NAM summit is 'stain on humanity,' says Netanyahu
Opening Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei calls Israelis "ferocious Zionist wolves who digest the Palestinian people" • U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stays in hall without protest.
Clifford D. May: Ban Ki-moon over Tehran
Proof, as if more were needed, that the U.N. is broken beyond repair.
FP: Jews should be clear on what the world’s position on them was, is and probably will be as long as they exist. Unfortunately, they are not.
Egypt may resume civilian nuclear program, Morsi says
Egyptian nuclear ambitions were discarded following 1967 defeat by Israel • Egypt signed Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 but delayed ratifying it, presumably due to evidence that Israel embarked on a nuclear weapons program.
FP: And in that context, how do Brothers and Mullahs with nukes strike you?
Dempsey: I don't want to be 'complicit' in Iran strike
Chairman of US Joint Chiefs says strike unlikely to destroy nuclear program; White House says window on Iran diplomacy not open 'indefinitely'; IAEA reports Iran doubled number of centrifuges at underground site.
FP: And this is the superpower supposed to protect the West from them.
Bill Katz: WELCOME TO THE BRAVE NEW WORLD
The rules of Obamacare are beginning to take effect. Get used to the new and progressive way things will be done. Please be sure to send a thank-you note to Nancy Pelosi. From Fox:
A provision of ObamaCare is set to punish roughly two-thirds of U.S. hospitals evaluated by Medicare starting this fall over high readmission rates, according to an analysis by Kaiser Health News.
Starting in October, Medicare will reduce reimbursements to hospitals with high 30-day readmission rates -- which refers to patients who return within a month -- by as much as 1 percent. The maximum penalty increases to 2 percent the following year and 3 percent in 2014.
Doctors are concerned the penalty is unfair, since sometimes they have to accept patients more than once in a brief period of time but could be penalized for doing so -- even for accepting seniors who are sick.
"Among patients with heart failure, hospitals that have higher readmission rates actually have lower mortality rates," said Sunil Kripalani, MD, a professor with Vanderbilt University Medical Center who studies hospital readmissions. "So, which would we rather have -- a hospital readmission or a death?"
The answer is "death." We are dealing with "progressives" for whom death is simply another stage in life. You may be sure that many of the people running these programs will find ways to get the care their families need.
But according to federal government figures, nearly one in five Medicare patients is readmitted to a hospital within 30 days of release, costing taxpayers an estimated $17.5 billion.
"Readmissions has been a low-hanging fruit for Medicare," said Jordan Rau, a staff writer with KHN, an editorially independent program of the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "They've been very unhappy that about 2 million Medicare beneficiaries are being readmitted every year between 30 days of discharge."
COMMENT: Obviously, each case must be evaluated independently by qualified medical people. There may well be some inappropriate readmissions, and yes, even some corruption. But there seems to be an overall arbitrariness about these new rules. Increasingly, we fear, authority will be taken out of the hands of physicians and placed in the hands of bureaucrats...and seniors will be targeted because their care may not be "cost effective."
Sarah Palin warned of death panels in Medicare. She was laughed at. Will the laughter stop?
FP: Those who think that hospitals will react by making sure that patients don’t need to get readmitted are in for a surprise: they will simply cut readmission rate.
Matt Taibbi: Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital
Last May, in a much-touted speech in Iowa, Romney used language that was literally inflammatory to describe America's federal borrowing. "A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation," he declared. "Every day we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love." Our collective debt is no ordinary problem: According to Mitt, it's going to burn our children alive.
And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.
FP: What decline means: a choice between Obama and Romeny.
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