HEALTH PLAN STICKER SHOCK AHEAD FOR SOME BUYERS
By CARLA K. JOHNSON
AP Medical Writer
CHICAGO
As a key enrollment deadline hits Monday, many people without health insurance have been sizing up policies on the new government health care marketplace and making what seems like a logical choice: They’re picking the cheapest one.
Increasingly, experts in health insurance are becoming concerned that many of these first-time buyers will be in for a shock when they get medical care next year and discover they’re on the hook for most of the initial cost.
The prospect of sticker shock after Jan. 1, when those who sign up for policies now can begin getting coverage, is seen as a looming problem for a new national system that has been plagued by trouble since the new marketplaces went online in the states in October.
CHRISTMAS SCHEDULE 2013SACRAMENT OF RECONCILIATION
Parish Penance Service, Wednesday, December 18th – 7:30pm
Confessions, Saturday, December 21st 1-3pm
NO CONFESSIONS CHRISTMAS EVEMASS SCHEDULE CHRISTMAS EVE
Tuesday, December 24th
4:00pm in Church
4:00pm in Auditorium
5:30pm in Church
5:30pm in Auditorium
7:00pm in Church
MIDNIGHT (Carols begin at 11:30pm)MASS SCHEDULE CHRISTMAS DAY
Wednesday, December 25th
8:00am
9:30am
11:00am
12:30pm
12:30pm Spanish in Auditorium
THERE IS NO 6:30PM MASS ON CHRISTMAS DAYConfession Schedule
NJ TRANSIT OFFERS EXTRA SERVICE AND SAVINGS FOR HOLIDAY WEEK
Money-saving Family Super Saver fares in effect continuously from December 20 until January 6
December 17, 2013
NEWARK, NJ — NJ TRANSIT is offering extra service for the upcoming holidays to give customers more travel options, whether going to the mall for last-minute shopping, leaving work early for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, or attending New Year’s Eve festivities.
In addition, NJ TRANSIT is giving customers more than two weeks of continuous savings through a special extension of the Family Super Saver Fare, which allows up to two children 11 and younger to travel free with each fare-paying adult. Usually limited to weekends, the Family Super Saver Fare will be in effect for the entire holiday period, starting at 7 p.m. Friday, December 20 until 6 a.m. Monday, January 6, on all trains, buses and light rail lines.
NJ TRANSIT customer service representatives and volunteers will be deployed at major facilities throughout the holiday weekend to assist customers with their travels.
For complete schedule and fare information, customers may visit njtransit.com or call 973-275-5555.
On Tuesday, December 24, trains will operate on a weekday schedule on all lines with additional “early getaway” service from New York Penn Station, Newark Penn Station and Hoboken Terminal starting at 1 p.m. on the Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast, Raritan Valley, Morris & Essex, Pascack Valley and Port Jervis lines. Newark Light Rail, Hudson-Bergen Light Rail and River Line will operate on a weekday schedule. Buses will operate on a regular weekday schedule on most routes, with early getaway service from the Port Authority Bus Terminal starting around 1 p.m. to accommodate the heaviest travel. Visit njtransit.com for details.
On Christmas Day, Wednesday, December 25, trains will operate on a weekend schedule/major holiday schedule on all rail lines. Newark Light Rail and River Line will operate on a Sunday schedule. Hudson-Bergen Light Rail will operate on a weekend schedule. Holiday bus schedules vary by route—customers are advised to visit njtransit.com for details.
On Thursday, December 26 and Friday, December 27, trains will operate on a modified weekday schedule on all rail lines with additional New York-bound trains between 10 a.m. and noon on the Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast and Morris & Essex lines. Customers are encouraged to travel early, if possible, when ridership is light. Select morning peak period trains on the Northeast Corridor and North Jersey Coast Line will not operate due to expected light ridership—customers should visit njtransit.com and use the “Station-to-Station Trip Planner” to find trains between the holidays. Newark Light Rail, Hudson-Bergen Light Rail and River Line will operate on a weekday schedule. Buses will operate on a weekday schedule, with extra bus service to and from New York on selected routes, including early getaway service from the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Friday, December 27 starting around 1 p.m.
On Saturday, December 28, trains and buses will operate on a weekend schedule. Newark Light Rail and River Line will operate on a Saturday schedule. Hudson-Bergen Light Rail will operate on a weekend schedule.
On Sunday, December 29, trains and buses will operate on a weekend schedule. Newark Light Rail and River Line will operate on a Sunday schedule. Hudson-Bergen Light Rail will operate on a weekend schedule.
In addition, on Sunday, December 29, service on the Meadowlands Rail Line will operate for the Giants/Redskins game at 1 p.m.
On Monday, December 30, trains will operate on a modified weekday schedule on all rail lines with additional New York-bound trains between 10 a.m. and noon on the Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast and Morris & Essex lines. Customers are encouraged to travel early, if possible, when ridership is light. Select morning peak period trains on the Northeast Corridor and North Jersey Coast Line will not operate due to expected light ridership—customers should visit njtransit.com and use the “Station-to-Station Trip Planner” to find trains between the holidays. Buses and light rail lines will operate on a weekday schedule.
On New Year’s Eve, Tuesday, December 31, trains will operate on a modified weekday schedule on all rail lines with additional New York-bound trains between 10 a.m. and noon on the Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast and Morris & Essex lines. Customers are encouraged to travel early, if possible, when ridership is light. Select morning peak period trains on the Northeast Corridor and North Jersey Coast Line will not operate due to expected light ridership—customers should visit njtransit.com and use the “Station-to-Station Trip Planner” to find trains between the holidays. Additional “early getaway” service from Hoboken Terminal will operate on the Pascack Valley and Port Jervis lines in the afternoon. In the evening, additional New York-bound trips will operate on the Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast and Morris & Essex lines. In addition, certain trips that normally depart just before or just after midnight will operate later to accommodate customers returning from New Year’s festivities.
Bus schedules vary by route. Customers are advised to check their timetables or visit njtransit.com for schedule information. Selected routes will operate on special holiday schedules, available on njtransit.com, to match service with ridership demand, including early getaway service from the Port Authority Bus Terminal between noon and 4 p.m. to accommodate the heaviest travel, with less frequent service during the peak periods and later in the evening due to lower ridership. Early getaway service will also operate from the Jersey City Waterfront on the No. 64 and No. 68 bus routes. In the evening, additional service to the Port Authority Bus Terminal will be offered on selected routes from approximately 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. to accommodate customers traveling to New York for the festivities.
Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, Newark Light Rail and River Line will operate on a weekday schedule.In addition, River Line will operate extended late-night service on New Year’s Eve and after midnight on New Year’s Day to accommodate customers attending the festivities on the Camden Waterfront. Special late-night trains will operate between Camden and Trenton, making all local stops.
Hudson-Bergen Light Rail will also operate added late-night service on New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day to accommodate travelers returning home from midnight celebrations.
IMPORTANT NOTE: No open containers of alcohol will be permitted on board trains, light rail vehicles, aboard buses or in any NJ TRANSIT facility. This policy will be strictly enforced on New Year’s Eve and after midnight.
After midnight, special late-night trains will operate on most rail lines, and expanded bus service will be provided from the Port Authority Bus Terminal until approximately
2 a.m. on selected routes. Visit njtransit.com for details.
On New Year’s Day, Wednesday, January 1, trains will operate on a weekend/major holiday schedule. Newark Light Rail will operate on a Saturday schedule. River Line will operate on a Sunday schedule. Hudson-Bergen Light Rail will operate on a weekend schedule. Holiday bus schedules vary by route—customers are advised to visit njtransit.com for details.
Travel tips
Check Schedules in Advance: Plan your trip online to take advantage of extra trains and buses.
Travel Early: On December 26 and 27, NJ TRANSIT rail lines will operate on a modified weekday schedule. Avoid the crowds by traveling during the traditional peak-period (6-9 a.m.) when ridership is light.
Allow Extra Travel Time: Traffic congestion during the holidays may affect bus travel times to and from New York City, so customers should plan accordingly.
Ticketing: Purchase round-trip tickets at the start of your trip to speed your return. Use ticket vending machines or see a ticket agent, if available, to avoid possible surcharges. Bus customers departing Port Authority Bus Terminal are reminded that tickets must be purchased before boarding the bus.
Luggage: Travel as light as possible. Passengers with luggage or packages should use the overhead racks or designated luggage spaces. On multilevel trains, customers with large bags should use the mezzanine levels at the ends of each car.
Traffickers turning North Jersey region into ‘giant narcotics warehouse’
Sunday December 22, 2013, 10:53 PM
BY TOM MASHBERG
STAFF WRITER
The Record
Related: Inside N.J. suburban drug mills, a grimy, lucrative business
For decades, North Jersey has been a place where New York workers settle into quiet homes and where freight destined for the Empire State can be conveniently and affordably stored.
Now, drug traffickers operating out of New York that are looking to expand sales and evade police are ferrying large amounts of heroin into North Jersey, turning the region into what law enforcement officials call “a giant narcotics warehouse.”
In the past five years, at least two dozen major New Jersey busts have had New York links, netting several hundred kilos of heroin and leading to scores of arrests and prosecutions, according to police and prosecutors.
In May, police in Fort Lee spotted a car with a flat tire in the middle of a main road. The driver, John Rivas, 52, of the Bronx, said he had been visiting friends nearby. Police went to the address given by Rivas and fell upon four New York men smoking pot and milling 2 pounds of heroin.
Inside N.J.’s suburban drug mills, a grimy, lucrative business
Sunday December 22, 2013, 10:53 PM
BY TOM MASHBERG AND REBECCA D. O’BRIEN
STAFF WRITERS
The Record
New Jersey drug agents have seen plenty of bizarre sights when busting heroin mills, the sunless, foul-smelling assembly lines where laborers spend hours on end grinding up raw heroin and spooning it into $5 street bags.
They’ve seen trash bags filled with coffee grinders that fried out after being used thousands of times to pulverize the drugs into sniffable powder; they’ve confiscated tens of thousands of tiny glassine envelopes stamped with cheeky brand names like Barack Obama, DEA and Lady Gaga; and they’ve seized Build-A-Bear stuffed animals sliced open at the belly to reveal freshly smuggled wads of the raw narcotic. They’ve walked in on middle-aged drug packagers clad only in underwear — to prevent stealing — and surgical masks — to keep them from getting high from the airborne powder.
But for local investigators, one case stands out: an April 2011 raid on a new suburban two-family home on Grandview Place in Fort Lee, a quiet green cul-de-sac near the George Washington Bridge, less than 1,000 feet from a school. There, investigators found a woman at a kitchen table, stamping glassine bags filled with heroin while her preschool-age daughter sat nearby eating cereal. She was among a dozen Dominican immigrants who had been bused in from the New York City overnight by minivan to work the 12-hour shifts needed to meet what cops call “a ravenous demand” for opiate drugs.
Democratic senator says Obamacare could have ‘meltdown,’ hurt party
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s healthcare law could have a “meltdown” and make it difficult for his Democratic Party to keep control of the U.S. Senate next year if ongoing problems with the program are not resolved, a Democratic senator said on Sunday.
Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who has urged delaying a penalty for people who do not enroll for health insurance in 2014 under the law, told CNN that a transitional year was needed for the complex healthcare program, commonly known as Obamacare, to work.
“If it’s so much more expensive than what we anticipated and if the coverage is not as good as what we had, you’ve got a complete meltdown at that time,” Manchin told CNN’s “State of the Union” program.
“It falls of its own weight, if basically the cost becomes more than we can absorb, absolutely.”
The Obamacare Generation
The ACA depends on Millennials picking up the tab — as they already are for other entitlements — in the midst of a bad economy.
December 19, 2013 12:00 AM
By Victor Davis Hanson
There are all sorts of time bombs embedded within Obamacare.
Will we force doctors to treat the millions of new Medicaid patients who are signing up for services that can be only partially reimbursed? How exactly will the IRS collect penalties from millions of off-the-books youth who choose not to buy coverage?
Of the newly insured who chose not to buy health insurance in the past, how many will follow through on their initial signups with steady monthly premium payments? If many don’t, how will we collect what they owe? Will all those who lost their coverage have enough money to buy the costlier Obamacare replacement plan?
Among these unanswered questions, the most disturbing pertain to the demand that millions of so-called Millennials must purchase health insurance — estimated at about $1,700 a year — that they will hardly use. Their premiums supposedly will subsidize older, in-need Americans who cannot pay the full costs of coverage that they will draw on frequently.
We forget that young people are already targeted for a number of government redistribution plans. Of America’s age cohorts, the under-30 bunch is the least likely to be employed, and the most likely to work at low-wage or part-time jobs.
Millennials already pay high payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare coverage for the elderly. Yet most economists predict that both programs will soon prove insolvent and will not be able to extend the present level of benefits to young contributors when they retire.
We are currently in the greatest economic slowdown since the Great Depression. The now normal 7 percent unemployment hits the young especially hard. Their jobless rate typically ranges from two to three times higher than the national average. Requiring employers to provide Obamacare coverage will spike unemployment and, again, do the most harm to those who are just entering the workforce.
2,000 steps to a healthier heart: Walking that far every day for a year can reduce heart attack and stroke risk by 8%
Exercise is equivalent to walking 20 minutes a day at a moderate pace Walking 40 minutes a day can reduce cardiovascular risk by up to 20% Researchers at University of Leicester looked at 9,306 adults for study Those with greater levels of activity had lower levels of risk
By Jenny Hope Medical Correspondent
PUBLISHED: 20:13 EST, 19 December 2013 | UPDATED: 20:14 EST, 19 December 2013
Taking just 2,000 extra steps a day could help people prone to heart attacks and stroke cut their risk by eight per cent, claim researchers.
The exercise is equivalent to walking 20 minutes a day at a moderate pace, says a study in The Lancet medical journal (must credit).
The health benefits are gained by anyone doing 2,000 extra steps for a year on top of their normal levels of activity.
Under pressure from Senate Democrats, the President partly suspends the individual mandate.
Dec. 20, 2013 6:41 p.m. ET
It seems Nancy Pelosi was wrong when she said “we have to pass” ObamaCare to “find out what’s in it.” No one may ever know because the White House keeps treating the Affordable Care Act’s text as a mere suggestion subject to day-to-day revision. Its latest political retrofit is the most brazen: President Obama is partly suspending the individual mandate.
The White House argued at the Supreme Court that the insurance-purchase mandate was not only constitutional but essential to the law’s success, while refusing Republican demands to delay or repeal it. But late on Thursday, with only four days to go before the December enrollment deadline, the Health and Human Services Department decreed that millions of Americans are suddenly exempt.
Broken Heart Syndrome Really Does Exist
December 20, 2013 11:26 PM
MIAMI (CBSMiami) — How many times have you heard someone say they’re so sad about something that they have a broken heart? More often than not, they don’t really have a broken heart but it can actually happen. Broken heart syndrome is a serious medical condition caused by sadness.
When Janet Ghise’s 14-year-old dog, Maggie died unexpectedly at a kennel while she was on vacation, she was devastated.
The wrecking ball swung again toward the crumbling Obamacare edifice yesterday. Ironically, it continues to be the Obama administration that is operating the heavy machinery.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced, in the form of a letter to Democratic senators, that Obamacare’s individual mandate tax will be waived in 2014 for persons who had their policies canceled in 2013 due to Obamacare.
At this point, after months of on-the-fly pronouncements, delays, and exemptions (often announced, not coincidentally, in the days just before a major national holiday), perhaps nothing should surprise us anymore about Obamacare’s disastrous rollout. But yesterday’s announcement is still startling because of what it says about the state of the president’s signature domestic legislation. The law is falling apart before our eyes.
Driviing on snowy or icy roads requires special attention to safety. Althought it’s impossible to have ideal road conditions 365 days a year, there are certain precautions you can take to make winter driving safer. Here are some tips and suggestions to help you get ready for the hazards of winter.
Holiday Hours for Village Offices – December 24 and 25
HOLIDAY HOURS
Village Hall offices and The Stable will be closed on Tuesday, December 24th and Wednesday, December 25th in observance of the Christmas holiday. These offices will open again on Thursday, December 26th at 8:30 a.m.
Village Hall offices and The Stable will be open all day on Tuesday, December 31st (New Year’s Eve) and will be closed on Wednesday, January 1st in observance of the New Year’s holiday. These offices will open again on Thursday, January 2nd at 8:30 a.m.
There will be rear yard garbage collection and recycling collection on December 24th and December 31st, but there will be no garbage or recycling collection on December 25th or January 1st. Please consult your Ridgewood Village calendar for further information.
As always, the Police Department, located on the second floor of the Ridgewood Village Hall, will be open on all of these holidays.
Heroin’s poisonous path to North Jersey
Sunday December 22, 2013, 12:57 AM
BY REBECCA D. O’BRIEN AND TOM MASHBERG
STAFF WRITERS
The Record
The case began on a quiet suburban street in North Bergen, in the attic of a vinyl-sided Cape Cod, where in October 2008 investigators discovered 6 kilos of pure, uncut heroin wrapped with white packing tape, concealed in a blue Reebok duffel bag. Scattered throughout the Cottage Avenue house — above the refrigerator, tucked inside a love seat, in the master bedroom closet — was more than $2.7 million in cash. The man renting the house was Mario Villaman-Puerta, a 32-year-old Mexican citizen who had been deported several years earlier after a cocaine distribution conviction in Illinois. He was arrested along with another man.
Five years later, that investigation, dubbed Operation Shut Down by the Drug Enforcement Administration, has reached from the suburbs of North Jersey to the poppy farms of Colombia, exposing a 5,000-mile international narcotics network that connects the Cottage Avenue stash house to a Colombian drug-trafficking organization that supplies Mexico’s powerful and violent Sinaloa cartel with cocaine and heroin for distribution in the United States.
Ten days ago, the head of that Colombian organization, Jorge Milton Cifuentes-Villa — considered one of world’s most powerful drug kingpins — was extradited to the United States to face charges stemming from Operation Shut Down, a DEA official confirmed.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/bergen/Heroins_poisonous_path_to_North_Jersey.html#sthash.Db8dZTJd.dpuf
Football coach grateful for support
Coach Chuck Johnson
Ridgewood High School footbal
To the editor:
I want to thank the students (especially the illustrious class of 2014 — our seniors — you know I love you guys), our administration, our parents, our Ridgewood football alumni, and our entire village for the incredible support, encouragement and enthusiasm given to our 2013 Maroons Football Team throughout our magical season.
I personally was the recipient of so many voicemails, e-mails (the furthest away from Sydney, Australia) and personal contacts. It was amazing to hear about a pre-game tailgate from our Scholarship Committee President Jacque Peay that encompassed “over 1,000 people.” To see, hear and feel the energy Saturday night at MetLife Stadium was inspiring to our players and coaches.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/236675591_Letter__Football_coach_grateful_for_support.html#sthash.WPWVjYNN.dpuf
