Reader says Obamacare Architect Ezekiel J. Emanuel says Let Nature Take its Course and refuse all medical treatment after 75
Valley can build separate buildings. That’s what I thought it was doing. Buying up all that land.
It can use its present location for Maternity for example and other buildings for other things.
Don’t kid yourself no. 2. Cancer has NOT advanced very much since the 1950s. Get it and find out for yourself.
The best defense against heart disease is a very healthy lifestyle.
Life style is 80 percent of health which includes a healthy environment. No traffic pollution no poison on lawn that gets into water spoils ecology causes nerve damage and CANCER !!We should be discouraging traffic from CBD. POLLUTION. YIKES!!
There are many hospitals around this area that have the same wonderful!! easy cancer cures as Valley. We don’t need Valley here at all. Growing up I was 15 miles from a hospital and survived to tell about it.
Are you aware of what was on News Hour a few days ago, channel 13 with Judy Woodruff, and in the Atlantic magazine this past Sept.
A proposal, written by a bioethiscist that people age 75 refuse all medication because statistics of millions of people PROVE that after that age health declines very precipitously and painfully and the cost of prolonging life not worth it emotionally, physically. It’s very painful for most people. We’re talkin fancy western countries. Not to mention financial and using resources that would be best used to save young people. Very much antibiotics that are becoming and are ineffective now from overuse.
Now that would put Valley out of business so very fast. They are counting on sickies 80 years and over for their survival. They said so at meetings.
But UP UNITL ABout age 75 it’s mostly in our control. Very much so. If we keep the lifestyle and environment clean. If we don’t live the correct lifestyle Valley, can’t really do anything significant for us despite their hype. Valley should spread out. with multiple buildings. Why are they such pigs.
CDC director: Travel ban could make Ebola outbreak worse
By Cameron Joseph – 10/04/14 01:17 PM EDT
A travel ban to the countries facing an Ebola outbreak could paradoxically make the problem worse, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden said during a Saturday press conference.
Frieden said the CDC would consider any and all precautions, but warned that a travel ban could make it harder to get medical care and aid workers to regions dealing with the outbreak.
He said that had already occurred when African Union aid workers tried to get to Liberia but were stuck in a neighboring country for days because of a travel ban.
“Their ability to get there was delayed by about a week because their flight was canceled and they were stuck in a neighboring country,” he said.
Frieden also said the CDC has experienced a spike in reported potential cases of Ebola following the first diagnosis of a patient in the U.S. in Dallas earlier this week, saying the rise in concern was a good thing but that he remained the only patient who has been identified as suffering from the disease. Two patients who were initially identified as having potential Ebola symptoms in the Washington, D.C. area were ruled to not have the disease on Saturday.
Scrutiny in Texas to Detect Whether Ebola Has Spread
By MANNY FERNANDEZ and NORIMITSU ONISHIOCT. 1, 2014
DALLAS — The man who has become the first Ebola patient to develop symptoms in the United States told officials at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital last Friday that he had just arrived from West Africa but was not admitted that day because that information was not passed along at the hospital, officials acknowledged Wednesday.
The man, Thomas E. Duncan, was sent home under the mistaken belief that he had only a mild fever, a hospital administrator said; the information that he had traveled from Liberia, one of the nations at the heart of the Ebola epidemic, was overlooked.
Mr. Duncan came back to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday and was admitted for treatment, but in those two days in between, his contacts with a number of people — including five schoolchildren and the medics who helped transport him to the hospital — potentially exposed them to Ebola, forcing officials to monitor and isolate them in their homes and to begin a thorough cleaning of the schools the students attended. Mr. Duncan is now in serious but stable condition.
On its one-year anniversary, ObamaCare gets an ‘F’ By Michael D. Tanner September 28, 2014 | 12:00am
This Wednesday will mark one year since enrollment in ObamaCare began. What began with the disastrous rollout of healthcare.gov has ended with the health law’s supporters claiming victory.
It is true that some of the worst predictions have not yet come true. Yet. But in the last year we’ve also seen plenty of bad news for consumers, providers, employers and taxpayers.
A report card:
The Uninsured:Earlier this month, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services director Marilyn Tavenner testified that roughly 7.3 million people signed up for insurance through the exchanges. That’s down from early estimates of 8.1 million, because nearly 800,000 of those who initially enrolled have stopped or never paid their premiums. A bigger question is how many enrollees were previously insured and were just changing plans. Overall, the best estimates suggest that roughly 8 million people gained insurance under ObamaCare, but roughly half of those were enrolled in Medicaid (outside of the exchanges), which isn’t really health-care reform so much as adding people to government welfare. And it still leaves 41 million American adults uninsured. We spent billions to move the needle a tick. Grade: C
Your Plan : Despite the president’s assurances to the contrary, roughly 6 million Americans were kicked off their insurance because their plans failed to offer a lengthy-enough maternity stay, didn’t provide sufficient drug and alcohol rehabilitation benefits or otherwise fell short of the insurance that federal bureaucrats thought that they should have. This includes more than 100,000 New Yorkers. Nearly all eventually found other insurance, but a new study from the National Center for Public Policy Research found that, on average, ObamaCare plans were worse than the plans they replaced, in terms of both providers covered and cost-sharing. A new wave of cancellations is about to begin as well. Those New Yorkers who managed to renew their noncompliant plans prior to the effective start date for ObamaCare last year should start receiving cancellation notices any day now. Some people may not even be able to keep the plans that replaced the plans they couldn’t keep the first time. In several states, insurers have dropped plans that they offered on the exchanges or even withdrawn from the market altogether. And if that was not bad enough, Americans with employer-based insurance may find out their insurance has to be changed starting next year. Grade: F
Premiums: If judged against President Obama’s promise that health-care reform would save us all at least $2,500 through lower premiums, ObamaCare deserves an F. But premium increases have been less bad than expected, especially in states like New York that already had highly regulated insurance markets. Last year, New Yorkers in the individual market saw a reduction in their premiums, but only because the individual market was already in such terrible shape. In states where the individual market was not already dysfunctional, there were significant premium increases. This year, New Yorkers can expect premium increases averaging roughly 6 percent for individual plans and almost 7 percent for small business. Grade: C+
A recent editorial declared a victory for Obamacare as evidenced by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation survey showing a substantial reduction in the number of uninsured New Jersey residents over the past year.
The result, while positive, is not all that surprising given that under the law individuals must purchase coverage or face a financial penalty. In addition, the government doled out taxpayer-funded subsidies and expanded eligibility under Medicaid. I suppose there aren’t too many problems that can’t be solved by throwing money at them — except perhaps deficits.
The result, while positive, is not all that surprising given that under the law individuals must purchase coverage or face a financial penalty. In addition, the government doled out taxpayer-funded subsidies and expanded eligibility under Medicaid. I suppose there aren’t too many problems that can’t be solved by throwing money at them — except perhaps deficits.
The editorial does not report on other effects of Obamacare: cancellation of policies for individuals who had to then purchase new policies at vastly higher premiums, elimination of choice among coverage (Uncle Sam knows what you need), and an overall reduction in the availability and quality of health care.
Recent downward corrections to the enrollment figures due to non-payment of premiums portend even higher premium costs next year unless the administration bails out insurers for their losses with even more taxpayer money. No one disputed the goal of reducing the ranks of the uninsured. The quarrel was always with the approach.
Until this ill-conceived law is repealed, we have to live with its consequences, both intended and unintended. To paraphrase the Greek King Pyrrhus, any more victories like this, and we will be ruined.
Government Insider Warned of HealthCare.gov Security Risks: ‘I Am Tired of the Cover-Ups’
Sharyl Attkisson / @SharylAttkisson / September 18, 2014
Government insiders who flagged security issues prior to the launch of HealthCare.gov were right to be concerned. That’s according to a new audit by the Government Accountability Office, which concluded that security weaknesses are putting “the sensitive personal information” contained by HealthCare.gov and its related systems at risk.
HealthCare.gov security problems put “sensitive personal information” at risk, @usgao concluded.
As the Obama administration prepared to launch the website last fall, one of those insiders voiced concern about the vulnerabilities and complained about “cover-ups” masking the severity of the problems.
The findings run counter to claims by Obama administration officials who have long insisted there’s no reason for any concern regarding the website’s security.
The news comes in advance of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing at 11 a.m. today examining the security vulnerabilities. GAO Director of Information Security Issues Greg Wilhusen will testify. His report concludes, “Until these weaknesses are addressed, the systems and the information they contain remain at increased risk of unauthorized use, disclosure, modification, or loss.”
Missing Information
As the GAO performed its security investigation, it did not receive full information from the government, according to Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif. He says that government officials refused to provide GAO with reports on 13 HealthCare.gov security incidents.
“What vulnerabilities to sensitive personal information is CMS still so intent on hiding from an independent government auditor?” said Issa in a statement issued Wednesday.
The GAO found that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which runs HealthCare.gov, failed to “analyze privacy risks associated with HealthCare.gov systems or identify mitigating control.” The GAO also faulted officials for not performing comprehensive security testing and not ensuring that security plans contained all required information, “which makes it harder for officials to assess the risks involved in operating those systems.”
According to the GAO, the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CMS, agreed or partially agreed with GAO’s six recommendations “to fully implement its information security program” and “concurred with all 22 of the recommendations to resolve technical weaknesses in security controls, describing actions it had under way or planned related to each of them.”
Warnings Ignored
Serious security problems with HealthCare.gov were exposed in stories I reported for CBS News in November and December of 2013. They revealed that Teresa Fryer, the chief information security officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, explicitly recommended the website should not be launched Oct. 1, 2013, due to security concerns, but was overruled by her superiors.
“I am tired of the cover-ups,” a government security chief said of HealthCare.gov problems.
Fryer said she had warned, both verbally and in a briefing, that the website carried “high [security] risks” and possible exposure to “attacks.” Fryer also said that sherefused to put her name on a letterrecommending the website be given a temporary authority to operate while the issues were sorted out.
Additionally, Henry Chao, the CMS project manager in charge of building the website, was apparently kept in the dark about serious security failures. Those included “high-risk” issues, flagged by the government’s security testing firm, which indicated “the threat and risk potential [to the system] is limitless.”
‘Tired of the Cover Ups’
Meantime, internal documents newly released by Republicans on the Oversight Committee detail agency infighting and secrecy efforts surrounding the troubled launch of HealthCare.gov.
Fryer indicated that she was frustrated by fellow CMS officials who were not providing a true picture of security testing prior to the launch.
“I am tired of the cover-ups,” she emailed a colleague, stating that she intended to give “a truthful update of exactly what was going on” to an official at Health and Human Services who had asked for a status report.
CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner (Photo: Alyson Fligg/Sipa USA/Newscom)
When CMS’ independent security testing prior to launch produced negative results, documents indicate one CMS official sought to have the report changed.
“We need to hit the pause button on this report,” wrote CMS’ Thomas Schankweiler, “and have an internal meeting about it. … It is very possible that this report will be reviewed at some point by [the Office of the Inspector General], and could see the light in other ways.”
In an Oct. 5, 2013, email, CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner forwarded a subordinate a complaint from a White House adviser and then instructed, “Please delete this email.” Issa says that instruction violates federal record-keeping rules.
Tavenner is scheduled to testify at today’s Oversight Committee hearing.
Forty-six percent of doctors give President Obama’s healthcare law a “D” or an “F,” according to a new survey from the Physicians Foundation. In contrast, just 25 percent of those surveyed gave the law an “A” or a “B.”
The findings come from a survey that was emailed to “virtually every physician in the United States with an email address on record with the American Medical Association” this March through June as the law’s major provisions were taking effect, and received more than 20,000 responses from doctors.
In their comments that were included (but kept anonymous) in the report, a number of doctors complained about the vast amount of bureaucracy that has been added to the medical profession.
“Get government OUT of healthcare,” one doctor wrote.
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Another wrote, “Repeal Obamacare.”
Another comment read, “I’m a Canadian physician practicing in the United States. The politicians and policy makers need to understand that government involvement in healthcare never works.”
Fed: Under Obama, only the richest 10 percent saw incomes rise
By Jennifer Pompi – The Washington Times – Thursday, September 4, 2014
Under President Obama, the richest 10 percent were the only income group of Americans to see their median incomes rise, according to a survey released this week by the Federal Reserve.
The Fed data covered the years 2010-2013, during which period Mr. Obama constantly campaigned against income inequality and won re-election by painting his Republican rival as a tool of Wall Street plutocrats.
“Data from the 2013 [Survey of Consumer Finances] confirm that the shares of income and wealth held by affluent families are at modern historically high levels,” the report said in noting that the median income fell for every 10-percent grouping except the most affluent 10 percent.
American health care is in upheaval. On one side, overhead and malpractice insurance costs keep increasing, while salaries stagnate. On the other, patients believe that expensive drugs are better, more people are on government-run insurance that pays less, while private insurance fights every claim.
Now doctors spend most of their time trying to game the system, requiring endless paperwork, protracted bureaucratic battles and “treadmill medicine,” seeing as many patients as possible in as little time. This problem will only intensify as millions join the ranks of the insured under the Affordable Care Act.
Modal Trigger
Dr. Sandeep JauharPhoto: Maryanne Russell
In this self-perpetuating cycle, doctors spend most of their time as businessmen — and care suffers.
It’s no wonder then that doctors no longer enjoy their jobs, explains Jauhar, director of the Heart Failure Program at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and author of “Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), out now.
“This book is meant to be like the scene in ‘Network’ when [Howard Beale] opens the window and yells, ‘We’re not going to take it anymore,’ ” Jauhar says in an interview with The Post.
As investors buy struggling hospitals, big change comes to New Jersey health care
AUGUST 23, 2014, 8:38 PM LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, AUGUST 24, 2014, 7:05 AM BY LINDY WASHBURN STAFF WRITER THE RECORD
Bayonne Medical Center wasn’t just bragging about efficiency when it posted a big digital clock on a highway billboard a few years ago to show the real-time waits in its emergency room. It wanted patients to come to its ER. Lots of patients.
Big change comes to New Jersey health care
It didn’t matter if the hospital was in the patient’s insurance network. On the contrary, to the businessmen who had recently purchased the medical center, those “out-of-network” patients held the key to reversing Bayonne’s fortunes.
These owners, who bought the hospital in bankruptcy, had found an unintended — and very profitable — consequence to a state regulation that was designed to protect patients with urgent medical needs. While the regulation required insurance companies to pay for emergency treatment at hospitals where their coverage wasn’t normally accepted, it did nothing to control the size of the bills the hospitals could submit to those insurers.
And that loophole enabled Bayonne, which had ended its contracts with some of the state’s largest insurers, to charge those higher out-of-network rates. The result was striking: The strategy contributed to a $17 million operational profit within two years of its 2008 takeover.
Dumb as a box of Rocks ,I believe the Union called it “Cadillac healthcare plans “
Federal Employees Union Says Obamacare Could ‘Hurt’ Members
12:05 PM, Aug 15, 2014 • By MICHAEL WARREN
The National Treasury Employees Union is an independent union representing, according to its own figures, “some 150,000” federal workers from many different agencies. The union claims to fight for the “dignity and respect” of its members, and it maintains a “legislative action center” to keep tabs on what Congress is up to.
With a Republican-controlled House of Representatives that was elected on a message of reining in federal spending, the NTEU’s been on alert for any and all legislation that proposes reducing pay and benefits for federal workers. In fact, on the union’s website, there’s a handy list of 13 active pieces of legislation (all sponsored by Republicans) that the NTEU says it wants to stop. “Warning!” reads the top of the fact sheet. “Which of these bills could hurt you? ALL OF THEM.”
Among the bills is H.R. 1780, sponsored by Michigan Republican Dave Camp. The NTEU says the bill could hurt workers because it would “require most federal employees to leave the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program…and instead join health plans established under the Affordable Care Act.”
Governor Christie is on the Ocean City Music Pier today pushing for another sweeping round of public employee benefit reforms, Save Jerseyans.
It’s timely.
You know what the pension numbers look like because you’re a regular reader. That being said, our obnoxiously gigantic $40 billion in unfunded pension liabilities is eclipsed only by a public employee health benefit program that’s $47 billion in the red. What else could you expect from a state with roughly 81 government employees per square mile?
But it’s not simply a matter of how many people are drawing pensions and health benefits, retired and active. Nope. It’s how much each plan costs! A new report from the nonpartisan Pew Charitable Trusts and the MacArthur Foundation released Wednesday discovered, unsurprisingly, that our state’s public employee health benefits are the highest in the nation – $1,334 on average – as opposed to $963 nation-wide.
Assembly Republican Budget Officer Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth) seized upon the reports release to reaffirm the importance of Governor Christie’s newly-convened reform study commission. “Offering benefits at a fair cost to dedicated public employees is the right thing to do,” added O’Scanlon. “Providing Rolls Royce coverage that taxpayers cannot afford is unacceptable. Under this scenario, everyone loses.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration says the clock is ticking for hundreds of thousands of people who have unresolved issues affecting their coverage under the new health law.
Six in 10 Americans are dissatisfied with the state of the U.S. economy, more than 70 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, and nearly 80 percent are down on the country’s political system, according to the latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll.
The frustration carries over to the nation’s political leaders, with President Barack Obama’s overall approval rating hitting a new low at 40 percent, and a mere 14 percent of the public giving Congress a thumbs up.
“We’re in the summer of our discontent,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “Americans are cranky, unhappy… It is with everything going on the world.”
Yet because this discontent differs – among Democrats, Republicans, and independents – Hart cautions that Americans still aren’t likely to be storming the polls on Election Day in November.
“We’re unhappy, but we aren’t coalescing around an issue,” he said.
Indeed, 57 percent of respondents told pollsters that something upsets them enough to carry a protest sign for a day.
“The public seems have moved beyond the plaintive cry of ‘Feel our pain!’ to the more angry pronouncement of ‘You are causing our pain!’”
No matter how you feel about Halbig vs. Sebelius—the recent decision that said it was illegal for the government to funnel subsidies to the 36 states that declined to build health care exchanges—the odds that this legal challenge to Obamacare will ultimately prevail in the courts are not that high. But the law’s supporters should brace themselves for even fiercer future battles: Their folly was to pass a complicated and flawed law with zero Republican support, and now they have to contend with full-bore Republican opposition as they try to make it work.
Halbig’s odds of being upheld are low, not because its legal argument is “stupid” or “criminal,” as its opponents claim, but because of courtroom politics. Halbig was issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but the full court tilts heavily liberal, and it is likely to reverse the decision.
Opponents of the law petitioned the Supreme Court last week to rule on the legality of the subsidies while the lower courts are still split. But the politically squeamish Chief Justice John Roberts might prefer to let matters play out at that level rather than jump into a partisan mud fight. (Theoretically, the four conservative justices would be enough to grant certiorari, but unless they know that Roberts will rule with them eventually, they wouldn’t risk egg on their face.)
But that doesn’t mean that Obamacare supporters can take a victory lap. The program’s biggest vulnerabilities are still down the road. And that’s no accident.
The administration postponed implementation of the more painful aspects of the program till after the president is safely out of office—partly through the original law and partly by altering the law through executive fiat.
Thanks to lobbying by labor, the law delayed taxing so-called Cadillac Plans, which benefit union households, till 2018. Likewise, it doesn’t require states participating in the Medicaid expansion to pick up any of the tab for their added costs till 2016.
The penalty for the individual mandate, which starts at $95 per individual and $285 per household, will soar to $695 and $2,085, respectively, by 2016.
But the real danger is the “risk corridor” provision that was meant to backstop the losses of insurance companies so that they don’t pull out, prompting Obamacare’s collapse.
“Risk corridors” essentially cap both the profits and losses that insurance companies can make. A company whose profits are higher than the capped amount has to fork over the excess to one that incurs losses.
In theory, this program, which is also due to expire around 2017, is supposed to be financed by the insurance industry. But the problem is that if the industry as a whole doesn’t make enough profits to offset its losses, then a federal bailout may be necessary when these programs are phased out and their final bill comes due.
The likelihood of a bailout is not as remote as liberals claim, given that 71 percent of the exchange enrollees are older and not as healthy, about 11 points more than optimal according to the administration’s own projections. Indeed, even before many insurersreported lower-than-expected earnings this week, Moody’s had downgraded its outlook for the industry to “negative.”
But the insurer bailout is not the only appropriation battle brewing. In the fairytale that the president told the public, Obamacare wasn’t going to cost taxpayers a “dime” because all of the necessary funds would be obtained from drastic Medicare reimbursement cuts to doctors and hospitals. How drastic? So drastic, notes Forbes analyst Chris Conover, that by 2030 Medicare would be paying providers 60 percent less than what private plans do.
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