Assurex Health, Inc., a commercial-stage, informatics-based precision medicine company providing treatment decision support to healthcare providers for behavioral health and chronic pain conditions, has secured an additional $15 million in equity financing from existing Series D investors.

Mason, OH (PRWEB) December 21, 2015

Assurex Health, Inc., a commercial-stage, informatics-based precision medicine company providing treatment decision support to healthcare providers for behavioral health and chronic pain conditions, has secured an additional $15 million in equity financing from existing Series D investors, according to Virginia C. Drosos, President and Chief Executive Officer.

“We are pleased this round of funding was led by existing shareholders,” Drosos said. “We continue to receive strong support from Sequoia Capital, Claremont Creek Ventures, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Mayo Clinic, and Cross Creek Advisors among others. Each investor has a proven track record, knows us well and is committed to support our ongoing growth and mission.”

“This additional financing reinforces our commitment to deliver proven, industry-leading science and to continue to build broad, clinical adoption of GeneSight®,” Drosos added. “Results from published, peer-reviewed clinical studies have demonstrated that GeneSight delivers better outcomes for the patient at a lower cost to the healthcare system.”

Powered by CPGxTM, a proprietary combinatorial pharmacogenomics technology, the GeneSight test measures multiple genomic variants for each patient and weights them together – rather than one at a time – to provide comprehensive genetically-driven information for each medication for each patient. In clinical studies, GeneSight has proven to more than double a patient’s likelihood of response to medications and reduce healthcare costs by more than $2,500 per patient per year.

The new financing follows the recent announcement regarding a significant enhancement to the GeneSight Psychotropic test, now the most comprehensive neuropsychiatric pharmacogenomics test available. The test gives healthcare providers an expanded range of options in helping to make medication decisions for patients suffering from depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia, and other behavioral health conditions.

GeneSight Use, Acceptance Growing

More than 14,000 healthcare providers have used GeneSight to help make treatment decisions for over 230,000 patients across the country. More and more health insurance plans are covering GeneSight including Geisinger Health Plan, Tufts Health Plan and Fallon Community Health Plan, each of whom recently agreed to coverage for Medicare Advantage patients. They join over 80 other payors who have committed to GeneSight coverage, including Medicare and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which together cover over 70 million Americans.

About Assurex Health
We help people achieve mental wellness with advanced CPGx™, a proprietary combinatorial pharmacogenomics technology providing individualized treatment support for neuropsychiatric conditions. Assurex Health is the leader in neuropsychiatric combinatorial pharmacogenomics. Assurex Health was founded in 2006 with licensed, patented technology from Mayo Clinic and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, who continue to be research collaborators. Assurex Health is the only company in the category with multiple peer-reviewed, published studies that demonstrate the clinical validity and clinical utility of its technology, including its substantial healthcare cost savings benefit. The company has grown every quarter, and also has begun to expand internationally through a partnership with Canada’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

Media Contacts:

Sarah DeDiemar                     
Assurex Health                    
sdediemar(at)assurexhealth.com     
513.701.5000                    

Rick Miller    
On behalf of Assurex Health
rick(at)rickmillercommunications.com
513.608.8463 Reported by PRWeb 14 hours ago.

1099 Express announces new software for processing IRS 1095 forms; speeds processing time, reduces errors, allows electronic filing.

Corpus Christi, TX (PRWEB) December 21, 2015

Businesses have a huge new burden to fully comply with filling out and filing the new, very complicated, IRS Form1095s. If not submitted, vast numbers of individuals will be charged the new Obamacare tax. This surprise tax can be deducted from individual's refunds without warning or billed directly by the IRS. Why is this going to happen? Because many businesses do not know how to complete IRS Form 1095, nor are they aware they are required to send out the complex 1095 forms to their employees. Also, many businesses may get a surprise penalty from the IRS for not mailing a 1095 form to their employees, and not sending the IRS their copy. That’s two more surprises for businesses.

What are these surprises all about? And what is a IRS Form 1095? The simple answer is: An IRS Form 1095 tells the individuals and the IRS if health care coverage was provided or not. If not, individuals and businesses may be liable for the surprise tax noted above. Since 2015 is the first year for Obamacare taxes, many businesses are simply not ready and some are not even aware of this new regulatory burden.

Without an IRS Form 1095, the employee can be charged by the IRS for every month the person did not have 1095 proof of insurance. It’s a little like having proof of car insurance. Better not get caught by the police without it. Of course, there are exceptions in Obamacare, but predict many will be caught by surprise.

IRS Forms 1095 must be delivered to virtually everybody, so the IRS can calculate their Obamacare tax due, if any. Businesses are required to furnish the IRS Form 1095 to their employees and the IRS: Generally Employers to their Employees, Health Insurance Companies to their policy holders, and the Government Health Care Exchanges to those policy holders.

There is a real emergency at hand. IRS Form 1095 must be mailed to millions of people by the deadline of January 31, 2016. That's less than 45 days from now.

So what’s the solution? The solution will almost always require software, due to the complexity of the form. Plus, companies will need to possibly send electronic delivery to the IRS. There are many software packages available in all price ranges; some are very expensive, other solutions are under $500.00 and include features that assure the IRS receives their 1095 copies electronically, on time, by March 31.

Companies providing 1095 Compliance software can be found by Internet search on key words such as "1095 Compliance", or "1095 Forms", or "Obamacare Compliance", or similar search terms. Some of the companies that offer 1095 compliance software at very reasonable cost are http://www.1099Express.com and,http://www.WageFiling.com.

-30-
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Bob Miner
1099 Express
Phone: 361/884-1500
Email: sales(at)1099Express.com Reported by PRWeb 11 hours ago.

Early this year President Obama spoke before the Cleveland Club. After the speech 7^th grader Alura Winfrey inquired, "If you could go back to the first day of your first term what advice would you give yourself?" Obama reflected for a moment and then blithely explained he would have worked harder to sell his economic policies.

Ms. Winfrey asked the right question but might have elicited a more revealing response if the question was given more context and phrased more insistently. Something like this: "Given that under your watch your party lost the country, in retrospect what would you have done differently?"

The data clearly would have supported her. When Barack Obama took office Democrats controlled the White House, both houses of Congress and had outright control (both houses of the state legislature and the governorship) of 27 states. Republicans controlled 17. In 2010 Democrats lost the House and the number of Democrat to Republican-controlled states almost exactly reversed. In 2014 Republicans won the Senate and the score regarding state control now stands at an astonishing 32 to 7 in favor of Republicans. And Republicans could complete the federal trifecta in 2016.

Nothing Obama could have done would have avoided the tsunami of vicious racist and xenophobic hatred that washed over him and the country, aided and abetted by the savagely partisan and vitriolic FOX news. Nothing would have stopped obscenely rich and intensely self-interested individuals like the Koch brothers from pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns to discredit and defile the President and the government in general.

But Obama might well have stunted the emergence of a rightwing populist movement if he had pursued an aggressive populist strategy of his own, one that demonstrated government could effectively challenge giant corporations and unbridled private greed on behalf of small business and the average family.

Obama certainly had the opportunity. The economy was in free fall. Millions faced the prospect of losing their homes. Millions more were losing their jobs. After freeing itself of most government restrictions and oversight the financial sector had become dysfunctional. Even stalwart defenders of laissez faire capitalism were confessing the error of their deregulatory ways. "Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?" Representative Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) asked Ayn Rand acolyte Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve in October 2008. "Yes, I've found a flaw," Greenspan reluctantly conceded, and added, "I've been very distressed by that fact."

The crisis in the health care sector was less visible but the sector's inefficiencies and callousness were manifest. At a cost 30-100 percent higher than other nations were paying for universal health care, the America health care "system" left over 40 million uninsured. As many as 45,000 people died each year because they lacked health insurance. Medical expenses caused 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies and had been rising by twice the inflation rate for several decades. Shrinking numbers of companies were offering employees adequate health care insurance and those that did were requiring more of the premium to be paid out of the workers' paychecks even while insurance companies increased the level of deductibles.

To his credit Obama did try to make systemic changes in both the financial and health care sector. To his everlasting discredit he tried to make these changes without actually structurally changing the system. Instead of confronting power he bribed the powerful: $700 billion in direct support and trillions in low cost money for the banks, $500 billion for the health insurance companies. He enlisted the support of giant pharmaceutical companies, among the most profitable of all manufacturing firms, by refusing to cap drug prices. He enlisted the support of giant insurance companies by embracing an individual mandate he had opposed during the campaign, thus guaranteeing the companies millions of new mostly healthy younger customers, whose premiums would be heavily subsidized by the government.

At one point Obama met with the CEOs of the nation's 13 largest banks. He accurately warned them, "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks." But rather than make demands, he pleaded with the bankers: "Help me help you." They were only too glad to do so.

Those with the pitchforks were enraged. Anti-government activists were delighted. The American public needed someone to blame and if Obama wasn't willing to blame those who deserved it, the Koch brothers and Fox News and others were more than willing to step into the vacuum and blame the government.

*What Obama Could Have Done*

Obama could have chosen a different path. But doing so would have required that he tell the American people who really deserved blame for the crises and why the system that allowed them to do so must be changed.

In 1933 in his first Inaugural Address Franklin Delano Roosevelt identified the cause of the economic collapse and declared war on Wall Street. "Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men," he declared. "They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish...the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit."

Forty-five years later Ronald Reagan came to office in the midst of another economic crisis but unlike FDR he declared war on government. "It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the ... unnecessary and excessive growth of government.... government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Reagan's narrative eventually became the guiding philosophy of both political parties. Recall Bill Clinton's famous declaration, "the era of big government is over." Indeed one might argue that it was not Ronald Reagan who undid the New Deal. It was Bill Clinton.

In his Inaugural Address Obama needed only to change two words of Reagan's to begin to change the narrative and foster a new populism: "It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the ... unnecessary and excessive growth of giant corporations.... corporations are not the solution to our problem; corporations are the problem."

The time was propitious for taking on corporate capitalism. A month before the election, responding to popular outrage, Congress had rejected the first no-strings-attached bailout bill despite warnings that it had to act within hours or risk a total financial meltdown and against the wishes of the White House and leaders of both parties. The American people wanted public money used for the public good rather than to satisfy private greed. A revised bill directed the use of bailout money to increase lending and prevent foreclosures.

The banks responded by thumbing their collective noses at the American public.

But by the time Obama took office bailout recipients were actually reducing lending and simply parking their money at the Federal Reserve. As Matt Taibbi notes, in August 2008, before the bailout, banks deposited $2 billion in excess reserves at the Fed. By January 2009, that sum had ballooned to an astonishing $843 billion. A few days before Obama's inauguration the giant insurance company AIG, the largest bailout recipient paid out bonuses totaling $160 million, more than $1 million each to 73 employees of the department whose financial manipulations had bankrupted it.

In the early days Obama promised to take on the banks. A few weeks after taking office he told Congress, "I intend to hold these banks fully accountable for the assistance they receive, and this time, they will have to clearly demonstrate how taxpayer dollars result in more lending for the American taxpayer."

He had the tool to make that happen, and more. Congress had given the White House authority to own the banks. Indeed, support for government ownership had surprisingly broad support. In February 2009 Mr. Greenspan told the Financial Times, "It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring," The Financial Times reported, "policymakers across the political spectrum appeared to be moving towards accepting some form of bank nationalisation." Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told the FT. "We cannot keep pouring good money after bad...If nationalisation is what works, then we should do it."

By early 2009 the federal government had effectively taken control of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG and it also acquired equity shares in the nine largest banks. In late February the US government took a 36 percent equity stake in Citigroup, gained control of half the seats on the Board of Directors, and gained the right to fire senior management. The government acquired a more modest share in the nation's largest bank, Bank of America, but only because they refused to bargain with the banks the way banks bargained with their customers. The government had provided $40 billion to Bank of America. The Wall Street Journal noted that at the time the entire market value of Bank of America was about $25.5 billion.

The government, however, went out of its way to structure its equity investments in ways that would not permit it to dictate, but that was a policy path that wasn't inevitable. The business world would have understood if the government had called what it was doing a "hostile takeover". These were common. And often a hostile takeover was followed by firing senior management and breaking up a company to raise its share price. Obama could have looked to do the same as well as demand rather than beg for an increase in lending and a modification of mortgage terms to reduce foreclosures.

If he did so, Obama would have earned undying hatred from Wall Street, as FDR had. But the American public likely would have supported him. Public opinion polls at the time consistently show that Americans wanted to break up the banks.

Public opinion polls also showed a deep suspicion of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Between one third and half supported redesigning the medical system to significantly reduce the role of private profit oriented insurance companies.

Obama succeeded in dramatically expanding one public insurance program, Medicaid. During the campaign he had supported a broader public option. The Public Option Act would have allowed all citizens and permanent residents to participate in the nation's largest single payer insurance program, Medicare.

Expanding Medicare would have given the American people the ability to choose public over private, non-profit over profit. Would there have been any role for private insurance companies? Possibly. Many nations with excellent universal health plans do rely on private insurance companies. But these companies are so tightly regulated as to make them essentially public utilities. Their profits are capped. The menu of basic services mandated is extensive. Drug prices are strictly regulated. The companies compete less on price than on service.

In both the health care and financial sectors Obama could have educated Americans about how the profit motive provides a powerful incentive for corporations to do the wrong thing. To maximize profit for shareholders, health insurance companies deny services to policyholders. Even conservative federal Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner observed that the "incentive [of some insurers] is to keep you healthy if it can but if you get very sick, and are unlikely to recover to a healthy state involving few medical expenses, to let you die as quickly and cheaply as possible."

In early 2009 an investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations concluded that over a five year period three large health insurers had denied payments to 20,000 customers in order to increase profits by $300 million. An investigation by Senator Jay Rockefeller found that just 74 cents of every premium dollar for individual health insurance actually went to pay for health care. One company paid out only 66 cents on the premium dollar. Medicare, America's largest (although not the only) single payer system, spends 95-98 cents on the dollar it receives in taxes for medical expenses.

The same dynamic infected the financial sector. Bonuses were based on selling products, toxic on not. Banks pushed no-down-payment mortgages on people without jobs setting payments artificially low for the first few years. After putting together millions of little ticking time bombs banks then bundled mortgages and offloaded their fiduciary responsibility to investors. Rating agencies fraudulently gave the securities high ratings. Appraisers fraudulently inflated the market value of the properties.

Just before the 2008 election Bank of America agreed to pay $8.4 billion to 400,000 defrauded customers to settle a suit filed by 11 states. One trader at Barclays more recently summarized the ethics of the financial sector, "If you ain't cheating you ain't trying."

To accomplish a systemic restructuring of the health and financial sectors Obama would have had to mobilize the American public. He was and is an excellent communicator. And he could have taken a page from the right wing playbook by putting a human face on his message. Ronald Reagan had a gift for doing so. He repeatedly talked of a Welfare Queen who used multiple identities to defraud the welfare system in order to substantiate his point that the poor were freeloaders taking advantage of bleeding heart liberals.

Obama would have had no problem putting a human face on unbridled greed. The CEO of the giant insurance company United Health was given stock options worth $1.1 billion and then had the arrogance and gall to fraudulently backdate these options to allow him to reap another $500 million. Now that's a welfare queen!

Obama would have had no trouble offering the American people horror stories from both the financial and health sectors. In early 2010 a Google search for the term "health insurance horror stories" generated 419,000 hits. Former Cigna insurance company executive Wendell Potter observed, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." Obama's job should have been to make Americans pay attention.

He could have run a series of TV ads similar to the ones the health insurance companies financed that helped derail Clinton's ill-fated health plan in 1994. Those starred the mythical couple Harry and Louise terrified at the prospect of government health care.

Obama's could have starred real individuals and couples in real life situations where private profit-oriented corporations are terrorizing them. Like the woman who was denied breast cancer surgery because she had been treated for acne in the past or the man whose policy was rescinded just as he needed costly medical intervention because his insurance agent had incorrectly entered his weight on the application forms.

And Obama could have highlighted some of the many horror stories stemming from the unquenchable greed of giant pharmaceutical companies. Congressional hearings held in 2008 found one company that acquired an existing drug to treat breathing problems in newborns and hiked the price from $100 a unit to $1500. Another company acquired a decades-old drug for infantile spasms and raised its price from $40 a vial to over $23,000!

Foreclosure horror stories were, and are as common as health insurance horror stories. As Matt Browner Hamlin of Occupy Our Homes told Alternet several years ago, "You can basically throw a dart off a building and hit someone with a foreclosure horror story." Sarah Jaffe reported how Christine Frazer and her family were thrown out of the Atlanta home they'd lived in for 18 years, at gunpoint in the dead of night. Kathryn Nava wound up on disability and had trouble making her mortgage payments. A friend was willing to help her make her back payments, but wanted to see a payment history. The mortgage company wouldn't provide that history. In desperation Nava called the president of the company. Here is his coldhearted voicemail, "Let me enlighten you, Kathy. First of all, there's nothing in your contract with us says we owe you any history, now, next year, five years from now or the next time...I've begun foreclosure today. I bet you're sorry now that you made that phone call. I don't need to put up with your crap, OK?...Bottom line, I'm doing nothing for you now."

Even if Obama had done all these things he would still have had to counter those who echoed (and echo) Ronald Reagan's narrative. Responding to a later State of the Union address, Obama Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) offered up the Republican trope, "In fact, a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies."

Obama could have noted that in 2006 private lending institutions issued about 85 percent of subprime mortgages. But he could and should have gone much further and performed an ideological jujitsu on the right wing narrative by agreeing with Rubio that the collapse was in large part driven by "reckless government policies" but then explain that the recklessness was in eliminating safeguards that for more than two generations had protected the American economy and households.

In 1999 Congress recklessly repealed the Glass-Steagall Act that for 50 years had stopped Wall Street from speculating with government guaranteed deposits. A year later Congress recklessly deregulated the derivatives market. The next year the new federal bankruptcy act gave derivatives priority for payment. In 2004 the SEC recklessly waived the rules that limited lenders to a maximum debt-to-net-capital ratio of 12 to 1 for five giant Wall Street firms-- Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley. They promptly ratcheted up ratios to 30 and even 40 to 1. Three years later Washington overturned effective state anti-predatory lending laws.

As William Black reports, from 2002-2007 honest appraisers delivered to Washington officials a petition ultimately signed by 11,000 of their colleagues charging that lenders were pressuring them to artificially inflate prices on properties and blacklisted those who refused. The government recklessly refused to act.

But Obama did none of those things. One result is that today if you do a Google search with the term "insurance horror stories" you'll get over 1 million hits. But now many if not most are horror stories about Obamacare. Another result is that economic power has become even more concentrated as the number of community banks shrinks while the assets of the 5 biggest banks are almost 40 percent larger than they were before the crisis. These five banks now control over 44 percent of the nation's banking assets and 39 percent of the nation's GDP. In the health sector, insurance companies, hospitals, drug companies and doctor organizations have engaged in a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions.

The failure of Obama to either rhetorically or operationally adopt a truly populist strategy has, I firmly believe, given rise to the Bernie Sanders phenomenon. His message is resonating because he is clearly saying that will bring real change by restructuring the system and redistributing and democratizing power and resources. It may be one reason he labels himself a socialist. After a speech at Georgetown University Sanders answered a French student who asked why he feels the need to call himself a socialist. "(M)y vision is not just making modest changes around the edge - it is transforming American society," he responded.

So how might President Obama have answered 7th grader Alura Winfrey? Perhaps this way: "Frederick Douglass once declared, 'Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.' I was challenging two unethical and inhumane systems dominated by giant private corporations whose sole aim was to maximize corporate and individual profits. I should have realized that I needed to convince a skeptical public that government could act on their behalf. And I could do so only be clearly acting on their behalf, which meant confronting power with power."

 

 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 10 hours ago.

Dear Santa,

I have been very good this year. I finally graduated college as a Philosophy major, Canadian Studies minor (I know what you're thinking: "A minor? That's really going above and beyond!") and received an overall GPA of... well, the GPA doesn't matter. The point is: I DID IT, Santa! Not only that, but I defied all the odds and also managed to land a job in the midst of this harsh and volatile economy! Now, I know working as a holiday hire in Macy's housewares department isn't exactly what I studied for, but I do get to hold the keys to the Fine China display case, and that makes me feel pretty glamorous and powerful. Most importantly, however, this job has allowed me to live my dream of finally moving out of my parents' house and into an apartment of my very own. Just me... and five roommates I found on Craigslist.

Because I have been such a stand-up individual this year, you'll understand why my Christmas list is a bit longer than usual. I don't mean to be greedy, but I can't help but feel that my many accomplishments deserve to be rewarded during this holiday season.

Now that I am clearly An Adult, I've discovered that I constantly need to buy a lot of adult-like things; things I am now asking you to bring me for Christmas. This list includes, but is not limited to: cleaning products, cutlery, toilet paper, wine glasses, a duvet, shampoo, a crock pot, a vacuum cleaner, throw pillows, a variety of Glade scented candles, and maybe some of those rubber-ball-things you put in the dryer (what do those do, even?). I know this is a deviation from the wish-list of toys, games, music, and DVDs I've asked for in the past, but these presents are for the new, responsible me. Things sure have changed, haven't they Santa?

Additionally, I recently discovered I don't have health insurance anymore! Think you can add that to the list, while you're at it? You never know what's going to happen once you get out of bed, and I shudder at the thought of slipping on some black ice or being impaled by a reindeer antler this season and not being able to afford the medical bills. Preferably, you'd just get me a new, full-time job with paid vacation, full benefits (is dental too much to ask for?), flexible hours and an awesome boss who encourages after-work 'team-building' at the nearest Happy Hour. I'm not exactly sure how you'll gift wrap that and put it under the tree, but I know you'll come up with something. After all, you manage to fit all 400 pounds of yourself up and down millions of chimneys in one night; this should be a piece of cake (plate of cookies?).

Speaking of a 400 pound physique, what do you think about getting me a gym membership and personal trainer for Christmas too, Big Red? Ever since graduation, I've noticed that my body won't let me have half-a-dozen cocktails for dinner and a foot-long breakfast burrito at 2:00 a.m. for dessert. Not without paying a 'hefty' price, anyway. I guess you could say I'm a bit... curvier than I've been in the past, but I'm still much too young to let myself go! What do you think? You seem to be doing pretty well with the ladies (Mrs. Claus is looking especially sexy this year, congratulations buddy!) do you think it's important I be physically fit in order for me to still get laid from time to time?

This brings me to the most important present of all! I would also appreciate it if you brought me someone who will have regular sex with me throughout the holidays and into the New Year! I've been in somewhat of a post-college slump, Santa -- you can't just walk into a frat party and hook up with the drunk hottie from your French II class anymore! You have to really work for it! Plus, it's getting colder out, the nights are longer, and while fuzzy slippers and a warm blanket are comforting, it's not as comforting as a naked body huddled up next to you, post-coital. Of course, if this proves to be too complicated or if "human sex partner" is one of those annoying loop-holes in your wish-granting abilities, then I will happily settle for a large bottle of liquor and free HBO for a year. Just make sure the alcohol isn't in a plastic bottle... I'm an adult now!

Wishing you a happy holiday,

Wes

This post was originally featured on Thought Catalog

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 9 hours ago.

Despite dominating most online polls on the Democratic presidential debate, leading Clinton in New Hampshire polls and closing in on her in Iowa, Bernie Sanders continues to be sidelined by mainstream media.

He has consistently received less coverage than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both of whom he matches when it comes to presidential polls. And when I say less coverage, I mean Trump has received 23 times more network minutes of coverage on major news networks than Sanders has. This is a testament to both the influence of political lobbies and the mainstream's media's selective attention to showmanship and sensationalism.

It is unlikely this will change. Sanders is the least favorite candidate of big money (as he suggested himself on December 19) and cannot match the campaign budget of Hillary Clinton.

Secondly, he is not given to playing to the lowest common denominators of fear and bigotry that are the chief forte of Trump and Cruz-and which mainstream media laps up hungrily.

Where does that leave us Bernie supporters? Well that still leaves us with the most powerful weapon of this Presidential campaign: the Internet. Online newspapers, blogs and social media are where the real action now takes place. This is the space where we must be relentless in pointing out why Bernie Sanders is the best candidate for the American Presidency. For a start, here's a countdown of the only reasons you will ever need to vote Sanders:

*5. Bernie Sander is the only true voice of the Liberal left in the running for POTUS.*

Sanders is the only candidate that is not afraid of using the "s word" and in fact believes that aspects of socialism are necessary for America to become a land of equal economic opportunity again.

In his own words: "Democratic socialism means that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy. Democratic socialism means that we must reform a political system in America today which is not only grossly unfair but, in many respects, corrupt."

Sanders is the only candidate who has consistently and unequivocally been a proponent of LGBT rights and has backed up his words with his actions. In 1983, during his first term as Mayor of Burlington he supported the city's Pride Parade. He voted against "Don't Ask Don't Tell" in 1993 and against the "Defense of Marriage Act" in 1996.

*4. Sanders is the candidate placing the greatest and most appropriate amount of emphasis on climate change. *

He has rightfully stated that this is the greatest threat facing our planet. He has been firm on his intent to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, imposing a carbon tax on polluters and working towards a 100% clean energy America. He also happens to be the only candidate untainted enough by corporate ties to be trusted to fight the opposition of the coal and oil industry to these initiatives.

*3. Bernie Sanders has the most sane and intelligent foreign policy plan of any candidate.*

Sanders is a breath of fresh air from the over-sized machismo and war-mongering of the Republican Candidates and the vague, undecided foreign policy that has defined Hillary Clinton's stint as Obama's Foreign Secretary. He advocates a better relationship with China and an end to NAFTA, CAFTA and other disastrous trade initiatives that have created mistrust with China and Russia as well as resentment in the developing world were these agreements are seen as a fixing of the global economic playing field in favor of the West.

Sanders is firm on wanting to improve relations with Iran and continuing to abide by the terms of the Iran nuclear deal. On ISIS, this is what he has to say: "While we must be relentless in combating terrorists who would do us harm, we cannot and should not be policeman of the world, nor bear the burden of fighting terrorism alone. The United States should be part of an international coalition, led and sustained by nations in the region that have the means to protect themselves. That is the only way to defeat ISIS and to begin the process of creating the conditions for a lasting peace in the region."

This alone contains more wisdom than what we have heard so far from the entire Republican line of presidential hopefuls. It is indeed the regional players whose war this truly is and it must be they who are at the front lines. Illegal and unnecessary wars have damaged America's economy and global standing, created havoc in the middle east and done not an iota of good for anyone.

*2. Sanders is the only candidate who has an unequivocal health care plan. *

He is very clear in his stance against anti-Muslim bigotry. Despite the illogical and vicious opposition by Republicans to the single-payer option that hijacked the Affordable Care Act, Sanders remains committed to a Medicare-for-all health care system. Despite everything that the Republicans have stated, this model has been proven in the rest of the industrialized world to result in significantly better outcomes at significantly lower costs.

That aside, health care is where we must draw the line between profitability and providing care. Caring for the sick is a service that should not be hostage to the ability of health insurance, pharmaceutical and biotech companies to maximize their profits. A single-payer system will result in greater scrutiny of medication, hospital and health technology costs and put doctors back in charge of patients rather than insurance companies.

*1. Sanders' economic plan is the only plan that makes the Middle class and poverty its focus.*

Here in a nutshell, is Bernie Sanders' economic agenda:

Clearly and consistently, Bernie Sanders has proposed a number of items in his economic agenda. Improving America's crumbling infrastructure is foremost on the list. He believes that repairing and rebuilding our roads, railways, ports and water and sewage systems will not only improve their functioning but will provide tremendous job creation opportunities.

Sanders has consistently advocated raising the minimum wage. It is unconscionable that someone working 40 hours a week should still live in poverty. This is something that giant corporations can certainly accommodate while maintaining their obscene profits. Small businesses will be better served by tax breaks and a single-payer healthcare system than by paying their workers the pittance that presently passes for minimum wage.

Sanders has been consistently pro-union and believes in giving Unions greater bargaining power when it comes to wages and benefits. For all the derision poured on unions by Republicans, they have played, and continue to play, a central role in getting fair pay and benefits for workers. Over the last two presidencies the pendulum has swung again in the direction of corporate hegemony and lay-offs and pay cuts have become too frequent, pervasive and easy to execute. A Sanders presidency will be our best chance to restore this delicate balance.

Sanders wants to reform the tax code and base it on the ability to pay. He wants to eliminate tax loopholes that allow corporations to ship American jobs overseas. He understands that it is not ludicrous notions like building walls at our borders that will protect American jobs but stopping our modern robber-barons from taking them overseas so that they can overwork and underpay foreign workers to fill their pockets.

Folks, this is the best chance we have had in a long time to take the decision-making that affects our lives and the lives of our children away from lobbyists and the 1 percent that have for far too long dictated the actions of our government.

If you vote for Bernie Sanders, you will be voting for America.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 10 hours ago.

The various GOP presidential hopefuls, like all politicians since time immemorial, have made a lot of promises this campaign season. Here are some of the things they've vowed to do if they make it to the White House.

*Reverse action on climate change.*

Republicans across the board have sworn to roll back the country's efforts to mitigate climate change, despite polls showing that a majority of Americans are in favor of addressing the problem. First to go would be the Clean Power Plan, which the Environmental Protection Agency announced in August. The plan would cut carbon emissions to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 and enable the U.S. to meet its current commitments to the United Nations.

Every GOP candidate running for president has come out against the Clean Power Plan. Even former New York Gov. George Pataki, who has supported other measures to rein in climate change, told Bloomberg in August that the Clean Power Plan “is a classic top-down, government-imposed solution" that will "result in higher costs of energy [and] an increase in the vulnerability of the electrical supply, and I think it's just completely wrong.”  

Other candidates have taken a harder line against the Clean Power Plan, and indeed against all executive actions taken by President Barack Obama.

“If you live by the pen, you die by the pen,” Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) told The Washington Post in June for an article about what his first 100 days would look like. So there's that.

*Repeal Obamacare.*

After two years of sign-ups following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, more than 16 million people now have health insurance who didn’t have it before. But every GOP candidate except Ohio Gov. John Kasich has promised to repeal Obamacare -- though for the most part, they've been pretty vague about what would take its place.

“[I'd] figure out a way to repeal Obamacare,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said at a roundtable in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, this May, responding to a question about actions he’d take in his first 100 days. “I think repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a 21st-century consumer-directed, patient-driven health care insurance system has to be a high, high priority.”

*Deport, deport, deport.*

Last year, Obama bolstered the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and initiated a new one: Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents. These actions would defer the prosecution of childhood arrivals to the U.S. for two years and allow the parents of any U.S. citizen or resident to live and work in the country without fear of deportation -- meaning that 6.3 million U.S. citizens wouldn’t have to see their families dismantled.

But the Republican presidential candidates have opposed this, for the most part characterizing it as executive overreach, a la Cruz, who called the measure “patently unconstitutional.”

Real estate mogul Donald Trump has been the most aggressive candidate on immigration. He has repeatedly promised that his plan to lead the forceful removal of 11 million immigrants, reminiscent of a 1954 program called “Operation Wetback,” would be done in “a very humane way.” Experts say that’s not possible. *Make America "great" again, and make China a loser.*

On Trump’s campaign website, the candidate promises to take swift action against China for not playing fair: “On day one of the Trump administration the U.S. Treasury Department will designate China as a currency manipulator.”

Democrats like Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.) would rejoice. He and many in Congress agree that China’s intervention in the world’s currency market is stifling U.S. exports and costing the country millions of manufacturing jobs.

China deliberately devalues its currency -- which should be traded at the highest rates, because it’s in greatest demand by all the countries that need to buy China’s exports in the local currency -- by using its massive reserves to buy up U.S. dollars. This lowers the supply of the dollar compared to the Chinese yuan, which makes U.S. exports more expensive, and therefore tougher to sell.

The U.S. trade deficit “has increased by $200 billion to $500 billion per year as a result,” according to a 2012 report by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “The United States has lost 1 million to 5 million jobs due to this foreign currency manipulation.”

Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund declared China’s currency “fairly valued.”

*Remind Congress that it's super important for everyone to get along.*

In response to a question about how his first three months in office would be unique, former neurosurgeon Ben Carson said at a National Press Club event that he would call a joint session of Congress to address hyper-partisanship in the legislature, stressing the importance of Judeo-Christian values.

“We've gotten to the point where we believe that if somebody disagrees with you, then you need to try to destroy them, destroy their family and their livelihood,” Carson said. “Where did that come from? I guarantee you, it did not come from our Judeo-Christian values and roots.”

*Wage yet another war against same-sex marriage.*

This summer, a week after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said he would not accept the ruling. 

"I reject this decision and will fight from 'Day One' of my administration to defend our Constitution and protect religious liberty," Huckabee said of the Supreme Court's ruling in a press release.

On his website, Huckabee promises to push for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman. 

Those efforts would likely be a waste of time, since a constitutional amendment requires a two-third majority in Congress -- or in a state vote -- and same-sex marriage currently enjoys record-high support among Americans.*Roll out the red carpet for Wall Street, and let them wipe their feet on consumers.*

Everyone in the GOP field has promised to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act, which put into place a package of Wall Street regulations following the 2008 financial meltdown. Dodd-Frank also established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to act as an arbiter for the public in the face of unscrupulous business practices.

In July, Carson wrote in a Washington Times op-ed that the CFPB is “the ultimate example of regulatory overreach, a nanny state mechanism asserting its control over everyday Americans that they did not want, did not ask for and do not need.”

For what it's worth, the CFPB has secured over $10 billion in relief for consumers since its creation in 2011. It's currently addressing the student debt crisis by suing for-profit colleges for fraud and taking on the country’s largest student loan company for allegedly cheating borrowers.

*Reduce college student loan debt by discouraging liberal arts degrees.*

Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), who has voted consistently against Dodd-Frank and the CFPB, said in November that within his first 100 days as president, he would deal with the student debt issue by adjusting the academic accreditation system to incentivize low-cost training of professions like welding, rather than philosophy degrees, for example.

*Renege on the Iran deal**.*

GOP candidates Rubio, Cruz, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.) have all promised to immediately undo an international agreement that lifts financial sanctions on Iran in exchange for constraints on uranium enrichment programs meant for the development of atomic weapons.

Expressing dissatisfaction with the deal in September, Fiorina said the first thing she'd do in the Oval Office would be to make two phone calls. The first would be to reassure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of America’s support. The second would be a message to Iran’s supreme leader: “Until you open every nuclear and every military facility to full, open, anytime, anywhere, for-real inspections, we are going to make it as difficult as possible for you to move money around the global financial system."*End mass government surveillance?*

Rand Paul's staunch opposition to the government collecting metadata from U.S. citizens is one reason the Kentucky senator may not win the Republican nomination in a time of heightened concern over national security. To date, he’s been the only person in the field who's argued that privacy should win out.

“The president created this vast dragnet by executive order,” Paul said at the beginning of his campaign. “As president, on day one, I will immediately end this unconstitutional surveillance.”

*Boost cybersecurity, somehow.*

Carson has said he would prioritize tightening cybersecurity, although he's been less specific about it than some critics would like.

“We must immediately harden our electrical grid and have multiple layers of alternative energy,” Carson told The Washington Examiner in September. “That's critical ... We also must beef up our cyber capabilities both offensive and defensive.”

*Keep former lawmakers from going straight to K Street.*

Pataki has taken a strong stance on eliminating the “revolving door” between lawmakers and lobbyists, though he's in the minority as far as actually making this a campaign issue.

In September, Pataki said he would “propose a law on day one" of his presidency: "You serve one day in the House or Senate, there’s a lifetime ban on you ever being a lobbyist in Washington, D.C.”

*Invade Chinese airspace with Air Force One.*

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would solve U.S. challenges with China by flying Air Force One over military installments in the South China Sea to show them “we mean business.”

At the undercard GOP debate in November, Christie said this would be the first thing he would do when it comes to China -- surely a smart way to establish a good rapport with the United States' primary trading partner.

*Send Vladimir Putin a message -- that we're gonna keep doing what we've been doing.*

Fiorina pledged at a town hall meeting in August to address the threat of Russia by "rebuild[ing] the 6th Fleet," a part of the U.S. Navy that conducts operations in Europe and Asia. But as Vox's Ezra Klein points out, the 6th Fleet doesn't actually need rebuilding. In fact, most of what Fiorina has promised to do regarding Russia in her first 100 days, including starting military exercises in the Baltic States and putting more troops in Germany, are things the Obama administration is doing or has already done. 

*Balance the budget, by sheer force of will.*

Never fear! Amid all the flurry, Kasich has promised he'll manage to balance the budget, using... methods.

"I spent my entire lifetime balancing federal budgets, growing jobs, the same in Ohio. And I will go back to Washington with my plan. And I will have done it within 100 days, and it will pass, and we will be strong again,” Kasich said during an October GOP debate. “Thank you."

No, governor, thank you.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 9 hours ago.

Dear Carrie,

My friend's 90-year-old mother was just diagnosed with early stage dementia. Unfortunately, she never provided any written or verbal guidance about her wishes for care, so my friend finds herself in a very tough spot. I want to make sure this never happens to me or to my loved ones. What do we need to do to prepare?

--A Reader

Dear Reader,

Contemplating the possibility of dementia is tough, whether you're talking about yourself or a loved one. We want to think that it only happens to the very elderly, someone in their 90s such as your friend's mother. And so we put it off. But according to the "2014 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures, Alzheimer's & Dementia" report by the Alzheimer's Association, one in nine Americans age 65 or older have some form of dementia. And the annual number of new cases of Alzheimer's and other dementias is projected to double by 2050. It's scary. It's sobering. And to me, it means there's a real need to confront this possibility--and prepare for it--when we're young and clear headed enough to look at financial and healthcare decisions from a practical as well as an emotional perspective.

Your friend's situation is a heartbreaking example and you're very wise to take steps now to prevent this from happening to you and your family. But no matter how forward thinking you are, it won't be easy. You may be willing to face the possibility of incapacity, but others may not be so comfortable with the idea, either for you or for themselves. So you may have to tread gently. Here are some thoughts on how to go about it.

*Think realistically about care options*

Exploring care options for someone with dementia is more of a challenge than with other diseases. That's because, while there is certainly the need for doctor's visits and medications covered by insurance, a lot of the care required by people with Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia involve more personal care--called the activities of daily living (ADLs). Where do you turn for help with eating, bathing, dressing or just making sure you don't injure yourself? These things aren't generally covered by health insurance.

Again, according to the report from the Alzheimer's Association, unpaid caregivers such as family members provide billions of hours of care. Professional care is available, such as assisted living, in-home care or adult daycare centers, but the costs can be a challenge. For instance, basic assisted living services average about $42,000 per year according to alz.org (as of 2015). And that's just the estimated average. I recently spoke with someone who was paying $12,000 a month to have both parents in assisted living with full care.

Your own family and financial circumstances may well determine what care might be available to you or to a loved one. But whether you'll have to rely on professional assistance or you have a supportive family network that can provide help, be aware that you'll be dealing with potentially significant emotional as well as financial costs.

*Plan for the financial side*

There's a whole list of costs you may have to deal with from ongoing medical care to home safety related expenses to full residential care.

Most insurance policies don't cover nursing home care or help with ADLs. And while Medicare covers some skilled home health care such as skilled nursing care, long-term care isn't covered. Medicaid is a possible solution, but it's only available when an individual has depleted most of their personal assets.

Unless your family has significant assets to self-insure, you may want to look into long-term care insurance. Here, too, you have to be cautious. Not every LTC policy covers Alzheimer's. And you want to make certain that a policy covers things like assisted living, skilled nursing home care and licensed home care.

There are, of course, other financial options. People with a lot of equity in their homes may see that as a potential source of funds. Others may max out a health savings account (HSA) every year and keep it in reserve for this type of care. Your retirement funds can also be a significant resource.

*Talk to your family about the emotional side*

Once you've thought through potential practical solutions, talk to your family. Be upfront about why you're bringing up the subject. Your friend's story could be a good starting point.

If you're talking to your parents, they may welcome the chance to discuss their own fears and desires. Your children may be more resistant, but make it clear that you're not being morbid, just realistic. And no matter what response you get, be willing to listen to everyone's concerns.

*Put your paperwork in place*

Basic paperwork includes an advance healthcare directive, power of attorney for healthcare, a will and/or trust, and a durable power of attorney for finances. You'll find more specific information on legal documents for someone who's incapacitated at alz.org.

There's no one solution for every family. But thinking about it and planning ahead is something everyone should do. It also would be a good idea to consult with your financial advisor about the best way to prepare financially given your personal circumstances. I applaud you for being willing to tackle this very difficult subject.

*For more updates, follow Carrie on LinkedIn and Twitter.*

Looking for answers to your retirement questions? Check out Carrie's new book, "The Charles Schwab Guide to Finances After Fifty: Answers to Your Most Important Money Questions."

This article originally appeared on Schwab.com. You can e-mail Carrie at askcarrie@schwab.com, or click here for additional Ask Carrie columns. This column is no substitute for an individualized recommendation, tax, legal or personalized investment advice. Where specific advice is necessary or appropriate, consult with a qualified tax advisor, CPA, financial planner or investment manager. Diversification cannot ensure a profit or eliminate the risk of investment losses.

COPYRIGHT 2015 CHARLES SCHWAB & CO., INC. (MEMBER SIPC.) (1215-7257)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 8 hours ago.

There was a lot traffic in 2015 at the intersection of business and politics. A real estate developer emerged as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, and the Affordable Care Act was saved by the U.S. Supreme Court. I’ll look at Donald Trump in a separate post looking at what 2016 has in store, and I gave Obamacare its own post, since a lot happened concerning health insurance this year beyond the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Here are 10 other government-related stories that… Reported by bizjournals 8 hours ago.

Founder, Dr. Rick Workman speaks on recognition from Press Ganey

Effingham, IL (PRWEB) December 21, 2015

Heartland Dental, LLC, the largest dental support organization in the United States, was recently recognized as a 2015 Leader in Transparency by Press Ganey Associates, Inc., a leading provider of healthcare performance improvement solutions. This award honors organizations committed to leveraging transparency initiatives to advance the overall care experience for their patients.

“For several years, Press Ganey has helped Heartland Dental supported offices identify areas of advancement, gain an understanding of what patients want and benchmark themselves against their peers,” said Rick Workman, DMD, founder and active executive chairman at Heartland Dental. “Now, we’re excited to help supported offices use this valuable patient feedback as a way to differentiate themselves in the marketplace to showcase their commitment to high-quality care – directly from existing patients to prospective patients.”

With rising health insurance costs in the U.S., more people are turning to online searches to ensure they’re making informed, sound decisions regarding their healthcare. When searching for health services online, reviews and ratings often show up at the top of the results. Online transparency has become a standard for business-to-consumer as well as consumer-to-business interaction.

Heartland Dental embraces this standard by posting patient reviews and ratings on the website of supported offices. These reviews and ratings are compiled from every patient experience survey response administered by Press Ganey. Heartland Dental works with Press Ganey to review both positive and negative results to better understand the patient’s needs and identify improvement opportunities for each office. Once results are compiled, the Heartland Dental marketing team converts the participating office’s mean score into a star rating and publishes the rating along with comments taken from the survey. Posting all responses, positive, negative and neutral provides prospective patients an accurate representation of the experience at each office.

About Heartland Dental

Heartland Dental, LLC is the largest dental support organization in the United States with more than 700 supported dental offices located in 31 states. Based in Effingham, Illinois and founded by Rick Workman, DMD, Heartland Dental offers supported dentists and team members continuing professional education and leadership training, along with a variety of non-clinical administrative services including staffing, human relations, procurement, administration, financial, marketing, and information technology. For more information, visit http://www.Heartland.com. Follow Heartland Dental on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Reported by PRWeb 7 hours ago.

HONOLULU, Dec 21 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will make an appearance in Jerry Seinfeld's "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" on Dec. 30.

In a promotional video for the web series' seventh season, Seinfeld pulls up to the South Lawn of the White House in a Corvette 1963 Corvette Stingray Split Window Coupe.

The series on Crackle, Sony's free streaming network, hosts A-list comedians as they ride to get coffee with Seinfeld, usually in high-end antique cars.For the episode with Obama, which taped Dec. 7, the Corvette did not leave the South Lawn, the White House said.

Obama and Seinfeld took turns driving and then sat down for coffee in a staff dining room to discuss "many of the little things that make life in the White House simultaneously remarkable and routine," the White House said.

Obama has given several non-traditional interviews, often with comedians.

In 2014, he starred on Zach Galifinakis's web series, "Between Two Ferns," where he urged young people to sign up for health insurance on the online market places created by the Affordable Care Act, his signature domestic policy.

Obama also filmed an episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls during a visit to Alaska earlier this year.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards; editing by Grant McCool)

 

*Also on HuffPost:*

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 6 hours ago.

Consumers seeking health insurance through the Washington Health Benefit Exchange have until Wednesday to sign up for coverage that begins Jan. 1. Open enrollment for 2016 ends Jan. 31. Reported by Seattle Times 5 hours ago.

Tim Gruber

This story was co-published with the Washington Post.

Nursing home workers across the country are posting embarrassing and dehumanizing photos of elderly residents on social media networks such as Snapchat, violating their privacy, dignity and, sometimes, the law.

ProPublica has identified 35 instances since 2012 in which workers at nursing homes and assisted-living centers have surreptitiously shared photos or videos of residents, some of whom were partially or completely naked. At least 16 cases involved Snapchat, a social media service in which photos appear for a few seconds and then disappear with no lasting record.

Some have led to criminal charges, including a case filed earlier this month in California against a nursing assistant. Most have not, even though posting patients’ photos without their permission may violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal patient privacy law that carries civil and criminal penalties.

The incidents illustrate the emerging threat that social media poses to patient privacy and, at the same time, its powerful potential for capturing transgressions that previously might have gone unrecorded. Abusive treatment is not new at nursing homes. Workers have been accused of sexually assaulting residents, sedating them with antipsychotic drugs and failing to change urine-soaked bed sheets. But the posting of explicit photos is a new type of mistreatment — one that sometimes leaves its own digital trail.

In February 2014, a nursing assistant at Prestige Post-Acute and Rehab Center in Centralia, Wash., sent a co-worker a Snapchat video of a resident sitting on a bedside portable toilet with her pants below her knees while laughing and singing.

The following month, one nursing home assistant at Rosewood Care Center in St. Charles, Ill., recorded another using a nylon strap to lightly slap the face of a 97-year-old woman with dementia. On the video, the woman could be heard crying out, “Don’t! Don’t!” as she was being struck. The employees laughed.

And this February at Autumn Care Center in Newark, Ohio, a nursing assistant recorded a video of residents lying in bed as they were coached to say, “I’m in love with the coco,” the lyrics of a gangster rap song (“coco” is slang for cocaine). Across a female resident’s chest was a banner that read, “Got these hoes trained.” It was shared on Snapchat.

The woman’s son told government inspectors that his mother, who had worked as a church secretary for 30 years, would have been mortified by the video. Days after the incident, the home changed hands and is now known as Price Road Health and Rehabilitation Center. Greystone Healthcare Management, its new owner, said it “provides extensive, on-going training, support and oversight to insure that we provide patient centered care.” (The prior owner, Steve Hitchens, said the incident happened days before the home was sold and he does not recall details.)

In a statement, PrestigeCare said it fired the employee, alerted authorities and instituted new, stricter cellphone and social media policies. “We take these situations very seriously and are thankful that our own internal procedures alerted us so promptly to the issue.”

Rosewood Care Center did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Tim Gruber

“Something hasn’t happened now unless there’s a selfie or Facebook posting about it,” said Marian Ryan, the district attorney of Middlesex County, Mass., whose office is pursuing elder abuse charges against two women who posted numerous videos of nursing home residents on Snapchat. “The use of social media is just pervasive across every aspect of society.”

ProPublica identified incidents by searching government inspection reports, court cases and media reports. Ryan said she suspects such incidents are underreported, in part because many of the victims have dementia and do not realize what has happened.

Nursing homes rarely found problematic social media postings themselves – most came to light based on tips from other staffers or members of the community, records show. Indeed, some of the Snapchat posts were not shared publicly but only with a select group of “friends,” one of whom alerted home officials or authorities.

The federal agency charged with enforcing the privacy law, the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services, has not penalized any nursing homes for violations involving social media or issued any recommendations to health providers on the topic.

Deven McGraw, the office’s deputy director for health information privacy, expressed outrage when told about the incidents. “If we don’t have pending investigations on any of these cases … they would be candidates for further inquiry from our end,” she said, adding that the office also should issue guidance on social media and the privacy law.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulates nursing homes, has cited individual facilities for deficiencies related to privacy and is seeking to more explicitly address the issue as it writes new definitions of “abuse,” “neglect,” “exploitation” and “sexual abuse” in updated rules governing the homes.

“Nursing home residents must be free from abuse or exploitation,” CMS spokeswoman Lauren Shaham said in an email.

While it is impossible to know whether these incidents are increasing, ProPublica’s analysis identified 22 cases in the past two years, but only 13 in the two years before that. That could partly reflect the explosive growth of social media, and Snapchat in particular.

The incidents represent a tiny fraction of the content created by Snapchat’s more than 100 million daily active users, who view more than 6 billion videos each day. Snapchat has a Safety Advisory Board to guide its policies and products.

“This type of behavior is cruel and violates the Terms of Service promise Snapchatters make to respect other people’s rights,” the company said in a statement. “We believe that elderly people should be celebrated and cared for with respect and compassion. We have a dedicated Trust & Safety team that reviews abuse reports and takes action when they become aware of a violation, and we comply with valid legal requests from law enforcement.”

Greg Crist, a spokesman for the American Health Care Association, the nursing home industry trade group, said in an email that unauthorized photos and videos of residents are “disturbing.”

Some homes, he noted, particularly those in rural areas, do not use social media themselves so they may not realize that “many of their employees do, so they need to be vigilant and aware.” The group hosts training sessions on social media and expects to hold more in the coming year.

Joe Small’s great-grandmother, Annie Mae Martin, was videotaped without her permission at St. Ann’s Home, a Rochester, N.Y., nursing home.

A former nurse’s aide posted a video on Facebook in October 2012 showing a hand briefly tugging at the back of the woman’s hair and recording unseen staffers taunting her with insults. “The boss lady said that if you don’t wash the dishes, she will slap the black off you … and she called you a bitch,” one says. The aide, Ericha Brown, who worked at the home for less than a month in 2011, tagged other employees and added the caption: “I miss these mornings.”

Brown was arrested and charged with three counts of willful violation of health laws; she pleaded guilty to one count. In a handwritten confession, she wrote, “I deeply regret my actions and will never do anything like this again.” She did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Martin remained a resident of the home and died earlier this year at age 94.

“It was very distressing,” said Small, who held Martin’s power of attorney. “We are all going to get old one day and need assistance to help us in our day-to-day activities, and this is the way you have to be treated when you go into these establishments?”

Susan Murty, administrator of St. Ann’s Community, said the home began an investigation immediately after an employee discovered the posting and officials worked with authorities to determine its scope. “Most of the people who work in nursing homes are really wonderful people, and it’s a shame that this is what people talk about. That’s always our frustration.”

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office prosecuted the case and also secured a guilty plea earlier this year in another case involving an aide at a nursing home in Erie County.

“We will not tolerate medical professionals who abuse and exploit the trust of nursing residents by broadcasting private and sensitive medical issues on social media,” Schneiderman said through a spokesman.

Taylor Waller, a former nursing assistant in Indiana, pleaded guilty in September to one count of voyeurism for sharing a photo of a resident’s back side and buttocks on Snapchat. She served three days in jail, she said, and is currently on probation.

In an interview, Waller acknowledged that she made a mistake but said she did not take the picture for malicious reasons and the resident didn’t even know it happened. “They just blew everything out of proportion,” she said. "It was just a picture of her butt. How many people take a picture of people’s butts?… I worked in health care for five years. Everybody takes pictures of the residents all the time. I’m not the only one.”

Waller also said that people searching for nursing homes for relatives have bigger issues to worry about than privacy violations involving social media.

“There is so much abuse that goes on,” she said. “Nursing homes are so short staffed. Every facility I worked in, every time I went in, residents would be soaked from head to toe in pee and they sat in it for hours. They were treated like animals. I understand taking pictures is bad but there are so many worse things that need to be taken care of, too.”

At Gridley Healthcare and Wellness Centre in California, a nursing assistant reported a co-worker in April 2014 for using Snapchat to send pictures of residents who were “inappropriately exposed” or who appeared to be deceased. The assistant told state health inspectors that “she was absolutely disgusted by the lack of respect this showed for human life and for a person who had passed… . It was amazing to her that a person could be so uncaring for a laugh.”

Five workers ultimately pleaded guilty to state charges of elder abuse or failure to report elder abuse. The home’s current administrator, Diana Haines, said she could not comment because she wasn’t the administrator at the time and that the home changed operators this year. A representative of the home’s operator at the time of the incident said in a statement to the Gridley Herald newspaper that the home was cooperating with authorities, took corrective action, and that its highest priority was to “ensure the best quality of care and treatment for our patients.”

Many nursing homes ban the use of cellphones on the job but have had trouble enforcing those rules.

Tim Gruber

This fall, an employee at LifeHOUSE Vista Healthcare Center near San Diego took video of a partially nude woman getting into the shower and shared it on Snapchat. A second employee is seen standing behind the resident laughing. Both were suspended, then fired. The California Attorney General’s Office on Dec. 9 charged one of the assistantswith misdemeanor counts of elder abuse and invasion of privacy.

“Let’s face it, if this were my mother, I would just be furious with this. I’d be inconsolable,” said Tom Allen, a lawyer for the home. “There’s no reason for anybody at LifeHOUSE to do or condone this type of thing.”

Allen said social media poses many challenges for homes. “We’re feeling our way through this. There’s no ground rules here.”

Some homes have allowed employees to keep working after warning them about using cellphones on the job.

At Newaygo County Medical Care Facility in Michigan, a nursing assistant was written up twice for using her cellphone at work, including once for taking pictures, before she wasaccused of taking a picture of Mindy Mench’s grandmother-in-law, Janet Hartranft, on the toilet there in September 2013. Hartranft died in March 2014 at age 79.

The nursing assistant pleaded no contest to a charge of using a computer to commit a crime.

At the aide’s sentencing hearing, Mench said she read a letter to the court asking the caregiver to explain her actions. “I just said, ‘Why? Why did you take this picture?’ ” Mench recalled. “She never addressed anything that I said in my letter. She never even looked at me.”

Mench, who had power of attorney for Hartranft, said she has two sisters who work in nursing homes and they couldn’t explain it either.

“These people, our older generation, have served, whether they were a vet or not, they have served in our communities and in our society,” Mench said. “Look what you’re doing to them, look how you’re treating them. It’s taking advantage of the weak and it’s sick.”

In an interview, the woman who was convicted, Reida Osterman, denied taking or posting the video and said she believes another employee picked up her phone and did it. She said she pleaded no contest because “I was going through a very stressful time in my life, probably the worst time in my life ever.”

“If I could answer to the family, I would, but I can’t tell them why because I did not post no pictures of anybody,” she said. “I know for a fact I would never ever ever do anything to hurt anyone.”

Michigan lawyer Tatiana Melnik has written and spoken about the need for health care organizations to pay attention to their employees’ use of social media. Facilities need to enforce their rules, not just have them, she said.

“If there are no sanctions for misbehavior because no one is actually watching what’s happening,” she said, “staff members have no reason to actually respect the rule.”

Like this story? Sign up for our daily newsletter to get more of our best work.

NOW WATCH: Mark Cuban explains why downloading Snapchat is a huge mistake Reported by Business Insider 3 hours ago.

Back in June, this website first "solved" the "mystery" behind America's missing inflation, when we showed that a record number of US renters are unable to afford housing, suggesting that record amounts of "disposable income" were being diverted for use as a shelter "tax" instead of being spent on true discretionary goods and services, leading (together with the Obamacare tax) to the broad and distressing decline in not only traditional retail sales and moribund consumer spending, and the "secular" economic slowdown observed over the past several years.

We followed this in September with another expose titled  "The Mystery Of The "Missing Inflation" Solved, And Why The US Housing Crisis Is About To Get Much Worse" explaining why the Fed is about to make a historic mistake and unleash an even more acute housing crisis if it hikes into an economy where the only core inflationary "impulse" if that from rent inflation, at a time when median real household incomes have tumbled to levels last seen in 1989.

As we explained in July, one major problem is that the Fed's measures of inflation are wrong, if not with malicious intent, then purely due to definitional purposes. But a bigger problem for the the Fed's measures of how the overall economy is doing (and/or overheating) is that the Fed telling the vast majority of Americans that inflation is negligible, leads to riotous laughter.

The reason for this is a simple, if dramatic, one: *the U.S. transformation from a homeownership society, to one of renters*.

 

In fact, the only age group that has seen an increase in homeownership in the "New Normal" are those aged 65 and over!

Showcasing the plight of renters was the "State of the Nation's Housing" report from the Center for Housing Studies, according to which for American renters 2013 marked another year with a record-high number of cost burdened households - those paying more than 30 percent of income for housing. In the United States, 20.7 million renter households (49.0 percent) were cost burdened in 2013.

As more Americans are forced into a limited number of rental units, prices have exploded at a far greater pace than what is officially reported in the shelter or core CPI metric, for all - but especially for those in the lower income buckets: as seen in the lower right chart, *the rental "cost burden" of households making under $30,000 is the higest ever, at well over 70%*. 

It gets worse: a whopping 11.2 million, or more than a quarter of all renter households, had "severe cost burdens, paying more than half of income for housing." The median US renter household earned $32,700 in 2013 and spent $900 per month on housing costs. Renter housing costs are gross rents, which include contract rents and utilities.

But the punchline is that, as noted above, all this was taking place in the years following 2000, *when gains in typical monthly rental costs exceeded the overall inflation rate, while median income among renters fell further and further behind. *As a result, the share of renter households facing severe cost burdens grew dramatically, reaching a new record high of 28 percent in 2011, and if adding in those with moderate burdens, *just under half of all renters were cost burdened in 2013. *These rates are substantially higher than a decade ago and roughly twice what they were in 1960.

 

As we explained three months ago, the implications for not just the US economy, but for US demographics and society as a result of this "stagflationary" rental environment are profound. They are also the reason why the biggest US generation by number of participants - the Millennials, at 82 million strong - and the one generation that was supposed to be the dynamo that pushes the US out of its post-crisis funk is, simply said, crushed.



Millennials are also expected to continue experiencing rent burdens as they age. Having entered the labor market during and following the Great Recession, those in the millennial generation have received lower wages and experienced higher rates of unemployment and underemployment than their older counterparts at this point in their lives. As a result, *millennials have less wealth accumulated, have delayed forming new households, and are less likely to become owners at the age that older generations had previously*. In combination, we are likely to see additional household formation by millennials over the next decade and expect a relatively higher share to remain renters during that period.



In fact, far from confirming the "bullish thesis" that Millennials will eventually move out of their parents basement and buy (or rent) their own housing while starting new households, just the opposite was found to be taking place:



*In 2015, 15.1 percent of  25 to 34 year olds were living with their parents, a fourth straight annual increase, according to an analysis of new Census Bureau data by the Population Reference Bureau in Washington*. The proportion is the highest since at least 1960, according to demographer Mark Mather, associate vice president with PRB. "*The phenomenon of young adults, facing their own financial challenges, forced to squeeze in the homes of their parents. And new data show the trend is getting worse, not better."*



As Bloomberg redundantly added, "It takes young people longer these days to find jobs with decent wages. Young adults need to spend more time getting the necessary education and skills before they can become self-sufficient. The recession likely exacerbated this trend."

Perhaps the best visual summary of the "mystery of the missing inflation" was the following interactive map showing that in virtually all major seaboard metro areas, including the major cities in California, New York, and Florida, *the number of households with a cost burden is 50% or higher. *

 

 

This is how we concluded in September:



All of this could have been avoided if only the Fed has observed the "missing" and soaring rental inflation that was right in front of its nose all the time, and which it did everything in its power to ignore just so the 1% can keep their ZIRP and QE, and become even wealthier on the back of the middle class and the 80 million of 25-34 year old Americans who have found out the hard way that not only is the American Dream of owning a home officially dead, it has been replaced with the American nightmare of completely unffordable renting.



So why do we bring up this very critical topic today? One reason: as Deutsche Bank's Dominic Konstam wrote out over the weekend, not only is it still "all about the rental inflation", but it is this "mystery" of missing inflation, which we exposed not once but twice over the past 6 months, that has so stumped and confused the Fed, it is now piling policy mistake upon policy mistake.

As a reminder, in the last CPI print before the Fed's rate hike announcement, even as headline inflation barely rose from the year ago period pushed lower by the ongoing collapse in energy prices, it was core inflation that printed at 2.0% and give the Fed the green light it had been so eagerly anticipating, to hike.

Only there is one problem.

Here is what Konstam said about the prospects for US benign inflation, why the German bank "remains strongly opposed to a view that inflation will shock to the upside", and how rental inflation is at the core of everything.



From a theoretical perspective we have a bigger problem with a bearish inflation outlook in that *core inflation ex housing remains extremely weak on both a PCE and CPI basis. OER/rental inflation is therefore the main “culprit” for the Fed in achieving its inflation “target”. *



Define irony: the one thing that is crushing millions of Americans and more than a quarter of all US renting households - those who can barely afford to rent even as their real median incomes continue to slide - *is what the Fed interpreted as a green light to hike*!

Konstam continues:



*The trouble is that rents are running high not because house prices are booming and/or construction is sawing but because structurally new entrants to the housing market are renters not owners. *This is reflected in the *very low first time homebuyer rate, less than 30 percent.*



Now, prepare to be amazed: remember how we said above core inflation rose 2.0% in November from a year ago. Well, if you strip out housing, core inflation was just barely above 1%. Worse, on a Core PCE basis, if one excludes housing inflation, *one gets the lowest inflationary print since the financial crisis!*

And here is absolute punchline which if one ignores everything we have said above, is a must read:



*Rent is however a “tax”. In this instance it is not something that represents real growth or discretionary consumption*. If OER was soaring on the back of house prices and housing construction that allowed for wealth extraction, i.e. prior to the crisis, the outlook would be very different. *As we have highlighted before, the stagflation concept in housing is a negative for structural demand and therefore pricing power*.



If only every economist would read these 68 short words, there would be no confusion why there is no economic recovery, why retail sales are foundering, why wage growth is non-existent, and why corporate CEOs are the most bearish they have been since 2012. In short: everyone would know why not only the Fed failed with its ZIRP policies, but why it is compounding this failure with another failure by hiking rates.

So what does all of this mean? Well, the US economy is now one where "taxes" define growth.

· On the one hand, *there is the Supreme Court mandated "tax" that is Obamacare*, which quarter after quarter is the biggest source of GDP growth as it forces US consumers to spend billions on (soaring) health insurance, in the process giving the impression of healthy Personal Consumption Expenditures and a growing US economy.  Don't feel like paying this tax? Sorry - it's the law.
· On the other hand, *there is the "tax" that is rent*: a tax which has soared in recent years, vastly outpacing median incomes (which have been declining) as landlords can hike asking rents to whatever levels they choose: after all owning a new home has become virtually impossible for what little is left of the US middle class. Don't feel like paying this tax? Fine, just prepare to live under a bridge or in a tent.

Combined, these two *taxes *are draining hundreds of billions in disposable income from American households, and leading to the secular stagnation that so many supposedly intelligent economists are observing every day unfold before their very eyes, and yet which so very few can explain even though the reasoning is so simple a 10 year old without a formal economic education can understand that when one pays the bulk of one's disposable income on the two core essentials, housing and health - whose prices keep soaring with every passing day - there is virtually no money left for everything else.

No wonder then that the Fed will not grasp any of this before it is far too late.

And the biggest irony: for the Fed these two largest economic "taxes" which force "spending" and which push up "inflation" are precisely the catalysts that served as the basis for the Fed's decision to hike rates in a desperate attempt to give the impression that the US economy is recovering, when in reality the Fed has been looking at the economy's fundamental deterioration in the face, and reached the absolutely wrong conclusion, convincing itself it now has the "green light" to proceed with a rate hike! Reported by Zero Hedge 2 hours ago.

BOUNCES in Apple and Microsoft yesterday as well as a rally in hospital stocks after more Americans signed up for subsidised health insurance helped US stocks to end stronger.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.72 per cent to end at 17,251.48 points and the S&P 500 gained 0.78 per cent to 2,021.16.

The Nasdaq Composite added 0.93 per cent to finish at 4,968.92, helped by a 1.29 per cent gain in Microsoft.

Shares of Apple, under pressure in December over concerns that iPhone sales could miss estimates, rose 1.23 per cent and boosted major indexes.

About six million people have signed up for subsidised health insurance, often called Obamacare, including 2.4m new customers, the US government said on Friday.

Tenet Healthcare jumped 11.6 per cent, its best day since June. Universal Health Services rose 3.64 per cent.

Notwithstanding yesterday’s broad gains, many on Wall Street have acknowledged that 2015 looks to be a modest loss for stock investors, said Jennifer Ellison, a principal of San Francisco-based Bingham, Osborn & Scarborough.

“It’s going to be tough to get much of a rally now because it’s so quiet and volume is already down,” Ellison said. “Nobody’s interested in anything except making some modest tweaks to their portfolios for year-end spit and polish.”

The effects of the first Federal Reserve interest rate hike in almost a decade last week continued to resonate with investors. “It reaffirms our view that the economy is doing really well,” said Philip Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors in New York. Reported by City A.M. 15 minutes ago.

iPatientCare celebrated the achievements of being the First ConCert by HIMSS™ Certified Ambulatory EHR and record expansion of its user base during 2015

Woodbridge, NJ (PRWEB) December 22, 2015

iPatientCare, Inc., a pioneer in mHealth and cloud based ambulatory EHR, integrated Practice Management and Patient Engagement solutions, celebrated its achievements in product capabilities/certifications and record expansion of its user base in the year 2015.

The key achievements was iPatientCare being the first recipient of the ConCert by HIMSS™ EHR certification from ICSA Labs based on Interoperability Work Group (IWG) specifications. This certification was granted after rigorous and thorough testing to the technical specifications EHR Edge and Direct Edge System test groups.

iPatientCare also became the first EHR vendor, selected from a rigorous evaluation process in accordance with the GNYHA Ventures Ambulatory Electronic Record Request for Proposal (RFP). Through this agreement, GNYHA Services, Innovatix, and Essensa healthcare members have access to an ambulatory EHR and related services, including a list of free interfaces and custom reports.

Another important achievement was iPatientCare EHR v2014 (2.0) software accomplishing certification for the Surescripts Implementation Guide v 10.6 2013-05-01, EPCS Services, and Connectivity to Surescripts through HTTPS with Basic Authentication. With this added feature, iPatientCare users now have access to complete end-to-end ePrescribing capabilities in awards-winning, easy-to-use, Cloud-based EHR.

iPatientCare is proud to successfully maintain its selection as a Nationwide CMS Qualified Registry to Report HealthCare Quality Measures for years 2014 and 2015.

Additionally, iPatientCare is also honored to magnificently uphold its fame in the list of top 20 most popular Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Software by Capterra since year 2013; currently ranked at 9th place.

iPatientCare EHR has been selected as one of the 20 Most Promising EMR-EHR Solution Providers in 2015 by Healthcare Tech Outlook.

Finally, iPatientCare successfully concluded National User Conference (NUCON) 2015 with various informative sessions including special session by Ashley Spence, Health Insurance Specialist in the Division of Electronic and Clinician Quality, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), on 2015 PQRS Reporting Overview.

Udayan Mandavia, CEO/President, iPatientCare, Inc. enthusiastically commented, “This year started with lot of challenges, such as, significant ramping up of operations to handle exceptional growth in our Revenue Cycle Management services, rolling-out of ICD-10 version to thousands of customers, and getting our products certified for higher standards of interoperability and ePrescribing. I am glad to see year 2015 ending with iPatientCare being the first and ONLY ConCert by HIMSS EHR till today and additionally seeing iPatientCare user base expanding with largest ever success in last few recent years.”

About iPatientCare

iPatientCare, Inc. is a privately held medical informatics company based in Woodbridge, New Jersey. The company is known for its pioneering contribution to mHealth, as well as its Cloud-based unified product suite that includes an Electronic Health/Medical Record and integrated Practice Management/Billing System, Patient Portal/PHR, Health Information Exchange (HIE), and mobile point-of-care solutions that serve the ambulatory, acute/sub-acute, emergency and home health market segments.

iPatientCare EHR 2014 (2.0) has received 2014 Edition Ambulatory Complete EHR certification by ICSA Labs, an Office of the National Coordinator-Authorized Certification Body (ONC-ACB), in accordance with the applicable eligible professional certification criteria adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Full certification details can be found at ONC Certified Health IT Product List.

The ONC 2014 Edition criteria support both Stage 1 and 2 Meaningful Use measures required to qualify eligible providers and hospitals for funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Full certification details can be found at ONC Certified Health IT Product List.

iPatientCare’s ONC 2014 Edition Meaningful Use Stage 2 Certified Complete EHR is also Designated as a Test EHR by CMS.

The company has won numerous awards for its EHR technology and is recognized as an innovator in the field, being a pioneer to offer an EHR technology on a handheld device, an innovative First Responder technology to the US Army for its Theatre Medical Information System, the first to offer a Cloudbased EHR product. iPatientCare is recognized as one of the best EHR and Integrated PM System for small and medium sized physicians’ offices; has been awarded the highest number of industry Awards; and has been recognized as a preferred/MU partner by numerous Regional Extension Centers (REC), hospitals/health systems, and academies.

Visit http://www.iPatientCare.com for more information. Reported by PRWeb 19 hours ago.

Dr Harry Persaud made more than $7m from health insurance fraud while abusing patients’ ‘sacred trust’, says FBI

A cardiologist who ordered patients to undergo unnecessary open heart surgery and performed risky tests and procedures in order to reap fraudulent payments from Medicare and private insurers has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.Dr Harry Persaud, 56, from Westlake, Ohio, may have put lives at risk and threatened people’s health while making more than $7m from manipulating patients’ “sacred trust”, federal investigators found.

Continue reading... Reported by guardian.co.uk 15 hours ago.

The city of Las Cruces’ Economic Development Office recently launched a free online tool designed to help young businesses grow by making smarter decisions through data analysis, according to a report in the Las Cruces Sun-News. SizeUp for Local Business Intelligence can be found on the City of Las Cruces’ website at las-cruces.org/sizeup. It creates a one-stop place for businesses to obtain data on revenues, health insurance costs, supplier locations and more, said Cruz Ramos, the city's interim… Reported by bizjournals 12 hours ago.

Third-quarter economic growth continued at a solid pace as domestic demand grew robustly. Slowing foreign growth continues to weigh on output in the United States, underscoring the importance of policies that promote continued strong and consistent domestic demand. Last week’s omnibus budget and tax agreement will help encourage these positive domestic trends. But there is more work to do, and the President remains committed to policies that will boost our long-run growth and wages: including opening our exports to new markets through high-standards free trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and raising the minimum wage.

*FIVE KEY POINTS IN TODAY'S REPORT FROM THE BUREAU OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS (BEA)*

*1. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose 2.0 percent at an annual rate in the third quarter, according to BEA’s third estimate. *GDP grew at a slower pace than the 3.9 percent rate in the second quarter. Third-quarter GDP growth was boosted by consumer spending (which rose 3.0 percent), business fixed investment (which rose 2.6 percent) and residential investment (which rose 8.2 percent). However, inventory investment—one of the most volatile components of economic output—subtracted 0.7 percentage point from overall growth. Net exports continued to weigh on output, subtracting 0.3 percentage point amid slowing global demand. Export growth remains well below the pace observed earlier in the recovery. Overall, real GDP rose 2.1 percent over the past four quarters.

Real Gross Domestic Output (GDO)—the average of product-side and income-side measures of output—rose 2.3 percent in the third quarter, a faster pace than GDP alone. CEA research suggests that GDO is potentially more accurate than GDP (though not typically stronger or weaker) over the long term. GDO is estimated to have grown 2.1 percent over the past four quarters, the same pace as GDP.

*2. Third-quarter real GDP growth was revised down 0.1 percentage point at an annual rate. *The downward revision was entirely accounted for by a somewhat larger decline in inventory investment than previously estimated. The change in inventory investment during the third quarter is now estimated to have subtracted 0.7 percentage point from annualized GDP growth. Inventory investment is an especially volatile component of economic output, and growth in Private Domestic Final Purchases (PDFP, see point 5)—which captures the most persistent and stable components of GDP—was revised up 0.1 percentage point. Revisions to other components were small and mostly offsetting.

*3. After decreasing sharply during the financial crisis, residential investment has risen throughout this recovery—but upside potential for growth remains. *Residential investment rose from a trough of 2.4 percent of GDP in the third quarter of 2010 to 3.4 percent in the third quarter of 2015. But in the years before the onset of the housing bubble, residential investment was a considerably larger share of the economy—around 5 percent in 2000. Over the past four quarters, residential investment has grown 9.4 percent—the strongest four-quarter growth rate since the bounce-back from the financial crisis in 2012 and 2013.

One important structural challenge facing the supply of housing is the rise in excessive or unnecessary land use regulations. While land use regulations sometimes serve reasonable and legitimate purposes, they can also give extra-normal returns to entrenched interests at the expense of others. I recently discussed these trends—and their links to both aggregate growth and rising inequality—at the Urban Institute.

*4. Prices of health care services have risen just 0.7 percent over the past four quarters, extending the recent period of exceptionally slow health care price inflation, while expanding coverage has driven faster growth in aggregate utilization of health care services*. Prior to 2015, an increase in health care services prices as low as the 0.7 percent increase over the most recent four quarters had not been seen since 1961. Continuing an unusual pattern in recent years, the increase in the prices of health care services over the last year was only slightly above the overall increase in consumer prices. From 1960:Q1 through 2010:Q1, the inflation rate for health care services exceeded the inflation rate for all consumer goods and services by an average of 2.1 percentage points.

The continued slow increase in health care prices is a major reason that overall per-enrollee health care spending—the metric of health costs most relevant to individuals and families—continues to grow exceptionally slowly in both the public and private sectors. However, aggregate health care spending—reflecting aggregate utilization of health care services—has grown at an elevated rate in recent quarters. The 4.6 percent increase over the most recent four quarters remains well above the 1.9 percent average rate from 2010 to 2013. This recent acceleration appears to largely reflect increased access to care by the millions of people who have gained health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act since the end of 2013. Upward pressure on aggregate utilization growth from expanding coverage is neither a surprise nor a cause for concern and will be temporary, lasting only until coverage stabilizes at its new, higher level in the coming years.

 

 

*5. Real private domestic final purchases (PDFP)—the sum of consumption and fixed investment—rose 3.2 percent at an annual rate in the third quarter and is growing at a faster four-quarter pace than overall GDP. *Real PDFP—which excludes noisier components like net exports, inventories, and government spending—is generally a more reliable indicator of next-quarter GDP growth than current GDP. Overall, PDFP rose 3.2 percent over the past four quarters, compared with 2.1 percent GDP growth over the same period. The especially large gap between PDFP growth and GDP growth is mostly attributable to net exports, reflecting slowing growth abroad. To the extent that systematic patterns emerge in global growth, the information contained in exports may contain an important signal about the headwinds we face from abroad.

 

As the Administration stresses every quarter, GDP figures can be volatile and are subject to substantial revision. Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any single report, and it is informative to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available.

Jason Furman is the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Reported by The White House 12 hours ago.

ATLANTA, Ga., Dec. 22, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- HGS Colibrium Inc. ("Colibrium") a proven leader in integrated software solutions designed specifically for the health insurance industry, officially launched a new, more intuitive website for clients and prospective customers within the... Reported by PR Newswire 12 hours ago.

January has been declared as National Glaucoma Awareness Month by Prevent Blindness and other leading eye health organizations, in an effort to help educate the public on the disease, including risk factors, treatment options and other resources.

CHICAGO (PRWEB) December 22, 2015

Today, nearly 3 million people ages 40 and older have glaucoma, according to the Prevent Blindness “Future of Vision: Forecasting the Prevalence and Costs of Vision Problems” report. As the population ages, the number is projected to grow steadily, increasing nearly 50 percent to 4.3 million by 2032 and by more than 90 percent to 5.5 million by 2050. Glaucoma is an eye disease that currently has no cure. It causes loss of sight by damaging a part of the eye called the optic nerve.

January has been declared as National Glaucoma Awareness Month by Prevent Blindness and other leading eye health organizations, in an effort to help educate the public on the disease, including risk factors, treatment options and other resources. In addition, Prevent Blindness offers the online “Glaucoma Learning Center,” providing patients and their caregivers with additional free information.

The study also found that although more than 60 percent of glaucoma patients today are white, by 2050, most glaucoma patients will be non-white, due primarily to the rapid increase in Hispanic glaucoma patients. By 2050, blacks and Hispanics will each constitute about 20 percent of all glaucoma patients.

Glaucoma is often referred to as the “sneak thief of sight” because most people notice no early symptoms or pain. However, vision loss may be decreased if detected and treated early. That is why it is imperative for adults to get a complete, dilated eye exam from an eye care professional for the best chance of saving their sight.

There are many risk factors for glaucoma including:·     Age – The older you are, the greater you are at risk (especially if you are over 60 years old). African Americans are at a greater risk at a younger age starting at age 40 and older.

·     Race – African Americans age 40 and over are 4-5 times more likely to have glaucoma than others. Hispanics are also at increased risk for glaucoma as they age. Those of Asian and Native American descent are at increased risk for angle closure glaucoma.

·     Diabetes – According to the American Diabetes Association, people with diabetes are 40 percent more likely to suffer from glaucoma than people without diabetes. The longer someone has had diabetes, the more common glaucoma is.

·     Family history – If you have a parent, brother or sister with glaucoma, you are more likely to get glaucoma. If you have glaucoma, inform your family members to get complete eye exams.

·     Medical history – You are at risk if you have a history of high pressure in your eyes, previous eye injury, long term steroid use, or nearsightedness.

“Promising new research on glaucoma and other eye diseases is being conducted every day, but until there is a cure we must take the necessary steps today to save our sight for the future,” said Hugh R. Parry, president and CEO of Prevent Blindness. “As the New Year begins, now is the perfect time to make a resolution to make your eye health a priority and schedule an eye exam today!”

Prevent Blindness offers free fact sheets to help answer common questions about health insurance, Medicare coverage for glaucoma, the Affordable Care Act and eye care at http://www.preventblindness.org/health-insurance-and-your-eyes.

For more information on glaucoma, please call Prevent Blindness at (800) 331-2020 or visit http://www.preventblindness.org/glaucoma-learning-center.

About Prevent Blindness
Founded in 1908, Prevent Blindness is the nation's leading volunteer eye health and safety organization dedicated to fighting blindness and saving sight. Focused on promoting a continuum of vision care, Prevent Blindness touches the lives of millions of people each year through public and professional education, advocacy, certified vision screening and training, community and patient service programs and research. These services are made possible through the generous support of the American public. Together with a network of affiliates, Prevent Blindness is committed to eliminating preventable blindness in America. For more information, or to make a contribution to the sight-saving fund, call 1-800-331-2020. Or, visit us on the Web at preventblindness.org or facebook.com/preventblindness.
.
### Reported by PRWeb 12 hours ago.