Hospital Charges YOU

Some hospitals are marking up treatments by as much as 1,000 percent, a new study finds, and the average U.S. hospital charges uninsured patients three times what Medicare allows. North Okaloosa Medical Center, Florida charges uninsured and out-of-network patients 12.6 times what Medicare allows.

Part of the problem is the Convoluted U.S. healthcare system. Medical costs can be paid by private insurance companies, directly by employers, by government-funded systems such as Medicare or Medicaid, and directly by patients. Hospitals negotiate different rates with different payers.
 

Then there is in-network and out-of-network rates. And patients often don't know until after they've received a treatment whether their insurance will pay for it, or for the doctors who delivered it.

It leads to confusion, and hospitals are taking unfair advantage of this. "Because it is difficult for patients to compare prices, market forces fail to constrain hospital charges," Bai and Anderson wrote in their report, published in the journal Health Affairs.

"These hospitals have markups (ratios of charges over Medicare-allowable costs) approximately 10 times their Medicare-allowable costs compared to a national average of 3.4," Bai and Anderson wrote.

Bai alleges certain hospitals are taking advantage of the most vulnerable patients. 
The wide variation in the charge-to-cost ratio … or why some hospitals are charging 10 times their own costs, is unknown except they CAN.

Just a thought. 

Hidden Danger ??

New York city's Department of Health will propose  that all chain restaurants add a salt-shaker-like symbol on menus next to products that contain more than the recommended daily limit of 2,300 milligrams of sodium, about 1 teaspoon of salt.

At Panera Bread, the Italian combo sandwich which includes seared steak, smoked turkey, ham, salami and onions has 2,830 mg of sodium, while the sesame jack chicken strips at TGI Friday's contain 2,700 mg of sodium. That is only one meal. By the end of the day the total intake of Sodium will be far worse.

Overconsumption of sodium increases the risk of high blood pressure, which can lead to heart attack and stroke. Correcting the high blood pressure with medication has its own side effects -bad effects that are serious sometimes.

The average American consumes about 3,400 milligrams of sodium each day, more than 2300 milligrams recommended .   "High sodium levels are probably the biggest health problem related to our food supply,"

The composition of menus may soon have more warning labels than food products. Studies have found that the vast majority of dietary salt comes from processed and restaurant foods. 

Just a thought.

Tailor...

Joyce Mitchell, 51, a prison tailor shop instructor, was arraigned on the felony charge of promoting prison contraband and misdemeanor count of criminal facilitation. Keith Bruno, Mitchell’s lawyer, entered a not guilty plea on her behalf.

Investigators are looking into whether Joyce Mitchell may have had sex with inmates other than convict David Sweat, who, along with Richard Matt, have been on the run for nearly three weeks, multiple sources told ABC News.

The two killers are on the lam after making a daring escape from an upstate prison. They planned to kill the husband of the woman accused of helping them out, a source told the Daily News on Sunday.

This high security prison has turned into a  friendly, sexually active, drug available, and big future plans type of facility. Why would any runaway and destroy own life? There must be a strong reason behind it.  Just a thought.

Former Star

 


Former star financial analyst Meredith Whitney has finally resolved a nasty legal battle, but her hedge fund appears to have little money left.
Executives at BlueCrest Capital Management have dropped their suit against Whitney. The unnamed executives had been the largest backers of Kenbelle Capital.

BlueCrest asked for all its money back in October 2014 then $46 million citing poor investment performance. Whitney refused to return the capital, saying it went against an agreement to have the investment in place for at least two years.
The amount of capital still managed by Kenbelle is unclear.  It was also uncertain if any new money has put into the fund recently.

Whitney was named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in 2009. 

Whitney is best known for her prediction as an Oppenheimer analyst of the subprime mortgage collapse and Citigroup's frailty before the financial crisis. Kenbelle was set up to build on Whitney's 2010 warning about an impending wave of municipal bond defaults and invest in stocks based on the "the new geography of U.S. prosperity,".
The fund suffered losses, however, declining approximately 11 percent, gross of fees, from January through the end of November in 2014, according to the BlueCrest complaint. Recent return information was not available.
 

Key staffers left late last year. Kenbelle's offices on the 35th floor of 444 Madison Ave. in New York are now on the market to rent.

Just a thought.

Fat or Fiction...!

Good fats are needed by the body as they help us to absorb certain nutrients, regulate hormone production and help the growth and repair of tissue. The body does not make essential fatty acids by itself, so it’s really important to consume ‘good’ fats found in flaxseeds and walnuts.

The brain is made up of 60% fat, with brain tissue mostly comprised of the essential omega 3 fatty acid DHA, which supports optimal cognitive function. These are most commonly found in fish. An alternative idea is taking omega 3 supplement.

Not all dietary fats have the same effect on the body. Coconut oil is a type of saturated fat, which is converted into pure energy by the body rather than being stored as fat. As well as providing energy, coconut oil won’t cause a spike to your blood sugar levels.

‘Trans-fats’ are the type of fats to avoid at all costs, as these are the only type of fat to cause weight gain.  The largest and most concerning source of trans-fats in a person’s diet today is found in baked goods, margarine, snacks, and fried food.

Trans-fats can cause insulin resistance, inflammation as well as significantly raise the risk of serious diseases such as heart disease.

Benefits of omega 3 fatty acids include anti-inflammatory, anti-coagulant and insulin-sensitising effects.               Just a thought.

Self-defense... Naa

Prosecutors said Hubers, a UK  graduate, killed Poston out of anger after he tried to break up with her.  Hubers claimed she shot Poston in self-defense.

When she called 911 to report the shooting, she said the 29-year-old attorney from Highland Heights, Kentucky, was frequently violent and had been attacking her when she grabbed his gun. She shot Poston six times.

A juror who helped convict Shayna Hubers in the shooting death of her on-again, off-again boyfriend Ryan Carter Poston says “At no point did I buy the battered girlfriend defense.  .” “She took the key for the house to get back in. She was free to leave and did not. I did not see any evidence of physical abuse.”

 

The jury found Hubers, now 24, guilty of murdering Poston on Oct. 12, 2012. The jury also recommended she spend 40 years in prison.

“He was right in front of me and he reached down and grabbed the gun, and I grabbed it out of his hands and pulled the trigger,” Hubers is heard saying on the call.

 

At times, Hubers was even seen laughing in the police video, seemingly joking about the victim’s gunshot wounds. “I gave him a nose job,” she said.

It took jurors less than five hours to reach their verdict.

A judge has yet to make a final ruling on Hubers’ sentence. Hubers must serve at least 20 years in prison and will be eligible for parole after that time is served. A court date has been set for June 15.

Self-Defense with on and off relationships doesn't work. No-body Buys it.

Just a thought.

Moderate? Not.

Republicans have no shortage of presidential contenders, and the field just got even more crowded when former New York Gov. George Pataki became the eighth Republican to officially launch a bid. The party could have as many as 22 if everyone who's expressed interest decides to get in.

 

Just about every Republican candidate is vying to be considered the most conservative candidate in the 2016 race, from social issues to taxes and federal spending.

 

Pataki boasts of shrinking New York's welfare state and lowering its taxes. 

But he's further to the left. Notably, he believes climate change is a problem. He is for a "cap-and-trade" system to limit carbon emissions in the U.S.; and he supported abortion rights as governor.
 

He sides with the likes of Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum in calling for more U.S. ground troops to be sent to Iraq to fight ISIS.

  

In the most recent major GOP-primary poll, released Thursday by Quinnipiac, Pataki failed to garner even one percent. The leaders, Jeb Bush and Ben Carson, sat at 10 percent each.

He is way off the Republican ideas except for the war. Don't send our boys to war in the Middle East. Let the Middle East adjust itself and they started. 

Just a thought

 

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.