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Thus, while economists have cheered the flattening in health spending, families have assumed more and more of the health care burden: even if households benefit from the slower growth in health costs in the long term, they might suffer in the short term as their out-of-pocket health costs rise at a painful economic tim...
In a new study in Health Affairs, Michael E. Chernew of the Harvard Medical School and his co-authors estimate that rising out-of-pocket payments, like deductibles and copays, account for about 20 percent of the decline in health spending.
Other major factors include lower Medicare payment rates, the less-rapid development of new medical treatments — especially prescription drugs — and changes in the way that insurers pay health care providers. Over the last decade, for instance, hundreds of hospitals and doctors have started to accept “bundled payments”...
Policy makers in Washington consider that last change to be one of the most promising ones, though economists say they believe it is only just starting to show up in health spending statistics — if at all. “For a few years, it was like what Bob Solow used to say about computers and productivity growth — you could see i...
Forecasters generally expect the low pace of health cost growth to continue through 2013.
But come 2014, the significant expansion of insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act will start to increase national health spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, although the underlying pace of inflation might remain low. Consolidation among medical providers also might start to push up the pace of cos...
Over the long term, a reduction in health inflation could be a boon for both families and the federal government. Policy makers consider rising health costs to be the biggest threat to the budget. Rising health costs have also eaten up more of workers’ pay, contributing to the decline in real incomes over the last 15 y...
Amidst great excitement and jubilation, the second-year media students of Jyoti Nivas College recently hosted Akhyana, the annual communicative english fest. For this year’s fest, the theme chosen was ‘the comparison and contrast of parallel cinema and mainstream cinema’.
Around 21 colleges actively participated in the fest and enthusiastic students competed in activities such as paper presentation, photography, radio jockey script writing and movie spoof among others.
After the inaugural ceremony, Principal Sr Elizabeth addressed the gathering and presented a short film showcasing the chronological advent of popular cinema since the 1950s.
This was followed by an inspiring speech by the guest of honour Pawan Kumar, Kannada film director and screenwriter whose recent psychological thriller ‘Lucia’ catapulted him to success. In his speech, Pawan pointed out that he believes that there are only four kinds of films — good films, bad films, films that make mo...
This was followed by a panel discussion on the theme. The panel consisted of individuals from their own contrasting niches in the film industry — Anu Prabhakar, an Indian film actress who has acted in 60 odd Kannada films; Shibani Bathija, a renowned Bollywood screenwriter best known for ‘My Name Is Khan’; KM Chaitanya...
The interactive discussion threw light on various aspects of parallel and mainstream cinema and was most interesting when the floor was open for questions from the audience.
Siddharth, a participant from PESIT College.
A young woman who turned to lifestyle blogging to inspire others living with facial disfigurements has been to Westminster to urge politicians to ensure North East students receive better careers advice.
Katie Meehan spent most of her young life under the surgeon’s knife after she was diagnosed with cystic hygroma as a child.
The condition meant she lived with an enlarged tongue and face - which made it hard, at times, for her to eat, and even breathe.
She underwent a number of operations, thanks to the generosity of Gazette readers and businesses, and before she left school she launched her own blog in a bid to inspire others.
It was a conversation with a friend that led her onto a course at Gateshead College in business management - which gave her the skills and confidence she needed to turn her hobby into a commercial blog which has attracted more than one million hits.
Until then, Katie says she received no careers advice, and felt either getting a job or staying on at sixth form to do A-levels were the only options available to her.
It’s so important that schools give students the opportunity to explore other options so that people can avoid making the wrong choice, as I did.
The 23-year-old, accompanied by Gateshead College principal Judith Doyle, took part in a round-table debate at the House of Commons to discuss the issue of ensuring schools comply with a legal requirement to give pupils information on all the options available after their GCSEs.
Hosted by Robert Halfon MP, chair of the Education Select Committee, the meeting was attended by senior education and business leaders including Lord Baker, Ofsted Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman and Anne Milton, the Minister of State for Skills and Apprenticeships.
Katy said: “At the time, the only viable option for me seemed to be getting a job or staying on at sixth form to do A-levels, which might be suitable for some students but wasn’t really for me.
Delegates heard how Katie’s career took a turn for the better after her friend, who was studying at Gateshead College, encouraged her to attend an open day there.
She said: “I met with the teaching staff and loved the environment so I enrolled on a business management course.
“I’d already started my lifestyle and beauty blog – http://katiemeehan.co.uk/ – while I was at school, and the college course gave me the skills and confidence to turn my hobby into a commercial business blog.
“If I’d known more about college then, I would have gone there straight after my GCSEs.
Internal research produced by Gateshead College among students who started courses last September reveals that only 28% of 16 to 18-year olds were given advice about apprenticeships from their school.
Of the 395 students taking part in the research, 56% were recommended to choose one option more than any other, and in most cases, this was A-levels compared to only 10% for vocational courses.
Around 45% of students felt they did not have enough information to make informed decisions about what to do after GCSEs.
Anthony Joshua has admitted he was ‘cautious’ against Joseph Parker fearing he may lose the chance to fight Deontay Wilder.
The IBF and WBA (Super) champion added the WBO strap to his collection with a points victory over Parker, but it was a performance unlike Joshua’s usual explosive outings.
Joshua was clearly concerned about Parker’s power and abilities, and fans were disappointed not to see the Brit let loose against his fellow champion.
But the 28-year-old has now explained it was the prospect of facing Wilder that caused him to change his tactics against the previously undefeated Parker.
‘When I sit back and think about it there was a lot of talking [about Wilder],’ Joshua said. ‘He’s done well to build a profile on the back of my hard work.
‘When we’re all in the same division we have to fit each other and we will get it on when the deal is right.
‘After I fought Carlos Takam, Wilder called me out and said I’d been ducking him and dodging him but I hadn’t heard a word from him before that.
‘So I entered my next fight thinking I was going to be fighting Wilder next because I’d been negotiating with Wilder’s team since after I fought Takam.
‘Then I had a fight with another champion so I thought if I won I’d fight Wilder so I fought carefully [against Parker].
Joshua is back in action next week against mandatory challenger and former world champion Alexander Povetkin, who has just one defeat on his record.
The showdown will take place at Wembley and Joshua is still hopeful Wilder will agree to fight him at the iconic stadium in April.
In this March 9, 2018, photo provided by the U.S. Navy, the aurora borealis displays above Ice Camp Skate in the Beaufort Sea during Ice Exercise (ICEX) 2018. ICEX18 is a five-week exercise that allows the Navy to assess its operational readiness in the Arctic, increase experience in the region, advance understanding o...
Scientists are seeing surprising melting in Earth's polar regions at times they don't expect, like winter, and in places they don't expect, like eastern Antarctica.
New studies and reports issued this week at a major Earth sciences conference paint one of the bleakest pictures yet of dramatic and dangerous warming in the Arctic and Antarctica. Alaskan scientists described to The Associated Press Tuesday never-before-seen melting and odd winter problems, including permafrost in 25 ...
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Tuesday released its annual international Arctic report card, detailing the second warmest Arctic on record and more than a dozen different problems, including record low winter sea ice in parts of the Arctic, increased toxic algal blooms, which are normally a warm wa...
"The Arctic is experiencing the most unprecedented transition in human history," report lead author Emily Osborne, chief of Arctic research for NOAA, said Tuesday.
University of Colorado environmental science program director Waleed Abdalati, who was NASA's chief scientist and was not part of the NOAA report or any of the studies, said what's happening is a big deal.
"It's a new Arctic. We've gone from white to blue," Abdalati, an ice scientist said. He said he normally wouldn't use the word "scary" but it applies to what's happening.
"Continued warming of the Arctic atmosphere and ocean are driving broad change in the environmental system in predicted, and, also, unexpected ways," the NOAA report said.
One of the most noticeable problems was a record low sea ice in winter in the Bering Sea in 2017 and 2018, report card authors and other outside scientists said.
In February — the depth of winter — the Bering Sea "lost an area of ice the area of Idaho," said Dartmouth University engineering professor Donald Perovich, a co-author of the Arctic report card.
This is a problem because the oldest and thickest sea ice is being lost, down 95 percent from 30 years ago. In 1985, about one sixth of all the Arctic sea ice was thick multi-year ice, now it is maybe one-hundredth, Perovich said.
"I left Nome and we had open water in December," Sheffield said in an interview at the American Geophysical Union scientific conference in Washington. "It's very much impacting us."
She mentioned the recent death of someone driving on ice that would normally be thick at this time but wasn't.
"Having this area ice free is having this massive environmental change," Sheffield said, adding there's been a "multi-species die off" from starvation because of the changes that lack of winter sea ice has had on ocean life. "That should get everyone's attention." She said that includes the first spring mass die-off of...
Normally there's an east-west separation of cold and warm water in the Bering Sea that drifts from year to year, but this year the warm water reaches all the way up to the Bering Strait and that's changed sea life, Sheffield said.
Ornithologist George Divoky, who has been studying the black guillemots of Cooper Island for 45 years, noticed something different this year. In the past, 225 nesting pairs of the seabirds would arrive at his island. This past winter it was down to 85 pairs showing up, but only 50 laid eggs and only 25 had successful h...
"It looked like a ghost town," Divoky said.
With overall melting, especially in the summer, herds of caribou and wild reindeer have dropped about 55 percent — from 4.7 million to 2.1 million animals — because of the warming and the flies and parasites they bring, said report card co-author Howard Epstein of the University of Virginia.
University of Alaska Fairbanks permafrost researcher Vladimir Romanovsky said he was alarmed by what happened to the permafrost — ground that stays below freezing years on end. This past year, Romanovsky found 25 spots that he regularly monitored that used to freeze in January, then February, but never froze this year....
This means areas that store heat-trapping carbon, especially methane, may let more of the gases escape into the air and also is difficult for buildings, roads and pipelines constructed on the concept of frozen ground, he said.
Because of warming, the Arctic is "seeing concentrations of algal toxins moving northward" infecting birds, mammals and shellfish to become a public health and economic problem, said report card co-author Karen Frey.
And the warmer Arctic and melting sea ice has been connected to shifts in the jet stream — the currents that move weather fronts in the air — that have brought extreme winter storms in the East in the past year, Osborne said.
But it's not just the Arctic. NASA's newest space-based radar, Icesat 2, in its first couple of months has already found that since 2008, the Dotson ice shelf in west Antarctica has lost more than 390 feet (120 meters) in thickness since 2003. That's bigger than the Statue of Liberty, said radar scientist Ben Smith of ...
Another study released Monday by NASA found unusual melting in parts of East Antarctica, which scientists had generally thought was stable and perhaps even gaining in ice.
Four glaciers at Vincennes Bay has lost nine feet of ice thickness since 2008, said NASA scientists Catherine Walker and Alex Gardner. That's not as fast a loss as in western Antarctica. But loss of ice sheets in Antarctica could lead to massive rise in sea level.
"We're starting to see change that's related to the ocean," Gardner said. "Believe it or not this is the first time we're seeing it in this place."
All these paint a consistent picture, scientists said.
"There's a message that Earth is telling us," former NASA chief scientist Abdalati said. "We can choose to hear it or we can choose to ignore it."
Harry Reid shook up the Capitol yesterday by scrapping a jobs bill coordinated by Max Baucus (D-MT) that numerous lawmakers and the White House had already signed off on. Some liberals had complained the bill included too many concessions to Republicans. Reid's proposed substitute is a much slimmer package. The left is...
Finally "Thank God Harry Reid is standing up to Max Baucus and his incessant need to do everything for the Republicans and big business," says Americablog's John Aravosis. At Open Left, Chris Bowers agrees: "It is enough to make one ask--why didn't he just do this with health care?"
I'm glad he is learning to not let Baucus screw up every god damned thing that goes through the Senate, and I'm glad he is saying to hell with the Republicans. Now, could someone tell me exactly wtf he thinks he is going to accomplish with a piddling 15 billion dollar jobs bill with 9.7% unemployment in a $15 Trillion ...
'Confused and Perhaps Even a Bit Shellshocked,' Nate Silver dubs the Democratic leadership, suggesting this latest move is another bit of reaction to the Massachusetts loss. Ultimately, the jobs bill "should be a trap ... for Republicans," in that voting for the bill makes it bipartisan but not voting for it is tremend...
And He's Confused Everyone Else, Too The Washington Post's Ben Pershing points to signs that Reid took a number of lawmakers and the White House by surprise: "Harry Reid has never been the most talkative or introspective of politicians, so interpreting his behavior and predicting what he'll do next has long been a popu...
Republicans, Unite The National Review's Stephen Spruiell would like to see Republicans take advantage of Democratic disorganization. He thinks this is essentially another stimulus bill, and thus unhelpful. Thus, "in a way, it's good that Reid is nakedly eschewing bipartisanship"--it could give Republicans "cover" to d...
The story of Mexico's 43 students spurred photographer François Pesant to action. These pictures capture a country's violence and loss.
In 2014, when 43 Mexican students disappeared in mass kidnapping, Montreal photographer François Pesant was covering the story for a news outlet back home. He joined a search party in Iguala, the southwestern city where the group was taken.
Says Pesant: "I was really impacted by what I saw."
"People spending their weekends in these beautiful mountains, looking for clandestine graves, hoping to find the bodies of their loved ones to put an end to the uncertainty of not knowing," he tells CBC Arts.
"I decided to do a long-term project on that issue."
The result is a personal photo series called Conmovida, or "Shaken Land" — and on the Season 3 premiere of Interrupt this Program, he takes you inside the origins of the project.
In the video above, you'll follow Pesant and a search party to the wilderness around Iguala as he continues work on series.
Though Pesant tells CBC Arts that he's since completed the project, he remains based in Mexico City, where he spent the last three years developing Conmovida.
It was a journey that took him to Acapulco, Cocula, Veracruz and Coahuila. More than 27,000 people are reported missing in Mexico, as the episode mentions. "Death is much more present than it is in Canada," he says on the program.
The 42-year-old photographer reports on human rights issues in countries around the world, and his award-winning work has appeared in Le Devoir, The Walrus and Le Monde. Conmovida, however, was unique.
"This project is art," he says. "It's definitely not journalism."
As you'll see in the video, the images in the series have a washed-out haze, and though the subject is violence and loss, there are no obviously dramatic scenes. There's no gore, no dead bodies, no anguished family members. Pesant shoots the landscape on Polaroid film, and then blurs the results through a bleaching pro...
"I think that the imperfection and timelessness of the Polaroid negative shows the boundlessness of the violence in Mexico," he writes.
"The faded colours of the images evoke the blurriness surrounding this unclear conflict. The traces of chemicals left on the prints and the defects in the negatives act as a metaphor of the scars left by such violence on the landscape and the affected populations."
Select images from the series have been presented at Mexico City's Museo Memoria y Tolerancia, as well as appearing in Montreal newspaper Le Devoir. Now that the project is complete, he's preparing an exhibition that he hopes to stage in 2019.
Find more of Pesant's work on his website.
Check out some of the photos featured on Interrupt This Program.
As Microsoft readies Windows Vista, it faces challenges in convincing customers to upgrade to the new OS.
Now that Microsoft has finalized Windows Vista's six editions, the challenge at hand for the company is to encourage customers to upgrade once the new OS is available.
And that challenge is nothing to sneeze at, customers and analysts said. According to them, Microsoft faces a variety of hurdles that could deter upgrades to the new OS, which is expected to ship toward the end of this year.
One major roadblock might be the sheer number of editions of Vista expected to be available at launch, said Joe Wilcox, analyst with JupiterResearch. Microsoft's last major Windows upgrade, Windows XP, launched with only two editions -- Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional, he said. XP is now available in five e...
Microsoft already has identified what it calls a "good enough" problem among customers that purchase Windows' client version, Wilcox said. That is, customers think the version of Windows they currently have is good enough for what they want to achieve with their computer, so they see little or no reason to upgrade to t...
"Microsoft's best marketing for Vista will come from simplicity -- making the value of Vista as easy to understand as possible, so people can look and say Vista is a lot better than the version they have now," Wilcox said. With six versions of Vista expected to be available at launch, he wondered, "Are there too many o...
Some of the editions also pose their own unique upgrade issues for the vendor. A change in Microsoft's enterprise licensing strategy that will come with the new OS already has inspired ire among customers. When Vista is released, only customers with Microsoft volume licensing agreements -- either an Enterprise Agreemen...

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