Where Are My Keys?

Fewer doctors under Obamacare..

Just as predicted.  Good luck finding a doctor if you live in the Golden State, and use Covered California:

Over 214,000 doctors won't participate in the new plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA,) analysis of a new survey by Medical Group Management Association shows. That number of 214,524, estimated by American Action Forum, is through May 2014, but appears to be growing due to plans that force doctors to take on burdensome costs. It's also about a quarter of the total number of 893,851 active professional physicians reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In January, an estimated 70% of California's physicians were not participating in Covered California plans.

The reasons are pretty simple: reimbursements are down, and docs can't take on a heavier patient load.  Doctors are also required to take on sicker patients, who might not have the ability to pay at all (with high deductible plans).

Recipe for disaster, just as people who understand business have been saying since Day One.

New York and New Jersey are more on the ball than the White House..

Both Governors showing more leadership than POTUS:

The patients with the highest level of possible exposure will be automatically quarantined for 21 days at a government-regulated facility. As WCBS 880’s Rich Lamb reported, those patients include anyone having direct contact with a person infected with Ebola while in Liberia, Guinea, or Sierra Leone.

Those with a lower risk will be monitored for temperature and symptoms, Cuomo explained.

The New York and New Jersey health departments will determine their own specific procedures for hospitalization and quarantine, and will provide a daily recap to state officials on the status of screening, New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said at the news conference.

The new procedures already have been put into use at Newark Liberty International Airport.

On Friday, a health care worker landed at Newark after treating Ebola patients in West Africa, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said at the news conference. A legal quarantine was issued for the woman, who was not a New Jersey resident and was set to go on to New York afterward.

“This woman, while her home residence is outside the area, said her next stop was going to be here in New York,” Christie said. “Governor Cuomo and I discussed it before we came out here, and a quarantine order will be issued.”

The woman will be quarantined in either New York or New Jersey, Christie said.

Where was this when I was in high school??

Photomath is pretty cool:

Need a little help getting through your next big math exam? MicroBlink has an app that could help you study more effectively -- perhaps too effectively. Its newly unveiled PhotoMath for iOS and Windows Phone (Android is due in early 2015) uses your smartphone's camera to scan math equations and not only solve them, but show the steps involved. Officially, it's meant to save you time flipping through a textbook to check answers when you're doing homework or cramming for a test.

See if you can figure out what the author was trying to convey..

Read this piece, and see if you can decipher what point York was trying to make.  I'll help you out a little, with a passage from it:

But then came a woman named Betsy Markey, who reminded the crowd that she was elected to the House of Representatives in 2008 but lost the next time around, in 2010, to a Tea Party Republican named Cory Gardner. Markey is now running for state treasurer, and, almost as an aside, told the crowd, "I am also the only Democratic woman running statewide."

It's true. Despite all the women on the stage, and all the talk about women's rights, when it comes to actually running women for statewide office, Colorado Democrats have fallen a little short. There are six statewide offices on the ballot in this election — governor, lieutenant governor, senator, secretary of state, attorney general, and treasurer — and in five of those races the Democratic candidates are men, Markey being the lone exception.

In addition, of the seven Democratic candidates for U.S. House seats from Colorado, six are men. (Incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette is the exception there.) In this intense election season, Democrats have filled the airwaves with soundbites from women and discussion of so-called women's issues. But the Democrats on the ballot are almost all men.

To me, the message is pretty clear.  York is pointing out the interesting choice that Colorado Democrats (lead by Mark Udall and his lovely ads) talk about women, women, women; but when it comes time to actually run candidates, the choices from the Party are almost exclusively men.

Others read the article and think it is about how in Colorado, neither Party runs women for office.

And that Condi Rice should be the choice for President of Colorado.

 

Al.

 

What does EBOLA stand for?

Enjoy Barack Obama's Legacy, America.

Pretty sweet paint job..

A car, an artist wife, and a few Sharpies.

 

"No viable threat..", ver 4.0

I'm sure it's nothing.

 

You know what global warming doesn't do?

Make big lakes colder.

"No viable threat..", ver 3.0

The second health care worker infected with Ebola flew the day before being diagnosed (and presumably an active carrier of the virus), on the airline I used for 95% of my business travel*:

A second Dallas health-care worker has tested positive for Ebola, officials said Wednesday, as they also asked 132 people who flew with that infected woman on a Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland to Dallas on Monday to call the federal Centers for Disease Control.

Officials also warned that additional cases of the deadly virus at the Dallas hospital where the woman worked is "a very real possibility."

...

Jenkins said the second infected woman, who was not identified by name or job title, was isolated within 90 minutes of reporting a fever Tuesday. She is the third person diagnosed in the U.S. with Ebola, which is currently epidemic in three West African countries.

The CDC hours later revealed that the newly infected woman had flown on Monday on Frontier Airlines Flight No.1143 from Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth. The CDC asked all passengers aboard that flight to call 1-800-232-4632. Frontier Airlines, in its own statement, said passengers who also traveled with the woman on Flight 1142 on Friday from Dallas/Fort Worth to Cleveland should also contact CDC at the same phone number.

So now we have expanded the circle of potential infectees by 132 air travelers, flight crew, the people they came in contact with, the folks that cleaned the plane, the other planes that they then cleaned, those travelers, etc.

The plane was "cleaned" twice:

Frontier Airlines said Flight 1142 remained overnight from Monday and received a thorough cleaning per normal procedures. It was also cleaned again in Cleveland on Tuesday night, the airline said.

"Cleaning per normal procedures" of course, meaning wiped down with rags and basic cleaning solutions.  I'm guessing the crew wasn't wearing hazmat suits, and didn't secure and then destroy the materials they used, as the knowledge of the Ebola-stricken passenger hadn't come to light yet.

So did the crew inadvertendly make it worse, and spread the virus?

One sick patient has turned to 2 new cases, which has turned into several hundred (at least) new potential cases to track down and test.

Good thing there is "no viable threat" here in the States.

 

*I've been a loyal Summit-level status member with Frontier for the last decade.  Recently, Frontier changed their rewards policy, and I switched all my business travel to Southwest, and havent flown them for two months.  I've flown Frontier planes in and out of Dallas more times than I can remember.  Glad I made the switch to Southwest.