Source: Are you getting overcharged by your hospital? Time to become a Smart patient | VentureBeat. If you’re a patient represented by Medicare or Medicaid, you’re well served because these programs have significant market muscle: They negotiate prices below what it costs to treat patients. …..With few exceptions, private insurers tend to be relatively weak when bargaining with hospitals, so that hospitals can extract from them prices substantially in excess of the full cost of treating privately insured patients, with profit margins sometimes in excess of 20 percent. Finally, uninsured patients — also called “self-pay” patients — have effectively no market power at … Continue reading Overcharged By Your Hospital?

In the decades since a jury convicted him of murder, nearly every piece of evidence in this case has fallen away. A key witness told The New York Times that a detective instructed him to select Mr. Ranta in the lineup. A convicted rapist told the district attorney that he falsely implicated Mr. Ranta in hopes of cutting a deal for himself. A woman has signed an affidavit saying she too lied about Mr. Ranta’s involvement. Detective Scarcella and his partner, Stephen Chmil, according to investigators and legal documents, broke rule after rule. They kept few written records, coached a … Continue reading Wrongly Convicted….

  Source: Obama’s $2 billion plan to wean US off foreign oil (+video) – CSMonitor.com. If the Obama administration has its way, $2 billion in new revenue from offshore oil drilling will fund research into how to wean American drivers off imported oil… “The reason so many different people – from the private sector, the public sector, our military – support this idea is because it’s not just about saving money, it’s also about saving the environment. But it’s also about our national security,” Obama said. “This is not a Democratic idea or a Republican idea; this is just a smart … Continue reading Putting a Man On The Moon And….

I HAVE come to a resolution myself, as I hope every good citizen will, never again to purchase any article of foreign manufacture which can be had of American make, be the difference of price what it may.  —  Jefferson, Thomas  Who would have thought that the “Buy American” theme started so many years ago with Thomas Jefferson.  If only we had learned this lesson from him. Continue reading Buy American

Source: Rubio: Reported Obama Immigration Plan ‘Dead On Arrival’ | Rubio | Fox Nation. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Saturday panned a reported immigration reform proposal from President Obama, saying it would be “dead on arrival” in Congress. If actually proposed, the President’s bill would be dead on arrival in Congress, leaving us with unsecured borders and a broken legal immigration system for years to come,” said Rubio in a statement I really had hope that the “new” Republicans in the Senate and House would at least be willing to do a minimal amount of compromise in working with their Democratic … Continue reading I Had Hopes But…..