No Brainer, Health

 

Texas is leaving a huge amount of federal money on the table and not insuring more than 1 million people because of its opposition to Obamacare.

The decision by Texas to reject expansion of Medicaid, the government health-coverage program for the poor, will prevent the state from receiving an estimated $100 billion in federal cash over a decade, at the same time its hospitals are eating $5.5 billion in annual costs for treating uninsured people.

Those uncompensated costs in turn are being covered by taxes and insurance premiums paid by the state's businesses and residents, who are also footing the bill for expanding Medicaid in 29 states.

The Medicaid expansion states, as a rule, have seen a marked decline in their uninsured rates and the amount of costs their hospitals incur in caring for people without insurance.

Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas still has $765 million in uncompensated care costs annually from treating the uninsured.

"A huge chunk" of Parkland's uncompensated care costs "could be paid for by about $580 million a year that would be brought in by the Medicaid expansion monies," said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who oversees the hospital.

    

Also galling to the business community is research showing that for every $1 the state paid toward Medicaid expansion, it would earn back $1.30 in new economic activity, which would include the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs.
"You look at the numbers, and you say, this is a no-brainer," said Ray Perryman, a leading Texas economist, in an interview with NPR.

Traditional Medicaid is jointly run by the federal government and individual states, and enrollees do not pay premiums for their health coverage. States have the power to set restrictions on who can receive coverage, whose costs are split, more or less evenly, with the federal government.

No health coverage for the poor will cost the States much more money than having coverage.   Just a thought. 

Complete silence

 

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert paid a man to conceal a sexual relationship they had while the man was a student at the high school where Hastert taught, a federal law enforcement official told NBC News on Friday.

Tribune reported earlier in the day that two unnamed federal officials said that Hastert paid a man from his past to conceal sexual misconduct.

Hastert was indicted Thursday on charges that he structured bank withdrawals to avoid federal reporting requirements and later lied about it to the FBI.
 
The indictment said that Hastert was paying an unidentified person from his past to conceal Hastert's "prior misconduct." The indictment did not specify the alleged misconduct or name the person.

The Yorkville, Illinois, school district where Hastert taught and coached wrestling from 1965 to 1981 said that it had "no knowledge of Mr. Hastert's alleged misconduct, nor has any individual contacted the District to report any such misconduct."

No one on the Republican party said any thing.    Nobody said Hilary had a wrestling team.....   Just a thought.

Delay...

Federal regulators announced that Teva Pharmaceuticals will pay $1.2 billion to settle charges that one of its subsidiaries illegally blocked the launch of low-cost generic versions of the blockbuster sleeping pill Provigil.

Thursday's settlement stems from charges brought in 2008 against Cephalon Inc., acquired by Teva. The FTC alleged that Cephalon paid four generic firms more than $300 million to delay launching their low-cost versions of Provigil drugs until 2012. Provigil is approved to treat excessive sleepiness and posted U.S. sales exceeding $1 billion in 2008, accounting for about half of Cephalon's sales that year.

The $1.2 billion fee from Teva would be paid to pharmacies, insurers, wholesalers and other businesses. The settlement agreement also bars Teva from entering into similar reverse settlement deals.

In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in a key case that reverse settlement agreements can run afoul of federal antitrust laws, and therefore be challenged in court.

"Today's landmark settlement is an important step in the FTC's ongoing effort to protect consumers from anticompetitive pay for delay settlements, which burden patients, American businesses, and taxpayers with billions of dollars in higher prescription drug costs.  Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Limited is the world's largest generic drug maker.

Open the door for generic medications from Canada and most of these scams will disappear. Just a thought.

Abolishing death penalty

In a landmark veto-override vote backed by an unusual coalition of conservatives who oppose capital punishment, Nebraska abolished the death penalty.
Senators in the one-house Legislature voted to override Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican who supports the death penalty. The vote makes Nebraska the first traditionally conservative state to eliminate the punishment since North Dakota in 1973.

Some senators said they philosophically support the death penalty, but are convinced the state will never carry out another execution because of legal obstacles. Nebraska hasn't executed an inmate since a 1997 electrocution.

The repeal bill was introduced by independent Sen. Ernie Chambers, who has fought for nearly four decades to repeal the death penalty.
  
Nebraska now has 10 men on death row, after one died on Sunday of natural causes.
Michael Ryan on death row for the 1985 cult killings of two people, including a 5-year-old boy had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

At least 4.1% of all defendants sentenced to death in the US in the modern era are innocent, according to the first major study to attempt to calculate how often states get it wrong in their wielding of the ultimate punishment. [The Guardian, Ed Pilkington].

Just a thought.

Mathematician's...

John Forbes Nash, Jr. (June 13, 1928) was an American mathematician whose works in game theory, differential geometry, and partial differential equations have provided insight into the factors that govern chance and events inside complex systems in daily life.

His theories are used in economics, computing, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, accounting, computer science (minimax algorithm which is based on Nash Equilibrium), games of skill, politics and military theory.

Serving as a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton University, he shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi. In 2015, he was awarded the Abel Prize for his work on nonlinear partial differential equations.

In 1959, Nash began showing clear signs of mental illness, and spent several years at psychiatric hospitals being treated for paranoid schizophrenia. After 1970, his condition slowly improved, allowing him to return to academic work by the mid-1980s. His struggles with his illness and his recovery became the basis for Sylvia Nasar's biography, A Beautiful Mind, as well as a film of the same name starring Russell Crowe.

On May 23, 2015 was killed in a motor vehicle accident in New Jersey.  Just a thought.

Irish landslide

Irish voters have resoundingly backed amending the constitution to legalize gay marriage, leaders on both sides of the Irish referendum declared on Saturday.

Couples hugged and kissed each other amid scenes of jubilation at counting centers and at the official results center in Dublin Castle, whose cobblestoned central square was opened so thousands of revelers could sit in the sunshine and watch the results live on big-screen televisions.

We're the first country in the world to enshrine marriage equality in our constitution and do so by popular mandate. That makes us a beacon, a light to the rest of the world, of liberty and equality. So it's a very proud day to be Irish.

"For me it wasn't just a referendum. It was more like a social revolution".

In the first official result, the Dublin North West constituency voted 70.4 percent "yes" to gay marriage. But the outcome was already beyond dispute as observers, permitted to watch the paper ballots being counted at all election centers, offered precise tallies giving the "yes" side an unassailable nationwide lead.

Political analysts who have covered Irish referendums for decades agreed that Saturday's emerging landslide marked a stunning generational shift from the 1980s, when voters still firmly backed Catholic Church teachings and overwhelmingly voted against abortion and divorce.

"We're in a new country," said political analyst Sean Donnelly, who called the result "a tidal wave" that has produced pro-gay marriage majorities in even the most traditionally conservative rural corners of Ireland.

The world is changing. Just a thought.

Wacooo !!

Waco police, assisted by police officers from several cities were surrounding the Twin Peaks Restaurant after several people were reported shot during a rival motorcycle gang fight, Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said.

Swanton said the fight quickly escalated from fists and feet to chains, clubs and knives, then to gunfire.

Gang members were shooting at each other and officers at the scene fired their weapons, as well, Swanton said. 
The victims were taken by ambulance to Baylor Scott and White Hillcrest Medical Center, which later was placed on lock down.

A witness who was having lunch across the parking lot said he and his family had just finished eating and walked into the parking lot when they heard several gunshots and saw wounded being taken from the fight scene.
“We crouched down in front of our pick-up truck because that was the only cover we had,” the man, said.

Waco had a population of 124,805 on 2010, making it the 22nd-most populous city in the state.

A small town with mega problems, one after the other?  Just a thought.

NAPA's Wine !!

 
The Los Carneros Water District and Napa Sanitation District held a groundbreaking ceremony for a $20 million recycled water line project. By next year, recycled water will travel in a 9-mile pipeline through this south county grape-growing region.

The water will have its origins in the city of Napa, traveling through the sewer system to the Napa Sanitation District plant south of Highway 29 and the Butler Bridge. After the city’s sewage is cleaned up, the resulting highly treated water can be used for irrigation, but not for drinking.

A decade ago, Napa Sanitation District had trouble getting rid of recycled water. Now, its recycled water is in great demand. The district is building a pipeline to bring irrigation water to the rural Coombsville area east of the city of Napa. When that project and the Carneros project are finished, the district will have increased its recycled pipe network from 11 miles to 25 miles and doubled its recycled water sales.

The sanitation district also uses its recycled water to help out in rural farm areas.
The Carneros recycled water project is a long time coming. John Stewart of the Los Carneros Water District said the idea dates to the late 1970s, when the area had cow pastures and orchards instead of vineyards.

Enjoy a glass of NAPA's wine.  Just a thought.

Money Loss.

In the history of sudden wealth loss, Li Hejun may have set a new record.
Li, who was China's richest man until this week, saw his fortune drop by as much as $15 billion in a half-hour as the stock in his company, Hanergy Thin Film Power Group, fell by nearly half. Trading in the shares was halted Wednesday.

While plenty of billionaires have seen their fortunes cut in half over time, few if any have seen $15 billion wiped out in a half-hour. Li's total fortune was around $30 billion before the stock plunged.

Prior to the drop, the company's shares had risen by more than fivefold since September, baffling analysts. Reuters reports that Hong Kong regulators are looking at alleged market manipulation with the stock.

In a similar wealth decline, Hong Kong property and electronics magnate Pan Sutong has lost more than $11 billion this week as shares of two listed companies, Goldin Financial and Goldin Property, both closed down more than 40 percent.

Pan owns around 65 percent of Goldin Property and more than 70 percent of Goldin Financial, according to filings. His fortune was listed at more than $28 billion, making him Hong Kong's second-richest man.
That means that the two men have lost more in one day that the total net worth of Carl Icahn, Steve Ballmer or Michael Dell.

Another mystery. Just a thought.

Phony Cancer Charities

 

 A federal lawsuit filed against four phony cancer charities and their operators with strong roots in East Tennessee, who allegedly scammed more than $187 million from consumers throughout the country.

The joint complaint alleges that the defendants—including Cancer Fund of America, Children’s Cancer Fund of America, Cancer Support Services and The Breast Cancer Society portrayed themselves to donors as legitimate charities with substantial nationwide programs whose primary purposes were to provide direct support to cancer patients, children with cancer, and breast cancer patients in the United States.

In fact, the overwhelming majority of consumers’ contributions benefitted only the perpetrators, their families and friends, and professional fundraisers, who often received 85% or more of every donation, according to the federal lawsuit.

Consumers’ donations were wasted and misused, cancer victims were not helped, and the representations that defendants were legitimate charities were false.  Among other things, defendants or their telemarketers often told donors that their contributions would be used to provide pain medication to children suffering from cancer, transport cancer patients to chemotherapy appointments, and/or pay for hospice care for cancer patients.  

Careful with your donation.      Just a thought.