What tech gadget do you plan to buy?
What tech gadget are you most likely to buy this holiday season?
Kindle Fire
iPhone 4S
Android smartphone
iPad
Kindle touch or Kindle reader
Nook reader
Another brand of tablet computer
None of the above
View Results
What next for long-term care after CLASS act folds?
The federal government threw in the towel on creating a public option for long-term care coverage last week, and that would seem to be definitive for now. In defeat, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was doing the right thing in admitting the conceptâs flaws and cutting the governmentâs losses of the proposal, which was a lesser-known component of the new health reform law. It was an attempt to expand the number of Americans with long-term care coverage by providing a basic, inexpensive LTC option deployed mainly through the workplace as an opt-out choice in benefit plans.
Republicans were overjoyed with the decision, obviously, since they have always seen CLASS as a budget trick to pump up the health lawâs revenue and make the law seem less expensive than it is (CLASS had been projected to generated $86 billion in revenue in the early years from premium payments made by policy holders whose coverage had not yet vested).
But there is still the problem to solve about how weâll care for our frail elderly in the years ahead, and its unclear what the path to a solution will be. After the shouting subsidies, weâre still left with an inadequate, patchwork system for funding long-term care in the U.S.
The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College (CRR) says about one-third of Americans turning 65 this year will need at least three months of nursing home care sometime during their lives.
Medicare covers only a small portion of long-term care needs, and the cost of a semi-private room averages $79,000 per year. CRR calculates that the mean lifetime exposure to long-term care costs for a 65-year-old couple is $260,000, with a five percent risk of a $570,000 expense.
Meanwhile, Medicaid remains the nationÂs largest LTC funder, paying for more than 40 percent of all care. And the market for private LTC insurance continues to limp along, the victim of collective national denial and expensive policies.
About seven million Americans have private LTC coverage, according to LIMRA, the insurance industry research and consulting group. Although a 2010 LIMRA survey suggested that 20 percent of U.S. adults have some form of LTC coverage, the researchers thought that was Âan overstatement caused by confusion about what consumers do and donât have.
And, while LIMRA says the number of LTC policies sold in 2010 jumped 11 percent, that gain came against 2009, when the economic crash produced numbers that were the worst since the early 1990s.
The LTC industry also suffered a bout of bad publicity in the past year â the result of double-digit rate hikes on existing policyholders and decisions by several major insurance carriers to exit the market.
Sales for the first half of 2011 are up a modest two percent, according to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance (AALTCI). âSales should be down, considering the bad economy and the bad image surrounding the product â but theyâre not,â says Jesse Slome, the associationâs executive director.
Indeed, the recession has forced Americans to cut back on all kinds of insurance. For example, ownership of individual life insurance has hit a 50-year low last year, according to LIMRA data, with only 44 percent of U.S. households covered. ÂIf Americans are cutting back on that kind of protection, you can imagine that long-term care insurance is a far lower priority, a LIMRA spokeswoman says.
Following the demise of CLASS, Some believes the government should consider steps to reform Medicaid funding of LTC, and create tax incentives to stimulate sales of private policies. âWe need to change the rules so states arenât going broke, and Medicaid is a program only for those who really canât afford their own insurance â and provide incentives for middle class people to get coverage.â
What next for long-term care after CLASS act folds?
The federal government threw in the towel on creating a public option for long-term care coverage last week, and that would seem to be definitive for now. In defeat, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was doing the right thing in admitting the conceptâs flaws and cutting the governmentâs losses of the proposal, which was a lesser-known component of the new health reform law. It was an attempt to expand the number of Americans with long-term care coverage by providing a basic, inexpensive LTC option deployed mainly through the workplace as an opt-out choice in benefit plans.
Republicans were overjoyed with the decision, obviously, since they have always seen CLASS as a budget trick to pump up the health lawâs revenue and make the law seem less expensive than it is (CLASS had been projected to generated $86 billion in revenue in the early years from premium payments made by policy holders whose coverage had not yet vested).
But there is still the problem to solve about how weâll care for our frail elderly in the years ahead, and its unclear what the path to a solution will be. After the shouting subsidies, weâre still left with an inadequate, patchwork system for funding long-term care in the U.S.
The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College (CRR) says about one-third of Americans turning 65 this year will need at least three months of nursing home care sometime during their lives.
Medicare covers only a small portion of long-term care needs, and the cost of a semi-private room averages $79,000 per year. CRR calculates that the mean lifetime exposure to long-term care costs for a 65-year-old couple is $260,000, with a five percent risk of a $570,000 expense.
Meanwhile, Medicaid remains the nationÂs largest LTC funder, paying for more than 40 percent of all care. And the market for private LTC insurance continues to limp along, the victim of collective national denial and expensive policies.
About seven million Americans have private LTC coverage, according to LIMRA, the insurance industry research and consulting group. Although a 2010 LIMRA survey suggested that 20 percent of U.S. adults have some form of LTC coverage, the researchers thought that was Âan overstatement caused by confusion about what consumers do and donât have.
And, while LIMRA says the number of LTC policies sold in 2010 jumped 11 percent, that gain came against 2009, when the economic crash produced numbers that were the worst since the early 1990s.
The LTC industry also suffered a bout of bad publicity in the past year â the result of double-digit rate hikes on existing policyholders and decisions by several major insurance carriers to exit the market.
Sales for the first half of 2011 are up a modest two percent, according to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance (AALTCI). âSales should be down, considering the bad economy and the bad image surrounding the product â but theyâre not,â says Jesse Slome, the associationâs executive director.
Indeed, the recession has forced Americans to cut back on all kinds of insurance. For example, ownership of individual life insurance has hit a 50-year low last year, according to LIMRA data, with only 44 percent of U.S. households covered. ÂIf Americans are cutting back on that kind of protection, you can imagine that long-term care insurance is a far lower priority, a LIMRA spokeswoman says.
Following the demise of CLASS, Some believes the government should consider steps to reform Medicaid funding of LTC, and create tax incentives to stimulate sales of private policies. âWe need to change the rules so states arenât going broke, and Medicaid is a program only for those who really canât afford their own insurance â and provide incentives for middle class people to get coverage.â
Al Qaeda official killed in Yemen, pipeline blown up
Residents and local officials said they believed the attacks were conducted by foreign aircraft and that there were at least three raids on several targets.A Yemeni official described al-Banna as one of the most dangerous militants on their wanted list.Unidentified assailants, believed to be militants, later blew up a gas pipeline which transports gas from Maarib province to Belhaf port on the Arabian Sea.Yemen’s LNG export facility at Balhaf, which is led by French oil major Total (TOTF.PA) with three South Korea companies holding stakes, opened in 2009 and was the largest industrial project every carried out in Yemen.Witnesses said the flames from the gas pipeline could be seen from several kilometres away.
UPDATE 1-Nighthawk plans fundraising for Jolly Ranch revamp
* Shares down 7 pctOct 14 (Reuters) - U.S.-focused oil explorer Nighthawk
Energy , whose efforts to buy the Jolly Ranch project in
Colorado were dampened by weak market conditions, said it would
raise money through a share sale to fund a new work programme
there.Nighthawk, which was in talks to buy out operator and
50-percent stakeholder Running Foxes Petroleum’s stake in the
project, now plans to raise 5 million euros ($6.9 million)
through a placing and open offer to finance the work programme.”The current overall market conditions have determined that
the acquisition cannot be executed,” the company said in a
statement on Friday.”The company is proposing to push ahead with the first steps
in the new work programme, undertaking improvements to existing
wells and drilling a number of new wells, commencing in early
2012.”In April, the explorer said a study conducted at its Jolly
Ranch project in Colorado estimated probable and proved reserves
(2P) of 55,000 barrels of oil, which was lower than what
investors had hoped for.Last year, Nighthawk had said it would abandon its other
projects and concentrate solely on the Jolly Ranch project, one
of the initiatives that Chief Executive Tim Heeley started after
taking over.Nighthawk’s shares, which have lost more than a quarter of
their value over the past month, were down 7 percent at 3.1
pence at 0724 GMT on Friday on the London Stock Exchange.
UPDATE 1-Nighthawk plans fundraising for Jolly Ranch revamp
* Shares down 7 pctOct 14 (Reuters) - U.S.-focused oil explorer Nighthawk
Energy , whose efforts to buy the Jolly Ranch project in
Colorado were dampened by weak market conditions, said it would
raise money through a share sale to fund a new work programme
there.Nighthawk, which was in talks to buy out operator and
50-percent stakeholder Running Foxes Petroleum’s stake in the
project, now plans to raise 5 million euros ($6.9 million)
through a placing and open offer to finance the work programme.”The current overall market conditions have determined that
the acquisition cannot be executed,” the company said in a
statement on Friday.”The company is proposing to push ahead with the first steps
in the new work programme, undertaking improvements to existing
wells and drilling a number of new wells, commencing in early
2012.”In April, the explorer said a study conducted at its Jolly
Ranch project in Colorado estimated probable and proved reserves
(2P) of 55,000 barrels of oil, which was lower than what
investors had hoped for.Last year, Nighthawk had said it would abandon its other
projects and concentrate solely on the Jolly Ranch project, one
of the initiatives that Chief Executive Tim Heeley started after
taking over.Nighthawk’s shares, which have lost more than a quarter of
their value over the past month, were down 7 percent at 3.1
pence at 0724 GMT on Friday on the London Stock Exchange.
Surgery halts seizures in many epileptics -study
In the first long-term study of post-surgery epilepsy
patients, British researchers found that 82 percent of them were
seizure-free after one year, 52 percent had no seizures after
five years, and 47 had still had none after 10 years.”If the seizures aren’t controlled with medication, that’s
where surgery should be considered,” said John Duncan of the
National Hospital for Neurosurgery at University College London,
who led the study. “In those people, surgery has a good chance
of stopping the seizures.”Epilepsy is a brain disorder that affects around 50 million
people worldwide, including many millions of young children and
teenagers. It can cause recurring seizures, in which brain cells
send out faulty signals, causing sometimes violent muscle spasms
and loss of consciousness.It can be focal epilepsy, where a specific part of the brain
is affected, or generalised epilepsy, where the regions of the
brain involved are much more spread out.There is no cure for epilepsy, but medications can help
prevent seizures in some patients. Common drugs include
divalproex sodium, the generic version of Abbott Laboratories
anti-seizure drug Depakote, and Trileptal sold by Swiss
drugmaker Novartis AG .According to the World Health Organisation, recent studies
in both developed and developing countries have shown that up to
70 percent of newly diagnosed children and adults with epilepsy
can be successfully treated with anti-epileptic drugs.After between two and five years of successful treatment,
drugs can be withdrawn in about 70 percent of children and 60
percent of adults without relapses.Around half of epilepsy cases are focal, and in Britain,
where Duncan’s study was carried out surgery is generally only
available for these patients — usually only when two or three
types of medication have already failed.The study, published in The Lancet medical journal, followed
615 patients for up to 19 years after their surgery.The average duration of epilepsy before surgery was 20
years. Duncan and other experts said that in the light of their
findings, it was important to improve pre-surgical assessments
so that suitable patients could be offered surgery sooner.Asked about the relative costs of the two approaches, Duncan
said in a telephone interview that in Britain, such surgery has
a one-off cost of around 13,000 pounds ($20,000). Drug therapy,
in contrast, costs approximately 1,000 pounds ($1,500) a year
plus ongoing costs of healthcare.In a commentary on Duncan’s findings, Ahmed-Ramadan Sadek
and William Peter Gray of the Wessex Neurological Centre and
Britain’s Southampton University said doctors should change
current practice to refer patients who might benefit from
surgery earlier.”This study validates the long-term effectiveness of
epilepsy surgery,” they wrote. “Clinical practise needs to
change with the early referral of appropriate patients.”
UPDATE 1-ARRIS to pay 76 pct premium for BigBand Networks
* Deal seen neutral to non-GAAP accretive by mid-2012* Deal has diluted equity value of about $172 mlnOct 11 (Reuters) - Broadband technology and software
provider ARRIS Group Inc said it is to buy BigBand
Networks , a video networking service provider, for
$2.24 per share in cash — a premium of 76 percent — to
strengthen its networked video technology capabilities.ARRIS said the deal — which equates to a diluted equity
value of about $172 million, or $53 million net of estimated
BigBand cash on hand — extends the company’s capabilities in
processing, managing and distributing digital video content, and
should help it to acquire technologies and patents.”BigBand’s valuable patent portfolio, coupled with their
expertise in digital video networking, will enhance ARRIS’
technological leadership as service providers move to an all-IP
(Internet Protocol) Converged Network Architecture,” ARRIS said
in a statement.ARRIS said it expects the deal, seen completing late this
year, to be neutral or to add to profit by mid-2012.Shares of Redwood City, California-based BigBand Networks
soared 74 percent to $2.21 in pre-market trade on Tuesday. They
closed at $1.27 on Monday on Nasdaq. Shares of Suwanee,
Georgia-based ARRIS closed at $11.52, a 10-week high, on Monday
on Nasdaq.
State bans use of tanning beds by minors
Previously, California had banned minors under the age of 14 from using tanning beds, but allowed those between 14 and 18 years of age to use tanning beds with parental consent.The bill was part of a cluster of legislation signed on Sunday designed to “improve the health and well-being of Calfornians,” according to a statement from the Governor’s office.”I praise Gov. Brown for his courage in taking this much-needed step to protect some of California’s most vulnerable residents — our kids — from what the ‘House of Medicine’ has conclusively shown is lethally dangerous: ultraviolet-emitting radiation from tanning beds,” the bill’s sponsor, state Senator Ted Lieu, said in a statement.”If everyone knew the true dangers of tanning beds, they’d be shocked. Skin cancer is a rising epidemic and the leading cause of cancer death for women between 25 and 29.”The law will go into effect on January 1, 2012, according to Lieu’s office.
