Eideard

The Obama administration said Friday that most health insurance plans must cover contraceptives for women free of charge, and it rejected a broad exemption sought by the Roman Catholic Church for insurance provided to employees of Catholic hospitals, colleges and charities.

Federal officials said they would give such church-affiliated organizations one additional year — until Aug. 1, 2013 — to comply with the requirement. Most other employers and insurers must comply by this Aug. 1…

Since I’m a devout member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster can I get a similar one-year dispensation, say, from paying my income tax?

The rule takes a big step to remove cost as a barrier to birth control, a longtime goal of advocates for women’s rights and experts on women’s health.

In announcing details of the final rule on Friday, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said it “strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.”

“Scientists have abundant evidence that birth control has significant health benefits for women,” Ms. Sebelius said, and “it is documented to significantly reduce health costs.”

Catholic bishops issued a statement saying…“Blah, blah, blah, bladiddy-blah, blah, blah!”…

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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced new guidelines…requiring health insurance plans…to cover several women’s preventive services, including birth control and voluntary sterilization.

According to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius the decision is a part of the Affordable Care Act’s move to stop problems before they start. “These historic guidelines are based on science and existing literature and will help ensure women get the preventive health benefits they need,” she said in a news release…

Besides contraceptive use, the list includes screenings for conditions such as gestational diabetes and the human papillomavirus (HPV), as well as breastfeeding support and counseling on sexually transmitted diseases…

The decision to offer contraception at no additional cost was not supported by everyone. You can fill in the usual list of priests and reactionary pundits on your own.

The Obama administration released an amendment to the prevention regulation that allows religious institutions offering health insurance to their employees the choice of whether or not to cover contraception services.

However, supporters say the service will help millions of women who struggle to afford prescription birth control.

“Today is a historic victory for women’s health and women across the country,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America in a press release. “Covering birth control without co-pays is one of the most important steps we can take to prevent unintended pregnancy and keep women and children healthy.”

Overdue. We’re getting there, folks. I figure the United States is almost up the level of political understanding offered by science and social research of, say, the late 19th Century.

A plumber who used the internet to highlight his wife’s affair with a director of one of the world’s largest financial companies will appear in court on harassment charges. Lawyers believe the case could help define the limits of free expression on the internet.

Ian Puddick, 41, from east London, was incensed after learning that his wife had conducted a 10-year relationship with her boss, a director of Guy Carpenter, a reinsurance company that advises clients on risk management.

Puddick set up a series of websites, a Twitter account and a blog to draw attention to the affair, alleging that the director, who he named, was pursuing an affair with his wife on the company’s time and expenses – a claim rejected by Guy Carpenter. The company maintains Puddick’s actions forced the director to leave his position due to stress.

Puddick’s legal team are expected to use the three-day hearing at Westminster magistrates court to examine the actions of the City of London police, which dispatched its serious crime unit to raid his home and office in search of evidence. Plus an anti-terrorism squad.

Puddick’s legal team is seeking to summon a number of Guy Carpenter’s executives to appear at his trial, a move that promises unwanted publicity for a company that likes to keep a relatively low profile. Internal Guy Carpenter emails obtained by Puddick’s legal team and seen by the Observer show that the firm employed a subsidiary – Kroll, a global private investigation agency used by many blue chip companies – in its quest to establish that Puddick was waging a harassment campaign…

Michael Wolkind QC, representing Puddick, said his client intended to defend his actions. “This case is about Mr Puddick’s right to express his feelings about another person’s immorality. Ian Puddick dared to speak out about his wife’s affair and it has cost the public £1m for the extraordinary investigation carried out by an unusually enthusiastic police alongside an elite security firm.”

Puddick’s legal team say his home has been burgled and files were stolen as well as some valuables. However, following a police investigation, there is nothing to suggest that Guy Carpenter or Kroll were involved in any illegal activity.

Puddick is now reconciled with his wife.

Phew! At least they got that part sorted.

A former president of the Maryland State Medical Society, Dr. Sroka has practiced family medicine for 32 years in a small, red-brick building just six miles from his childhood home, treating fishing buddies, neighbors and even his elementary school principal much the way doctors have practiced medicine for centuries. He likes to chat, but with costs going up and reimbursements down, that extra time has hurt his income. So Dr. Sroka, 62, thought about retiring.

He tried to sell his once highly profitable practice. No luck. He tried giving it away. No luck.

Dr. Sroka’s fate is emblematic of a transformation in American medicine. He once provided for nearly all of his patients’ medical needs — stitching up the injured, directing care for the hospitalized and keeping vigil for the dying. But doctors like him are increasingly being replaced by teams of rotating doctors and nurses who do not know their patients nearly as well. A centuries-old intimacy between doctor and patient is being lost, and patients who visit the doctor are often kept guessing about who will appear in the white coat…

Yup. Let’s address law and healthcare legislation and ignore the number of greedy buggers whose choice to enter medicine is grounded almost exclusively on income vs. effort.

Indeed, younger doctors — half of whom are now women — are refusing to take over these small practices. They want better lifestyles, shorter work days, and weekends free of the beepers, cellphones and patient emergencies that have long defined doctors’ lives. Weighed down with debt, they want regular paychecks instead of shopkeeper risks. And even if they wanted such practices, banks — attuned to the growing uncertainties — are far less likely to lend the money needed…

Of course “fewer unnecessary tests” is also a crock as anyone who has investigated rising medical costs should know. Cripes, I’ll even include an anecdote. In a good deal of pain on a weekend, I went to a private emergency clinic. After batteries of tests including a skull X-ray they gave me painkillers and suggested I see my regular doctor on Monday. The bill to Medicare, my supplemental insurance and me was over $800.

My doctor resolved the cause as a previously unexperienced allergy – treated with OTC medication, by the way. He chuckled over the private emergency clinic as “they certainly know how to manage their profit centers”.

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People living in England enjoy better health than Americans, despite less investment in healthcare, research published in the US has revealed.

Across all ages, US residents tend to fare worse in terms of diabetes, high cholesterol and heart disease markers, data on over 100,000 people show…

The reason remains a mystery, says the US team…

Not a mystery if you pay attention to the bullshit cranked out by our bought-and-paid-for politicians.

Despite the greater use of health care technology in the US, Americans receive less preventive health care than their English counterparts…

But despite looking, the researchers did not find any real evidence that differences in obesity, alcohol consumption or physical activity were to blame.

Smoking may be a factor, but Dr Melissa Martinson and colleagues doubt it because even younger Americans who have not yet been exposed to decades of tobacco smoke appear to be in worse health than English counterparts.

And although a larger share of Americans are uninsured or under insured compared to populations in England or other European countries, even groups with good access to health insurance experienced worse health than people in England…

A spokesperson from the Department of Health said: “The NHS offers care free to all at the point of use and based on need.

“Whilst in some areas our outcomes may be favourable compared with those in the US, we are still clear that we have a long way to go before we achieve outcomes comparable with the best performing health systems.

“That is exactly why we are modernising the NHS.”

My mates in the UK complain about the NHS even more than their peers – and my friends – in the GWN complaining about Health Canada.

We have succeeded in modernizing little or nothing.

Coppers still searching for Davis [L] – Ortiz [R] sits in the slammer

Police arrested a suspect in an arsonist-for-hire in Titusville after they said he made a critical mistake — he left the tip of his finger at the scene of the crime.

Meanwhile, detectives are seeking the public’s help in finding the man they say was trying to pull off an insurance scam by burning down his house.

Police were called to a fire at a home on North Dixie Avenue about 11:15 a.m. Saturday. While they were investigating, police said, they discovered evidence of accelerants, leading them to determine that the fire was likely an arson.

Then, while sifting through evidence, officers got a tip — literally. They found a piece of a latex glove with the tip of a finger inside.

Police said they found their suspect at a local hospital. They matched the tip to 24-year-old Ismael Ortiz, who detectives said quickly confessed. But how did the suspect clip his tip? Detective Jessica Edens explained: Trying to flee after setting the fire, “he slammed his finger in the door,” Edens said, “and it cut the tip of his finger off.”

Police said Ortiz told detectives he was hired by a resident of the home, Samuel “Sammy” Davis. Investigators said Davis hired Ortiz to burn down the house so he could collect on a renters insurance policy…

Edens said Ortiz was arrested and booked into the Brevard County Jail.

I guess you get what you pay for – even when hiring a crook.

Alabama Health Officer Dr. Don Williamson and Gov. Bob Riley
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The Obama administration plans to announce Monday that it will make $206 million in bonus Medicaid payments to 15 states — with more than a fourth of the total going to Alabama — for signing up children who are eligible for public health insurance but had previously failed to enroll.

The payments, which were established when Congress and President Obama reauthorized the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 2009, are aimed at one of the most persistent frustrations in government health care: the inability to enroll an estimated 4.7 million children who would be eligible for subsidized coverage if their families could be found and alerted. Two of every three uninsured children are thought to meet the income criteria for government insurance programs.

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, has called the matter “a moral obligation” and has challenged health care providers, state and local governments and community groups to seek out eligible children…

The bonus grants are distributed according to a formula. To qualify, states must have adopted at least five of eight measures aimed at streamlining enrollment for children in public insurance programs and have recorded Medicaid caseload increases that could not be attributed solely to a worsening economy. Thirty-two states did not even apply for the grants. Three of the 18 that did apply did not qualify for payments…

In times of economic distress, the pressure on states, which must balance their budgets, is to reduce costs in the revenue-draining programs. One traditional method for doing so has been to make enrollment cumbersome and to devote minimal resources to marketing.

RTFA for details about the states receiving the awards.

Then, of course there the sort of beancounters who would rather children remain uninsured for predictable reasons: they’re from non-white families, they live in districts known to vote for opposition parties, you know the drill. You’ll probably hear some of their speeches in Congress, next month.

In a snapshot of systemic waste, researchers have calculated that more than half of the 354 million doctor visits made each year for acute medical care, like for fevers, stomachaches and coughs, are not with a patient’s primary physician, and that more than a quarter take place in hospital emergency rooms.

The authors of the study…said it highlighted a significant question about the new federal health care law: can access to primary care be maintained, much less improved, when an already inadequate and inefficient system takes on an expected 32 million newly insured customers..?

More than half of acute care visits made by patients without health insurance were to emergency rooms, which are required by federal law to screen any patient who arrives there and treat those deemed in serious jeopardy. Not only does that pose a heavy workload and financial burden on hospitals, but it means that basic care is being provided in a needlessly expensive setting, often after long waits and with little access to follow-up treatment.

“More and more patients regard the emergency room as an acceptable or even proper place to go when they get sick,” Dr. Stephen R. Pitts said, “and the reality is that the E.R. is frequently the only option. Too often, patients can’t get the care they need, when they need it, from their family doctor.”

The new federal law is expected to bolster primary care by increasing reimbursement for practitioners, luring students into the field with incentives, expanding community health centers and encouraging new models known as accountable care organizations and patient-centered medical homes…

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The long curly hair that sticks out of NFL football player Troy Polamalu’s helmet has been insured by a shampoo company for $1million. Polamalu, a defender for the Pittsburgh Steelers, has been tackled at least once by his distinctive 3ft-long hair which hangs down his back.

Shampoo maker Procter & Gamble took out the policy with Lloyd’s of London. Polamalu’s trademark hair has won him sponsorship deals for Procter & Gamble’s brands in the US.

Information on the kind of damage covered by the policy was not released by the insurer…

Polamalu, 29, is Samoan by descent and says he has not cut his hair since 2000.

In recent years long hair has become fashionable in the NFL, and an estimated 10% of players now have hair sticking out of their helmets. Most are defenders, who generally do not get into positions where they could be tackled by their hair while running with the ball.

Commentators and fans have been debating the fashion for several years. It is not against the rules to pull someone down by the hair.

Nice publicity move for Polamalu and P&G. Something for pundits and peabrains to worry about.

Feel interested enough to comment on what is, after all, cultural fashion?

George Wincapaw thought he was getting some strange requests from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The 63-year-old Vietnam War veteran had had several heart attacks since leaving the Navy, submitting enough paperwork on them to amass a two-volume file at the Veterans Benefits Administration office. But in response to his most recent claim, submitted earlier this year, the office was requesting copies of medical records Wincapaw had already submitted.

Curious, he traveled from his home in Oconomowoc to the VA regional offices in Milwaukee to look at his medical file. What he found shocked him.

He wasn’t providing duplicates. Dozens of his medical records were missing.

Then the public contact representative with whom he was reviewing his file broke the news: An employee had been fired from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Wincapaw’s representative agency, for destroying veterans’ records.

An official with the state VFW, which handles thousands of such cases a year, told Public Investigator the employee had shredded nearly all its veterans files – no one knows how many – after making a unilateral decision to go “paperless…”

Steve Lawrence, speaking for the group, admitted that Lee Guerrero, who represented veterans on their claims, was fired in August 2009 for shredding all of their claimant files in the VFW service office.

He did not keep electronic copies of the documents, either…

“He just thought going paperless meant getting rid of the files  . . . It cost him his job as soon as we found out about it,” Lawrence said.

RTFA. Explains other stuff you may find interesting as well.

Dumbest part? Employees who complained about what Guerrero was doing – were told to shut up. They weren’t high enough up the food chain to get anyone to listen to them.