If Evergreen Health does not get acquired, it will likely have to fold, leaving its 35,000 members to find health insurance plans elsewhere — probably for higher prices. Evergreen needs capital to survive, and is seeking to be acquired by outside investors. If the deal does not go through, competition in the Maryland marketplace could suffer and consumers may end up paying higher prices for their health plans, said a report from NovaRest Actuarial Consulting, which was contracted to review the… Reported by bizjournals 4 hours ago.

NEW YORK ― Thalia Cassuto, 86, remembers when birth control was banned in some states. 

She can still picture herself in 1955, 25 years old and walking up the stairs of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Queens to get her first diaphragm. Birth control was legal in New York at the time, but not in neighboring Connecticut.

“In those days, if you did it before you were married, you had to really hide it,” she said. 

Cassuto, then a third-grade teacher, said she was “still growing up” in her mid-twenties and wanted to take some time to focus on her career before becoming a mother. “I was out to be certain I was a professional and good at what I was doing before I was going to go home and have children,” she said.A decade later, in 1965, the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that the state’s ban on contraception ― a 19th-century law that prohibited any person from using “any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception” ― violated “the marital right to privacy.” In 1972, the high court clarified that unmarried people also had the right to use birth control without “government intrusion.”  

Cassuto, now a women’s rights activist in upstate New York, thought during the Obama administration that the fight to protect birth control access was over and won. But 52 years after the landmark Griswold decision, progress on the issue seems to be moving in reverse.

President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are moving to defund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of birth control to low-income women. And the Trump administration is now rolling back an Obama-era rule that required employers to cover contraception in their health insurance plans ― a benefit that has guaranteed birth control access at no cost to 55 million women. 

The moves are “part of a large sweep of things that mean that men in blue suits are telling us what to do with our bodies,” Cassuto said. “They’re not understanding the dignity of women.”

Cassuto traveled to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, the anniversary of the Griswold decision, to lobby her congressman the issue. She has also attended town halls in the district of Rep. John Faso (R-N.Y.) and even showed up at his local office to denounce his vote against Planned Parenthood funding.

“I was taking my love of country for granted under President Obama,” she said. “I don’t take that for granted anymore ― I know I have to work for it. It’s like my country is sick, and I have to take care of it.”


People think there was a glorious past. There wasn’t. It wasn’t glorious at all. It was frightening.
Thalia Cassuto
Nearly 9 in 10 sexually active women have used birth control, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Before President Barack Obama passed the Affordable Care Act, more than 20 percent of American women of childbearing age had to pay out of pocket for contraception. Now, only 4 percent of women are shouldering the cost. The law, in addition to federal investments in family planning through organizations like Planned Parenthood, has contributed to an all-time low in unintended pregnancy and the lowest U.S. abortion rate since the procedure became legal in 1973.  

Now that Republicans are in charge, they are framing the issue as one of “taxpayer-funded abortion.” The longstanding Hyde Amendment prevents any federal dollars from paying for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest and protecting the life of the mother. However, because some of Planned Parenthood’s clinics offer abortion services, Trump and many GOP congressman believe the organization should not be eligible for funding that subsidizes contraception for low-income patients. Further, because some people believe (erroneously) that certain forms of birth control are akin to abortion, Trump has decided to allow any employer or insurer to refuse to include any of it in their health plans for moral reasons.

Tom Price, the secretary of Health and Human Services, said the move will “safeguard the deeply held religious beliefs of Americans.” type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Coverage + articlesList=590fc3e1e4b0104c734ffb52,56f147fee4b09bf44a9e6196,588f8376e4b0522c7d3c013dDawn Laguens, an executive at Planned Parenthood, said the Griswold anniversary is a reminder of what’s at stake under a government that decreases birth control access. 

“Over the past half century, birth control has provided enormous benefits to women and their families, and has been nothing short of revolutionary for women and society,” she said in a statement. “But under the Trump administration, we are now facing an immediate future where a woman’s ability to make a most basic and personal decision ― when and if to have a child ― could be limited by her boss.”

Cassuto said she “shriveled” when she heard Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan and remembered bans on abortion and contraception, and a society where white men were considered “better” than other people. 

“That’s the problem,” she said. “People think there was a glorious past. There wasn’t. It wasn’t glorious at all. It was frightening.” 

-- 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 4 hours ago.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog,

*The middle class in America has been shrinking for decades, and our leaders seem powerless to do anything about it.* Two years ago, the middle class became a minority in this country for the first time ever. In other words, the middle class now accounts for less than 50 percent of the population. But back in the early 1970s, the middle class made up more than 60 percent of the population. I have often compared being in the middle class to playing a really bizarre game of musical chairs. When the music stops playing each month, *more chairs are being pulled out of the middle class*, and most of us are just *hoping *that we will still have a chair for the next go around.

Earlier today, I came across a USA Today article that discussed *some of the factors that are slowly but surely eviscerating the middle class.* I am going to share four of those factors with you, and at the end I am going to add one extra one.

First of all, the article pointed to a *decline in manufacturing and the rise of “service jobs”* as one of the key trends that is changing the nature of work in America…



‘Once dominant industries, like manufacturing — which paid well even without a college degree — have been overtaken by service sector jobs, most of which are low-paying, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.’



In the old days, even if you didn’t have any higher education you could support a middle class family by working in manufacturing. We were the greatest manufacturing society that the world had ever seen, and Detroit had the highest per capita income in the entire country. But after decades of sending manufacturing jobs overseas, manufacturing’s share of the U.S. economy is at an all-time low and formerly great manufacturing cities such as Detroit have become rotting, decaying hellholes.

Secondly, the USA Today article pointed to the *rising cost of a college education*…



‘The cost of getting a college degree is up more than 1,000% since 1978, according to Bloomberg.’



This is a particular pet peeve of mine, because I am still paying off my old law school loans. We encourage our students to get as much education as possible and to not worry about all the debt, but then millions of them find themselves financially crippled and without good jobs once they graduate. This makes it extremely difficult for a lot of our young people to enter the middle class.

Thirdly, the USA Today article brought up* stagnant wages and the rising cost of living*…



‘Decades of stagnant wages mean both parents must often work to make ends meet, creating a need for child care and elder care that didn’t exist in 1950, for example, when two-thirds of women were full-time “homemakers” aka caregivers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.’



Once upon a time, a single income could easily provide for a large middle class family in America. But today so many families have both parents working, and yet many of them still find it very difficult to pay the bills each month. In fact, surveys have found that somewhere around two-thirds of the entire country is living paycheck to paycheck.

Fourthly, the USA Today article mentioned* “the gig economy” as a major issue*…



‘The gig economy (Uber, Airbnb) has exploded, giving workers more control and flexibility, but fewer benefits or legal protections.’



Independent work and contract work have become major societal trends, and this isn’t going away any time soon. These types of jobs do not typically come with health insurance, retirement benefits, etc. and so this is something that our nation is going to have to wrestle with.

Fifthly, I would like to throw in the* decline of small business and entrepreneurship in America*. Working for yourself or starting a business have always been ways to lift yourself up into the middle class in this country, but today it is harder than ever to become independent. The government is absolutely killing small businesses and entrepreneurs with rules, regulations, red tape and high taxes, and little relief appears to be coming our way any time soon.

At this point, the *percentage of Americans that are self-employed is hovering near the all-time record low,* and if we hope to have a thriving middle class ever again we need to get this fixed.

We also need to train our young people for the jobs of the 21st century. At one time we had one of the best education systems on the entire planet, but *today our system of public education has become a global joke.*

And I am not exaggerating one bit when I say that.

*To give you an idea of how badly the quality of our workforce has declined,* I want to share with you something that the owner of a small manufacturing company posted in an Internet discussion forum…



I own a small manufacturing company. Most of the assembly work is done at a bench, with hand tools. The work is not difficult, but quality and consistency is paramount.

 

We are entering into our busiest time of year, and steady growth combined with losing one of our senior bench techs has caused me to run some ads (after spreading the word around to friends and associates).

 

I have been involved in the manufacturing business for about 30 years, and have seen thousands of resumes.

 

*The last couple weeks I have been reviewing a couple dozen resumes a day. What I am seeing now, is stunning and disappointing. When did people stop learning how to compose a sentence? When did they decide that a resume composed of two sentences is somehow complete? The poor level of spelling, grammar, and frankly effort has me perplexed and perpetually face-palming.*

 

So far, I have two resumes that were not immediately round-filed. Just two.

 

If this is the current state of our potential work force, we are in trouble.



That really resonated with me, because I have heard pretty much the same thing from so many business owners over the years.

Decades of following the “progressive agenda”, and I am talking about both Democrats and Republicans, has been absolutely disastrous for our society.

*We desperately need a complete and total cultural revolution, and that means returning to the values and the principles that this nation was founded upon.*

If we continue on the same path that we are currently on, the middle class will continue to deteriorate, and our nation as a whole will continue to decline.

*We can do better, and we must do better.* Reported by Zero Hedge 1 hour ago.

Health insurance giant Anthem Inc. didn’t cite President Trump when it announced Tuesday that it was withdrawing from the Obamacare marketplace in Ohio, leaving the marketplace with no insurer in at least 18 counties. But Anthem pointed the finger right at him — and at the Republicans in Congress... Reported by L.A. Times 36 minutes ago.

On March 23, 2010 Democrats slammed a health care plan through Congress that helped many Americans, but it is far from perfect. Now Republicans are offering a plan that will leave millions of Americans without insurance.  It seems as if Congress is unable to fix health care, however the current system is unsustainable. According to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare the U.S. spent $3.2 trillion on health care in 2015. That’s $10,035 per person. It’s an insane amount of money.

Turns out it is possible to lower costs and improve care, but it’s not as easy as I thought when I started the research for this article.  

The answer involves us reimagining health care. I’m going to call it “universal coverage” for the sake of simplification and because calling it “a combination of public and private insurance that requires 100 percent participation in the public portion while preserving private insurance benefits” is accurate, but awkward.  

Many are opposed to a system like this and cite six reasons: “I don’t want to pay for insurance for others,” “I don’t want to lose my current health insurance benefits,” “my quality of care will go down,” “universal coverage is anti-capitalist,” “pre-existing conditions are going to kill the insurance industry,” and finally, “it’s too hard to do!”

All of these objections can be overcome with facts.

We are already paying for the health care of others.

According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, the cost of “uncompensated” health care in America in 2013 was $84.9 billion of which state and federal governments paid $52.6 billion, leaving $32.3 billion unpaid. To cover the unpaid cost, providers and payers raise rates; the rates insured Americans will eventually pay.  The amount of unpaid costs is a pittance of the amount that we pay through taxes that fund Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs. That number is $1.664 trillion and those programs cover 112 million people.  

Despite the benefits our relatives, friends and neighbors receive from government programs, some still want to end all government health care and never adopt a universal coverage system.  Millions feel this way, until they lose their coverage due to some change in circumstance and they stay up all night hoping their kid doesn’t die from whooping cough. Nonetheless, they simply don’t want to be made to pay for the health care of others and they believe that if they don’t pay for government programs, they won’t be paying for other’s health care. Cognitive dissonance rules.

So, let’s eliminate all government health care including the tax breaks offered to people and companies with private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid. Pause for a second, think about it and say “yes” if you want this to happen.  

If you said “yes,” you can now prove that you are definitely not paying for other’s health care because there are no Medicare and Medicaid line items on your pay stub, right? Head in the sand; dissonance resolved.   

Except now, your brother, who works 50 hours a week hanging sheetrock, cuts his hand and doesn’t have insurance. Who’s going to pay? You are, because you just said “hell yes!” to ending his coverage and he’s not “others,” he’s family.

What if the same thing happens to someone who isn’t a relative? Too bad for them, right? Let someone else pay. Turns out that someone else is you.  

Everyone who has no government insurance coverage, but who still needs health care will go to the local hospital for treatment and not pay their bill (or in some cases, just die). Providers don’t work for free so that cost will be rolled into higher fees to people who do pay. By my calculations, the insured population would have to pay $20,295 per person per year; more than TWICE what they are paying today to cover the cost of the services rendered to the uninsured.

Simply put, sick people cost money and eventually everyone will pay whether we count the cost or hide it in higher fees and pretend we don’t.  

We can’t afford to eliminate government funded health care and we already pay for the care of others, so let’s admit that we already have a type of universal coverage system for one third of Americans and maybe that’s OK.

Let’s also agree that the current programs are way too expensive and that we want an efficient system with high quality care. How can we get that?  By pooling our money, lowering costs and adopting a full universal coverage system. Heck, we’re already 70 percent of the way there based on the total spend on government health care and $400 billion in tax breaks for companies who provide private insurance to their employees.  *We’ll need to accept a mandate, but you’ll be glad we did.*

We need to pool our money. Five percent of the population accounts for nearly half of health care spending and half the population has almost no health care usage.  The only way we can afford health care is if we all pool our money and share the expense until it’s our turn to personally benefit.  For this to work we’ll need a mandate; and I do mean mandate.  Not the sloppy system we have today where healthy people don’t get insurance because the cost is higher than the penalty.  Mandate as in this will be deducted from your wages like Medicare and Medicaid are today (but replace both).  The good news is that the mandate is going to save us a lot of money.

*We could pay for our universal health care system using just the money we spend today.*

Of the $3.2 trillion spent in 2015 Medicaid, Medicare, VA, DOD and CHIP paid $1,312 trillion, private insurance paid $778 billion, consumers paid $352 billion out of pocket, third-party party programs which includes a bunch of private and public entities paid $256 billion, money from investments covered $160 billion and other government spending was $96 billion.  Most of this money really comes from Americans in the form of fees and taxes.  In summary government programs plus the out-of-pocket payments equal $2.176 trillion, which is how much we can spend on our universal insurance system if we don’t want to raise our costs.  I’m holding out the money from private insurance because we’re going to radically change how that works.  

*We need to lower the cost of care while not reducing the quality.*

We have $2.176 trillion available, but we spend roughly $3.2 trillion a year so we need to lower our costs.

To understand what drives expense in America’s health care, I went looking for answers and found these three articles (and many more) that explain the issues in great detail. In summary, our health care is more expensive due to higher physician costs, overpaying for services, ordering unnecessary tests, having excess medical equipment, low hospital occupancy rates, long hospital stays, high administrative costs and a tort system that is need of an overhaul.  There are plenty of opportunities to lower our costs.

A study by BMC Health Services Research claims that $350 billion in paperwork and administrative costs savings could be realized by moving to universal coverage. On top of that, a study by the Institute of Medicine concludes that about $750 billion in fraud and inefficiencies exist in the system.  Let’s say we can cut fraud in half and realize $375 billion in savings.  Two initiatives alone provide $725 billion in savings and lower the annual cost of health care from $3.200 trillion to $2.475 trillion.

How much more would we save if we combined Medicare and Medicaid into one program? About 5 percent ($27.2 billion) of Medicaid costs are for administration. Medicare administration costs are between 2 percent and 17 percent, depending on whose data you believe, so let’s call it 8 percent or $51.2 billion. The total for both agencies is $78.4 billion.

These two agencies do much of the same thing for different people. I know they do some things differently, but in principle, they take in money in the form of taxes and fees and distribute that money to pay for health care for their participants. And they are pretty good at it. Recent reports indicate that Medicare is more efficient than private insurers and has lower administrative costs so let’s let them run our new universal coverage system.  

If we assume some efficiencies and give the new combined agency $60 billion for administration, then we’d save $19 billion. Now we are down to $2.457 trillion. That move barely lowered the costs, but does consolidate the majority of government health insurance into one program.We can save an additional $78 billion with tort reform. Since we struggle with even basic reform, let’s say we can eek out half. That would contribute $39 billion in savings, which puts us at $2.418 trillion. We’re still short $242 billion. The good news is that we still have an unused bucket of funds, but my proposed source will make insurance companies go apoplectic.

In an Office for National Statistics Study, the average spend by six industrialized countries on private insurance is 21 percent of total health care spend. In America, it’s 33 percent ($1.056 trillion in 2015). Dropping from 33 percent of all health care to 21 percent would still allow us to spend $672 billion for private insurance. It does mean that insurance companies will be 36 percent smaller and that’s also OK also because most care will come from our universal coverage system. By applying the $384 billion we just saved to our universal coverage plan, we have a surplus of $142.4 billion. Let’s leave it in the system. All the change will be expensive and disruptive. This can help pay for it. If we do, our total annual spend would be $2.176 trillion, which is $6,824 per person.

Congratulations, we moved to universal coverage at no additional cost and put $1.024 trillion back into our economy. For perspective, we could make college free for everyone and still have $948 billion left over.

Here’s a final surprise. There are currently 28 million uninsured Americans. I factored them into all the numbers above so not only do we lower our costs, we just gave 28 million people health insurance coverage. Despite this, many will want private insurance; and they are going to get it as we’ll see later.

*How is this possible?*

Ah, I can hear the rumblings. “That’s a lot of change. It seems to make sense, but how do I know it’s possible?”

Ten other industrialized countries have figured out how to keep costs low AND provide higher quality of care than America. The average per person cost for them is $4,386. We’re not going to get to that number due to many issues, but surely we could get to a number that is 64 percent higher (which is the number from above ― $6,824 per person). I find it impossible to believe that we can’t figure out how to provide quality health care to all Americans while spending 64 percent more per person than 10 countries who provide better care than us. Seriously.  Is anyone walking around America chanting “we’re number 11!” and admitting that 10 other countries are smarter than us?

*You won’t lose your private insurance coverage.*

When we move to a universal system, everyone will have coverage.  Many of the things private insurance pays for today will be covered by our universal plan, but we still need private insurance. Let’s see how it works in other countries.

In 16 industrialized countries, like in America, about 56 percent of the population has private insurance offered by companies like BUPA, Aviva and AXA. What does it look like? Exactly like the private health insurance we have today. It simply sits on top of your public universal coverage. You call your doctor, tell them you have private insurance and boom, you go to the front of the line for services. True story, my wife and I moved to the UK and she needed to renew her birth control prescription. She called the doctor’s office on a Friday and they told her to come in in three months (somehow ignoring how that might work out). She said “wait, I have BUPA.” They told her to come in next Tuesday.  See how it works? Straight to the front of the line.

“Not fair,” scream the hard-left utopians, and they are partially right, but if you want a system that works in America, this is what it looks like. It balances social responsibility and fiscal conservatism with privilege for those that earn it. For those who don’t have coverage today or find it very expensive, all your problems just got solved because you have universal coverage.  For those that have private coverage, who paid taxes, got their basic coverage and helped their fellow human beings, but also worked hard, got ahead and earned the perks of success, they will have the same coverage as they do today. It’s fair to everyone. Is it communist/socialist fair? Nope. Nor do most Americans want it to be. Is it capitalist-with-basic-social-and-fiscal-responsibility fair? Yes, it is.*Quality of care can actually get better.*

Americans aren’t getting good value for money. U.S. health care is ranked between 11th out of 11 industrialized countries and 37th in the world. Using any search engine will produce an avalanche of these articles. The good news is that study-after-study demonstrates that improving health care quality  is possible.

There’s a cacophony of alarm in health care industry studies and articles about quality going down under universal coverage systems, such as this one, which claims we’d see lower payments to providers and payers (true) and limited investment in advanced medical equipment and reductions in the speed of medical progress (not true).  If this is the case, how is it possible for the rest of the world to deliver higher quality of care at a lower cost than America? Perhaps it’s because almost 100 percent of the articles that claim the sky is falling don’t consider the effect of private health care on universal coverage. Perhaps there are reasons other than self-preservation. I’m not sure, but I have great difficulty reconciling lobbyist-supported studies that show quality MIGHT go down with the fact that 36 countries with universal coverage provide better health care than we do at a lower cost.   

*Universal coverage supports capitalism and reduces bankruptcy.*

Want another reason to love universal coverage? Not adopting it is undermining entrepreneurism. Want to start a company? I hope so because new business accounts for most net new job creation. But there is a problem. You and the people you hire need insurance. This issue alone keeps people from starting companies. Even the partial universal care we have under the ACA today, may allow the creation of 25,000 new businesses a year. If you want to improve the economy, we’ll need more startups and full universal coverage enables their creation.

Universal coverage will also reduce bankruptcy, which means more people can stay in their houses and buy stuff to drive the economy. About 2 million Americans a year go bankrupt and unpaid medical bills are the number one cause. In addition, approximately 10 million Americans will find themselves with medical bills that they can’t pay and more than 25 million Americans don’t take their medication because of the expense. As they become unhealthier, their cost of care will increase as will their inability to pay, so the burden will fall on the rest of us.

There are other effects. When I worked at Bank of America, I looked at our mortgage data and found it would have been cheaper for the bank to pay for health insurance for some customers than to take the losses associated with repossessing their house due to issues with lack of health care coverage; millions cheaper in aggregate. In many ways, moving to universal health solves this problem and the additional benefit, is that families have shelter and stability.

Lowering the number of bankruptcies and helping people pay for their medicine is good for the economy and good for us.

*What about all the job losses?*

Job losses are part of the cycle of capitalistic system improvements as is new job creation brought about by innovation and change. What’s the net impact? There are some wild estimates out there, but this article from Fortune indicates that we’d lose about 2 million jobs if we adopt universal care. Alternatively, a recent study by the California Nurses Association indicates that 2.6 million new jobs would be created. I think the actual answer is unclear. What is clear is that the move to universal coverage will cause change.

The single-payer component would combine parts of private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid into one system and some of the efficiency gained will come at the cost of jobs. In addition, private insurance will shrink dramatically; which will also cost jobs. However, the shift from spending money on administrative expenses to care provision, would create new jobs as would the growth needed to help the 28 million people we just added to the system.  The available information paints a mixed picture, but in the end, it doesn’t matter because we must make these changes and jobs will be lost and gained.  

*What about preexisting conditions? Won’t those increase the cost of our system?*

The hubbub about preexisting conditions is a subterfuge by insurance companies to distract imbeciles in Congress.

The insurance industry is adamant that they are harmed by covering people with preexisting conditions because of something called adverse selection.  What they are really saying is that if they offer coverage for preexisting conditions then more sick people will sign up and cost them more money.  This is partially true without universal coverage.  

Private insurance, like universal coverage works by pooling money from a mix of healthy and sick people. Insurance companies like to keep out people with preexisting conditions because they cost more than people without them.  They think that simply refusing to cover preexisting conditions for individuals, those people won’t join their pool of insured.  They are partially right.


The hubbub about preexisting conditions is a subterfuge by insurance companies to distract imbeciles in Congress.

Let’s say you are one of the 29 million Americans who have diabetes and you are an entrepreneur. You’d like a private insurance policy, but the cost is too high so you don’t get one. Problem solved for the insurance industry.  Well not quite because you have a wife and two kids and need insurance so you find an employer to hire you and get their insurance. Many large companies are self-insured, which means they pay most of the cost of insurance and have private companies administer the process. Insurance companies love this because the employer takes most, but not all, of the risk.  Self-insured companies have extra insurance from private insurers in case a person’s condition causes very high cost. You know, like people with preexisting conditions. Guess what? They got you anyway.

Under universal coverage, the government will bear most of the cost for people with preexisting conditions. Insurance companies don’t recognize this in their alarmist rhetoric because they don’t think we’ll ever have universal coverage.  If they’d admit we need to move to universal coverage, most of their problem with preexisting conditions goes away.

*It is hard to make all these changes.*

We just used facts and logic to lower our cost of health care. We also covered all Americans, kept private health insurance for those that have it, improved the quality of health care, stimulated the economy and eliminated issues with pre-existing conditions.

You know who can’t live with it? Insurance companies. Their size change would be stunning. In 2015, $1.056 trillion was spent by insurance companies.  With universal coverage, the number would be $672 billion. Private insurance is now 36 percent smaller. That’s 384 billion reasons they fight so hard to maintain status quo instead of doing what’s best for all Americans.

Know who else can’t live with it? Pharmaceutical companies. American drug costs are two to three times higher than the cost of other industrialized countries. Americans spent $425 billion on prescription drugs in 2015. If we spent 50 percent less due to negotiated rates, the industry would lose $212.5 billion. Drug companies need to earn a profit so they can invest in new drugs. Because we don’t have national negotiated rates, the excessive cost we pay for drugs subsidizes the lower cost in the rest of the world. It turns out that Americans aren’t just paying for the drugs of other Americans, we are paying for drugs used by people world-wide. When we move to universal coverage, we’re going to decimate pharmaceutical company margins and they’ll have to make up some of that through higher costs around the world.  Seems fairer actually, but it will be painful for the industry.

Doctors don’t like universal coverage either because it will mean lower income. Critics of universal care suggest that the lower income will reduce the incentives for people to become doctors and therefore create a shortage.  Is that true? The best estimates I could find show that the average doctor will experience a 12 percent drop and specialist would fare worse. Doctors spent a fortune to go to college and save lives. They deserve to be paid well, but a 12 percent drop from an average of $294,808 ($272,000 from the study adjusted for inflation) would mean they would make $259,431 and still be in the 99th percentile of earnings. Painful? Yes. Devastating and a big enough change to keep people from becoming physicians? Unlikely.

Turns out that it is possible to fix health care in America. We have a huge amount of money available, we just need to redeploy it. Private insurance and pharmaceutical companies will see dramatic changes to their business, but individual Americans can win big.

-- 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 49 minutes ago.

Millennials have seen dramatic gains in health insurance coverage since passage of the ACA, more so than any other age demographic. Instead of building on these historic gains, Trumpcare would have devastating effects on young people.

Trumpcare harms young people by eliminating the current tax credit that helps many young people purchase insurance. According to Young Invincibles, low- and moderate-income young individuals would pay more under Trumpcare than under current law, ultimately impacting over 4 million young people and harming the lowest-income young people the most. On top of that, Trumpcare allows insurers to impose penalties on those who experience gaps in coverage. Who is most likely to experience a gap in health coverage because of a move or a job transition? Young adults. In fact, as many as one-third of young people between the ages of 19 and 34 could face this 30 percent coverage gap surcharge under Trumpcare.

Trumpcare would also mean less access to quality coverage for young adults. Despite the assumption that young people are healthier, an estimated 31 million young adults are living with a pre-existing condition. Keep in mind — before the ACA, people were routinely denied coverage or charged higher rates based on a pre-existing condition. That doesn’t mean just illnesses like cancer, but even allergies, anorexia, or being a survivor of domestic violence. Under Trumpcare, these 31 million young adults would lose guaranteed insurance to cover the medical care they need. Out-of-pocket spending for key services for young adults, such as maternity coverage, mental health care, STD counseling and screenings, and substance use treatment, could increase by thousands of dollars per year — leaving financially-strapped young people to face high out-of-pocket costs they simply cannot afford.

As young people continue to face a host of financial challenges – student loan debt, saving for retirement or saving up to buy a house, looking for a job, among others – security in health insurance is paramount. I believe that we should do more to improve the financial security of the more than 200,000 young people in my Congressional district, not threaten their health coverage.

Trumpcare will threaten the health and future of young people across the country.

Representative Adriano Espaillat (NY-13) is a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

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

The American Health Care Act (AHCA) that is now before the Senate after passing the House of Representatives would allow states to seek waivers from current federal standards for health insurance plans. While the Senate seems likely to make changes concerning the particular standards that can be waived, the AHCA’s waiver and other provisions are expected to cause premiums to increase and benefits to disappear for millions of Americans. Millions more will likely lose their insurance completely.

As originally drafted, the AHCA would have expressly exempted Members of Congress from these waivers, a provision that is so politically awkward that the House separately adopted a bill that would repeal the exemption by amending the AHCA if enacted. Rep. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), who wrote the amendment, stated that it is intended to “ensure that Congress abides by the laws they pass and are treated no differently than other hard-working Americans.”

However, as the Washington Post has reported, it is unlikely that the amendment will actually do this. Under current federal regulations, Members of Congress buy their health insurance through the D.C. Health Exchange, and the D.C. government is unlikely to seek a waiver of current federal protections for residents and others who buy health insurance here. As a result, according to the Post, “lawmakers ... could end up with more robust and less expensive coverage than constituents in states that are not as friendly to Obamacare.”

Such preferential treatment for Members of Congress is clearly not what Congress intended when it overwhelmingly voted for McSally’s amendment. Nor is it likely to lead to the fairest health law: if Members of Congress know they will not be directly subject to the same rate increases and benefit cuts that their constituents will feel, they might make different judgments about what consumer protections are required.

Two entities have a responsibility to make sure that Congress’s intent that Members are in fact “treated no differently than other hard-working Americans” is actually implemented. One is the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the other is the District of Columbia. OPM could discharge this responsibility by directing Members of Congress to buy their health insurance in their states of residence, as opposed to the current rule that directs Members to buy their insurance through the DC Exchange.

If OPM did not take this step, the District of Columbia would have a constitutional obligation to ensure that Members of Congress do not access more favorable insurance through the D.C. exchange, because the Constitution empowers Congress to legislate for the District (Article I, Section 8, Clause 17). To do this, D.C. might redirect Members from the D.C. Exchange to the exchanges in their home States.

This redirection would not affect D.C. consumers, since Members of Congress comprise only a small percentage of the overall pool on the D.C. exchange—and the provision need not include congressional staffs, who are not mentioned in the stated intent for the amendment. This action by D.C. would honor Members’ intention to be subject to rules in their home States and, because it would help Members understand more directly the impacts of their legislation, the action might also benefit their States.

All of this seems like a good outcome for Congress, the District of Columbia, and the country. OPM and D.C. officials should consider how best to make it happen.

-- 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 7 hours ago.

UE SVP, Business Development James Riebel promoted to EVP

SAN DIEGO (PRWEB) June 07, 2017

Underground Elephant, an award-winning digital marketing technology company located in downtown San Diego, announced today the promotion of James Riebel to Executive Vice President of Business Development.

James advances to the position after five years as Underground Elephant’s Senior Vice President of Business Development. Riebel has played an integral role in the company’s consistent growth, and is responsible for spearheading UE's entry and expansion in the personal insurance market; was a key architect in the launch of ZipQuote.com; and headed the building of UE’s Enterprise Insurance business.

Prior to joining UE, Riebel worked at InsuranceAgents.com. During his years with InsuranceAgents, Riebel helped fuel the growth of a two time Inc. 500 company by building Insurance Carrier relationships, and leading their Sales and Account Management initiatives.

“James has been essential to the Underground Elephant ecosystem since he joined the team,” said Jason Kulpa, CEO of Underground Elephant. “Growing a team of talented and dedicated people internally continues to be critical to the organization’s success, and James has earned the position.”

In his new role as EVP of Business Development, Riebel will take on increased responsibility and leadership in guiding the firm’s efforts to set up successful partnerships with enterprise level businesses in new business verticals like health insurance. While he will continue to oversee the direct management of UE's enterprise level business, his greater focus will be on high-level growth strategy and scouting new opportunities for expansion to support long-term company growth.

About Underground Elephant
Founded by CEO Jason Kulpa in 2008, Underground Elephant is an award-winning marketing technology company that develops programmatic advertising platforms in order to bring transparency and efficiency to the buying and selling of structured lead generation. The company's robust portfolio of enterprise-grade tech solutions enhances the connection between enterprises and their prospective clients by delivering highly efficient pathways to organic sales conversations. Learn more at http://undergroundelephant.com/ Reported by PRWeb 22 hours ago.

Insurers that participate in New York's health insurance marketplace are requesting big rate increases for 2018, according to the state's Department of Financial Services website, which posted the rate requests Wednesday evening. Reported by Newsday 23 hours ago.

Agency to Bring to Market Innovative Compliance Quality and Performance Solutions

Annapolis, MD (PRWEB) June 08, 2017

ClearHealth Quality Institute TM (CHQI) welcomes former New York civil prosecutor and mental health counselor Michael Reisman as its President, effective immediately.

In his new role, Mr. Reisman will provide oversight of CHQI’s strategic business operations, including its accreditation programs for health plan appeals, telemedicine, and mental health parity: and RegQuest, a tool that details the business and regulatory forces impacting the medical management system.

“In selecting Reisman, CHQI has a proven leader whose skillset and experience aligns perfectly with our mission – to promote standards that incorporate the next generation of quality and outcome measures,” said Garry Carneal, JD, MA, CHQI founder.

“CHQI will play a vital role in promoting accountability for health plans and health care providers, thus improving our health care system,” said Reisman. He brings over 12 years of legal experience to CHQI. Most recently, he served in the New York Attorney General—Health Care Bureau, which protects the rights of consumers in the health care system. During his five years as an Assistant Attorney General, he was instrumental in efforts to enforce federal and New York mental health parity laws, which resulted in eight settlements with health insurance companies that greatly improved their mental health and addiction benefits and returned more than $2 million to consumers. Mr. Reisman also played an instrumental role in investigations and settlements regarding mobile health applications and pharmaceutical marketing.

Prior to joining the New York Attorney General’s Office, Mr. Reisman was a litigator at several national law firms, focusing on health care and intellectual property matters, and brought two high-profile court cases that improved the lives of mental health patients in New York and New Jersey.

Before receiving his law degree at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Mr. Reisman was a mental health counselor in inpatient and outpatient facilities in California, New York, and in the Czech Republic where he studied as a Fulbright Scholar. He received his Master of Arts in Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and his Bachelor degree from Williams College.

Earlier this year, CHQI announced its formation, with the intention to develop a broad array of innovative compliance, quality and performance solutions in the coming months. In May, CHQI and the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) announced a joint agreement to develop standards to promote accountability, transparency of operations and adherence to all relevant laws and regulations.

To obtain more information on CHQI, our accreditation initiatives, or the many programs and services offered, contact Julie Irons, manager of accreditation, at (410) 696-7634 or via email at info(at)CHQI(dot)com

                                                                            # # #

About Clear Health Quality Institute™ (CHQI) (http://www.CHQI.com)

Clear Health Quality Institute’s (CHQI) mission is to promote quality-based practices for health plans, providers and other stakeholders across the United States and its territories. Our accreditation and certification programs help assess, track and report on trends to enhance key insurance and provider outcomes. CHQI also offers educational programs, publishes issue briefs and underwrites research to raise awareness of patient safety issues and promote best practices. The organization is governed by an independent board and committee system, which is open to a wide-range of volunteers to ensure transparency and accountability. CHQI provides resources to serve patients, providers, payers, government agencies, and other stakeholder groups. To learn more about CHQI, please contact us at (410) 696-7634 or info(at)CHQI(dot)com. Reported by PRWeb 15 hours ago.

Erik McGregor/Sipa via AP Images

A coalition of physicians, AIDS activists, medical students, and women's health and rights advocates stage a political theater piece in front of the globe outside Trump International Hotel on May 25, 2017; to protest Trump's global gag rule, which expands the policy restriction to all U.S. global health funding. 

Even as he prepared to ruin the planet with his climate accord pullout, President Donald Trump found time in May for another pet project: making life less equitable and more dangerous for women in America and around the world. By the end of his first 100 days in office, Trump and hard-right enablers in his administration and Congress had already made significant headway in that damaging quest, logging potent early strikes against women’s reproductive rights and well-being. And now, they’re going even further.

First, the latest. A leaked 125-page draft regulation posted online on May 31 by Vox showed the Trump administration poised to dramatically weaken Obamacare’s popular preventive services requirement that health insurance plans cover the full range of contraceptives without a co-pay—including longer-acting, more effective, and more expensive options, like intrauterine devices (IUD).

Under the religious-right-pleasing draft revision, now undergoing an expedited internal agency review, hundreds of thousands of women could lose their guarantee of no-cost birth control, and by deeply problematic means. Its terms would allow any for-profit or nonprofit employer or insurer to opt out of providing the required contraception coverage by claiming either a religious or moral objection.

Put another way, the draft rule would discriminate against women by letting bosses, including huge, publicly traded for-profit corporations with no religious affiliation, deny a valuable health benefit critical for women’s ability to make their own childbearing decisions and general progress in life—all based on an assertion of beliefs the affected workers may not share. Ample grist, in sum, for the legal challenges being contemplated by groups like the National Women’s Law Center, the ACLU, and Center for Reproductive Rights.

The relaxed birth-control mandate concocted by Team Trump goes far beyond the unfortunate but much more limited accommodation the Supreme Court granted in its 2014 Hobby Lobby decision to “closely held” private for-profit businesses with religious objections, or the possible compromise for nonprofit religious objectors, like Catholic hospitals, universities, and social-service groups that the high court described last year in Zubik v. Burwell. Both rulings assumed that the government could still ensure employees’ full contraceptive coverage.

By contrast, the 34,000-word explanation of the intended policy shift downplays the proven importance of easy access to affordable contraception. In Trumpian fashion, the document asserts that the Affordable Care Act “does not require that the guidelines be ‘evidence-based’ or ‘evidence-informed.’”

News of the elephantine draft exemption followed on the heels of a new attack against Planned Parenthood contained in Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal, unveiled on May 23.

Planned Parenthood was already on the chopping block. The harsh Obamacare replacement approved earlier in May by the GOP-led House excludes the nation’s largest family-planning provider from Medicaid reimbursements for vital services like contraception, cancer screening, and sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment. Trump’s proposed budget, overall full of cruel cuts that disproportionately hurt women, would freeze out Planned Parenthood entirely, making it ineligible to participate in the entire array of federally funded health programs extending beyond Medicaid—cancer screenings and Zika virus prevention, for example—and Violence Against Women Act grants to combat sexual assault. That is, if Trump’s suggested scrapping of those grants doesn’t come to pass.

Trump’s plan to escalate the Planned Parenthood attack, it bears noting, came just days after a persuasive Guttmacher Institute report by Kinsey Hasstedt dispelling the myth favored by House Speaker Paul Ryan and others that federally qualified health-care centers could easily absorb the millions of women who now rely on Planned Parenthood for quality contraceptive care.

Trump’s budget so aggressively bludgeoned domestic social spending and foreign aid it was declared dead on arrival by congressional leaders. But beware: The president’s bad ideas about Planned Parenthood funding could live on in future Republican budget machinations on Capitol Hill.

Consider, finally, Trump’s mendacious Mother’s Day launch of “Women’s Health Week,” an annual ritual of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services rendered a glaring oxymoron by his administration’s zestful pursuit of female-unfriendly policies and programs. Trump’s prepared statement for the occasion spoke of “the importance of providing women access to the best, evidence-based health information and care.”

The insincerity of that rhetorical pose was driven home a day later, on May 15, when the State Department unveiled implementation details for one of the worst moves of Trump’s reckless, error-packed presidency—his misbegotten January 23 order imposing a vastly expanded version of the odious “global gag rule” (also known as the Mexico City Policy) carried out by every Republican president since Ronald Reagan in 1984, and rescinded by every Democratic president, including Obama.

This medical and free speech atrocity, grotesquely enlarged by the current size-obsessed White House incumbent, and rebranded, in Orwellian style, the “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance” policy, bars U.S. financial assistance to nongovernmental groups abroad that provide abortions or truthfully advise women about abortion even using their own non-U.S. government funds. An under-remarked-upon aspect of the rule forbids groups receiving U.S. aid from engaging in legal and political advocacy to promote changes in a country’s abortion laws and policies that would reduce unnecessary deaths and injuries from unsafe abortions—a massive problem.

“What the gag rule does so stunningly, in defiance of basic democratic values, is use U.S. health funding to get well-informed advocates to shut up about what they know is right for their own country: access to safe and legal abortion,” Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, summed up in an interview.

Under Trump’s GOP predecessors, the global gag rule was applied to U.S. family planning and reproductive health assistance to overseas groups, totaling about $600 million—causing enormous harm by shutting down urgently needed clinics in underdeveloped countries, shrinking access to contraception, and denying safe abortions, maternal care, and help in preventing HIV-AIDS. Trump’s gag rule, the May 15 announcement confirmed, extends to some $8.8 billion in global health assistance, greatly magnifying the sphere of potential injury.

“There’s a global abortion-rights movement that’s made a tremendous amount of progress in the last two decades,” stressed Patty Skuster of the global reproductive health and rights organization Ipas. “Reinstating the global gag rule on this enlarged level will shrink the number of individual and organizational players, inevitably weakening not just services, but social and policy change around unsafe abortions.” 

Serra Sippel, president of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), is struck by the State Department’s failure to carefully assess the real-world impact of the bloated gag rule before putting into it into effect. “Officials said that when a recipient-NGO declines to comply with the gag rule’s conditions, the money will simply be reallocated to other organizations,” she told me. “But finding good substitutes for experienced and committed groups foregoing U.S. aid won’t be easy.”

This human rights and foreign policy blunder is consistent with Trump’s general disregard for women’s health and rights, but it’s hardly “pro-life.” Marie Stopes International, a leading provider of reproductive care to the world’s most vulnerable women, has already said it won’t sign the global gag rule pledge. Without alternative funding, the group estimates, loss of its services from 2017 to 2020—roughly the duration of Trump’s first term—could result in as many as 6.5 million unintended pregnancies, 2.1 million unsafe abortions, and 21,700 maternal deaths.

Like earlier White House churning on reproductive-rights issues, the new White House developments come amid ongoing efforts by Republican-led states to impose a creative array of laws and regulations to impede the exercise of the constitutionally protected right to a safe and legal abortion, including sweeping new abortion limits just enacted in Texas despite the Supreme Court’s firm 2016 rejection of an earlier set. Yes, Texas again.   Reported by The American Prospect 14 hours ago.

In Washington, D.C., on Thursday, people lined up in droves as early as 4:15 a.m. to get a spot at former FBI Director James Comey’s highly anticipated Senate testimony. Bars across the country opened early to hold viewing parties, and networks are interrupting their popular soap operas to broadcast the hearing. The event has been dubbed “Washington’s Super Bowl.”

So it’s safe to say we’ve all gone a little Comey Crazy.


Here's the line to get into the James Comey FBI hearing this morning. pic.twitter.com/RTf9xAYAmC

— Al Drago (@Al_Drago) June 8, 2017

What the former FBI chief is expected to say is important. It’s the most concrete evidence we have that President Donald Trump attempted to quash an investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. However, it’s unlikely that Comey will definitively say that Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice, and the possibility of another smoking gun seems like a pipe dream. As HuffPost’s Sam Stein notes, Comey’s testimony alone will probably not spell the end of Trump.

Meanwhile, Republicans are well on their way to repealing the Affordable Care Act, putting millions of people at risk of losing their health insurance. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday took steps to fast-track their efforts, sidestepping the typical committee hearings in favor of closed-door meetings. And many Republicans are avoiding their own town hall meetings, where the subject is likely to come up. 

As progressive New York Times writer David Leonhardt notes, the Comey hearing has relieved some of the pressure Republicans faced in previous months against their health care plans. But it shouldn’t, he says.

“Even amid the Comey testimony, and all of the attention it deserves, don’t let health care be forgotten,” Leonhardt wrote this week. “It’s too important.”

And as several Obamacare supporters have noted, it’s not too late to speak out:


Don’t let the AHCA get swamped by Comey — stay vigilant and keep applying pressure on the Senate to #ProtectOurCare. https://t.co/7ktHfYq5jG

— Jason Sparks (@sparksjls) June 8, 2017


Trumpcare isn't stopping for Comey. Put five minutes on your calendar to call Toomey about making Trumpcare transparent: https://t.co/rWgHohnZul

— What's Pat Up To? (@WhatsPatUpTo) June 8, 2017
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 9 hours ago.

PARIS, June 08, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  *Stratumn, a leading provider of network solutions securing processes between enterprises and their stakeholders through blockchain technology and advanced cryptography, announces today the raising of €7M in a series A funding from Open CNP, the Corporate Venture arm of CNP Assurances, Otium Venture, Nasdaq and Digital Currency Group.*

Less than two years after its inception and one year after its seed financing, Stratumn has now accomplished the largest funding round to date in the European blockchain and data security ecosystem.

*Stratumn helps companies securing and streamlining regulatory and compliance procedures*

As companies become ever more connected to one another, and the security and integrity of their data is challenged, centrally managed information systems have proved their limitations. Stratumn's  Proof of Process Technology  solves a core dilemma for organizations: streamlining regulatory and compliance procedures, improving customer privacy and data protection, while reducing operational and back office costs. Stratumn's suite of network solutions provides organizations with an efficient and reliable way to streamline and secure the exchange of data between partners, customers, and regulators. Enterprises who adopt this technology benefit from better accountability, traceability and integrity of their records, while regulators may audit process data in real-time.

Stratumn has already developed more than 10 projects with large companies such as CNP Assurances, Allianz France, Nasdaq, Thales, Bureau Veritas or Bouygues Immobilier, and is currently France's leading company using the blockchain technology in terms of staff and projects development.

*The funding will accelerate Stratumn's development and expansion into the U.S.*

This funding round constitutes a major step for Stratumn, as it will allow the company to accelerate its development, notably by focusing on research, product design, and business development, as well as by continuing to attract talented individuals to join its 15-person strong international team - the company aims to double its size by the end of 2018. Stratumn also intends to develop its international activities through a planned expansion into the United States by the end of the year. This would allow the company to become closer to key stakeholders and decision centres in their core market segments.  

This round, led by Open CNP, the Corporate Venture arm of CNP Assurances, with the participation of Nasdaq, Digital Currency Group and existing investor Otium Venture, combines major corporate and financial investors from France and the United States. In addition to enabling Stratumn's development through additional funding, these investors will support Stratumn's growth in their respective fields and geographies through partnerships and knowledge sharing, which will help the company reinforce its existing links with the insurance, capital markets and digital currency ecosystems.

Stratumn and Nasdaq have also entered into a co-research and development partnership, which aims at leveraging  Proof of Process Technology  to enhance the software solutions and products for the capital markets, particularly in Nasdaq's Market Technology business and its own enterprise technology unit.

*Richard Caetano, Co-founder and CEO of Stratumn*  declared:  "We are very pleased to have successfully closed this series A round, which represents a major milestone for Stratumn. Our new investors will enable Stratumn to continue and accelerate its development and more effectively address growing needs in our markets. We are especially happy with the continued and increased support from Otium Venture, who have accompanied us for a year, and excited to welcome CNP Assurances, Nasdaq and Digital Currency Group, who will help us reinforce Stratumn's presence in the insurance and capital markets sectors. We are very confident about Stratumn's development prospects in the upcoming months and years. The successful closing of this round, as well as our investor's commitment as strategic partners, is rocket fuel which will power the development and launch of Proof of Process Technology."

*Magali Noé, CDO of CNP Assurances * said:  " Blockchain technology makes processes more reliable and streamlines information flows for consortiums. We would like to promote this technology to our partners and to insurance industry players using the Proof of Process Technology developed by Stratumn. This investment is part of the €100 million that CNP Assurances allocates to start-ups over a five-year period through its Open CNP programme and is the fourth Open CNP investment to date." 

*Bruno Raillard, Partner at Otium Venture, * added: *   " * We have been strong supporters since Stratumn's seed round one year ago. We were struck by the clarity and ambition of Richard's vision: enabling companies to embed security, traceability and transparency into their mission-critical business processes. The opportunity is massive. It's not about the $40bn+ of potential savings on compliance and back-office costs in capital markets, insurance and energy alone; it's about building the layer of trust that the network economy really needs to blossom. We're thrilled to see Stratumn grow and to be part of this important step."

*Nasdaq Head of Corporate Strategy Jean-Jacques Louis*  said:  "An investment in Stratumn was a natural development for us given the experimentation projects we have successfully executed with Richard and his team over the past year. We look forward to furthering our relationship between Stratumn and our technology team by collaborating on developing and applying unique financial technology that will bolster and strengthen the current and next generation products for our customers and ourselves. This approach fits with the mission of Nasdaq and, in particularly, our newly formed  Nasdaq Ventures ."

*Digital Currency Group CEO Barry Silbert * said:  "We are eager to have Stratumn join the DCG family, which now includes 100 companies across 28 countries. Stratumn's Proof of Process Technology solves critical challenges around verifying and auditing the integrity of data used to make critical business decisions, and we look forward to helping the team build partnerships across our network of blockchain service providers and enterprises."

*About Stratumn:*  Founded in Paris in 2015 by Richard Caetano, an American entrepreneur, Stephan Florquin and Sebastien Couture, Stratumn develops network technology to secure processes between enterprise partners, customers and regulators. Its  Proof of Process Technology  combines blockchain networks and advanced cryptography to streamline and secure the critical processes between organizations while insuring data privacy and reducing operational frictions and costs. Learn more at  www.stratumn.com  or follow  @StratumnHQ  for updates on Stratumn.

*About CNP Assurances:*  CNP Assurances is France's leading personal insurer with net profit of €1,200 million in 2016. The Group also has operations in other European countries and in Latin America, with a significant presence in Brazil. It has more than 35 million personal risk/protection insureds worldwide and more than 14 million savings and pensions policyholders. For 160 years, CNP Assurances has been protecting people against the risks of everyday life. The Group designs and manages life insurance, pension, personal risk insurance and protection products (term creditor insurance and health insurance). CNP Assurances has been listed on the first market of the Paris Stock Exchange since 1998 and has a stable shareholder structure thanks to the signing of an agreement between its major shareholders (Caisse des Dépôts, La Banque Postale, Groupe BPCE and the French State).  

*About Otium Venture:*  Otium is a thesis-driven, early-stage European VC, backing the founders building the creative society. Otium Venture is Otium's tech-focused team, investing in startups that create value through software, data and network effects. To learn more, please visit:  otiumcapital.com .

*About Nasdaq: * Nasdaq (Nasdaq:NDAQ) is a leading global provider of trading, clearing, exchange technology, listing, information and public company services. Through its diverse portfolio of solutions, Nasdaq enables customers to plan, optimize and execute their business vision with confidence, using proven technologies that provide transparency and insight for navigating today's global capital markets. As the creator of the world's first electronic stock market, its technology powers more than 89 marketplaces in 50 countries, and 1 in 10 of the world's securities transactions. Nasdaq is home to 3,800 total listings with a market value of $11 trillion. To learn more, visit:   http://business.nasdaq.com . 

*About Digital Currency Group:*  Digital Currency Group builds and supports bitcoin and blockchain companies by leveraging its insights, network, and access to capital. Based in New York City, DCG is the most active investor in the blockchain industry with over 100 investments in nearly 30 countries. Visit  www.dcg.co  or follow @DCGCo for updates on DCG and its dynamic ecosystem.

*Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements*

The matters described herein contain forward-looking statements that are made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements about Nasdaq and its products and offerings. We caution that these statements are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties or other factors beyond Nasdaq's control. These factors include, but are not limited to factors detailed in Nasdaq's annual report on Form 10-K, and periodic reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. We undertake no obligation to release any revisions to any forward-looking statements.

NDAQG

Media contacts

Stratumn - Brunswick Group - stratumn@brunswickgroup.com 

France: Domitille Harb, Tristan Bourassin
+33 (0) 1 53 96 83 83

USA: Brunswick San Francisco 
+1 415 671 7676

CNP Assurances - servicepresse@cnp.fr

Florence de Montmarin, Tamara Bernard
+33 (0) 1 42 18 86 51 / +33 (0) 1 42 18 86 19

Otium Venture - gabriela@otiumcapital.com

Gabriela Salord
+33 (0) 6 79 90 27 07

Nasdaq - ryan.wells@nasdaq.com  

Ryan Wells
Direct: +44 (0) 20 3753 2231
Mobile:  +44 (0) 7809 596 390 

Digital Currency Group - press@dcg.co 
--------------------This announcement is distributed by NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions on behalf of NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: Nasdaq via GlobeNewswire

HUG#2111376 Reported by GlobeNewswire 7 hours ago.

One of two insurers in this tiny state has announced it will not be back in the marketplaces next year, leaving customers concerned about the prices they will pay. Reported by CNNMoney 6 hours ago.

Several of the largest commercial health insurance companies have recently enacted policies intended to steer patients away from hospital-based facilities for the infusion of some of the most common drugs used for the treatment of auto-immune and inflammatory conditions. The Arise Infusion Therapy team helps to manage all issues affecting insurance pre-authorization, payment arrangements and scheduling to ensure a smooth and pleasant infusion experience.

Washington, DC (PRWEB) June 08, 2017

Several of the largest commercial health insurance companies have recently enacted policies intended to steer patients away from hospital-based facilities for the infusion of some of the most common drugs used for the treatment of auto-immune and inflammatory conditions. Citing significantly higher costs for care provided at hospitals, these insurers want patients to seek out less expensive settings to receive routine infusions. A common strategy employed by the payers is to require the prescribing physician to submit justification of medical necessity for hospital-based infusion. Use of hospital-based infusion centers without medical justification can result in the insurance company’s refusal to pay for treatment.

Not all infused medications have been subjected to these new rules, but many of the most popular anti-inflammatory drugs, such as Remicade (Infliximab), are frequently cited. It is best to check directly with your insurance company to determine if they have instituted restrictions on hospital-based therapy and for a list of drugs included in their restrictions.

ARISE INFUSION THERAPY SERVICES has five conveniently located centers in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area that provide safe, cost effective infusion therapy for patients in need of a non-hospital based treatment option. Arise Infusion centers are modern and attractive with many amenities to ensure your comfort. Most patients prefer Arise Infusion to both hospital-based and home-based care. Emphasizing a “safety first” philosophy, Arise Infusion centers are staffed with highly trained registered nurses working under physician supervision. “Most patients find Arise to be more pleasant and more convenient than receiving care in the hospital, with no sacrifice in safety or efficacy,” states Arise Medical Director Dr. Ashley Beall, MD, FACR. “We focus on patients with auto-immune and inflammatory conditions who aren’t so sick that they need to be treated in a hospital and aren’t so frail that they require home care. The offices are bright, cheerful places where people take a break to manage their conditions so they can lead full and productive lives.”

In their 2010 Medical Injectables and Oncology Trend Report, ICORE Healthcare determined that the cost of providing infusion therapy in an outpatient center such as Arise Infusion was roughly half the cost of providing the same treatment in a hospital. This savings may directly impact the patient in the form of lower out-of-pocket expenses. With rapid growth forecasted in the number of conditions that will be treated through infusion and a specialty drug market size already over $120 billion, it is not difficult to see the vast potential for overall health care savings by infusing drugs in more cost-efficient settings.

The Arise Infusion team helps to manage all issues affecting insurance pre-authorization, payment arrangements and scheduling to ensure a smooth and pleasant infusion experience. For more information regarding Arise Infusion visit our website at http://www.ariseinfusion.com or call 240-514-5000. Reported by PRWeb 6 hours ago.

Trumpcare would be devastating for millions of American families, but perhaps no one will bear the brunt of its cruelty more than older Americans. This harmful legislation raises costs and imposes a crushing age tax on older Americans right when they need the money the most ― just before retirement. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) prevented insurance companies from charging older enrollees more than three times the rate charged to their youngest enrollees. This ensures coverage is affordable for older Americans. However, under Trumpcare, states could choose to allow insurance companies to increase premiums for older Americans as high as they like, exposing older Americans to exponentially higher premiums. AARP estimates that allowing insurance companies to charge older Americans five times more than younger enrollees would add an average of $3,200 annually to premiums for adults age 60 or older. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office also confirmed that older Americans could see their premiums increased by over 800 percent under Trumpcare. About half of households age 55 and olderhave no retirement savings and these pre-retirement individuals can’t afford more health costs shifted onto them.

In addition to skyrocketing premiums, Trumpcare also unravels protections that older Americans want and need in their health coverage. The ACA currently requires health insurance companies to cover ten categories of essential health benefits in Marketplace plans, including mental health treatment and prescription drug coverage. Trumpcare strips away this guaranteed coverage, potentially leaving millions of older Americans without access to the coverage or the medications they need.  We know that three out of four adults age 50 and over take at least one prescription medication on a regular basis.  Losing access to quality and comprehensive coverage, including for prescription drugs, would be devastating to older Americans.

That’s not all. Trumpcare frees insurers to set premiums for enrollees, including older Americans, based on their health status. This would take us back to the days when health insurance coverage was unaffordable for individuals with pre-existing conditions ― especially for the 25 million older adults with pre-existing conditions. Exorbitantly high premiums and coverage that excludes certain conditions, such as hypertension, are, in practice, no different than coverage denials. If an insurer wanted to deny someone coverage, they could simply offer a plan with an overly expensive premium or a plan without the kind of coverage needed.

All in all, Trumpcare is a bad plan for older Americans.

Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL-08) is a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=590fc188e4b056aa2363d67c,59286a00e4b0df57cbfb7e1b

-- 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 5 hours ago.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior House Republican on Thursday called for immediate action to stabilize shaky health insurance markets around the country, amid concerns that the GOP could get blamed for rising premiums and dwindling choice next year. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said the government should keep paying billions of dollars in "cost-sharing" subsidies that help low-income people with deductibles and copayments. President Donald Trump asserts that the Affordable Care Act is collapsing, and he's repeatedly threatened to halt subsidy payments to force Democrats to negotiate on health care legislation. Testifying on Capitol Hill about the budget, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price tried to reassure lawmakers that the administration will not make any sudden moves. The Obama health care law provides two kinds of government subsidies to help people with modest incomes purchase private insurance. House Republicans sued the Obama administration over the payments, claiming that the ACA as written lacked explicit congressional authorization. Reported by SeattlePI.com 3 hours ago.

Father’s Day is fast approaching, and lifestyle brands are sharing their top gift recommendations ― that includes Ivanka Trump’s brand.

On Tuesday, Ivanka Trump HQ tweeted out its Father’s Day gift guide. 


Whether a football lover or a coffee aficionado, these picks will please every dad:https://t.co/xzoSzNiuVk #FathersDay #GiftGuide pic.twitter.com/I9RfWpLpJ8

— Ivanka Trump HQ (@IvankaTrumpHQ) June 6, 2017

The tweet features a photo of gift options, like grilling tools and coasters. “Whether a football lover or a coffee aficionado, these picks will please every dad,” Ivanka Trump HQ wrote. 

Trump has made moves to distance herself from her clothing and lifestyle brand and currently serves as an “assistant to the president,” but “Team Ivanka” remains in operation.

When Twitter users saw the Father’s Day gift guide, they were quick to direct their responses to the brand’s founder and namesake.


What will please my dad is not losing health insurance, have your poor excuse of a dad work on that

— Paradise (@paradisedicey2) June 6, 2017


My dad wanted a clean environment without rising sea levels or record high temps. I wish that had been one of your gifts...

— Ezra DF (@ezradf) June 7, 2017


Thanks for speaking out during these confusing and dark times.

— Justine Johnson (@MoviesSexa) June 6, 2017

Others referenced reports about the Trump campaign’s suspected collusion with Russian officials who interfered in the 2016 election.


And what's @IvankaTrumpHQ getting her dad - 2 big scoops of ice cream and beautiful cake to soothe the #manbaby as he goes down in flames?

— nowornever (@ShoutAloudNow) June 7, 2017


What's a good gift for a dad who's heading to prison soon? Asking for a friend... #ComeyWeek

— fine (@tunedhuman) June 6, 2017


Do you have electric fences to keep people out of the bushes? pic.twitter.com/IRMMhCOkxZ

— Alyssa (@alymdc14) June 7, 2017


Is this good for a Russian dad?

— Lynn Haas (@Haas6Haas) June 7, 2017

The gift guide itself includes a $250 coffee maker, $325 briefcase and a $117 set of grooming products.

Some dads also chimed in to share their thoughts on the gift offerings. 


I'm a dad and I don't want any of this bullshit.

— Comrade B Ware (@geoffglaab) June 6, 2017


As a father, of a boy and a girl, can you please stop your insane father Tweeting? #OrangeBuffoon

— Paul Browne (@PaulUK2901) June 6, 2017

This Twitter kerfuffle comes less than two weeks after the account was criticized for a Memorial Day tweet about “champagne popsicles.” 

Many people referred to the tweet as “tone deaf.”

H/T Scary Mommy

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It looks as if some of the Republican senators who were determined to protect the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion aren’t so determined after all.

On Thursday, while most of Washington was watching former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony on Capitol Hill, Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) indicated he would support an emerging deal that, in the course of repealing Obamacare, would eventually cut off new federal matching funds for the law’s Medicaid expansion.

Those matching funds, which enable states to open up the government insurance program to those whose incomes are below or just above the poverty line, are hugely consequential. Thirty-one states have taken the money, and, as a result, 11 million to 12 million newly eligible people have gotten health insurance.

Without those funds from Washington, most states would likely restore the narrower eligibility for Medicaid ― effectively wiping out the coverage gains, leaving millions of low-income Americans with worse access to health care and more exposure to crushing medical bills.The American Health Care Act, the bill that passed the House in early May, would stop funding new expansion enrollees in 2020, which means ― thanks to the constant churn of people in and out of the program ― that states now receiving expansion funds would lose most of them within two years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Precisely how the Senate would alter the House proposal isn’t clear, partly because negotiations are still underway and partly because GOP senators are writing their legislation in private and without formal committee hearings. But the basic idea under discussion, as senators, aides and lobbyists have confirmed, is to introduce some sort of seven-year timeline ― either postponing the date when expansion funds stop, reducing the expansion funds over a period of time or both.

“I support seven, I support seven,” Heller said on his way into a Capitol Hill meeting, according to an account by The Hill’s Peter Sullivan. “So do a number of us, including [Sen. Rob] Portman [R-Ohio] and others who have been working on this.”

Heller’s endorsement, such that it is, is politically significant because he is probably the most vulnerable Republican incumbent seeking reelection in 2018 and Nevada is among the 31 states that have taken the extra federal money.

In April, during a contentious town hall meeting, Heller spoke about the importance of protecting access to health care and noted that “we have 200,000 people here in the state of Nevada that now have access.” A few weeks later, after the House passed its bill, Heller issued a statement that he couldn’t support the House bill because, among other reasons, “we cannot pull the rug out from under states like Nevada that expanded Medicaid.”

It’s the same argument that Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) once made. Appearing on CNN in March, in response to a question about whether Medicaid expansion funding would be part of final legislation, Capito said, “It’d better be.”
Capito has talked about the importance of Medicaid expansion in West Virginia, where an estimated 175,000 have gotten coverage from it, and the critical role the program plays in combating the state’s opioid addiction crisis. But Capito has indicated she, too, supports the seven-year phase-out.

In fact, according to several reports, she is among those who have crafted the deal. One of her collaborators is Portman, whose state also expanded Medicaid and who, like Heller and Capito, spoke out repeatedly against the House bill’s treatment of the Medicaid expansion.

Portman has described the proposal as offering a “significant glide path,” as if slowing down the withdrawal of federal funds represents a major change to the House bill. But a handful of states have “trigger” provisions in the legislation authorizing Medicaid expansion in which eligibility reverts to pre-expansion levels as soon as they stop receiving that extra money from Washington. And even in the other states, the ultimate effect would be the very same if the only change to the House bill was the timing of the cut.

“Delaying or phasing in the cost shift to the states under the AHCA would not stop the eventual end of the expansion and steep reductions in Medicaid enrollment,” a recent briefing from the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes. “The bill still would reverse the historic gains in health coverage and access to care that have been made under the expansion.” 


THIS MAKES NO SENSE! Eliminating ~10 million people's health coverage in 7 years is still eliminating ~10 million people's health coverage. https://t.co/oYkavZqDlH

— Loren Adler (@LorenAdler) June 7, 2017

Of course, slowing down the Medicaid expansion cut would mean more spending in the Senate bill, relative to its House counterpart, because the federal government would be supporting insurance for more people for a few years. Republicans would have to find the money to cover that, either by cutting spending elsewhere or allowing some of the Affordable Care Act’s tax increases, which the House bill phases out, to remain in place longer.

That wouldn’t go down well with conservatives, who want to end everything about Obamacare as quickly as possible. But for Portman, among others, pushing some or all of the Medicaid expansion cuts into the future means pushing the pain of those cuts past the years in which they will be up for re-election.

Which isn’t to say they are not still subject to political pressure. One reason senators from expansion states spoke out against the House bill back in March, when President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and other GOP leaders were promoting it aggressively, was the furious reaction it generated among constituents.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his allies are doing their best to avoid a repeat by minimizing public scrutiny until a deal is in place and then voting as quickly as possible, which is the strategy House GOP leaders used to get legislation passed. McConnell’s strategy may be working, in part because Comey and related controversies are soaking up all of the attention in Washington.

Opponents of repeal could still turn their attention back to health care and change the course of the debate. But they are running out of time.

-- 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 21 minutes ago.

Private Healthcare Summit 2017 takes place in London this month

London, UK (PRWEB UK) 8 June 2017

Press access available upon request – contacts below

The UK’s private healthcare market is widely acknowledged to be going through challenging times at the moment, so a high-level summit in London this month is perfectly timed to discuss the present state and future of the sector.

The Private Healthcare Summit 2017 (http://summit.privatehealthcare.co.uk/) takes place at The QEII Centre in London on Tuesday 20th June 2017 and will bring together representatives of private hospitals, clinics and healthcare practices; private medical insurers; consultants and specialists; NHS Private Patient Units and patient and consultant organisations. The Summit is organised by Intuition Communication, the publishers of Private Healthcare UK (http://www.privatehealth.co.uk), the UK’s most comprehensive independent guide for consumers to the myriad of private healthcare options available to them.

The one-day event will examine how the market, demographic and behavioural changes, financial pressures and the impact of new technologies will shape the future of private healthcare. Topics under discussion include:·     How can we extend the benefits of private healthcare to a wider public?
·     How can we make private healthcare more affordable?
·     How can we deliver an outstanding patient experience?
·     How can we solve the staffing shortage in healthcare?
·     Where can we look for new international patient opportunities?
·     What does branding mean for private healthcare?

Speakers at the Summit include:

·     Kurt Barwis, President and CEO of Bristol Hospital and Healthcare Group
·     Chris Blackwell-Frost, Chief Customer Officer of Nuffield Health
·     Fiona Booth, CEO of AIHO
·     Dr. Tobias Gantner, Founder and CEO, The HealthCare Futurists
·     Chris Graham, Chief Executive of Picker Institute Europe
·     Dr Steve Iley, Medical Director of Bupa UK Insurance
·     Sue Smith, CEO of The Independent Doctors Federation
·     Matthew Ward, Corporate Innovation Manager of AXA PPP Healthcare
·     Keith Pollard, CEO of Intuition Communication.
·     The Summit will be chaired by health journalist Sue Saville

Keith Pollard, CEO of Intuition Communication, publishers of http://www.privatehealthcare.co.uk says the event is perfectly timed:

“The private healthcare market is going through challenging times. A static (at best) health insurance market, Brexit, an(other) election, the rising cost of healthcare, pressure on NHS funding, a shortage of nurses and support staff, the impact of digital technology…

The rising cost of private medical insurance has contributed to a decline in the number of people who are covered. Will the declining pound and the potential impact on trade, mean that private hospitals will be facing bigger bills for the drugs, consumables and equipment that they buy in from elsewhere?

With London's hospitals generating 25% to 30% of their revenue from international patients, will Brexit damage London/the UK's destination image, make it a less attractive place to come for treatment and encourage international patients to look elsewhere?

Perhaps the biggest challenge for the UK's private healthcare sector on leaving the EU will be the added difficulty of recruiting staff for the UK's private hospitals. EU membership has made it easier for other Europeans to come to the UK to work.

The Summit will examine how we can develop the market for private healthcare, through partnership, innovation, delivering value and world class care, and will provide a different perspective on what's happening in the UK's private healthcare sector.”

ENDS

For media access to the Summit plus interviews, images etc in advance, please contact Intuition Head of Operations, Sarah Ward on sarahward(at)privatehealth(dot)co(dot)uk

Notes for editors

About Private Healthcare UK
http://www.privatehealthcare.co.uk is the UK’s leading gateway to private treatment, cosmetic surgery, dentistry, private doctors and services such as health insurance. Private Healthcare UK helps people make informed decisions by providing extensive information on all aspects of private healthcare via the web.

Private Healthcare UK is published by Intuition Communication

About Intuition Communication
Intuition Communication is a specialist publisher of consumer and business-to-business information on private healthcare and medical travel. The company provides consumer-facing health and medical tourism portals such as Private Healthcare UK, HarleyStreet.com, Treatment Abroad, and International Medical Travel Journal and delivers marketing solutions, research and consultancy for private healthcare businesses, hospitals and healthcare providers in the UK and internationally. Reported by PRWeb 11 minutes ago.