolipidosis Type IV (ML4), despite their having both undergone genetic testing before starting a family.
When they learned that their genetic test had screened for less than half the conditions common in people of Jewish descent, the Golds made it their mission to spread the word about expanded Jewish genetic disease screening. They launched the Atlanta Jewish Gene Screen, an organization thatpartneredwith the Victor Center for Prevention of Jewish Genetic Diseases at Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, and Emory Geneticsfrom 2010 to 2012.
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Jewish genetic screening becomes more accessible through at-home testing kits
Listen Story audio 37min 24sec Susan Wolf: Professor of law, medicine and public policy at the University of Minnesota Robert Green: Medical geneticist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women's Hospital
Genetic tests are giving patients unprecedented insights into conditions that they could inherit, but should this information be made available to other family members who might also be susceptible?
On The Daily Circuit, we discuss the tension between awareness and privacy in genetic testing.
Susan Wolf, professor of law, medicine and public policy at the University of Minnesota joins the discussion along with Dr. Robert Green, a medical geneticist at Harvard Medical School.
From Science Friday:
That's even true when information can be vital for for the health of family members. "Let's say a researcher is doing a genetic study ... and they discover that their participant has a variant of the BRCA gene, associated with higher risk of breast and ovarian cancer," says Susan M. Wolf, the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law, Medicine and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota. "They go to that person and say, 'We think it's important for you to know this, but we're also concerned about your sister, or your brother, and other members of your family.'"
Do you think your genetic information is private? Does that change when a serious and inheritable disease turns up? Leave your comments below.
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Organic agriculture is the most expensive, expansive hoax perpetrated on consumers during the past half-century. An affront to the environment because its low yields arewasteful of water and farmland, organic agricultureconfers no advantages except for the feel-good factor for true believers. It only survives because of massive government subsidies and promotion, and black marketing that dishonestly disparages the competition .
My exposs of the many shortcomings and waning credibility of the organic agriculture industry have received a prodigious amountof attention. A 2012 Forbes column got more than a quarter million views. My most recent one on this subject, last month, attracted not only tens of thousands of readers but also a complaint from Jessica Shade, who bills herself as Director of Science Programs at The Organic Center. Thats something of an oxymoron, inasmuch as science holds little sway atthe advocacy organization she works for.
Shades preamble establishes her lack of credibility: U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic standards are based around the principles of sustainability and health. In addition, organic farming has many environmental advantages when compared to conventional farming.
None of that is true. Let me be clear about one thing, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman said when organic certification was being considered, the organic label is a marketing tool. It is not a statement about food safety. Nor is organic a value judgment about nutrition or quality.
Organic standards are wholly arbitrary, and in any case, as a recent report in the Wall Street Journal described, they are not being enforced very effectively: An investigation by the newspaper of USDA inspection records since 2005 found that 38 of the 81 certifying agentsentities accredited by USDA to inspect and certify organic farms and suppliersfailed on at least one occasion to uphold basic Agriculture Department standards. More specifically, 40% of these 81 certifiers have been flagged by the USDA for conducting incomplete inspections; 16% of certifiers failed to cite organic farms potential use of banned pesticides and antibiotics; and 5% failed to prevent potential commingling of organic and nonorganic products.
In December 1997, when USDA tried to set standards for organic agricultural production, the original version was rejected by the organic enthusiasts, largely because itwould have permitted the use of organisms modified with modern genetic engineering techniquesquite sensibly, in the view of the scientific community. In the end, modern genetic engineering, which employs highly precise and predictable techniques, was prohibited, while genetic modification with older, far less precise, less predictable and less effective techniques got waved through.
The resulting standards, which are based on a sentimental back-to-Nature, technological progress is evil ethic, arbitrarily define which pesticides are acceptable, but allow deviations if based on need. Synthetic chemical pesticides are generally prohibitedalthough there is a lengthylist of exceptions listed in the Organic Foods Production Actwhile most natural ones are permitted. The application as fertilizer of pathogen-laden animal excreta to the foods we eat is not only allowed, but in organic dogma, virtually sacred.
Dont let anyone confuse you: Organic pesticides can be toxic.As evolutionary biologist Christie Wilcoxexplainedin a 2012Scientific Americanarticle (Are lower pesticide residues a good reason to buy organic?Probably not.): Organic pesticides pose the same health risks as non-organic ones.
The designation organic is itself asyntheticconstruct of activists and bureaucrats that makes little sense.Moreover, organic standards are based on sets of principles and techniques which have nothing to do with the ultimate quality or composition of the final products. For example, if prohibited chemical pesticides or pollen fromforbidden genetically engineered plants wafts onto and contaminates an organic field, guess what? The farmer gets a mulligan: He does not lose his organic certification.
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Claims For Organic Agriculture Need More Sunlight, Less Shade
Genome Project legacy: advancements in gene th
KFDM #39;s Six On Health, sponsored by Christus Hospital St. Elizabeth #39;s and St. Mary explores how they Human Genome Project #39;s effort to map our chromosomal makeup has led to advances in gene ...
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HOPE, HYPE REALITY: TERMS USED IN GENE THERAPY
By: defeatHIV
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Published January 07, 2015
Novartis is diving deeper into the world of gene-based medicine by signing deals with two U.S. biotech companies, giving it access to a powerful new genome editing technology.
The tie-ups with unlisted Intellia Therapeutics and Caribou Biosciences show the Swiss drugmaker's confidence in the potential of so-called CRISPR technology, both for making new medicines and as a research tool.
CRISPR, which stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, allows scientists to edit the genes of selected cells accurately and efficiently. It has created great excitement since emerging two years ago and is being tipped for a Nobel Prize.
While current gene therapy approaches involve adding genes to affected cells, CRISPR opens up the possibility of correcting those cells' faulty genes in the lab before returning them to the patient.
Translating that promise into new treatments will take many years but Novartis' decision to apply the technology in its research labs is an important endorsement, since the company is the world's largest drugmaker by sales.
It is also a sign the Swiss group intends to be at the forefront of the nascent field, after recently establishing a new cell and gene therapies unit within the company.
Mark Fishman, head of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR), said genome editing could open a new branch of medicine, leading to cures for diseases caused by faulty genes.
"We have glimpsed the power of CRISPR tools in our scientific programmes in NIBR and it is now time to explore how to safely extend this powerful technology to the clinic," he said.
The deal with Intellia gives Novartis exclusive rights to develop programmes focused on engineered chimeric antigen receptor T-cells (CARTs) and the right to develop a certain number of targets for editing hematopoietic stem cells.
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Futurist Thomas Frey on Micro Colleges
Micro Colleges are immersive forms of post secondary education done in short periods of time. It is no longer possible to predict the educational needs of bu...
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Futurist Author Predicted Police State
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OPB | Jan. 7, 2015 12:30 p.m. | Updated: Jan. 7, 2015 2:23 p.m.
Brian DavidJohnson
Intel
Brian David Johnson has nothing if not an usual job. Hes Intels futurist. At first glance, many people might think he traffics in predictions. But Johnson says not so. He describes what he does asfuturecasting.
His job is to imagine what life might be like in 10 or 15 years and to imagine the kind of technology that might fit into that. Johnson says a big part of his job is talking to people, finding out whatstories theyre thinking about and getting them to realize that the future theyre creating is a function of thosestories.
Heres Brian David Johnson giving a TEDx talk about some of these ideas in2013:
What would you like to ask Brian David Johnson about thefuture?
Rose E. Tucker Charitable Trust
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Intel's Futurist Says His Job Dwells In Storytelling, Not Prediction
Part of the historic Futurist Cinema facade is likely to be kept as part of extensive regeneration plans for Lime Street, Liverpool council chiefs insist.
In response to online images of how the street could look following its expected facelift, the authority sought to reassure campaigners it hoped to retain elements of the site in design plans.
The news comes after pictures appeared on the website of developers Neptune alongside a description stating that student accommodation and a hotel were planned as part of the regeneration scheme.
The images of a future Lime Street are thought to be concept ideas rather than finalised designs, but do reveal a glimpse at the thought process behind the scheme.
The pictures suggest the two pubs at either end of the development - The Crown and The Vines - will remain, but show a dramatic change in between, with student homes, shops and a hotel among possible new structures.
The images also point to the loss of the historic cinema facades of The Futurist and The Scala, though a short row of shops next to The Crown appear to survive and the project does include plans to refurbish the former ABC Cinema with the creation of a new auditoria and venue with associated restaurants.
Accompanying the Lime Street images on Neptunes website is a short summary, explaining the development.
It said: This major regeneration initiative is being undertaken on behalf of Regeneration Liverpool and involves the clearance of a series of run down buildings in this important city centre street and the development of a high quality scheme with retail hotel and student accommodation.
However, the council has now dismissed the images as merely illustrative and said a consultation would take place over any official proposals.
A spokesman said: The regeneration plans for Lime Street are still a work in progress and published images are merely illustrative. The city council and the developers are in fact looking to integrate a section of the existing Futurist Cinema facade into the design of any future development.
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Part of historic Futurist facade could survive extensive Lime Street regeneration