An affordable price is probably the major benefit persuading people to buy drugs at www.americanbestpills.com. The cost of medications in Canadian drugstores is considerably lower than anywhere else simply because the medications here are oriented on international customers. In many cases, you will be able to cut your costs to a great extent and probably even save up a big fortune on your prescription drugs. What's more, pharmacies of Canada offer free-of-charge shipping, which is a convenient addition to all other benefits on offer. Cheap price is especially appealing to those users who are tight on a budget
Service Quality and Reputation
Although some believe that buying online is buying a pig in the poke, it is not. Canadian online pharmacies are excellent sources of information and are open for discussions. There one can read tons of users' feedback, where they share their experience of using a particular pharmacy, say what they like or do not like about the drugs and/or service. Reputable online pharmacy canadianrxon.com take this feedback into consideration and rely on it as a kind of expert advice, which helps them constantly improve they service and ensure that their clients buy safe and effective drugs. Last, but not least is their striving to attract professional doctors. As a result, users can directly contact a qualified doctor and ask whatever questions they have about a particular drug. Most likely, a doctor will ask several questions about the condition, for which the drug is going to be used. Based on this information, he or she will advise to use or not to use this medication.
Recalling a governor has been done before (Gray Davis) in California for reasons not nearly as serious as those under the present Governor Gavin Newsom. Procedures are here.
Let’s take a look shall we?
He pardoned several felons just last month including that committed grand theft, solicited a murder for hire operation in a street gang network and even forgery.
There is a growing homeless problem that is so far out of control, the Center for Disease Control should declare several cities/counties a threat to public safety for disease control and prevention. In fact, the CDC spends more than $3 million out of their California office and most of that is earmarked for Los Angeles.
Remember that boondoggle of a high speed rail system? Well the Federal government kicked in $2.5 billion and canceled a balance of $930 million since Newsom for the most part terminated the rail construction. There is some chatter about restarting the high speed rail construction where the cost would blow up to $77 billion. But hold on….there is more about this. California owes landowners under eminent domain. Seems many of those landowners moved away for nothing, literally nothing. Businesses too wonder about their financial sacrifice. Others could not sell their real estate that was not part of the rail system or eminent domain but was too near the proposed rail project, the land was essentially declared worthless.
John Diepersloot squinted under a bright Central Valley sun, pointing to the damage to his fruit orchard that came with the California bullet train.
He lost 70 acres of prime land. Rail contractors left mounds of rubble along his neat rows. Irrigation hoses are askew. A sophisticated canopy system for a kiwi field, supported by massive steel cables, was torn down.
But what really irritates Diepersloot is the $250,000 that he paid out of his own pocket for relocating wells, removing trees, building a road and other expenses.
“I am out a quarter-million bucks on infrastructure, and they haven’t paid a dime for a year,” he said. “I don’t have that kind of money.” Read more of the sad/pathetic stories here.
Now Governor Newsom has declared undocumented immigrants will get state paid healthcare. The state has already financial obligations it has not paid and must to make things right for her citizens before he can go spend $98 million. Where did that number even come from in the first place? Oh, another detail is a fine on people who don’t buy healthcare insurance, known as the individual mandate. He included in this budget (state budget is $214 billion) an additional $450 million over 3 years to fund insurance subsidies. Don’t forget that water tax too, it is still on the table while the state power companies are toggling power to users to save dollars. Sounds like a third world country more every day. Can the state even fund the $7.8 billion in the state employee pension fund? Oh, all diapers and menstrual products are tax exempt, there is rental assistance and a major housing shortage. Swell eh? photo
Don’t think this is just a California problem, rather it is a national problem. Remember federal dollars go to the state for all kinds of reasons, least of which is for the sanctuary status. People and disease can travel freely anywhere in the country.
It is prudent to review the members of the state legislature, the attorney generals office in Sacramento and the governor’s mansion and consider a real movement to encourage Californians to recall almost all of the state officials for the protection of national public safety and to stop the fleecing of all taxpayers.
Remember the panic Americans went through of the annual exercises called Jade Helm? It was an Obama operation where his military was practicing to impose martial law across the country so Obama would remain a forever president. Then Alex Jones bought into that notion and the message spread for months. It was a Russian troll operation, a very successful one. The Russians have made a fine art form of disinformation such that even government officials and media cannot make the distinctions.
Then of course there was/is the whole election interference operations not only in the United States but, Britain, Ukraine, France and even Mexico.
Among other disinformation campaigns is the whole vaccination thing. Well, the anti-vaccination thing set in and Americans have in countless cases refused to get their children vaccinated as any of them would or could cause autism.
The United States was not the only target for the Russian troll operation(s). Going back as far as 2014, the fake Tweets began. Even the World Health Organization as well as the American Journal of Public Health bought into the issue and Britain paid the price. But, some savvy media types at least did the digging and research once again proved that pesky Internet Research Agency was the culprit. Russia caused a panic and it has worked. Today, there is a measles outbreak around the country due to this anti-vaccine mission. Beyond Britain, even Russia targeted Ukraine.
We are now in a state by state policy matter over the spread of measles and some towns have quarantine programs for people without vaccines or making laws demanding vaccines be administered. Will it end with measles? Likely no. This will affect international travel and visa programs including approvals.
Russia has effectively weaponsized health systems.
A 2018 report by the American Public Health Association, titled “Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate,” came to a similar conclusion.
“Whereas bots that spread malware and unsolicited content disseminated antivaccine messages, Russian trolls promoted discord. Accounts masquerading as legitimate users create false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination,” the report said.
“Health-related misconceptions, misinformation, and disinformation spread over social media, posing a threat to public health. Despite significant potential to enable dissemination of factual information, social media are frequently abused to spread harmful health content, including unverified and erroneous information about vaccines,” it continued. “This potentially reduces vaccine uptake rates and increases the risks of global pandemics, especially among the most vulnerable.”
Measles was considered eliminated in the U.S. in 2000 because of vaccines against measles, mumps, and rubella. Nevertheless, cases have increased in the U.S. Public health professionals have called the disease a leading cause of death among children.
The World Health Organization has said that fear of vaccines has become one of the top threats to global health as previously eradicated diseases make a comeback.
“Vaccine hesitancy—the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines—threatens to reverse progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases. Vaccination is one of the most cost-effective ways of avoiding disease—it currently prevents 2-3 million deaths a year, and a further 1.5 million could be avoided if global coverage of vaccinations improved,” a World Health Organization report reads. “Measles, for example, has seen a 30% increase in cases globally.” Read more here from Newsweek.
Sky-High Deductibles Broke the U.S. Health Insurance System
Employers are questioning a system they say costs patients too much.
Bloomberg: When Carla Jordan and her husband were hit with a cascade of serious medical issues, she knew that at least her family had health insurance through her job. What she didn’t realize was that even with that coverage, a constant stream of medical bills would soon push the family to the edge of financial collapse.
The Jordans, both 40, were once solidly in the middle class, but ever since the 2008 financial crisis, money has been tight at best. Then calamity hit. In 2016, Carla needed a gallbladder operation. Her husband John suffered a seizure the same year, followed by an unrelated infection that sent him to the emergency room. Toward the end of the year, Carla was diagnosed with diabetes. Even after paying $501 a month for medical insurance, they ended the year owing $8,000 to 18 different providers, with creditors threatening to garnish John’s wages.
Health plans similar to the Jordans’ that put patients on the hook for many thousands of dollars are widespread and growing, but some employers are beginning to have second thoughts. “Why did we design a health plan that has the ability to deliver a $1,000 surprise to employees?” Shawn Leavitt, a senior human resources executive at Comcast Corp., said at a conference in May. “That’s kind of stupid.” A handful of companies, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and CVS Health Corp., have recently announced plans to reduce deductibles or cover more care before workers are exposed to the cost.
Yet it’s still the reality for a growing share of Americans. Today, 39 percent of large employers offer only high-deductible plans, up from 7 percent in 2009, according to a survey by the National Business Group on Health. Half of all workers now have health insurance with a deductible of at least $1,000 for an individual, up from 22 percent in 2009, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. About 41 percent say they can’t pay a $400 emergency expense without borrowing or selling something, according to the Federal Reserve. The bottom line: People like the Jordans simply can’t afford to get sick.
Deductibles Keep Rising
About 40 percent of Americans can’t afford an unexpected $400 expense, according to the Federal Reserve.
***
The family had an Anthem Inc. insurance policy through Carla’s job as a public school teacher in Stafford County, Virginia. But the monthly premium barely covered any of their bills before paying a $2,000 deductible. And by the end of 2016, the Jordans were deep in the hole to doctors, hospitals, an anesthesiologist, urgent care, and various labs and testing centers. Their doctors sent collections notices. Some dropped them as patients until they paid up.
“I actually dreaded going to the mailbox,” Carla recalled. “I feel like I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do.” And yet, she said, sickness pushed the family “right over the brink.”
Since the early 2000s, employers have mostly embraced high-deductible health plans. The thinking has been that requiring workers to shoulder more of the cost of care will also encourage them to cut back on unnecessary spending. But it didn’t work out that way. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many families were hard-pressed to meet their soaring health-insurance deductibles. At the same time, studies show that many put off routine care or skipped medication to save money. That can mean illnesses that might have been caught early can go undiagnosed, becoming potentially life-threatening and enormously costly for the medical system.
Patients Exposed
The share of Americans under 65 enrolled in high deductible plans is rising
The family had an Anthem Inc. insurance policy through Carla’s job as a public school teacher in Stafford County, Virginia. But the monthly premium barely covered any of their bills before paying a $2,000 deductible. And by the end of 2016, the Jordans were deep in the hole to doctors, hospitals, an anesthesiologist, urgent care, and various labs and testing centers. Their doctors sent collections notices. Some dropped them as patients until they paid up.
“I actually dreaded going to the mailbox,” Carla recalled. “I feel like I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do.” And yet, she said, sickness pushed the family “right over the brink.”
Since the early 2000s, employers have mostly embraced high-deductible health plans. The thinking has been that requiring workers to shoulder more of the cost of care will also encourage them to cut back on unnecessary spending. But it didn’t work out that way. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many families were hard-pressed to meet their soaring health-insurance deductibles. At the same time, studies show that many put off routine care or skipped medication to save money. That can mean illnesses that might have been caught early can go undiagnosed, becoming potentially life-threatening and enormously costly for the medical system.
Patients Exposed
The share of Americans under 65 enrolled in high deductible plans is rising.
***
How the U.S. insurance system came to stick its customers with increasingly onerous medical bills is a 15-year-long story of miscalculations and missed opportunities. It started in 2003 when President George W. Bush and congressional Republicans passed a change to the tax code that encouraged employers to experiment with high-deductible plans, which ask patients to pay out of pocket for care — sometimes thousands of dollars — before insurance coverage kicks in. The trend got a push when the financial crisis hit: As the economy stalled and employers shed nearly 9 million jobs over three years, companies desperate to slash costs turned to high-deductible plans to save money. The next wave came with the arrival of Obamacare in 2010. Millions who were previously uninsured could now get coverage, but many of them took on deductibles of $1,000 or higher.
The Jordan family never expected to become a casualty of the trend. Little more than a decade ago, they were making more than $100,000 a year. John Jordan had a carpentry business that did well during the housing boom. Carla’s job teaching computer science classes at a local high school gave them steady income and health benefits. When their children, now teenagers, were first born, she recalls paying $500 for her maternity stays in the hospital.
“That was the biggest bill we ever got,” she said.
Since then, Carla’s salary has barely increased and John’s business never recovered after the crash. With student loans, car notes and a house worth less than their mortgage, the Jordans filed for bankruptcy in 2013, allowing them to discharge some debts. But their income never fully bounced back.
They were ill-prepared to deal with sharply escalating health-care bills: Carla’s gallstone, her diabetes diagnoses, John’s seizures, followed by a serious campylobacter infection. The family couldn’t afford the $1,000 it would cost for Carla’s six-week diabetes class. Instead, she got a 40-minute crash course. They shelled out $125 for five pills to treat John’s infection. Still, the bills were piling up. Early in 2017, Carla took a day off from work to go through the stacks of paper, calling each office to negotiate. Few were willing to help.
“It did not really matter to them,” she said. “It was just, ‘When can you pay and how much can you pay?’”
By last year, the couple was making about $79,000, before taxes. They have no savings for retirement or for their children to go to college. “We both live paycheck-to-paycheck,” Carla said. They pay about $35 a month for medications for John’s blood pressure and acid reflux. Carla takes inexpensive metformin—just $3 a month—for diabetes, and doesn’t yet need insulin.
But her diabetes test strips and lancets cost $120 for a three-month supply. To stretch them as long as she can, she checks her blood sugar only when she feels dizzy or nauseous, rather than the standard three times a day. When she had the flu this past winter, she put off going to the doctor until her fever hit 105.
The Jordans’ response to spiraling family medical costs is repeated in families across the country, studies suggest. When one large employer switched all its employees to high-deductible plans, medical spending dropped by 12 percent to 14 percent, according to an analysis by economists at University of California, Berkeley and Harvard. But the workers weren’t learning to shop more effectively for health care. They simply reduced the amount of medical care they used, including preventative care. In high-deductible plans, women are more likely to delay follow-up tests after mammograms, including imaging, biopsies and early-stage diagnoses that could detect tumors when they’re easiest to treat, according to research in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
“High-deductible plans do reduce health-care costs, but they don’t seem to be doing it in smart ways,” said Neeraj Sood, director of research at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California.
Some big companies are sitting up and taking notice. “We all thought high deductibles are going to drive people to get involved—‘skin in the game,’” Jamie Dimon, the chief executive officer of JPMorgan, said in early June. Instead, “they didn’t get the surgery they needed, when they needed it, because they can’t afford the high deductible in one shot.” JPMorgan is effectively eliminating deductibles for workers making less than $60,000 a year.
Dimon has teamed up with the top executives of Amazon.com Inc. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to improve the health care they provide for their workers. The incoming CEO of that venture, surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande, has also noticed the plight of such families as the Jordans. “I had one friend who was bankrupted with a health plan,” Gawande said at the Spotlight Health event in Aspen, Colorado, on Saturday. “He had a $3,000 deductible and couldn’t meet it.”
About five years ago, CVS switched all of its 200,000 employees and their families to health-insurance plans with high deductibles. As the company pushed more costs onto employees, some stopped taking their medications.
“Nobody in their right mind would think that it’s a smart thing to basically be keeping people away from taking their medications,” said Troy Brennan, the chief medical officer at CVS. The company had initially offered a limited selection of generic drugs for free to its workers. But evidence that people were skipping medications prompted CVS to broaden the list, including some brand-name treatments and insulins on the free-drug list, an approach it now recommends to its corporate customers.
The company is also studying a plan to allow employers to offer free, branded drugs to workers in cases where CVS has already negotiated deep discounts. The plan could be in place as soon as 2019.
For the Jordans, such changes are late in coming. On New Year’s Day, 2017, Carla Jordan sat down with her laptop at her kitchen table to write a 20-page letter railing against insurance companies and high medical costs, replete with tables showing their expenses and eight pages of references. She pointed out that health insurance companies’ stock prices, not to mention industry executive salaries, were both soaring, while the thousands of dollars in premiums she paid protected neither her family’s health nor its finances.
“This is an urgent situation, with dire consequences,” she wrote. “Please take action immediately.” She sent the letter to then-President Barack Obama, President-Elect Donald Trump and 220 members of Congress. Only four responded. Seven months later—and for the second time in four years—the couple filed for bankruptcy.
Imagine the other cities in Iraq and Syria. Mosul was part of Assyria as early as the 25th century BC. Of note, in 2008, there was a sizeable exodus of Assyrian Christians. They sought sanctuary in Syria and Turkey due to threats of murder unless they converted to Islam.
MOSUL, Iraq — In March, VICE News returned to Mosul for the first time since the war against ISIS was declared over eight months ago.
While life may be returning to normal in the eastern half of the city, on the other side of the river — where the fighting was most intense — the scale of rebuilding that needs to be done is monumental. It’s estimated there are still 8 million tons of conflict debris that need to be moved before reconstruction can start, equivalent to three times the size of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. About 75 percent of that rubble is in West Mosul, and it’s mixed with so much unexploded ordnance that experts say this is now one of the most contaminated spots on the planet.
In the Old City, where ISIS made its last stand, residents have slowly started to come back – a few business owners hoping to repair shops, and families who have no other option but to live in their damaged homes. Some water tanks have been trucked in, and electricity cables have been temporarily patched together along some streets, but the place feels deserted, and in some ways the scene was not that different from how it looked shortly after the fighting.
Eight months on, there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of bodies still under the rubble, making life unbearable for the families who have returned.
The putrefied corpses are mainly Islamic State fighters or their families, since many of the non-ISIS civilian bodies have been dug out and reclaimed by family members or civil defense workers. The bodies that remain are a severe health hazard, but there’s little political will to deal with them, and removing them is risky given the unexploded munitions littering the area. Nevertheless, teams of citizen volunteers are going house-to-house carrying out this gruesome, dangerous work on a daily basis.
**
One volunteer team is led by Sroor al-Hosayni, a 23-year-old former nurse. Many of her group are even younger; some are medical students, but most have no formal training in handling corpses. So far, they say they’ve pulled and bagged more than 350 bodies that no one else was willing to deal with. They laid them in white plastic body bags where municipal trucks can easily collect them, labeling them for any potential explosives found with the corpse.
“We saw that there were bodies everywhere, in the alleys and inside the houses,” Hosayni said. “I took my team and started implementing this idea by going to help municipality and government workers in removing these bodies before summer comes and disease spreads in the city.”
At first the authorities complained, telling her: “‘You don’t have to move ISIS bodies. Leave them there; the dogs will eat them.”
Hosayni replied, “But one or two dogs can’t eat them; there are thousands of bodies.”
A suspected execution room inside the basement of a collapsed building Al Maydan, the district of the Old City where ISIS made its last stand. Hosayni and her team say there are more than 100 rotting corpses here. So far they have pulled more than 30 bodies from this room n the last few weeks. (Adam Desiderio/VICE News)
After filming Hosayni’s team at work near the destroyed Al Nuri mosque, we followed them to Al Maydan — the Old City neighborhood where ISIS made its last stand — where they had been working on one particular site for weeks.
Bulldozers have started clearing a path where Souk Al-Samak Street once ran along the river, but almost nothing else has changed since the air bombardment flattened this district.
The ruins of arched and intricately carved stone doorways open onto inner courtyards like dioramas of the war, frozen in time: Human corpses in varying degrees of decay lying amid stray ordnance, broken china, plastic toy trucks, and discarded military apparel.
Two hundred yards up the street and on the right, the team pointed us to a building on the banks of the Tigris River. Scrambling through the collapsed masonry, we emerged into two mostly intact basement rooms with barred windows looking out onto the river. In the far room, buzzing with flies and inescapable stench, were dozens and dozens of corpses, stacked too deep to count, one on top of another. It seemed to be the remains of a mass execution.
The body collectors told us there were at least 100 bodies in here; the team had already cleared more than 30 but had barely made a dent in the mound of corpses.
23 year-old Sroor al-Hosayni, a former nurse, leads a team of volunteer body collectors pulling corpses out of a collapsed building in Al Maydan, the district of the Old City where ISIS made its last stand. Hosayni and her team of volunteers have been pulling bodies from what they say is an execution room in the basement of this building. (Adam Desiderio/VICE News)
We saw what appeared to be the bodies of children, though it was difficult to verify given the level of decay. We saw no weapons or military gear on the bodies. The team told us they could see bullet wounds to their heads.
There are reports that ISIS locked large numbers of people in rooms like this, using them as human shields during the final days of the conflict. Many of those families died in coalition airstrikes — but this room was intact. It’s possible they could have been executed by ISIS fighters as government forces closed in. But it’s not clear why ISIS would kill or dispose of civilians in this way.
There are also reports of Iraqi forces executing captured ISIS members in this exact neighborhood. Beards and long hair were still visible on some of the corpses, leading the body collectors to believe some could be men who may have been affiliated with ISIS. But speaking to VICE, a senior Iraqi military official rejected any notion that Iraqi forces may have been responsible for the killings and told us that the site had already been investigated, without providing further details.
One international organization that has documented instances where Iraqi security forces have been accused of carrying out executions is Human Rights Watch.
Belkis Wille, the lead Iraq investigator at Human Rights Watch, visited the site soon after we did. She told us she was unaware of any investigation having been done at this particular site, and that — whoever was responsible for the deaths — the removal of evidence was troubling given that this was potentially the site of a war crime.
**
“Sites like that need the proper forensic teams securing the site and conducting the analysis needed to determine whether this is indeed the site of a crime,” Wille told VICE News. “Despite promises by the prime minister at the end of the battle to investigate abuses, we haven’t seen any sign of that leading to teams coming in and doing the investigations necessary. And the question really is, at what point do these sites potentially lose their forensic value and lose the evidence?”
Inside the remains of Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, Iraq where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamic State caliphate in 2014. (Adam Desiderio/VICE News)
But for the body collectors — and for many residents of Mosul — with the heat of summer approaching, the overwhelming priority right now is to clean up this city and begin rebuilding. The need to properly document and investigate potential war crimes isn’t at the top of the agenda.
“It’s time to focus on the living, not the dead,” was the mantra we heard from authorities and from many families trying to rebuild their shattered lives.
Nevertheless, the question of what happened in neighborhoods like Al Maydan and others in those final stages before victory was announced, and in the days shortly afterward, refuses to disappear.
In the ultimate stages of the battle to extinguish the last pockets of ISIS from Mosul last summer, access to the “fight zone” became increasingly restricted.
Baghdad declared the conflict officially over on July 10. The announcement, broadcast live on state television, came as a surprise to many, since there were explosions and gunfire still echoing out from the Old City where the last dregs of the Islamic State terrorist group were refusing to surrender.
Just a day before that, VICE News was one of the few outlets that managed to get past the cordon to join a general from Iraq’s elite counterterrorism brigade and an advance team of his men as they carefully picked their way across the booby-trapped rooftops of collapsed buildings in the district of Al Maydan to plant an Iraqi flag on the banks of the Tigris.
It was a journey through hell. The neighborhood had been pulverized by airstrikes and shelling throughout the campaign, but the intensity had grown as ISIS fell back to these ancient, narrow streets lined with buildings dating back to the 12th century. There was hardly a structure still intact, ordnance and bodies lined the route, some fresh, some bloated and badly decomposed from days or weeks in the sun.
Reaching the river was a symbol of having decisively broken through ISIS defensive lines, a long-awaited moment of triumph for the soldiers. But as the flag was raised and the soldiers took selfies, gunfire from a sniper still alive among the rubble sent the party scattering for cover. In those final days, as different units of Iraq’s security forces held impromptu victory celebrations after liberating neighborhoods, the question lingered of what the end of hostilities actually looks like when the enemy is hell-bent on fighting to the death.
We will likely never know who killed the people in the basement room of the house on Al-Samak Street — but as long as claims persist that extrajudicial killings by Iraqi security forces may have taken place, the stakes of not investigating those could be high. While there is little sympathy for ISIS right now in the devastated neighborhoods of Mosul, a culture of impunity for any abuses that were committed could set the stage for the same kinds of grievances that contributed to the group’s rise in the first place.
Cover image: The basement of a collapsed building in Al Maydan, the district of the Old City where ISIS made its last stand. Volunteers have been pulling bodies from what they say is an execution room filled with more than 100 corpses in the basement of this building. (Adam Desiderio/VICE News)
Maybe between Amazon, a tech company, JP Morgan, an investment company and Berkshire Hathaway, a financial think tank and provider could solve the corruption within government healthcare first…Just last year:
The Justice Department charged more than 400 people across the country in a major crackdown on health care fraud, officials said Thursday. The accused individuals cost the federal government $1.3 billion in false Medicare and Medicaid billings, according to authorities
The investigation focused on opioid-related crimes as the government continues to try to address the public health crisis that has been sweeping the country. Many of the health care providers charged had billed Medicaid and Medicare for drugs that were never purchased, while others took advantage of addicts by giving out unnecessary opioid prescriptions for cash or charging for false treatments, according to the Justice Department. More here.
It is pathetic that the FBI has an exclusive division to investigate and prosecute healthcare/government fraud.
The FBI is the primary agency for exposing and investigating health care fraud, with jurisdiction over both federal and private insurance programs. Health care fraud investigations are considered a high priority within the Complex Financial Crime Program, and each of the FBI’s 56 field offices has personnel assigned specifically to investigate health care fraud matters. Our field offices proactively target fraud through coordinated initiatives, task forces and strike teams, and undercover operations.
The Bureau seeks to identify and pursue investigations against the most egregious offenders involved in health care fraud through investigative partnerships with other federal agencies, such as Health and Human Services-Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), Office of Personnel Management-Office of Inspector General (OPM-OIG), and Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), along with various state Medicaid Fraud Control Units and other state and local agencies. On the private side, the FBI is actively involved in the Healthcare Fraud Prevention Partnership, an effort to exchange facts and information between the public and private sectors in order to reduce the prevalence of health care fraud. The Bureau also maintains significant liaison with private insurance national groups, such as the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, the National Insurance Crime Bureau, and private insurance investigative units. More here.
Another pathetic item is during 2017, when the House repealed Obamacare and the Senate failed to do so….no one spoke to the whole fraud component which is in fact costing the taxpayers billions…..BILLIONS.
BBC
So, will these companies come to the rescue for their own employees or perhaps lay the groundwork for total repeal?
“The ballooning costs of health care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy,” Berkshire Hathaway (brk-b) chairman and CEO Warren Buffett said in a statement. “Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable.”
Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and J.P. Morgan Chase are forming a not-for-profit health care venture to lower health care costs for their U.S. employees, the companies announced Tuesday morning, sparking a slide in the shares of a host of health care-related companies. The initial focus of the independent company will be on technology that will provide their U.S. employees and their families with simplified and high-quality health care at accessible costs, the companies said.
The move comes amid growing speculation that Amazon is likely to enter the prescription drug business and that has sent tremors through the pharmaceutical supply chain.
“The health care system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty,” Jeff Bezos, Amazon (amzn, +0.69%) founder and CEO, said in the statement. “Success is going to require talented experts, a beginner’s mind, and a long-term orientation.”
The effort is in its early planning stages, the companies said, and the initial formation of the company would be led by Todd Combs, an investment officer of Berkshire Hathaway; Marvelle Sullivan Berchtold, a managing director of J.P. Morgan Chase; and Beth Galetti, a senior vice president at Amazon.
“Our people want transparency, knowledge and control when it comes to managing their health care,” said Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase(jpm, +0.48%). “The three of our companies have extraordinary resources, and our goal is to create solutions that benefit our U.S. employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans.”
“The ballooning costs of health care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy,” Berkshire Hathaway (brk-b) chairman and CEO Warren Buffett said in a statement. “Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable.” Drugstore operators CVS Health(cvs, -1.85%) and Walgreen Boots Alliance (wba, -1.10%) as well as pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Holding(esrx, -0.13%) dropped between 4.5% to 6% in premarket trading. Hat-tip Forbes.
Maybe Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats should have consulted with Watson…
Watson Health value-based care offerings deliver innovation designed to help drive value for providers and health care organizations as those providers and organizations work to manage population health, deliver more efficient care, engage patients and consumers, and optimize business performance – through the power of data-driven insights.
Is IBM part of the problem or the solution?
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Pharmaceutical and bio-tech
Studies based on real-world evidence to help pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies understand the market landscape. Health economics and outcomes research combined with stakeholder research and engagement and management tools.
In today’s value-based healthcare environments, costs and revenues often depend on how fast and how effectively you can identify and engage at-risk patients, members and employees. Our solutions help you gain insight from your data to stratify your populations, design targeted programs, close care gaps and align with quality measures and initiatives.
Outcomes: Leverage insights, outcomes and economics through solutions, expertise and partnerships.
Essential connections: Vastly improve your understanding of your members, stakeholders, patients or employees, to gain essential knowledge and data to breakdown silos.
Confidence: Provide greater evidence and clarity to help you make informed decisions.
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BBC
