Richard Gaspar's Public Library

05 Oct 09

Why Business Fears the Public Option - BusinessWeek

www.businessweek.com/...b4150026723556.htm - Preview

cost shifting
Medicare (which covers elderly Americans) reimburses just 78% of health-care providers' costs on average
9 more annotations...
- "The government doesn't try to reimburse at market rates, and that just results in a lot of cost shifting back to premium payers," he says. "So why would we want to let them set up a public plan that reimburses at those same rates?"
- On Sept. 29 advocates of a public option failed to get it included in a key reform bill moving through the Senate. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her liberal allies have kept the idea alive in the three House bills still in play. It's unclear whether President Barack Obama will demand the inclusion of a public insurance option in any final deal.
- Proponents add that government competition would force private insurers to lower premiums, making coverage more affordable for al
- Still, many economists suggest business is overstating the level of cost shifting. "This debate has a religious nature to it," says Rick Mayer, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Richmond. While a majority in the industry insists that cost shifting occurs, he says, "most health economists just don't believe in it.
- A study by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent panel that advises Congress on Medicare issues, bolsters Frakt's argument. The March report looked at historic pricing patterns and concluded that a hospital's market strength—not losses on its Medicare business—causes private insurers to pay much higher rates.
- In the 1990s, says MedPAC, private insurers used managed care to curb cost hikes by hospitals, reimbursing only selected doctors and hospitals at predetermined rates. But by 2000 a backlash against managed care by doctors and patients, combined with consolidation in the hospital industry, gave hospitals the upper hand in rate negotiations, and costs began rising again.
- Not surprisingly, hospitals with the most market power charged private insurers the most and had the highest overall profit margins, according to the study. By contrast, hospitals that were not able to demand higher payments from private insurers managed to stay in the black on Medicare payments by operating more efficiently, reducing errors, and keeping their costs in check—without any loss in quality of care.
- A Congressional Budget Office report issued in December 2008, which also debunked the notion of cost shifting, suggested that hospitals "facing shortfalls in payments" would run leaner, more efficient operations. More efficient hospitals might also reduce their rates for private insurers.
- The health-care debate, in all its complexity, really boils down to this: If you are going to cover uninsured Americans, someone will have to pay if the reform plans on the table don't deliver promised savings. And plenty of business executives worry that one way or another, that burden will fall to them.

27 Jun 09

Replacement DE Pool Filter Grids - Top Manifold Filters - Individual

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pool supplies

05 Jun 09

Benefits of Glutathione - A video testimony by Dr. David Perlmutter

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Glutathione

Custom Business Cards, MiniCards, Postcards and Stickers | moo.com

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online business cards

27 May 09

Microsoft's Next-Gen Search Engine Kumo Expected Next Week - PC World

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The search for Microsoft's mysterious Kumo may soon be over. According to reports, Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer will unveil Redmond's latest search brand, code-named Kumo, next week at The Wall Street Journal's D: All Things D conference

16 Dec 08

Things - task management on the Mac

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todo tool

11 Dec 08

Adidas (Boys) Trofeo Training Pant

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08 Dec 08

BlueHornet - Premier eMarketing Solutions email

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Emma Email Marketing | Email Marketing Solutions | Email Newsletters

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04 Dec 08

Satco 20MR16/GU10/FL S3515 Light Bulbs Unlimited gu10

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Satco 20MR16/GU10/FL

Flash Media Blog: Introducing Adobe Flash Media Server 3.5

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adobe

The new Flash Media Server 3.5 provides new innovation for delivery quality, ease of use and opportunities for Live media experiences that the world has never seen on the web
Flash Media Server 3.5 combined with Flash Player 10 or AIR 1.5 (also announced today) will help improve video experiences in Flash. As we watch video on the web over constant-changing network conditions this feature will allow video quality to improve or degrade with no interruption in video or audio flow.
4 more annotations...
- You can see Dynamic Streaming in action right now, from Akamai’s technology preview site: http://www.streamFlashHD.com/
- For the video consumer – the experience will provide a constant viewing experience that starts faster and has fewer “buffer” disruptions.
- Live Innovation with DVR functionality
  
  This is the feature I am most excited about because it will change the way we experience live media on the web.
  
  Consider the new world:
  
  Imagine you are watching your child’s college soccer game online. He takes the field for the first time ever, and your network suddenly fails, and the stream stops. 5 minutes later your network is back, and you’ve missed that important moment until the video becomes available 2 days later as a VOD stream. There is nothing we can do about the quality of your network, but if this stream was DVR-enabled, when your network came back, you could continue watching the event and not miss that important moment. In fact you could replay it over and over while the game continues.
  
  Imagine you are late to a company-wide announcement being broadcast by your CEO. The CEO makes a big announcement at the beginning of the session and you just missed it. If this stream was DVR-enabled then you could start the stream from the beginning, and only be behind a few minutes. You could always fast forward to live, but you will have received the message.
- Live DVR functionality in Flash Media Interactive Server 3.5 was designed from the ground up to operate at scale. What this means is Content Delivery Networks or large scale enterprises can deploy this feature with very little impact infrastructure. This is because Flash Media Server 3.5 essentially changes the live stream into a VOD stream. This allows the server to leverage the scaling and caching technology already available. The feature also supports just-in-time scaling if your live event was more popular then you had projected – put another way, you can add servers at anytime, including part way through the live, DVR-enabled stream.

30 Nov 08

ADIDAS Trofeo Training Soccer Pants ~MENS Large ~BNWT - eBay (item 260319525537 end time Nov-27-08 07:16:46 PST)

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Adidas Trofeo Training Pant - Soccer Magic

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American Cancer Society :: Cigar Smoking

www.cancer.org/...PED_10_2X_Cigar_Smoking.asp - Preview

The substance in tobacco that addicts people is nicotine, so
cigars do contain nicotine. If cigar smokers inhale, nicotine is
absorbed through the lungs as quickly as it is with cigarettes. For
those who do not inhale, the nicotine is absorbed more slowly through
the lining of the mouth. Cigar smoke dissolves more easily in saliva
than cigarette smoke. This means cigar smokers can get the desired dose
of nicotine without inhaling the smoke into their lungs.
Most cigars have as
much nicotine as several cigarettes. One cigarette delivers about 1 to
2 milligrams of nicotine, while many popular brands of cigars contain
between 100 and 200 milligrams, or as even many as 444 milligrams of
nicotine
1 more annotations...
- Cigar smoking increases your risk of death from many cancers,
  including:
  
  lung
  
  lip, tongue, mouth, throat (oral cavity)
  esophagus (the tube connecting the mouth to the stomach)
  voice box (larynx)
  
  Studies have shown that regular cigar smokers are 4 to 10
  times more likely to die from cancers of the mouth, larynx, and
  esophagus than non-smokers. For those who inhale, cigar smoking appears
  to be linked to death from cancer of the pancreas and bladder, too.

28 Nov 08

Thyroid Images

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What is the Thyroid Gland?

www.thyroidcancer.com/thyroid.htm - Preview

The thyroid gland has only one purpose, and that is to produce thyroid hormone. It does this by producing a protein called thyroglobulin and then attaching iodine to portions of it in order to produce the two forms of thyroid hormone called T3 and T4
T3 has three atoms of iodine attached to it and T4 has 4 atoms of iodine. There, so much for the mystery of why you are getting your T3 and T4 blood tests, they ARE thyroid hormone.
1 more annotations...
- The good news about this is that if you must give up your thyroid gland because of tumor, cancer, or improper function, everything your gland used to do can be replaced with a small tablet of thyroid hormone.

20 Nov 08

SureWest Reports 39% Operating Revenue Growth and 23% EBITDA Growth for Third Quarter 2008

news.prnewswire.com/ViewContent.aspx - Preview

nokeena

During the quarter, 3,400 Broadband voice RGUs were added, up
from 2,800 in the second quarter. A total of 1,500 migrated from the Telecom
segment to Broadband, resulting in a net consolidated voice RGU loss of 1,000
compared to a net loss of 3,100 in the third quarter of 2007
Oldham continued, "Demand is still high for our value package of voice,
video and data. In Sacramento, the VoIP product not only continues to help
offset access line loss, which sets us apart from our telecom peers, it also
serves as a driver for the growth of our high-speed Internet and digital TV
products."
3 more annotations...
- SureWest is expected to pass
  an additional 12,000 new homes with fiber-to-the-home technology in the fourth
  quarter (8,000 in Kansas City and 4,000 in Sacramento), most of which will be
  delivered late in the quarter. For full year 2008, the company anticipates
  passing a total of 26,000 fiber homes. SureWest expects to exceed
  35% penetration on its fiber networks.
- Broadband Business revenues increased to $9.3 million and customer counts
  grew to 6,300. Total Business ARPU grew 12% from the prior year and
  8% sequentially to $494.
- Additionally, SureWest recently built out a second data center
  facility and has experienced brisk growth in this product line as businesses
  seek protected back-up locations to accommodate their network

Google Calendar

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how infinite bandwidth will revolutionize our world Central - 5th Floor - Business and Technology

19 Nov 08

Tech firms turn to social media to reach consumers | Technology | Reuters

www.reuters.com/...idUSTRE4AH8G820081118 - Preview

blogs

Companies ranging from PC maker Dell Inc to storage equipment maker NetApp Inc are increasingly turning to outside blogs, viral videos and websites such as FaceBook, Twitter, FriendFeed and Digg -- and their tens of millions of users -- to reach consumers.
For tech companies with big marketing budgets, the shift to social media is an implicit acknowledgment that television and print are not necessarily the most effective ways to reach buyers, particularly younger ones.
6 more annotations...
- UBS has forecast global ad spending will fall 3.9 percent in 2009. In such an environment, social media could prove to be a cost-effective way to sell to consumers
- Dell said it has used Twitter to sell $500,000 worth of refurbished PCs. The company also took ideas solicited from its IdeaStorm site to make changes to its Latitude laptop
- NetApp said that, for the first time, it is dedicating 20 percent of its PR budget to social media
- One of the most effective social media advertising strategies, said author and blogger Dave Taylor, is to simply hand a new product over to a blogger for a test-drive
- Seagate Technology sponsored prominent blogger Robert Scoble, who wrote about the company's products and took part in promotions
- Historically, companies have been really focused on controlling the information they disseminate ... and the fact is that's dying, because accessibility and communication have so dramatically increased and improved,

13 Nov 08

2009 Should Be a Good Year for Level 3's Content Delivery Business - Seeking Alpha

seekingalpha.com/...-3-s-content-delivery-business - Preview

CDN

Level 3 (LVLT) officially opened its two new broadcast encoding centers and has already started signal acquisition, content ingestion and video encoding services for customers in its content markets group
The new broadcast centers allows level 3 to provide support for encoding up to 24 simultaneous live events in Windows Media, Flash or Move Networks formats. And with both broadcast centers tied into Level 3's Vyvx offering, the company can also ingest video directly from customer's locations and downlink and uplink video from nearly 95% of the world's satellites.
5 more annotations...
- With live events, you get one chance and once chance only to get it right. And while Akamai (AKAM) and Limelight (LLNW) still retain control of the most of the large scale live events on the web, Level 3 is quickly catching up.
- To support live events, most other CDNs currently use partners like iStreamPlanet, Origin Digital, or OnStreamMedia to handle the signal acquisition and encoding needs for events. And while those companies and others do a good job, the vast majority of customers, especially in the broadcast vertical, are looking for one company to handle it from end-to-end
- While CDNs are very good at delivering live streams, they are pretty poor in handling all of the others pieces of a live event and assigning a live event manager who can assist with things not under control of the CDN. That hands-on approach is what makes a live event successful. And if we think about where video is going with higher bitrates, longer form content and HD video quality, the process of ingesting and encoding video is going to be harder to manage and become more important to major content creators
- next year, Level 3 expects to make much of its live event services available on a self-provisioning model. Clients will have the ability to reserve encoders and ingest and encode their own streams on the fly, without having to call into Level 3. While most content owners are content to have someone else do it today, there is a shift going on in the industry as those in the media, entertainment and broadcast verticals take more control of their content.
- As online and broadcast divisions inside a company merge, more are shifting resources to where they want to provision encoders and live event solutions themselves. That logic is part of the reason why Level 3 acquired Servecast last year so it could layer some of Servecast applications on top of the Level 3 infrastructure.

Richard Gaspar's Public Library

Why Business Fears the Public Option - BusinessWeek

Replacement DE Pool Filter Grids - Top Manifold Filters - Individual

Benefits of Glutathione - A video testimony by Dr. David Perlmutter

Custom Business Cards, MiniCards, Postcards and Stickers | moo.com

Microsoft's Next-Gen Search Engine Kumo Expected Next Week - PC World

Things - task management on the Mac

Adidas (Boys) Trofeo Training Pant

BlueHornet - Premier eMarketing Solutions email

Emma Email Marketing | Email Marketing Solutions | Email Newsletters

Satco 20MR16/GU10/FL S3515 Light Bulbs Unlimited gu10

Flash Media Blog: Introducing Adobe Flash Media Server 3.5

Live Innovation with DVR functionality

ADIDAS Trofeo Training Soccer Pants ~MENS Large ~BNWT - eBay (item 260319525537 end time Nov-27-08 07:16:46 PST)

Adidas Trofeo Training Pant - Soccer Magic

American Cancer Society :: Cigar Smoking

Thyroid Images

What is the Thyroid Gland?

SureWest Reports 39% Operating Revenue Growth and 23% EBITDA Growth for Third Quarter 2008

Google Calendar

Tech firms turn to social media to reach consumers | Technology | Reuters

2009 Should Be a Good Year for Level 3's Content Delivery Business - Seeking Alpha

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