Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/314504488?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Saturday, June 22, 2013
Feds to get more options in vision, dental plans - Federal Times Blogs
June 21st, 2013 | OPM | Posted by Sean Reilly
Email: sreilly@atpco.com
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Starting this January, federal employees and their families will have an expanded lineup of both vision and dental insurance plans to choose from, the Office of Personnel Management announced this afternoon.
The number of dental plans will increase from seven to 10, according to a news release, while the number of vision carriers will rise from three to four. The last time OPM opened up the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program (FEDVIP) to new entrants was 2006. Premium rates and coverage will be announced later this year before Open Season begins, acting Director Elaine Kaplan said in the release.
?I am pleased that we were able to increase the number of carriers participating in the program, and now we will be offering more choices and flexibility for enrollees. . . ,? Kaplan said in the release.
The new vision insurer is ?Aetna; the three new dental carriers are ?Blue Cross Blue Shield, Delta Dental and Dominion Dental, OPM spokesman Joe Resnek said by phone. OPM made its selection yesterday after starting the application process in January. Here are the full lists of insurers (as of 2014) for both categories:
DENTAL??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? VISION
Aetna????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Aetna
MetLife??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Blue Cross Blue Shield
United Concordia??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? VSP
GEHA?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? United Healthcare
Blue Cross Blue Shield
Delta Dental
Triple S
Dominion Dental
Humana
Emblem Health
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Friday, June 21, 2013
NH budget deal ups funds for higher ed, services
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- New Hampshire's Legislature will vote on a $10.7 billion, two-year state budget next week that increases funding to higher education and services for the disabled and mentally ill, but does not authorize expanding Medicaid as Democrats had hoped.
Expanding Medicaid was the last big hurdle negotiated Thursday to reach a compromise.
Gov. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, applauded the bipartisan agreement, but said she was disappointed it did not authorize expanding Medicaid to an estimated 58,000 poor adults.
The Republican-led Senate negotiating team and Democratic-House team traded several proposals on Medicaid expansion before agreeing to establish a commission to study the impact expansion would have on the state and possible alternatives, such as using federal funding to buy private insurance for some.
States can choose to expand Medicaid as part of a key component of the federal health care overhaul, which will be fully implemented Jan. 1. If New Hampshire were to expand the program, the U.S. government would pick up the full cost for the first three years and 90 percent over the long haul. States can withdraw from covering adults at any time without penalty.
New Hampshire's Medicaid program covers low-income children, parents with nondisabled children under 18, pregnant women, senior citizens and people with disabilities. The expansion would add anyone under age 65 who earns up to 138 percent of federal poverty guidelines, which is about $15,000 for a single adult.
Legislative leaders could call a special session to vote to authorize expansion after the commission files its report, but the Senate would not agree to a firm date as the House wanted. Hassan also could call lawmakers into special session ? a move she indicated might be needed to ensure New Hampshire starts the program Jan. 1 to begin capturing the estimated $2.5 billion in federal funding the state would get over seven years.
"While I believe we could move forward now with accepting the $2.5 billion in federal funds for Medicaid expansion, I respect the Senate's desire to study a New Hampshire-specific model and appreciate its willingness to do so in a timely way," Hassan said in a statement. "I am confident that once members of the Legislature see the results of the study, they will want to move forward as quickly as possible through a special session."
The House and Senate largely had agreed on spending priorities entering negotiations. The compromise budget increases funding for higher education and services for the mentally ill and disabled. Negotiating teams agreed to ease cuts after learning their proposed reductions for the Veterans Home would force residents to pay for their own incontinence supplies. Both teams also agreed to pay for new union contracts negotiated with state workers and add back spending cut at the state revenue department and attorney general's office.
To help pay for the spending, they also agreed to require the Department of Health and Human Services to cut $7 million out of its budget and the governor to cut $25 million in staff and benefits with $10 million coming from state-tax supported workers. Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Morse, R-Salem, said layoffs could be avoided depending on how well Hassan went about getting the required savings.
The Senate had insisted on no tax increases and rejected a 20-cent cigarette tax increase and a delay in implementing tax breaks for businesses, both proposed by the House and governor.
In the end, the two sides agreed to raise some revenue estimates and to increase the tax rate applied to smokeless and similar tobacco products. The agreement also lets an automatic 10 cent increase in the cigarette tax take effect, but not the additional 20 cents or delay in business credits the House and Hassan proposed. The House also agreed to drop an increase in the gas and diesel tax to pay for highway improvements. The House earlier had killed a Senate casino bill that earmarked some revenue to road work. The budget includes a gambling study focusing on regulations needed if a casino was to be approved.
The House also agreed to a Senate proposal to fund four new charter schools.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nh-budget-deal-ups-funds-184201991.html
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Zuckerberg Replies To His Facebook Commenters' Questions On Immigration
"If it's just about tech wanting to hire more people, not as impressive" commented one of Mark Zuckerberg's 18 million Facebook followers. "It's definitely not just about tech immigration" Zuckerberg shot back in the comments for a video he'd posted from his political advocacy group FWD.us. Replying to average joes and reporters alike, Zuckerberg tried to clear up confusion about his lobbying.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/13GrYeg5Tvk/
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3D map of human brain is the most detailed ever
The folds, creases and intricate internal structures that make up the human brain are being revealed in unprecedented detail. A new three-dimensional map called BigBrain is the most detailed ever constructed, and should lead to a more accurate picture of how the brain's different regions function and interact.
Until now, the precise placement of the neurons that make up our brain circuitry has been difficult to map, largely because the human brain's surface is covered with folds and creases. Slicing a brain exposes only two dimensions, so it is often unclear where and how the cells within these folds are organised in three-dimensional space.
To make the new map, Katrin Amunts of the J?lich Research Centre in Germany and her colleagues embedded a 65-year old woman's brain in wax, sliced it into more than 7400 sections each 20 micrometres thick ? one-fifth of the width of a human hair ? and made digital images of the slices, also at a resolution of 20 micrometres.
Reassembling these images into a full 3D model of the brain was no easy task. It required 1000 hours on a supercomputer. But because the images' resolution was so high, the computer was able to determine the 3D shape of each fold correctly, even if the slice had been cut at an angle.
Tour de force
"It's a tour de force that has never been achieved before," says Arthur Toga of the University of California, Los Angeles. The model's resolution is 50 times higher than that of previous maps, allowing it to make out individual cell bodies ? although not all of the projections that connect one cell to another. It bridges a gap, Toga says, between low-resolution images from brain scans of living people and microscopic images of the connections between individual nerve cells.
Amunts's group plans to post BigBrain online as a template for other researchers to use and integrate with other findings. For instance, by superimposing maps of gene activity, it may be possible to work out which cells are performing particular functions.
It may also serve as a useful reference for the BRAIN initiative championed by US president Barack Obama, which aims to map all of the brain's activity. "You can't map function unless you can relate it to structure," says Toga.
Van Wedeen of Harvard University, who has argued that the brain is based on an underlying 3D grid, hopes the map will reveal similarly unexpected patterns and structure. "There's a tremendous amount we still don't know," he says.
Brain training
By making similar maps of further brains, it should also be possible to study natural variability in brain structure, and look for abnormalities linked to specific neurological diseases. Amunts is already well on the way to reconstructing a second brain ? which should go faster now that her group has trail-blazed its method.
Meanwhile, Jacopo Annese of the University of California, San Diego, is in the midst of constructing maps based on fewer, thicker slices, but imaging each with a resolution of just 0.5 micrometres. This should reveal the connections between individual cells.
Annese's group, called The Brain Observatory, recently sliced the brain of a person who had suffered from epilepsy and who had lost his long-term memory after surgery. The team is now constructing digital models of sections from this brain and those from 60 other people, including some who had been living with various psychiatric disorders.
Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.123538
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Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Utah businessman known for good deeds accused of Internet fraud
A Utah businessman known locally for his good deeds is being accused of masterminding a massive Internet fraud.
According to a recent profile in The New York Times, heroic acts like rescuing lost hikers and piloting his own helicopter to deliver relief supplies to earthquake victims in Haiti may have been funded on the backs of defrauded customers from his business.
The Federal Trade Commission has accused Jeremy Johnson of ?one of the largest and most intricate online marketing frauds ever perpetrated in the United States,? according to the Times.
The Times reports that the now-defunct company, I Works, promised to help members apply for government grants. The company allegedly lured in customers with the promise of easy money and risk-free guarantees, and it then would continue to charge the credit cards of ?unwitting consumers? for pricey monthly subscription fees.
Through this scheme, charges the FTC, Johnson amassed a fortune of $275 million. While the system of ongoing fees is not necessarily illegal, the government has charged that Johnson?s company failed to disclose the monthly fees or give customers a window of time to opt out of the subscription services.
For his part, the 6-foot-tall, red-haired Johnson vigorously disputes the accusations.
"They are absolutely not true," Johnson said of the allegations to the Salt Lake Tribune in 2010. "I never charged any consumer for anything without their consent."
Meanwhile, according to the Times, the rolling fees helped fund a lavish lifestyle ?of helicopters and houseboats, classic cars and poker at a Las Vegas casino."
The company first came under scrutiny after hundreds of thousands of customers began to seek credit for unauthorized charges. Visa and MasterCard ended many of the company?s accounts and fined I Works.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports the company allegedly had to set up 80 ?shell accounts? to accept payments without being detected.
"They had no employees, they had no office locations, they were mail drops," Collot Guerard, the lead FTC attorney on the lawsuit, told the Tribune. "They were essentially fronts, and they didn't have any substance to them other than lending their name to obtain a new merchant account when Jeremy Johnson and I Works were no longer able to get merchant accounts."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/local-man-known-good-deeds-accused-internet-fraud-142233712.html
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