Greg Ip wrote a fascinating, extremely well-researched and only marginally biased article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "The Unstable Economics in Obama's Health Law." As a healthcare provider as well as an Affordable Care Act participant, I was sent this article because I have been researching possible solutions to the LOSE-LOSE-LOSE debacle that Obamacare has become.

Below is how Mister Ip's article appeared on the Internet. And let me ask you, "What is wrong with this picture?"

*What editor thought it would be a good idea to include a photo of a white doctor helping a sullen black patient (obviously a beneficiary of Obamacare and probably some other wasteful Democrat subsidies or "entitlement programs") in this article??? *

Just as Donald Trump displays the shadow side of xenophobic white America, The Wall Street Journal's choice of this particular photo with this article unconsciously displays what many Republicans think but seldom say (even David Duke doesn't publicly say it anymore): "We can't trust black people. They are lazy and when given the opportunity they will bilk the system. (They make marvelous singers, dancers, and athletes, but aside from their entertainment value, they are really quite a burden on society.)" *That is what The Wall Street Journal tacitly told its readers when it decided to publish that particular photo with that particular article.*

The Republican argument against Obamacare - with which Mister Ip closes his article - is not wrong. I am sorry to report that Obamacare, in its current incarnation, does function as a tax on the middle class to subsidize healthcare for the lower class. *But when the white male CEOs of all of the major health insurance companies earn $10 million to $15 million dollars per year and their companies are leaving the healthcare exchanges because they are supposedly losing money, is it really the lower class citizens who are bilking the system?*

Ip writes, "So how can the ACA be fixed? Democrats' solution is, essentially, more *subsidies*. Mr. Obama has called for a "public option," a federal health plan to supplement private insurers. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, goes even further: She wants anyone over 55 to be able to opt into Medicare. Both would nudge the U.S. closer to a 'single payer' model like Canada's that liberal activists have long sought. Yet this would require a lot more money and further erode *market forces* in health care." (FYI, just as "family values" is Republican code for anti-abortion and anti-same-sex marriage, "Canada" is Republican code for socialism.)

And here we see where Mister Ip is unequivocally misguided: "further erode market forces in health care." *Market forces concern profits; healthcare concerns saving human lives.*

What is the price of a human life, Mister Ip? If your son or daughter needed a million dollars worth of brain surgery this week to survive, I am sure you could pass the hat around to your fellow white co-workers at the Wall Street Journal and raise your $12,000 deductible or maximum out-of-pocket costs, but could the average minority in America do the same?

Maybe "market forces" - ie. profitability - are incompatible or inapplicable when saving people's lives? Unless, of course, you believe that only rich people's lives are worth saving because their wealth is merely a sign that god truly loves them (c.f. Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism").

Or maybe those Canadians aren't so dumb after all and have figured out how to provide better healthcare opportunities to a wider range of people and not just the anointed elite?

Our healthcare system is broken and articles with photos like the one above subconsciously perpetuate a myth that black people and minorities are the problem and those poor white CEO's earning *$10-$15 million dollars per year* are really trying their darnedest to make sure that the healthcare system is fair.

The situation is a LOSS for healthcare workers, a LOSS for most consumers, and a LOSS (allegedly) for Aetna, Blue Shield and most other insurance companies who are threatening to leave the exchanges because they are no longer earning enough money. *Hey, nobody is intentionally trying to sabotage Obamacare and make the first black president look bad - right?*

Instead of blaming President Obama and the Democrats or thinking that "misplaced risks" and inaccurate enrollment predictions are the problem, maybe some of those CEOs earning *$10-$15 million dollars per year* should stop whining about not making enough profits and start finding ways to help fellow human beings survive and thrive... maybe even human beings who aren't white.

-- 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 18 hours ago.

Financial columnist Megan McArdle recently wrote a column entitled "Healthcare Is a Business, Not a Right." She was responding to a tweet from financial writer Helaine Olen, which she quotes as:

"The health of Americans should not be a profit center. Health care is a right. Full stop."

Health care is a business, says McArdle, but most of us aren't tough-minded enough to admit it. Even if you ask a conservative, she writes, "there is a good chance you'll get a rant about greedy insurers nickel-and-diming hardworking consumers when they're sick."

"Almost everybody feels that there is something fundamentally wrong about making money off someone else's illness," McArdle laments.

It's a straw-man argument. Nobody I know thinks there's something "fundamentally wrong" with doctors or nurses earning a living, or pharmacies turning a profit. Doctors, nurses, and corner pharmacists are iconic figures in American folklore.

McArdle misrepresents her adversary. Olen's tweet begins with the number "25,"which McArdle omits, meaning it's the 25th in a series of tweets. The full series makes it clear that Olen is talking specifically about health insurance. Olen's "full stop," which McArdle mocks, seems intended to signal the end of her twitter essay.

But then, you can't make a straw man without breaking some straws.

"No, don't sputter and tell me that it's obvious, that people need health care," McArdle writes. "People need a lot of things. You'll die without food long before you'll die without healthcare, and yet few people say we need to 'take the profit motive out of farming' ..."

Nobody's sputtering, but the farming analogy is poorly chosen. Food production and health care delivery occur in very different economies. The need for food is consistent, stable, and predictable. The need for healthcare varies dramatically over time. Insurance, whether public and private, spreads risk among larger groups and levels out its potentially devastating cost spikes.

But, while farmers provide food, insurers don't provide health care. They're intermediaries. When they're profit-driven, their economic incentives can become socially destructive. Other for-profit health intermediaries include pharmaceutical companies and third-party investors like Bain Capital, who invest in medical providers and then press them to maximize profits. (See "Sick Money.")

The result is a broken economy that works for profiteers but not for "consumers."

Intermediaries make people angry when they exploit the system without adding value. People are outraged over the EpiPen scandal because they know that its manufacturer jacked up prices excessively, which it can do thanks to government-granted patent privileges. Patients are likely to die as a result.

Similarly, people are outraged over UnitedHealth's profits because they know that UnitedHealth has never cured a sick child or mended a broken arm. But it has denied patients potentially life-saving treatments (yielding only when faced with bad publicity.)

For-profit health financing has failed this nation. Here's a thought experiment:

Imagine an America where food costs twice as much as it does in most other developed countries.

Imagine an America where most Americans under the age of 65 get their food from a "food intermediary" chosen by their employer.

Imagine an America where the "food intermediary" can deny people access to lifesaving nourishment.

Imagine an America where corporate food distributors are granted special privileges by the government, then grossly overcharge customers who must either pay up or die.

Imagine an America where the out-of-pocket cost of food is rising much faster than inflation.

Imagine an America where a minimum of 45,000 people die each year because of inefficiencies in our food economy.

Would people across the political spectrum be saying that food is a right that's being corrupted by profit? Absolutely. And they'd be right.

Full stop.

Rights and commerce aren't diametrically opposed. Want to enjoy the national parks that are every American's birthright? You'll probably take a for-profit airline to get there, and stay in a for-profit hotel once you arrive. Want to exercise your right of free speech? You may take out a full-page ad in a for-profit newspaper. (There is a problem with media consolidation and free speech, but that's a topic for another day.)

Rights and commerce can coexist in a democratic society, as long as commerce doesn't threaten rights. But when they clash, commerce must give way. Since commerce has failed to provide affordable and accessible health care, it must yield to rights.

Here's a cold, quantifiable truth some people would rather not accept: Government does some things better than the private sector. Health care financing happens to be one of them. That's why every other developed nation on earth provides better care to more of its people at lower cost than we do.

McArdle snipes at Great Britain's health system because its guidelines sometimes limit treatment. She doesn't mention that our system does too. But our guidelines are set by highly-paid executives who aren't accountable to the public, and whose economic self-interest lies in restricting care.

McArdle quotes economist Robin Hanson's theory that we finance health care through insurance because we're attracted to "reciprocal altruism." If so, wouldn't we be more likely to have a public health insurance system, like every other developed nation on earth? I doubt anyone thinks health insurance corporations are "altruistic."

The real reason our system is structured this way is more prosaic. Wages were fixed during World War II, but the agency that administered them exempted fringe benefits. So employers began offering health insurance to attract workers, and our hodge-podge system grew up around this historical anomaly.

That system is a financial and moral failure. The employee portion of employer-based health premiums is skyrocketing, rising 83 percent between 2005 and 2015. The average American family with "good" employer coverage now pays $10,473 per year for health care. One-third of all Americans, including 40 percent of women, have an unmet healthcare need because of cost - even if they have insurance.

The US paid more than twice as much per capita on health care as the average for developed countries, paying nearly twice as much as a share of the economy (despite its many uninsured and under-insured) - with poorer outcomes than comparable countries on standard measurements like life expectancy.

By any objective measure, the US insurance industry has failed to manage either the cost or the quality of health care. Health care is a human right, and private insurers have failed to safeguard it. They had their shot, and they blew it.

McArdle gradually morphs from a defense of "greedy insurers" to the argument that health care cannot be a right because "it has to stop before we run out of wallet." (That distastefully buzzwordy phrase presumably means, "before we run out of money.")

That's another straw man, since virtually no one argues otherwise. Every right is limited by outside constraints. That's why the right to free speech doesn't allow you to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

We all agree that hard choices must be made when resources are limited. Let's see, where do we begin? Profit-taking is driving up healthcare costs at all levels. UnitedHealth's operating earnings were $11 billion last year. Aetna's were $2.7 billion. Big Pharma? Don't even ask.

I'm sure most Americans would agree: If we're going to talk about pulling the plug on Grandma, which is where McArdle is headed, then we sure can't afford these guys. Maybe when they show up for their next big payday, we'll have to explain that we've "run out of wallet" to pay them.

Government's first obligation is to protect rights, not profits. When the Declaration of Independence proclaimed our "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," it even put "life" first.

Health care is a right, not a business.

-- 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 19 hours ago.

Emily Burchfield knew that with a 1-year-old daughter, another child on the way and her own business, she'd be busy this year.

But she didn't realize that one of her biggest tasks would be scrambling to find new health insurance before her insurer, Land of Lincoln, shutters. She's also grappling... Reported by ChicagoTribune 22 hours ago.

Aetna will stop selling individual health insurance policies on the Illinois Obamacare exchange at the end of this year, dealing yet another gut punch to a state insurance marketplace already bracing for the departures of insurers UnitedHealthcare and Land of Lincoln.

Aetna's individual plans sold... Reported by ChicagoTribune 22 hours ago.

New Article Finds Consumers Must Be Vigilant To Protect Their Health and Financial Information

Yonkers, NY (PRWEB) August 30, 2016

Medical identity theft – when someone steals personal data to get prescription drugs, medical care or surgery – is on the rise, according to “Body Snatchers,” an article in the October issue of Consumer Reports. The report explores the issue and includes tips on how consumers can protect themselves.

Personal health insurance information, which can include an individual’s Social Security number, address and email address, are vulnerable to theft. Consumers’ medical identities can be used to falsify insurance claims, fraudulently acquire government benefits, including Medicare or Medicaid, and to get prescription drugs and steal expensive medical services, even surgery.

While all people are at risk, some groups are more likely to fall victim to medical identity theft. Children’s health records are aggressively pursued by criminals because minors’ credit reports are not closely monitored. New mothers, surgery patients, and people with chronic conditions are also at higher risk for medical identity theft because they interact with the health system more often, providing more opportunities for records to be breached.

When consumers become victims of medical identity fraud, stopping the damage and clearing up bills and paperwork is much more difficult and time consuming than financial fraud. This is partially due to the fact that detecting medical identity fraud in the first place can be difficult, possibly continuing for years before the victim realizes what has occurred.

According to one recent report, 65% of medical identity theft victims said they spent an average of $13,500 to resolve problems stemming from the fraud, including medical bills that they did not incur, or to pay for services such as legal fees. Beyond the financial aspect of medical identity fraud, the thief’s own medical treatment, history, and diagnoses can get mixed up with the victim’s electronic medical records – potentially complicating the victim’s medical care for years.

Regulatory Environment & Industry Advancements

While there are medical privacy laws in place to protect consumers, they’re not always enough. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) outlines who can access your personal information and how they can use and share it. More recently, the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), requires that when a security breach takes place and unsecured health data is compromised, all impacted patients must be notified. If the breach affects more than 500 people, the media and federal government must also promptly be informed.

Unfortunately, the laws can also make it more difficult for a victim of medical identity theft to see their own health records once they’ve been fraudulently commingled with a thief’s information.

“There are benefits to electronic medical records and the sharing of medical data such as health diagnoses and treatment information between physicians and medical professionals,” said Orly Avitzur, M.D., M.B.A., Consumer Reports’ medical director. “But it’s vital that consumers remain vigilant and ensure their records are not compromised – and, in the case of fraud, move quickly to protect themselves.”

How to Protect Yourself

Consumer Reports offers the following tips to help people protect themselves from medical identity fraud:

Lower Your Risk· Get copies of your medical records and add new information each time you receive treatment
· Check your medical records annually
· Read every explanation of benefits (EOB) notice from your insurer
· If you lose your health insurance card, call and ask for a new ID number
· Don’t share health information on websites and apps, where it may be less secure
· Know that the practice of allowing friends or family members to use your insurance ID is illegal
· Ask healthcare providers how they safeguard your info

Spot the Warning Signs· You receive an EOB summary for treatment you never received
· A debt collector contacts you about medical bills you didn’t incur
· Your health insurer informs you that you’ve reached your benefit limit when you know you haven’t
· On your credit report there are collection accounts you don’t recognize

If It Happens To You· Call the facility where the fraud may have happened
· File a police report
· File an identity theft report with the FTC
· Contact your insurer
· Ask your healthcare provider for copies of your medical records
· Ask your insurer and medical providers for an accounting of disclosure of your medical records

More information, about medical identity theft, including expanded tips for how consumers can protect themselves, can be found in “Body Snatchers” featured at http://www.ConsumerReports.org and in the October 2016 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.

About Consumer Reports
Consumer Reports is the world’s largest and most trusted nonprofit, consumer organization working to improve the lives of consumers by driving marketplace change. Founded in 1936, Consumer Reports has achieved substantial gains for consumers on health reform, food and product safety, financial reform, and other issues. The organization has advanced important policies to cut hospital-acquired infections, prohibit predatory lending practices and combat dangerous toxins in food. Consumer Reports tests and rates thousands of products and services in its 50-plus labs, state-of-the-art auto test center and consumer research center. Consumers Union, a division of Consumer Reports, works for pro-consumer laws and regulations in Washington, D.C., the states, and in the marketplace. With more than eight million subscribers to its flagship magazine, website and other publications, Consumer Reports accepts no advertising, payment or other support from the companies whose products it evaluates.

__________
AUGUST 2016
© 2016 Consumer Reports. The material above is intended for legitimate news entities only; it may not be used for advertising or promotional purposes. Consumer Reports® is an expert, independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to work for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers and to empower consumers to protect themselves. We accept no advertising and pay for all the products we test. We are not beholden to any commercial interest. Our income is derived from the sale of Consumer Reports®, ConsumerReports.org® and our other publications and information products, services, fees, and noncommercial contributions and grants. Our Ratings and reports are intended solely for the use of our readers. Neither the Ratings nor the reports may be used in advertising or for any other commercial purpose without our permission. Consumer Reports will take all steps open to it to prevent commercial use of its materials, its name, or the name of Consumer Reports®. Reported by PRWeb 21 hours ago.

Chris Kay, Chief Innovation Officer at Humana, will deliver the opening keynote at the upcoming Distributed: Health conference on blockchain technology’s transformation potential for the healthcare industry.

NASHVILLE, TN (PRWEB) August 30, 2016

Chris Kay, Chief Innovation Officer at Humana, will deliver the opening keynote at the upcoming Distributed: Health conference on blockchain technology’s transformation potential for the healthcare industry.

The Distributed: Health conference, to be held on October 3, 2016 at Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center, is an event where healthcare and technology leaders from around the world are coming together for the first time to reimagine how health and medicine can be optimized and improved by blockchain technology.

As one of the largest health insurance providers in the United States, Humana is a global standard-bearer for health and wellness services that incorporate an integrated approach to lifelong well-being. Mr. Kay helms the company’s innovation initiatives including blockchain technology to develop game-changing products and services to improve health and reduce healthcare costs. Prior to joining Humana, as CEO of Citi Ventures, he pioneered efforts to simplify the retail banking experience. He also invested in a portfolio of companies to create new possibilities for Citi’s customers and new capabilities for the bank.

“We’re thrilled that Humana has taken the time to research this technology and its potential to create new efficiencies in healthcare,” said David Bailey, CEO of BTC Media. “This should serve as a wakeup call for the entire industry that distributed ledgers can offer solutions to some of the most challenging issues facing payers and providers today. We expect to see a Cambrian explosion of use cases for blockchain tech in healthcare, just as we’ve seen in the financial services industry over the past 24 months.”

“Blockchain allows for interoperability at a new level for health care,” said Humana president and CEO Bruce Broussard. “Competitors [can start] working together for the consumer. Blockchain is all about removing barriers, and that focus will enable consumers to better manage their health….The promise of blockchain is about putting the consumer at the center of health care, instead of the other way around.”

Mr. Kay holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Minnesota and a B.A. in French and Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He lives with his family in Louisville, where Humana is headquartered.

In addition to a full day’s roster of speakers and panels on October 3, the Distributed: Health conference will be preceded by a 24-hour blockchain hackathon starting on October 1. Over $28,500 in prizes will be awarded at the competition, which, like the conference, will focus on blockchain applications for healthcare, insurance and interoperability.

For more information or to register, visit https://GoDistributed.com/health/.

About BTC Media:
Headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, BTC Media LLC is the publisher of Distributed, Bitcoin Magazine and yBitcoin. The company is the world’s largest provider of multimedia educational and informational resources about the digital currency and blockchain industries.

For more information, please contact:

BTC Media
Tyler Evans, CTO
615-454-4861
health(at)godistributed(dot)com Reported by PRWeb 21 hours ago.

*How To Afford To Retire Wherever You Want*

Could you afford to retire how you want wherever you want? The opportunity for you to do just that could be greater than you might imagine.

The most important thing to understand when trying to determine how much retirement lifestyle your retirement budget will buy you is that you can control your cost of living most anywhere in the world within parameters. You choose where you want to live, how you want to live, how often you dine out, whether you have help around the house, where and how frequently you travel, where and how you shop, etc.

This is why there's really no answer to the question, how much does it cost to live in XYZ? The more relevant question is, how much money do you have to fund your retirement? Figure that amount and then identify the destinations overseas where that budget will buy you the retirement lifestyle you're looking for.

The bulk of any budget is given over to housing -- rent or a mortgage, if you have one -- so start here. Are you going to rent or to buy?

I strongly recommend that you rent, at least at first, for six to 12 months, to give yourself a chance to try the place on for size before committing. However, if you do eventually decide to invest in a home of your own, recognize that property ownership comes with carrying costs. As a home-owner, you'll have maintenance and repair costs, insurance, in some places property taxes, maybe grounds-keeping, etc. As a renter, you have none of these liabilities, which is why renting long term can make a lot of sense for the retiree abroad.

The other key housing consideration has to do with where in a country you want to settle. In Panama, for example, your rent could be $1,500 a month, for a two-bedroom apartment in a nice building in Panama City with a doorman and a pool ... or it could be $300 a month, if you choose instead to settle in a little house near the beach in Las Tablas, on the coast of the Azuero Peninsula, a beautiful, welcoming, more remote, and therefore much more affordable region of this country.

Here are other key expenses to factor into your retire-overseas budget:

*Transportation*

Will you need a car where you're thinking of relocating? If so, this likely will be your greatest expense after housing. In some places, in fact, the cost of owning a vehicle can be greater than the cost of your rent.

In the friendly, pleasant mountain town of Santa Fe, Panama, for example, you could rent a two-bedroom house for $200 or $300 a month. However, unless you're comfortable with the idea of using your own two feet or a taxi to get around town and the national bus service to travel the rest of the country, you'll need to invest in a vehicle. In a remote mountain region like this one, where roads can flood during the rainy season, maintaining your vehicle won't be easy. It might seem as though you're repairing tires and replacing shock absorbers almost as often as you're filling the gas tank.

If you're not up for the expense or the hassle of car ownership, consider less remote options and cities with good public transportation. Living without a car, transportation can go from being one of your biggest expenses to a negligible line item in your monthly budget.

*Food*
Groceries are a hugely variable expense anywhere. Your monthly food spending depends on how you want to live and eat. In Panama, Ecuador, or Nicaragua, for example, a couple could spend less than $300 a month on groceries. On that budget, you could eat well, but you'd be eating like the locals.

Or you could shop at the U.S.-style grocery stores (which exist in these countries) every week and load your cart with imported cheeses, specialty hams, wine, and prepared foods, in which case a couple's monthly grocery spend could be as much as $600 or more.

Grocery costs also vary according to region. In Paris, we lived in the 7th arrondissement, in the historic heart of the city. We discovered that prices in the grocery stores in our neighborhood were sometimes 25 percent more than prices for the same items in grocery stores in the 15th arrondissement, for example, a more working-class district.

*Gas*

Often used for cooking and typically a negligible expense -- a few dollars a month.

*Electricity*

The climate in the overseas retirement haven where you choose to hang your hat will dictate your monthly electric bill, which can be a big budget item in a place where you have to run your air conditioning around the clock to be comfortable. The budget-conscious should think about places like Medellin, Colombia, and Cuenca, Ecuador, where the weather is spring-like 12 months a year and you can get by most of the time without either heat or air conditioning.

*Telephone*
This cost varies greatly country to country and region to region. France is a big winner when it comes to telephone expense. You can buy a phone package from Orange, for example, for about $50 a month that includes unlimited free calling to the United States and Canada, much of Latin America and the Caribbean, and all Europe.

In most of the world, though, if you're not careful, your monthly international phone bill can be a shock, even the most costly item in your entire budget (including housing and transportation). The answer to controlling this budget item is a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) service such as Skype.

For local calls, a pay-as-you-go cellphone may be all you need. These are easier to obtain than a phone with a contract with a cellphone service provider in most of the world. Depending on where you're living and your lifestyle, a $10 calling card for your pay-as-you-go cellphone could last you all month.

*Internet*

Retire to a city most anywhere in the world today, and reliable Internet will cost you but $30 to $50 a month. However, if you're interested in retiring to a more remote region, the cost of Internet can be a significant part of your budget. If you choose to settle somewhere where you have to invest in satellite Internet, for example, budget $500 in hardware and set-up and then $200 a month or more for service.

*Cable TV*
Again, this is a significant budget issue only if you're living outside a city. In most areas of any population worldwide today, basic cable costs about $20 a month.

*Condo/Building/Home Owner's Association (HOA) Fee*

If you choose to live in a private development community or an apartment, you'll likely have a monthly condo or HOA fee. This is your contribution to the costs of maintaining and managing the shared areas of the development or the apartment building -- things like security, grounds-keeping, internal roads, a swimming pool, sometimes a concierge in an apartment building in Paris or Buenos Aires, for example.

You can incur this expense as an owner or a renter; it's an important thing to ask about before signing a lease.

*Property Taxes*

You won't be liable for any in Ireland or Croatia, for example, nor in Buenos Aires (though you will pay annual tax on property you own elsewhere in Argentina). That is to say, not every country imposes property tax, and, for those that do, the cost to you will likely be less, perhaps considerably less than you may be paying for property tax now, either because the percentage is less, the value of the real estate is less, or both. If you intend only to rent, of course, property tax won't be an issue for you anywhere.

*Household Help*

This can be one of the big benefits of living overseas. You can arrange full-time help around the house for as little as $150 a month in Nicaragua, Belize, Ecuador, Panama (outside Panama City), and Thailand, for example. And anywhere in Latin America or Asia the cost of part-time household help will make the idea of this kind of support irresistible.

*Entertainment*
This is one budget item that is completely controllable. Your monthly entertainment bill can be zero if you choose never go to anywhere or do anything. But that misses the point, doesn't it? Retiring to a new country isn't only about reducing and controlling your cost of living; it's also about improving and enriching your quality of life.

In remote regions of any country, your entertainment cost can be minimal -- say, $100 a month -- largely because there may be little to spend your money on. Living in a city offering many options for dining out and filling your leisure time, you'll want to be able to budget more generously for entertainment. Otherwise, you'll risk begrudging the opportunities for fun all around.

*Travel (within your new country of residence and for visits home)*

How often will you want to return home? Your biggest related expense will be airfare. Allow for it in your budget, as well as for in-country travel. You're taking a big step and making a big effort to relocate somewhere new and exotic. Once you're there, you'll want to get out and see the place.

*Health Insurance and Medical Care*

Depending where you choose to retire, this can be the biggest cost benefit of all. In some countries, it's possible to arrange good local health insurance for less than $100 per month. And some places in the world, especially in Asia, for example, it can make sense not to invest in health insurance at all. International-standard medical care in Thailand and Vietnam, for example, can be so low that it doesn't make sense to insure against it.

Original Feature: Budgeting For Retirement Overseas

*Related Articles:*

How To Retire Overseas In Seven Steps

How To Retire Overseas And Launch Your New Life, Step 1

The Retire Overseas Challenge No One Talks AboutEarlier on Huff/Post50:-- 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 19 hours ago.

The Internet of Things (IoT) Revolution is picking up speed and it will change how we live, work, and entertain ourselves in a million ways big and small.

From agriculture to defense, retail to healthcare, everything is going to be impacted by the growing ability of businesses, governments, and consumers to connect to and control their environments:

· “Smart mirrors” will allow consumers to try on clothes digitally, enhancing their shopping experience and reducing returns for the retailer
· Assembly line sensors will detect tiny drops in efficiency that indicate critical equipment is wearing out and schedule down-time maintenance in response
· Agricultural equipment guided by GPS and IoT technology will soon plant, fertilize and harvest vast croplands like a giant Roomba while the “driver” reads a magazine
· Active people will share lifestyle data from their fitness trackers in order to help their doctor make better health care decisions (and capture discounts on health insurance premiums)

No wonder the Internet of Things has been called “the next Industrial Revolution.” It’s so big that it could mean new revenue streams for your company and new opportunities for you. The only question is: Are you fully up to speed on the IoT?

Research analysts John Greenough and Jonathan Camhi of BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, spent months of researching and reporting this exploding trend and have put together a report on the Internet of Things that explains its exciting present and the fascinating future.

It covers how IoT is being implemented today, where the new sources of opportunity will be tomorrow and how 17 separate sectors of the economy will be transformed over the next 20 years, including:

· Agriculture
· Connected Home
· Defense
· Financial services
· Food services
· Healthcare
· Hospitality
· Infrastructure
· Insurance

· Logistics
· Manufacturing
· Oil, gas, and mining
· Retail
· Smart buildings
· Transportation
· Connected Car
· Utilities

 

If you work in any of these sectors, it's important for you to understand how the IoT will change your business and possibly even your career. And if you’re employed in any of the industries that will build out the IoT infrastructure—networking, semiconductors, telecommunications, data storage, cybersecurity—this report is a must-have.

Among the big picture insights you’ll get from *The Internet of Things: Examining How the IoT Will Affect The World*:

· IoT devices connected to the Internet will more than triple by 2020, from 10 billion to 34 billion. IoT devices will account for 24 billion, while traditional computing devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.) will comprise 10 billion.
· Nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IoT solutions over the next five years.
· Businesses will be the top adopter of IoT solutions because they will use IoT to 1) lower operating costs; 2) increase productivity; and 3) expand to new markets or develop new product offerings.
· Governments will be the second-largest adopters, while consumers will be the group least transformed by the IoT.

And when you dig deep into the report, you’ll get the whole story in a clear, no-nonsense presentation:

· The complex infrastructure of the Internet of Things distilled into a single ecosystem
· The most comprehensive breakdown of the benefits and drawbacks of mesh (e.g. ZigBee, Z- Wave, etc.), cellular (e.g. 3G/4G, Sigfox, etc.), and internet (e.g. Wi-Fi, Ethernet, etc.) networks
· The important role analytics systems, including edge analytics, cloud analytics, will play in making the most of IoT investments
· The sizable security challenges presented by the IoT and how they can be overcome
· The four powerful forces driving IoT innovation, plus the four difficult market barriers to IoT adoption
· Complete analysis of the likely future investment in the critical IoT infrastructure: connectivity, security, data storage, system integration, device hardware, and application development
· In-depth analysis of how the IoT ecosystem will change and disrupt 17 different industries

*The Internet of Things: Examining How the IoT Will Affect The World* is how you get the full story on the Internet of Things.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the IoT universe, choose one of these options:

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The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of the IoT.

Join the conversation about this story » Reported by Business Insider 19 hours ago.

Mesothelioma law firm Mesowatch will provide legal advice and financial assistance to asbestos victims and their families. The firm will also host a repository of educational information regarding industry news, legal rights and treatment on Mesowatch.com.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) August 30, 2016

For decades, the asbestos industry and employers have known about the dangers of asbestos exposure. Yet despite being aware of these risks, many in the industry continued to manufacture, distribute and market the toxic fiber.

That carelessness led to more than 11 million Americans being exposed to asbestos until the 1970s, resulting in thousands of cases of lung cancer and other illnesses.

Mesowatch – a law firm providing dedicated legal counsel in asbestos lawsuits – was launched to help victims of the industry and their families secure compensation from settlements, verdicts, trust funds, veterans benefits, social security and disability.

Comprised of a national team of attorneys and attorney partner groups, Mesowatch’s partners have secured multi-million dollar settlements and verdicts in mesothelioma lawsuits throughout the U.S., and the firm is committed to acting as a watchdog for the asbestos industry. The firm's aggressive approach helps victims secure fast trial dates and, in some cases, settlements have been reached within six months. To date, Mesowatch’s nationwide team of mesothelioma and asbestos exposure attorneys has secured $2 billion in compensation for clients.

Mesowatch.com Features A Repository of Information for Asbestos Exposure Victims

Patients who are battling mesothelioma and their families have a range of legal and financial rights to secure compensation for their suffering. Yet, many are unaware of their rights. Mesowatch.com was launched to educate people recently diagnosed with lung cancer and other asbestos-related diseases about their legal rights.

The financial burdens of battling an asbestos-related illness – which include lost wages, medical bills, treatment costs and transportation, among others – are difficult for families to overcome. Mesowatch.com offers in-depth information and advice about specific legal strategies for securing compensation including:

Mesothelioma Settlements
Trial Verdicts
VA Benefits for Asbestos-Related Diseases
Disability Benefits
Asbestos Trust Funds
Health Insurance Claims

About Mesowatch:
Sponsored by the Meldofsky Law Firm, Mesowatch is a team of nationwide asbestos exposure attorneys that has collectively secured $2 billion for victims of the asbestos industry. The firm provides comprehensive legal counsel for victims, helping them obtain access to veterans benefits, trust funds, disability payments and settlements. Mesowatch also works for fast trial dates, and in the past, settlements have been reached within six months. The firm also hosts a repository of information regarding asbestos-related diseases and news at Mesowatch.com. Reported by PRWeb 19 hours ago.

A common myth among opponents of single-payer national health insurance (NHI) is that it would cost too much and break the bank. This belief is based in part upon an assumption that patients would overuse health care if they gained access to it without any cost-sharing when they seek care. Cost-sharing has been a lynchpin of consumer-directed health care (CDHC) since the early 1990s, which assumes that patients who have more "skin in the game"-- through deductibles, co-payments, and other out-of-pocket costs--will make more prudent decisions about their own health care. But that policy and assumption have been discredited by actual experience over the last 25 years. In fact, the more cost-sharing is imposed on patients with higher deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket costs, the more they underuse care by delaying or avoiding necessary care. (1) Moreover, when Canada shifted over to its single-payer financing system in the 1970s, there was only about a 5 percent increase in their use of health care, mostly for necessary care that had been delayed or forgone. (2)
We have to face some inconvenient facts about what we are already spending--and wasting--in our current health care system, six years after enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)--a misnomer given the following facts:
· The ACA continues high cost-sharing in many of its plans and has failed to control costs or prices to the point that one in three Americans cannot afford necessary health care. (3)· There is rampant profiteering and waste in the ACA, as illustrated by these two examples: the administrative overhead in the growing market of private Medicare plans is six times that of traditional Medicare (4), and private insurers have been gaming the ACA's risk-coding program, under which they are paid more by overstating the health risks of older and sicker enrollees. (5)· We pay2.1 trillion in taxes to fund health care in this country,6,560 per person, more per capita than in Canada or any other nation. The costs to our government in paying for private health coverage (28 percent of all health spending) and tax subsidies for private employer-sponsored plans and other privately paid care (326 billion in 2015), indicate that we are already paying, as taxpayers, almost two-thirds of total health care costs in the country. That would be enough to provide universal access to health care for all Americans if it were to be re-directed from the inefficiencies and waste of private insurers to patient care in a simplified national single-payer financing system coupled with a private delivery system. (6)· The landmark 2013 study by Gerald Friedman, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, finds that NHI, when enacted, will save592 billion a year by cutting administrative waste of private insurers (476 billion) and reducing pharmaceutical prices to European levels (116 billion). (7)· Professor Friedman's ten-year projection for funding H. R. 676, the single-payer Medicare for All bill in the House, estimates that9.6 trillion will be saved from administrative economies, lower pharmaceutical prices, and lowered rate of medical inflation, that19.7 trillion will be saved on private insurance premiums, reduced out-of-pocket spending, and other private health spending, that17.5 trillion will be raised from the financial transactions tax, the high-income surtax, and the payroll taxes, and that the deficit will be cut by2.8 trillion. (8)· With the ACA, the government is paying more than1 trillion in subsidies to private insurers between 2015 and 2024 (9), even though 29 million people are still uninsured and tens of millions underinsured, and there is still no cost containment is in sight.
Critics of single-payer NHI fail to recognize that it would actually save money, even while providing universal coverage for our entire population for comprehensive health benefits, including inpatient and outpatient care, prescription drugs, dental care, mental health services, and long-term care. NHI will be funded by a progressive tax system based in large part on payroll taxes, whereby 95 percent of Americans will pay less than they do now for their insurance premiums, deductibles, co-payments, actual care, and out-of-pocket payments. People with annual incomes of $50,000 would pay $1,500 in payroll taxes, $6,000 for those with incomes of $100,000, and $12,000 for those with incomes of $200,000. (10)

Opponents of NHI use disinformation and distortion of its costs in the everyday debate over health care, especially during this election season. Reports of other studies ignore the savings that Friedman has projected, such as that by Kenneth Thorpe, economist at Emory University, who underestimates administrative savings with single-payer and ignores other savings, such as elimination of subsidies and savings on drugs and medical equipment. (11) Seemingly unaware of these savings, Hillary Clinton, as the Democratic presidential candidate, without apparent concern for the growing costs and unaffordability of care, restricted access, and flight of large insurers from the exchanges, contends that it would put a heavy tax burden on the middle class and still does not support NHI (although in 1994, in the absence of health care reform, she called it inevitable by 2000!) (12)

The costs of health insurance and health care are now exceeding $25,000 for a family of four with employer-sponsored PPO coverage, making the costs of care less affordable all the time. Continuing the ACA or repealing/replacing it with a Republican "plan" will only make matters worse. We have to recognize that private insurers are gaming the system to their advantage and holding us up for more generous bailouts as they exit the ACA's exchanges in droves. We can no longer afford their greed and wasteful bureaucracy. As access to care is further restricted by their higher premiums and narrower networks, we can only expect growing political backlash across the political spectrum.

John Geyman, M.D. is the author of The Human Face of ObamaCare: Promises vs. Reality and What Comes Next and How Obamacare is Unsustainable: Why We Need a Single-Payer Solution For All Americans

visit: http://www.johngeymanmd.org

*References:*

1. Davis, K, Schoen, C, Stremikis, MPP. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: How the Performance of the U. S. Health System Compares Internationally. New York. The Commonwealth Fund, 2010 update.
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror

2. Armstrong, P, Armstrong, H, Fegan, C. Universal Health Care: What the United States Can Learn from the Canadian Experience. New York. The New Press, 1998, 131-132.
https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Health-Care-Canadian-Experience/dp/1565845153

3. Pollitz, K, Cox. C, Lucia, L et al. Medical debt among people with health insurance. Kaiser Family Foundation, January 2014.
http://kff.org/report-section/the-burden-of-medical-debt-section-1-who-has-medical-bill-problems-and-what-are-the-contributing-factors/

4. Woolhandler, S, Himmelstein, DU. Single-payer health plan wouldn't cost U. S. more. Philadelphia Inquirer, February 5, 2016.
http://articles.philly.com/2016-02-06/news/70376862_1_health-spending-health-care-single-payer

5. Potter, W. Health insurers working the system to pad their profits. Center for Public Integrity. August 15, 2015.
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/08/17/17863/health-insurers-working-system-pad-their-profits

6. Ibid # 4.

7. Friedman, G. Funding H. R. 676: The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act. How We Can Afford a National Single-Payer Health Plan. Physicians for a National Health Program. Chicago, IL. July 31, 2013. Available at: htpp:.//www.pnhp.org/sites/default/files/Funding%20HR%/20676_Friedman_final_7.31.13.pdf

8. Friedman, G. An open letter to the Wall Street Journal on its Bernie Sanders hit piece. September 15, 2015.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-friedman/the-wall-street-journal-k_b_8143062.html

9. Congressional Budget Office. Insurance Coverage Provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Washington, D.C., April 2014.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/43472

10. Ibid # 7.

11. Himmelstein, DU, Woolhandler, S. On Kenneth Thorpe's analysis of Senator Sanders' single-payer reform plan. The Huffington Post, January 29, 2016.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-himmelstein/kenneth-thorpe-bernie-sanders-single-payer_b_9113192.html

12. Clinton, H, speaking to a group at Lehman Brothers Health Corporation, June 15, 1994. As reported by Health Care for All-WA Newsletter, Winter, 2015, p. 9.
http://pnhp.org/blog/2016/06/03/hillarys-public-option-proposal-could-it-work/

-- 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 17 hours ago.

The soaring price of the EpiPen has garnered controversy recently, but there are alternatives to this well-known allergy treatment device.

The EpiPen belongs to a class of medical devices known as epinephrine auto-injectors, which allow people to quickly inject a precise dose of the drug epinephrine. The devices are used to treat anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction that can be triggered, in people who have the corresponding allergies, by foods, insect stings, medications and certain other substances. [More: How Do EpiPens Work?]

Because anaphylaxis can be deadly, it’s critical that people with certain allergies have immediate access to epinephrine auto-injectors, said the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). In fact, the AAP recommends that children with food allergies carry two epinephrine auto-injectors with them at all times, in case a second dose is needed to treat an allergic reaction. (In general, allergies are more common in children than adults.)

But in recent years, the price of the EpiPen has increased dramatically, from $100 in 2007 to a current price of $600 for a two-pack, according to The New York Times. This price increase may limit access to the drug for people who need it, said U.S. Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, who sent a letter this week to Mylan, the manufacturer of EpiPen, asking about the drug’s pricing. And although health insurance may cover the drug, people with certain insurance plans, such as high-deductible plans, may have to pay the full price, according to USA Today.

But there is a cheaper alternative to the EpiPen, called Adrenaclick, which can be found at Walmart and Sam’s Club for as little as $142 with a coupon, according to Consumer Reports. Adrenaclick provides the same medication, at the same doses, as the EpiPen, according to Adrenaclick’s website. There’s also a generic version of Adrenaclick, called “epinephrine injection, USP auto-injector.” (There is no generic version of the EpiPen.)

However, the method of administering Adrenaclick or its generic version is a little different from that for the EpiPen; for example, Adrenaclick has two caps that need to be removed, while EpiPen has only one cap.

For this reason, it’s important that users learn precisely how to use whichever device they have, the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) said.

“The stress of an anaphylactic reaction is not the time to realize you have a different auto-injector than what was demonstrated to you by your allergist,” AAAAI said.

Another brand of epinephrine auto-injector, called Auvi-Q, was recalled last year because it was found to deliver potentially inaccurate doses of epinephrine, according to the Food and Drug Administration. It is no longer on the market.

It’s theoretically possible to use a simple syringe with a dose of epinephrine to treat anaphylaxis. But this method is more complicated, because patients need to make sure that they measure out the proper dose and delivery it quickly, Consumer Reports said.

In one study, it took parents 142 seconds (2.4 minutes) to draw up a dose of epinephrine for infants using a syringe. (Since the dose of epinephrine in the EpiPen and Adrenaclick is premeasured, it doesn’t need to be drawn up.)

Also, people should not premeasure a dose of epinephrine in a syringe (to have on hand in case of an allergic reaction), because epinephrine can degrade if it’s exposed to light for a long time, according to the AAAAI.

On Thursday, Mylan said it would offer coupons that cover up to $300 of patients’ out-of-pocket costs for the EpiPen.

Original article on Live Science.

Editor’s Recommendations
· 9 Weird Ways Kids Can Get Hurt· 8 Strange Signs You’re Having an Allergic Reaction· The 5 Most Common Allergies
Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

-- 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 16 hours ago.

If you didn't know better, it would  appear that healthcare costs are skyrocketing.

The amount the US spends on healthcare passed $3 trillion for the first time ever in 2014. Obamacare premiums are on the rise. There's seemingly always a controversy over a new drug with a massively inflated price.

Appearances are not reality, however, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

In a monthly economic letter, Mine Yücel and the Dallas Fed research team pointed out that healthcare services costs are actually running below core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) inflation. Put another way, healthcare services are actually a drag on inflation right now.

For one thing, according to the research from Yücel and company, prices for healthcare services (which includes things like the cost of a hospital visit, the cost of nursing home services, and net health insurance costs) have been growing at a much slower rate than in the past.

"The growth rate of health care services prices has slowed dramatically, from around 4 percent per year in 2004 to a low of about 0.5 percent in 2015," said the Dallas Fed team. "The rate has since moved slightly higher, to just less than 1.2 percent on a 12-month basis in 2016."

According to the Dallas Fed, this measure includes not just spending from households, but also those paying for households by proxy. Thus, government spending through programs such as Medicare and employers spending through group health plans are also included.

The impact on core PCE — which is used by such groups as the Federal Reserve in interest rate decisions and strips out volatile food and energy prices — from healthcare services is significant. Core PCE has been running well under the Fed's target of 2% for some time now, but without the drag from healthcare services, it would be very close to the goal.

"For the ex-food-and-energy index, excluding health care services raises current 12-month inflation to 1.69 percent from 1.57 while lowering longer-term average inflation to 1.61 percent from 1.94 percent," said the Dallas Fed study. "That means ex-food-and-energy inflation is 0.08 percentage points above its longer-term average rate rather than 0.37 percentage points below, the deviation when health care services are included."

(Of note: this data is on an aggregate level. It is not to say that individual health insurance plans or experiences at the hospital were not more expensive in recent years. However, in total, price growth slowed.)

Additionally, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, the growth for total health spending in the US based on data from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services hit the lowest point in decades in 2013 and remains well below the long-run average.

While Kaiser projects that there will be some normalization in spending growth over the next 10 years, both the Dallas Fed's measures and Kaiser's show that prices for healthcare aren't exactly ballooning.

*SEE ALSO: The government just announced some big changes to try to fix Obamacare*

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This animated map shows the most probable path to a Trump victory Reported by Business Insider 12 hours ago.

Albany's small employers will have more options to choose from when they look to purchase health insurance for 2017. That's because Empire BlueCross plans to boost the number of plans it offers businesses with fewer than 100 employees and to compete more heavily in the Albany area. The insurer, a subsidiary of Anthem Inc., will begin marketing its new options for small groups in September. "We’ve never left the market but we’ve had a very low presence," said Ethel Graber, the top executive… Reported by bizjournals 13 hours ago.

If passed, ColoradoCare would replace most private health insurance in the state with a universal-coverage system funded by taxpayer dollars and overseen by an elected board. Reported by Denver Post 10 hours ago.

A judge has, for a second time, refused to dismiss Oracle America’s lawsuit seeking to enforce an alleged settlement of all litigation pertaining to the failed Cover Oregon health insurance website. That means the case could be heading to trial November 14, ahead of the main litigation over who was to blame for the technical issues that beset the IT project. Oracle contends Gov. Kate Brown’s former chief of staff entered into an oral agreement with an Oracle executive to settle the half dozen… Reported by bizjournals 10 hours ago.

After a number of liberal leaders came out against the ColoradoCare single-payer health-insurance proposal two weeks and called it financially unsustainable, debate shifted from whether the idea of universal health care was a good idea to whether this particular effort to establish universal care was the right model. Those non-endorsements and the skepticism around the price tag for the proposal stemmed largely from a report released early this month by the nonpartisan Colorado Health Institute,… Reported by bizjournals 10 hours ago.

Donald Trump recently called Hillary Clinton a "bigot," saying that she is "selling [minority communities] down the tubes because she's not doing anything for those communities." Except for one thing: not only was he wrong, but she has the record to show her work in these communities.

As First Lady, Hillary advocated publicly for children and families, helping to pass the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which now covers more than 8 million children, helping reform the foster care and adoption system and advocating for the expansion of Medicaid to cover foster kids until they are 21. She pushed for the expansion of Head Start and advocated for quality child care and equal pay for women to help break down barriers for working parents.

In 1995, Hillary led the U.S. delegation at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, declaring that "women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights." Hillary made advancing the status of women and girls around the world a core part of U.S. foreign policy, working to bring down the barriers that stop women and girls from reaching their potential. She stood up against sex trafficking, expanded opportunities for women and girls in education and business and led the fight for a U.N. Security Council resolution to combat sexual violence against women and children in conflict zones.

As the Senator from New York, Hillary co-sponsored legislation to end racial profiling and fought to restore voting rights and expand programs that help people re-enter society after they have served time. As Secretary of State, Hillary was a champion for LGBT rights at home and abroad, fought for internet freedom, and rights and opportunities for women and young people around the globe.

And because of Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton, The Clinton Foundation and its affiliated Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), more than 11.5 million people in over 70 countries have access to lifesaving HIV/AIDS drugs at 90 percent lower cost, including more than 800,000 children.

So let's discuss bigotry, Mr. Trump. A "bigot" is "a person who hates or refuses to accept the members of a particular group." For example, a "bigot" would be someone who calls a judge "biased" because he is Mexican or someone who says that Mexicans immigrating to our country are "rapists" and "bringing crime." A "bigot" would be someone who says that people of a certain religion should not be permitted entry into a nation.

Former President Bill Clinton said in 1993: "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America." I believe that this still holds true today.

One of the former President's favorite stories is about Nelson Mandela, the late leader of South Africa. After his 27 years of imprisonment, Mandela invited his opponents to his presidential inauguration.

When Clinton asked Mandela how he could forgive them, he said, "I realize they could take everything from me except my mind and heart. Those things I would have to give away. And I decided not to give them away."

Vote for who you want in November. But when you vote, vote with your mind and your heart - because no one can ever take either one away from you.

And if you vote with your mind and heart, your choice is clear. Your candidate is Hillary Clinton.

-- 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.

Change has come to the criminal justice system in America’s most populous state. California’s arrest rate last year dropped to its lowest level ever recorded, the result of a voter-approved initiative to reclassify several nonviolent felonies as misdemeanors. Funds saved by the drop in arrests are being shifted to other priorities like victim services and mental health treatment. Meanwhile, state residents with criminal records are currently benefitting from the largest opportunity in U.S. history to remove certain felonies from their records. Supporting these policy changes is a first-of-its-kind statewide network of crime victims, including survivors of violent crimes, who have lent their moral authority to reform efforts.

A linchpin of all these developments is a former punk drummer turned prosecutor named Lenore Anderson. She was the co-author and campaign chair of Proposition 47, the state ballot initiative that reclassified several felonies, and the nonprofit she leads organized the network of crime survivors. With big victories under her belt, Anderson is expanding her focus. Her new organization, Alliance for Safety and Justice, will deploy a similar model in a host of other states with large prison populations. The group is organizing new networks of crime survivors and pushing more states to shift resources from incarceration to effective alternatives.

“Our most important goal is safety,” she said. “Over-incarceration is really unsafe. So our intervention is to ask, how are we spending our safety dollars?”
We spoke with Lenore Anderson for Sophia, a project to collect life lessons from fascinating people. She shared personal stories of the lives caught up in a broken justice system, and of the alternative approaches that are rising to replace it. 

+  +  +

*You said of your younger years, “I made a lot of mistakes. For a time, it wasn’t clear I would make it safely into adulthood.” What shifted you to the path you’re on now?*

(Laughs) Hindsight is always much more linear than reality, right? I was a troublemaker as a kid. I got in trouble with neighbors, parents, police, teachers, and it wasn’t until I was older that I understood that the help that was offered me is not the help that is offered to kids of color in my exact same position. In realizing that, I made a commitment to work on racial equity and criminal justice reform for my career.

I was in California in the 80s. During the exact same time that I was in high school, the number of tough-on-crime laws that were being passed in the legislature, the number of laws that were focused on the juvenile predator ― that was when it was occurring. And at that same time, I’m in high school ― middle-class white female ― doing things that are not that different from what a lot of young kids of color would be doing at that time in their lives, and the response to me was one of forgiveness.

Police would take me home instead of taking me to juvenile hall; my parents had resources to get me counseling and therapy; teachers let me pass classes that I didn’t actually pass. There was a perception that what I was doing were cries for help, and we need to figure out how to help her get on the right path; to see me as one that needed to be protected through my juvenile confusion to adulthood.Fast-forward ten years and I’m talking to parents of incarcerated youth. These are young people whose stories are not that markedly different from mine, with the exception of the response ― the exception of what police did, what parents had resources to do, what teachers did. I think that’s really why I do the work I do.

I didn’t go straight to college after high school. Eventually I went to junior college, mainly because I needed health insurance, and I enjoyed it. I did really well and ended up at UC Berkeley, and there I was very much interested in social justice. I go to an event where one of the speakers is Cornelius Hall, whose son Jerrold Hall was shot in the back by a law enforcement officer working for BART [the Bay Area’s rapid transit system] upon suspicion that he had stolen a Walkman.

That was a pivotal moment for me because, you know, half my friends stole Walkmans. No doubt, no question, I was one of the many teenagers who could have been Jerrold Hall, with the difference being he’s an African-American male and I’m a white female. I think that was one of the key moments where I was clear on the privilege that I had benefitted from.


What we’ve done is just so far beyond the number of people we’ve stuffed into prisons. We actually took generations of people, mostly low-income communities of color, and completely stripped hope and opportunities for basic economic stability and dignity. And we called it public safety.
- Lenore Anderson
You’ve made it a major priority to elevate the voices of victims of crime.

I worked with parents of incarcerated youth for a long time. We were organizing to replace youth prisons with community alternatives. Then I was in the district attorney’s office in San Francisco, and I similarly saw the gap between who is commonly victimized by crime and where the resources and attention go in the criminal justice system.

So when we started Californians for Safety and Justice, the mission was to replace over-incarceration with new safety priorities. And to me there has been a real big missing voice here ― the people who are most commonly victimized by crime. What are their current experiences with the criminal justice system? And what would they prefer to see?
When you look at the tough-on-crime era, they had a pretty successful media strategy. That was a 30-plus year march of dramatic expansion of a public system, dramatic expansion of the number of people incarcerated. And there were some myths that have been propping it up. One of the myths is, incarceration is the best way you protect public safety. The other myth is that that’s what crime victims want.

Well, most of the people that have been victims of crime had never been the center of public policy making during the tough-on-crime era. So the question is, how can we be more authentic in integrating the experiences of people who are victimized by crime and violence in what we’re going to replace over-incarceration with?

Safety has obviously got to be a top priority. There’s possibly no more important role that government can play in the lives of its citizenry. And to know how we’re going to deliver safety, you would think that we would talk a lot more to people who have experienced a lack of safety. We really have not. So from the outset, I wanted to make sure that we had a strategy for incorporating the voices of the victims of crime.

*Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna recently announced donations of $2 million to the Alliance for Safety and Justice. They compared your political strategy to the one used by Freedom To Marry, the group that helped legalize gay marriage. What is your strategy?*

Man, [Freedom To Marry] were great, weren’t they? We certainly aspire to be that effective and that successful. They’ve changed the country in a pretty short period of time.  

In terms of what we’re doing in states, we’re supporting local state-based advocacy organizations to advance criminal justice reform. We’re building crime survivor leadership to advance criminal justice reform. And we’re trying to advance public policies in states that reduce over-incarceration and replace spending on prisons with spending that’ll get us safer. Smarter safety investments.


Our focus has been the state systems because that’s where the majority of the money is and the majority of the people are.
Lenore Anderson
The role of the crime survivor work is valuable in terms of the substance, valuable in terms of a missing voice, and also valuable in terms of the political dynamic around criminal justice reform. The tough-on-crime era was very successful at framing all of those policies as “the pro-victim approach,” so we’ve tried to put forward an alternative vision that can allow us to see how those policies have been flawed. Those tough-on-crime policies actually haven’t helped the majority of crime victims, and so here’s the majority of crime victims ― here’s who they are and these are the kinds of things that they want to see. Promoting their voices has both substantive value as well as political value.  

In terms of political strategy, we’re looking at the top 15 incarceration population states in the country. A smaller number of states are disproportionately responsible for a lot of the over-incarceration in the country. When you look at national incarceration rates and you start to see them come down a little bit starting in 2012, it’s almost all California. One state has that much of an impact on that curve. Why? Because we’re such a large state. We have a huge general population and a very, very large incarceration population. When we’re talking about making big change, it makes sense to go to the big states, so we’re looking at the top 15 large incarceration population states ― it’s Florida, it’s Texas, it’s Illinois, Michigan, places where a lot of people live and a lot of people are incarcerated.

*Are you focusing at all on federal legislation?*

We just released a report on crime victims and we both hope and anticipate that it affects the conversation on federal approaches to criminal justice. But our focus has been the state systems because that’s where the majority of the money is and the majority of the people are.
You just surveyed crime victims nationwide about criminal justice issues. What did they say?

Lots of things that are counterintuitive. The common assumption is that crime victims want vengeance, or that they want the toughest possible longest sentence. What we found is actually quite different.

We found that the majority of crime victims want rehabilitation over punishment. The majority of crime victims want shorter sentences and prevention spending over long sentences. We found the majority of crime victims think that prosecutors should spend more time focused on neighborhood problem solving and rehabilitation, even if it means fewer convictions ― even if it means fewer convictions. Those kinds of findings really stand out, and these are diverse crime victims from all backgrounds across the country.

There are enough people at this point that have had direct personal experience with the failings of our current approach to criminal justice that pretty much everybody agrees that most people get worse in prison, not better. How can that possibly be a good investment? Hearing that from victims I think is a really powerful intervention on the conversation on what we should be doing.

*You told the New York Times, “My highest hope is that we start to really see some innovation that we haven’t seen in the past.” What sorts of criminal justice innovations are you impressed by right now?*

There is great innovation happening in the sphere of safety and justice. For the most part, they are boutique programs, they’re on the side, they’re operating on a dime. Getting those things to scale is the issue. We know what to do. The problem is, it’s not the centerpiece.

So we have general run-of-the-mill felony calendars that all day churn out the same sort of stuff. And then you have the neighborhood court program that operates in one neighborhood, that’s holistic in its approach, that has caseworkers on site that evaluate the drivers behind why someone’s involved in crime and addresses those drivers, like addiction or mental illness or homelessness. Then the person is stable, the crime stops happening, the neighborhood’s in better shape. Those things are often on the side. So I can definitely share the things that work well and are exciting, but also recognize the main issue is scaling them up.

So neighborhood court programs are excellent models of what could be done differently, especially when it comes to cycles of low-level crime.

There are a lot of wonderful restorative justice programs. They’re really powerful because they involve the crime victim in the resolution of the case in a way that the traditional criminal justice system can’t and won’t. A lot of the members of our Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice team have become inspired around criminal justice reform precisely because of a restorative justice experience that they had in their own dealings with the crime that occurred. It is really a missing piece that victims should have when it comes to solving crimes, up to and including serious crime. That’s a huge one.

There are a lot of excellent diversion programs. There’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion that comes out of Seattle; this is where police officers say to people who are struggling with addiction: “Hey, I won’t arrest you if you go into X treatment and case management program.” It’s more of a public health approach, understanding that people may relapse, that that’s part of the process of addiction. Law enforcement officers and case managers are trying to get this person out of the cycle of addiction and that is the goal of the program. It’s very different than a goal of, “Hey, I saw you on the street again, you’re still possessing drugs, we’re going to arrest you once again.”
So, diversion programs; all of the collaborative court models, in particular the community court models; and then restorative justice stand out to me as some of the things that have really been missing in terms of priorities.

I’ll mention one other, the Trauma Recovery Center model. We talk a lot in criminal justice reform about people committing repeat crimes and recidivism rates. But there’s another less-discussed reality: the people who are most likely to be victims of crime have been victims before. Their pathway to recovery is one that we completely miss when it comes to our safety investments, and this is something that we’ve been pushing a lot. 

What if we had a better sense of who around us are victims of crime that are vulnerable to being repeat victims of crime because they haven’t gotten the help that they need to recover? There’s this model in San Francisco called the Trauma Recovery Center, and we’ve been supporting them. Any victim can use it, and when you come in, you get help filling out your victim compensation forms, but you also get on-site access to mental health counseling, relocation assistance, and other things, they’re all incorporated.

So we found this one program and started working with our state senator. We’ve now gotten enough pieces of legislation and budget allocations passed in the last four years such that in California, there are now nine Trauma Recovery Centers across the state. One of them, it’s called Fathers & Families of San Joaquin, in San Joaquin County, a remarkable organization. They also work with kids who have been incarcerated and kids who are on probation. So right there in that one community center, they have the awareness and understanding of the risks that kids face to become victims of crime, and also are helping kids who have committed crimes get off that pathway and get onto productive lives. Really amazing stuff that’s popping up.


The majority of crime victims want rehabilitation over punishment. The majority of crime victims want shorter sentences and prevention spending over long sentences. We found the majority of crime victims think that prosecutors should spend more time focused on neighborhood problem solving and rehabilitation.
Lenore Anderson
*And how do you view the ideal role of prisons?*

The Vera Institute of Justice took a group of people from the U.S. to Germany to see their system. One of them was the Santa Clara District Attorney, Jeff Rosen, and hearing him talk about what that looks like is really interesting. He’s written a few pieces on it and given some speeches, you should check it out if you can because I think he paints an interesting picture of an actual real system today that works.

For example, in Germany, the people who run the prisons, it’s a highly-regarded job. They are Ph.D.’s in criminology and sociology, they understand rehabilitation and so forth. It’s taken very differently in that regard.

The proper role of our criminal justice system is to stop cycles of crime, and the vast majority of ways to best do that are at the community level; if people are a danger and cannot be in the community, then the priority responsibility is to rehabilitate them during the time that they’re separated from society.

So the focus is on the pathways for someone to safely return to the community. A system that emphasized that and focused on that would look radically different than what we have now, and it would be for a smaller number of people. Because if we had the kinds of programs in place on the front-end at the community level that offered alternatives to incarceration ― diversion and mental health treatment, drug treatment, all those kinds of things ― you’d see a lot fewer people get far downfield in their involvement in crime.

 

*What are some books that had a substantial impact on your intellectual development?*
Certainly Maya Angelou was very influential. “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.” I read that when I was young, a very influential book, taught me perseverance and growth through challenge.

And when I was in college, Frederick Douglass. I had a college professor tell me there are only about 200 written autobiographies by people who were enslaved in this country. Slavery lasted over 200 years and there are only 200 autobiographies actually in print. Isn’t that amazing? It’s just horrifying that we have that little direct knowledge of what this country did. At any rate, Frederick Douglass’s first autobiography was really impactful.

*Violent crime in California was up about 10 percent last year. Why do you think that is?*

There are a couple of things that are important to note. One is, most criminologists would say you want to look at crime trends for longer periods of time to be able to accurately evaluate where they’re going and why.

Two, we know that crime trends are often very localized. A severe challenge in one jurisdiction may not be the same in another. So when you break out what’s happening in San Francisco versus what’s happening in Monterey versus what’s happening in Fresno or Richmond, it looks pretty different. It doesn’t look quite like there’s one statewide trend. You can see a lot of diversity in how crime is happening. For example, it’s down in Oakland, it’s down in Pasadena.

There are a lot of jurisdictions where it’s going up and I would say that there’s a lot more that needs to be researched and understood to get a sense of what’s happening. Violent crime is certainly up in other parts of the country, as well. This requires close attention.

The other thing I will say is that every reform that occurs does need to result in adaptive practices at the local level. Sometimes those adaptations happen and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out what you’re gonna do now that a particular crime no longer means automatic incarceration. What are the other strategies you’re going to use to address these things? We’ve been clear, as it relates to Proposition 47, that implementation requires that locals change their practices. If locals do or don’t, that could be having an impact as well. 


There are enough people at this point that have had direct personal experience with the failings of our current approach to criminal justice that pretty much everybody agrees that most people get worse in prison, not better.
Lenore Anderson
*You’ve been doing this work for years. Is there a moment that stands out when you knew you’d made a major impact?*

Proposition 47 took six crimes, changed them from felony to misdemeanor, and applied that retroactively very broadly. Anyone in California who had one of these crimes on their old criminal record can apply to get that felony removed. Rough estimates are that there are about 1 million Californians that may be eligible for record change under Proposition 47. 

So we’re like: Let’s tell the public about this. We did outreach to grassroots organizations, we did billboards, we did television, radio, and then we decided we wanted to organize a large-scale fair, like a community fair, where we would have free lawyers on site, we would have hot dogs, music, and get people to come on down and get their records changed.

So it was Exposition Park in Los Angeles, and we got 150 lawyer volunteers all trained up, and they came to volunteer. And we got 150 event volunteers. We had no idea how many people were going to show up. Just no idea, we’re rolling the dice here.

The event starts at 11am on a Sunday and our team shows up at seven in the morning, and there are people who are already in line. At seven in the morning. My staff is like, “Hey, you know we don’t start until 11am?” And people have lawn chairs, sleeping bags. The response from the people in line was, “Oh no, we’ve been here since four in the morning. This is a really important day for us.” Five thousand people showed up at this event!

Watch the video below for scenes from the Los Angeles record change event.
I mean, it was totally overwhelming, total chaos, computer systems break down (laughs), we need to get more water. We had no idea, we had no idea. And the stories of the impact of these felony convictions on people’s lives was devastating and overwhelming. The grandma who can’t get her granddaughter out of foster care because she has some drug possession conviction from like 30 years ago. The guy who’s been only able to find part-time work for a decade, even though he has three kids. The woman who wants to get a student loan to go to college. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. There were moments where it was just tears.

And it is overwhelming. How are we ever going to possibly be able to help all these people ― not just on this day but in this country? What we’ve done is just so far beyond the number of people we’ve stuffed into prisons. We actually took generations of people, mostly low-income communities of color, and completely stripped hope and opportunities for basic economic stability and dignity. And we called it public safety. 

*Looking back, would you have handled your own education any differently?*

I sure wish I took high school more seriously than I did because I probably would have gone straight to college. On the other hand, perhaps I needed those years for growing up. I certainly encourage younger folks to take high school seriously and go to college when they can. I am grateful for the junior college system in California. I think community colleges are critical tools. Not everyone can go to a four-year.

There’s so much about education that is a luxury, in terms of the chance to grapple with ideas, learn as much as you can, absorb as much information as you can. Especially as a mom and working all the time, the opportunity to just read and learn is not the luxury that I have. I really wish that I’d spent more time in the libraries. I really wish I had taken more opportunities to learn everything I possibly could from the brilliant teachers that I was around.

Think of it as this very very short period of time where you’re actual job is to learn. I mean, that’s the coolest thing ever. And it’s not permanent. That’s a very, very short window. So absorb as much as you can.

I spent some time in other countries while I was in law school, and I remember a colleague of mine in Guatemala asking me all kinds of questions about the library at the law school that I went to. It was just such a remarkable thing that there would be this many books. Recognize that college and law school in particular are serious privileges and you should take them seriously and absorb everything you can.


To know how we’re going to deliver safety, you would think that we would talk a lot more to people who have experienced a lack of safety. We really have not.
Lenore Anderson
*Anything else to mention?*

It’s funny to me that this is even of interest to you, to be honest. Criminal justice reform is a totally new thing to all of a sudden be a very big issue. For the majority of the time I’ve been working on criminal justice issues, it has not been a major topic in the media or a major subject of presidential candidates, all this kind of stuff. That change just in the time that I’ve been doing this work has been interesting.

I’m really hopeful that means we’ve reached a point where we can have a breakthrough on this issue in the country. It certainly wasn’t what I would have expected 10 or 15 years ago. I mean, we now have Democrats and Republicans talking about some of the same things when it comes to criminal justice reform. Wayne Hughes Jr. was a major backer of Proposition 47, a very prominent conservative business leader here in California. Newt Gingrich endorsed Proposition 47. It’s just kind of amazing, right?

It’s such an exciting time for criminal justice reform and the possibility of completely changing how the country understands safety. What that will mean for millions of people is really humbling to me. It’s so important that we turn this moment into something meaningful, that we actually take the opportunity that I think we’re being handed right now.

What’s going to make the biggest difference? How are we going to turn mass incarceration into something of the past, something that we recognize was a huge mistake in terms of public policy and human development? That’s a very humbling but exciting opportunity that I see that exists right now in this country, and something that I don’t think I foresaw happening so soon.

This interview transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
[CITE: https://www.facebook.com/forawiserlife/]Sophia

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HONG KONG, Aug. 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Fosun International Limited (which, together with its subsidiaries, is collectively referred to as "Fosun" or the "Group", SEHK stock code: 00656) today announced its interim results for the first half of 2016. As at 30 June 2016, Fosun's total assets amounted to RMB437.71 billion, up 7.4% year on year. Net assets attributable to owners of the parent reached RMB82.66 billion, up 9.1% year on year. In the first half of 2016, Fosun recognized revenue of RMB32.50 billion, up 9.3% compared to that in the corresponding period of 2015. Net profit attributable to owners of the parent was RMB4.39 billion, up 21.4% year on year.

Adhering to its "insurance + investment" twin-driver core strategy, Fosun made further progress at liability and asset ends and further optimized its debt structure in the first half of 2016. Fosun deepened its footholds at the segmented insurance markets, embraced internet proactively, continued to explore investment opportunities in the field of C2M (Customer to Maker) and kept seeking opportunities for investment in emerging markets with potential for high growth. Thanks to robust growth as reflected by a number of performance indicators such as revenue, profit and scale of assets, Fosun International Limited became one of the top 500 listed companies for the first time based on the list released by Forbes and ranked 434^th globally and 47^th among Chinese enterprises. * *

*Secure and more stable operation*

In the first half of 2016, the Group's operation was obviously more stable. On one hand, Fosun improved its debt structure proactively, with medium-term and long-term debt ratio increasing from 57.4% at the end of 2015 to 66.4% as at 30 June 2016. On the other hand, the Group took advantage of the low interest rate in China by issuing a total of RMB47.3 billion worth of medium-term and long-term debts with the approval from the relevant authorities. In 2016, RMB23.12 billion worth of medium-term and long-term bonds was issued. The Group replaced the old debts of shorter duration and higher interest rates with new debts. Average cost ratio of the newly issued debts was 3.85%, which was remarkably lower than 4.65%, the average cost ratio of existing interest-bearing debts. The Group's net assets continued to grow at an average CAGR of 42.02% from 2004 to the first half of 2016, which greatly helped to improve the company's gearing ratio consistently. Meanwhile, the Group's liquidity continued to improve, with highly liquid assets reaching RMB150.62 billion, up by 16.2% from the end of 2015. Fosun kept facilitating its subsidiaries and invested enterprises to tap the capital market for fund: In the first half of 2016, the major asset restructuring of BOCOM Smart Network Technologies and Beibu Gulf Tourism invested by Fosun Capital were approved by China Securities Regulatory Commission ("CSRC"). Two invested companies were successfully listed on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ). Fosun Pharma's issuance of no more than 100 million new A shares was approved by CSRC in July this year.

In the first half of 2016, the Group was also active in cashing out its investments in big projects: Fosun exited its investment in Youku for a total of US$249 million. Fosun exited its investment in BHF, a private bank in Germany, for a total of EUR218 million while releasing EUR589 million worth of deposit. The Group also exited its investment in Lianjia Property for a total of RMB560 million.

*Integrated financial capability continued to improve*

In the first half of 2016, Fosun Group further strengthened its integrated financial capability. Total assets of the Group's integrated financial business segment reached RMB276.87 billion, up 16.7% from the end of 2015. Profit attributable to owners of the parent amounted to RMB3.98 billion, up 13.7% year on year. Investable assets of the insurance business segment reached RMB164.58 billion, up 2.61% from the end of 2015. Thanks to the low interest rates and stable profit from underwriting, cost of investable assets under the Group's insurance segment continued a downtrend and decreased from 1.4% in the first half of 2015 to 0.4% in the first half of 2016. In addition, Fosun encouraged its insurance subsidiaries to strengthen themselves with acquisitions: Ironshore, a specialty insurance company in the United States ("the U.S."), is expected to complete the acquisition of the remaining 80% equity interest in Lexon, the 12th biggest surety insurance company in the U.S., on top of the 20% stake in the latter already owned by the former. PeakRe's acquisition of a 50% equity interest in Caribbean insurer NAGICO Holdings Limited has already finished the payment of transaction and thereby expanding its business into Central America. These two acquisitions, which will generate an additional US$360 million worth of investable assets, are in the stage of being closed. Separately, Fosun explored the asset-light business model proactively to bolster its insurance assets. It planned to participate in the acquisition of run-off assets in Germany through a fund.

In August 2016, China Insurance Regulatory Commission formally approved the preparation for the establishment of Fosun United Health Insurance Company Limited, which is the sixth health insurance company in China. As such, Fosun further improved the layout of its insurance business in China and established a comprehensive insurance network covering life insurance, property insurance, health insurance and re-insurance. Apart from this, Fosun also obtained approval from European Central Bank (ECB) for its planned acquisition of Hauck & Aufhauser Privatbankiers KGaA ("H&A"), a private bank in Germany in August.

*The Group focused on wealth, health and happiness ecosystem and achieved remarkable results: the business segment accounted for 80% of the Group's total assets and 60% of its total net assets  *

In the first half of this year, Fosun continued to focus its asset allocation on three key business segments, namely, wealth, health and happiness. As at 30 June 2016, the total assets of the wealth, health and happiness business segments reached RMB349.96 billion, up by 14.5% from the end of 2015, and accounted for 80% of the Group's total, up from the 75% at the end of 2015. Net assets of the three business segments increased to RMB65.22 billion, significantly increased by 42.5% from the end of 2015, and accounted for 60% of the Group's total, up from the 46% at the end of 2015. In the first half of 2016, revenue grew by 115% year on year to RMB28.15 billion, accounting for 86.6% of the Group's total. Profit attributable to the owners of the parent amounted to RMB5.07 billion, up by 18.3% year on year and accounting for 115.4% of the Group's total.

*Health segment*: After over 20 years of development, Fosun's medical care and health business has already become a leader in China's pharmaceutical and health industry. Fosun is combining "health management + health insurance" through improvement of medical care services and technologies in order to build up the first-class healthcare vital entity in the world that has competitive advantage in the industry and integration capability.

Fosun Pharma announced in July 2016 that it acquired Gland Pharma, a leading injectable drug producer in India for no more than US$1.26 billion, which is the biggest overseas acquisition ever by Chinese drug manufacturers in terms of the transaction value. This transaction will help Fosun Pharma to upgrade its drug manufacturing business, accelerate its internationalization and increase its share of the markets for injectable drugs in Europe and the United States. At the meantime, Fosun will take advantage of Gland Pharma's capability to register drugs in 36 markets (including those of Europe and the United States) across the world as well as its R&D capabilities to produce high-quality products at low cost. This will enable Fosun to connect its innovative biological medicine R&D capability to India's unique policy advantages on generic drugs and will thus realize the integration of the production lines in both China and India.

Five domestic hospitals under Fosun Pharma own 3,018 beds, with 6,000 beds being expected to be added in the next three to five years. Luz Saude (Hospital de Luz) owns 10 private hospitals, 1 national public-private partnership ("PPP") health service hospital, 7 private clinics providing daycare nursery service and 2 senior caring nursery houses with a total of 1,179 beds. United Family Health Care has 5 hospitals.

At the same time, Fosun is confident about the rapid development of the senior living industry in China. The Group launched its high-end senior living community with total gross floor area (GFA) of 133,700 sq.m. and a total of 1,545 beds. Moreover, a GFA of 377,259 sq.m. of such senior living community is under development and this will add 3,592 new beds.

Fosun United Health Insurance Company Limited, which has recently obtained government approval for establishment and became the sixth health insurance company in China, will help Fosun further improve its eco-system and provide more comprehensive health management services for clients through innovative and outstanding health insurance products. United Family Insurance, an insurance product jointly launched by United Family Healthcare and Yong'an P&C Insurance is a good example. In healthcare segment, Fosun connected itself to internet proactively and invested in internet companies engaged in health industry, including We Doctor, Mingyizhudao.com, ysbang.cn, Jixiang Health, Easyhin, and Scanadu, etc.

*Happiness segment:* Roof-sealing of the first Atlantis Resort Hotel in China and the third of its kind in the world, which was 99.98% held by Fosun Group, was completed in July this year and is expected to be launched for trial operation in the second half of 2017. Atlantis Resort Hotel Sanya still has 807 apartments and 197 villas which will be available for sale to international investors in October. Total sales from this project is expected to reach RMB8 billion. Despite a downturn in Europe's tourism market, Club Med, another tourism brand under the Group, still managed to record the best results in recent decade during the first half of the 2016 financial year. Revenue and EBITDA of Club Med increased 2.0% and 70.5%, respectively in the first half of 2016 compared with those in the corresponding period of 2015. In April 2016, the fourth Club Med Resort in China was opened in Sanya. Like Club Med Resort Guilin and Club Med Resort Dong'ao Island opened earlier, Club Med Resort Sanya topped the list of TripAdvisor (the world's no.1 tourism commentary website) for most popular local hotels a few months after the opening. In the second half of 2016, Club Med Beidahu Resort will be opened in Beidahu, Jilin province. To date, Club Med has signed agreements or letters of intent over 24 projects in China. In addition, after Yuyuan's investment in Tomamu last year, Club Med signed an agreement this year to formally set up business in the resort of Tomamu. The first movie directed by Ang Lee and produced by Studio 8, a Hollywood movie maker invested by Fosun, is expected to be released in this November. In April 2016, Fosun participated in the privatization of Bona and invested in Honma, a famous golf product supplier in the world. Honma has a 14% share of China's market for golf products and ranks first in terms of the share of China's market for golf products and the share of the global market for high-priced golf clubs. 

*Wealth segment:* Highlights of this segment include: Fosun obtained approval from European Central Bank to acquire H&A, a private bank in Germany that has EUR8 billion worth of assets under its direct management and EUR39 billion worth of assets under administration ("AUA"). Rio Bravo, the second largest independent asset management company in Brazil, became Fosun's platform in this emerging market in July. Rio Bravo's AUM, or assets under management, reaches US$2.79 billion and the scale of its asset management kept growing by 23% per year in the last 10 years. Rio Bravo's businesses cover many fields such as private equities, equity funds, credit funds, infrastructure funds, financial advisory and various kinds of asset portfolio management and can improve Fosun's professional investment capability in Brazil rapidly. 

In the first half of 2016, profit attributable to owners of the parent from the investment side of the wealth segment was RMB2.31 billion, up by 104.0% year on year. Internal rate of return ("IRR") of the business segment reached 22.6% from 2000 to 30 June 2016. In addition, asset management and innovative finance segment started delivering good results as profit contributed by this segment amounted to RMB655 million, up by 13.7% from the corresponding period last year. The business segment has RMB64.79 billion worth of funds under its direct management and RMB77.5 billion worth of third-party wealth under its indirect management. The segment's business became increasingly comprehensive as it included companies engaged in securities brokerage, private banking, asset management at home and abroad, internet banking, factoring, small loans, financial leasing as well as credit companies and finance companies.

*I**nternet** i**nnovation: stepping up efforts to build up C2M ecosystem with industrial know-how*

Fosun Group actively participated in the supply-side reform initiated by the government and capitalized on the explosive growth of the "customer-to-maker" business model ("C2M"), thus bringing "to business" ("2B") internet innovation from behind the stage to the front stage. This was aimed at building the entire ecosystem for the future. Fosun has attached great importance to the new, "customer-to-maker" business model, which is oriented to consumers. The business model enabled the upgrading of traditional service industries through investment in platforms with huge amount of data and capacity for immense data input based on mobile internet technology. It integrates logistics, information, capital and talents to restructure the commercial ecosystem, and serves as a seamless interface between customers and the providers of services and products, thus eliminating intermediaries and enhancing customer loyalty.  The business model will enable the Group to meet diverse and personalized demands efficiently and at a low cost.

To build up the C2M ecosystem with industrial know-how, Fosun vigorously invested in platforms that have huge amount of data and capacity for immense data input, including the establishment of Star Big Data, a strategic agreement with Ant Group and investment in projects such as MYBank, dianping.com, We Doctor, jiguang.cn, MyMoney, 8dol.com and HECOM. For instance, dianping.com has over 200 million active users per month. We Doctor has over 110 million users registered with real names and 0.2 million experts from key hospitals with a total of more than 500 million patients being served. MyMoney has a total of 260 million registered users and 10 million active users per month. On the other hand, Fosun invested in C2M platforms that were capable of restructuring the supply chain, including EasyPrint in the printing industry, the "magic factory" Red Collar which produces custom-made products in garment manufacturing industry, and goujiawang.com, the provider of one-stop fitting-out products and services for homes in the fitting-out industry. 

In order to satisfy the needs arising from the C2M ecosystem, Fosun invested in Espressif, a company engaged in "internet of things" and other smart logistics companies such as Cainiao, Caigouxiongdi.com, Best Logistics, Runbow, Yundaex, ZJS Express, Fosun Sinopharm Logistics. It also invested in companies engaged in the lending business and Fintech such as MYBank, Ximu, Fortune Credit Management, Fosunling, Guangzhou Fosun Yuntong Small Loan, MyMoney, datebao.com, Sure and Earnest.

*Next step of globalization: more localized and more specialized *

The fundamental solution to the issues arising from different countries, industries, capital market and fluctuation of currencies is more thorough globalization. More thorough and safer globalization depends on localization of talents and platforms and in-depth industrial specialization. Fosun is very keen on specialization and localization of talents. Fosun has 240 managing directors across the world, and 116 of them are deployed to manage overseas investment platforms while 101 are localized talents who included seven such talents specializing in emerging markets such as Russia and India.

Fosun Group acquired many companies with regional investment platforms, such as IDERA Capital acquired in Japan in 2014, Resolution Property acquired in the United Kingdom ("U.K.") in 2015 and Eurasia Capital established in Russia in 2015. These platforms won many contracts to undertake projects quickly right after they became part of Fosun. Such projects included Shinagawa Seaside Park Tower and office building W/Y at Harumi Island Triton Square in Tokyo, Thomas More Square in London, U.K., 73 Miller Street in Sydney and Palazzo Broggi in Milan. Apart from Europe, the United States, Japan, mainland China and Hong Kong, Fosun further strengthened the development of emerging markets. As at 30 June 2016, Fosun established 13 overseas offices and 3 of them were located at emerging markets. It also planned to open six new offices in the regions such as Latin America, South America and East Europe.

In the first half of 2016, Fosun Group actively seized opportunities for investment in emerging markets such as Brazil and India. In July and August 2016, Fosun Pharma announced the acquisition of Gland Pharma, a leading injectable drug manufacturer in India and the acquisition of Rio Bravo, the second largest asset management company in Brazil in order to build the platforms and a strategic talent pool for developing the markets.

*Looking ahead to the future: To become a first-class investment group in the world with twin drivers empowered by insurance-oriented integrated financial capability" and "global industrial integration capability taking roots in China"*

Fosun always adheres to the "insurance + investment" twin-driver investment model and perseveres in combining China's growth momentum with global resources, while focusing on the business-to-family ("B2F") business model to mapping out a global strategies by concentrating on "wealth, health and happiness" lifestyle. In 2016, facing new changes brought about by the global market and growth of China's economy in 2016, Fosun will continue to embrace internet, capitalize on the growing trend of C2M and build up the entire eco-system for its businesses. In the second half of 2016, Fosun will accelerate the optimization of its debt structure, improve liquidity of its assets, and work towards the goal of having the global rating of its debts upgraded to investment grade. Fosun will proactively push forward with its globalization strategy, continue to push ahead with "localization" and consistently deepen the development of its industries. Fosun will speed up its strategic planning for emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia and India to realize a new round of growth while aspiring to become the world's first-class investment group dedicated to China's growth momentum.  Reported by PR Newswire Asia 2 hours ago.

Robert Weaver, a Quapaw tribal member, makes the cover of the September 2016 issue of Native Oklahoma magazine. Weaver, president and CEO of the Native American insurance management firm RWI Benefits, LLC, works to improve the health and wellness of native people through affordable health care.

Quapaw, Oklahoma (PRWEB) August 31, 2016

Robert Weaver, a Quapaw tribal member, makes the cover of the September 2016 issue of Native Oklahoma magazine. Native Oklahoma is a monthly publication of the Native American Times, Oklahoma’s online inter-tribal news source owned by Lisa Snell. Weaver, president and CEO of the Native American insurance management firm RWI Benefits, LLC, works to improve the health and wellness of native people through affordable health care. In the September issue, his business is also profiled in an article titled "Robert Weaver: Making health care affordable for Indian Country."

As a teenager, Robert Weaver lost a cousin to suicide. That experience stuck with him. At that time, finding adequate, accessible health insurance coverage for mental health issues was very difficult. As an adult, he recognized a need to educate and protect tribal leaders from insurance providers eager to cash in on a lack of knowledge about reasonable coverage costs. Since 2007, his business has been committed to leveling the playing field for Native Americans and eliminating these disparities.

"I am honored to be on the cover of this well-respected magazine within Indian Country," says Robert Weaver, RWI Benefits, LLC, president. "I'm always happy to bring awareness to the health care industry and the money practices within it. After all, without health we have nothing."

A more in-depth account of Weaver's business can be found in the September 2016 issue of Native Oklahoma. The electronic version of the magazine is now available at http://www.nativeoklahoma.us. Free hard copies can be found at tribal and Oklahoma welcome centers.

Since 2007, Robert Weaver has been the owner and founder of RWI Benefits, LLC. The firm specializes in all lines of insurance to include employee benefits, property and casualty, worker’s compensation and all other forms of insurance management consulting. The RWI Benefits home office is located in Quapaw, Oklahoma, on Tribal trust land. Additional offices are located in Joplin, Missouri, and Chickasha, Oklahoma. Weaver owns NativeCare Health, LLC, a third-party benefit administration company, as well as, MedCase, LLC, a utilization review firm. Weaver is also the consultative representative for government-to-government relations of the Quapaw Tribe, a group working in Washington, D.C., to improve healthcare access for Indian Country as a whole. Learn more at chooserobertweaver.com or rwibenefits.com.

One of Weaver's favorite publications is a free resource offered providing informational videos for less economically developed Indian tribes and nations. These videos can be found on the Robert Weaver Quapaw Tribe Facebook page or via the YouTube Native Health and Insurance Channel. If your organization needs assistance with any of the issues listed, Robert Weaver can be reached directly at 417-483-4700.

Native Oklahoma magazine is a publication of the Native American Times catering to Oklahoma visitors interested in Native American people, heritage and events. Find Native America online at http://www.nativeoklahoma.us. Reported by PRWeb 34 minutes ago.