Thursday, July 31, 2014

Antipsychotics Linked To Cognitive and Memory Impairments

Since there's not much going on with the Blind Juggernaut responsible for Feeding this 26.2% of all Americans - under the Glorious Guidelines of the People's National Institutes for Political Health (NIMH) - will suffer an excuse in any given year for Our Cronies to subject them to a raft of violent, prohibited by Law violations of Federal Racketeering and Civil Rights Statutes in order to fatten Our Cronies bottom lines, today:



Some of our fav Links: (courtesy of nachumlist.com)
Free Republic
Lucianne.com
Breitbart
The Daily Caller
Washington Free Beacon
Matt Drudge
World Net Daily
David Codrea
Sipsey Street Irregulars
Arutz 7: Israel National News
Jewish Voice and Opinion

We'll leave you with another of those boring old studies our bought and paid for Congress can't seem to find, in order to Do Their Job and take all of these drugs, at the very least, Off the CMS Buffet Table.

via madinamerica;



July 23, 2014

Finnish reseachers report in Schizophrenia Research that antipsychotic use is associated with cognitive and memory impairments. The University of Oulu team studied forty people diagnosed with schizophrenia and 73 controls at the ages of 34 and 43 years. “Higher antipsychotic dose-years by baseline were significantly associated with poorer baseline performance in several dimensions of verbal learning and memory, and with a larger decrease in short-delay free recall during the follow-up,” they observed.
“The use of high doses of antipsychotics may be associated with a decrease in verbal learning and memory in schizophrenia years after illness onset,” the researchers concluded. “The results do not support the view that antipsychotics in general prevent cognitive decline or promote cognitive recovery in schizophrenia.”
Lifetime use of antipsychotic medication and its relation to change of verbal learning and memory in midlife schizophrenia — An observational 9-year follow-up study (Husa, Anja P. et al. Schizophrenia Research. Published Online: July 15, 2014. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2014.06.035)

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

House Backs VA Overhaul Bill, 420-5: $10 Billion For Vets To Use Private Medical Facilities

via The Hill;


The 420-5 vote sends a conference agreement worked out by negotiators in both chambers to the Senate, where it is also expected to be approved. It will then be delivered to the White House for President Obama’s signature.
The three-year bill provides $10 billion in funding to pay for veterans to get healthcare at private facilities. Another $5 billion would go toward allowing the Veterans Affairs Department to hire more doctors, nurses and other medical staff.
"Our bill will allow veterans suffering long waits for care the option to be seen by a local doctor at a private hospital," said Rep. Dan Benishek (R-Mich.).
"It's long overdue that Congress took action to provide the quality of care our veterans have earned," said Rep. Ron Barber (D-Ariz.).
Under the bill, veterans may seek treatment at non-VA providers who participate in Medicare if they live more than 40 miles away from a VA facility, or if agency physicians cannot see them within 30 days.
The bill also includes $1.5 billion in funding for the VA to lease space at 27 facilities around the country. That step is intended to ensure that VA physicians can meet a backload of veterans looking for care. Officials have said the VA is under stress given the large number of veterans who have returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The only question in the vote was whether many Republicans would oppose the legislation because of its cost. Negotiators agreed that $12 billion would be considered emergency spending that would add to the deficit. The other $5 billion in costs are offset with spending cuts within the department.
Heritage Action, an influential conservative group, urged members to vote against the bill due to concerns that not all of the measure is offset, though the group did not put the bill on its legislative scorecard.
In the end, only 5 Republicans voted no: Reps. Rick Crawford (Ark.), Walter Jones (N.C.), Jack Kingston (Ga.), Mark Sanford (S.C.) and Steve Stockman (Texas).
House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) and other supporters of the bill argued the emergency spending was appropriate to ensure that veterans receive immediate care.
"It's not a blank check for a broken system," Miller said in comments before the vote.  
The bill is meant to respond to the long waits hundreds of thousands of veterans have endured in seeking care from Veterans Affairs facilities.
Internal reports released by the White House and the VA earlier this year found veterans waited weeks or even months to get treatment, and some veterans might have died waiting for help.
The reports also found VA officials covered up the long waiting times on numerous occasions. The VA was operating under rules in which veterans were supposed to receive an appointment within 14 days.
The scandal cost former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki his job. He resigned at the end of May.
The new bill would also give the department’s secretary more power to fire incompetent executives at the VA. Executives deemed unfit for duty would have an unpaid, 21-day window to appeal their dismissal and get a resolution.
The Senate on Tuesday voted 97-0 to confirm former Procter & Gamble executive Robert McDonald to be the next VA chief. He promised to hold employees accountable when he takes over his position.
"This bill ensures that newly confirmed Secretary McDonald will have more tools to hold individuals accountable for their actions," said Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.). 
On Tuesday, the findings of an agency-wide audit showed that employees at more than 100 agency sites maintained secret waiting lists that covered-up instances in which veterans endured long waits for care.
Miller cautioned that the compromise bill would not immediately cure all of the controversies surrounding the VA.
"Our work is far from over," Miller said. "The reform that is necessary to reforming the agency will require dedication for years to come."

GAO Report Details Flaws Behind $840M O-Care Website Rollout

via TheHill;


A series of management failures at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services led to the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov and $840 million in costs, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
“CMS undertook the development of HealthCare.gov and its related systems without effective planning or oversight practices,” wrote William Woods, GAO director of acquisition and sourcing management, in testimony prepared for a Thursday hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Woods added that officials failed to prepare for the rollout “despite facing a number of challenges that increased both the level of risk and the need for effective oversight.”
The GAO report prepared for the committee will be released Wednesday afternoon and comes after a long probe into last year’s rollout of ObamaCare’s online enrollment system. HealthCare.gov was plagued by numerous technical problems leading to low initial enrollment figures and left the administration scrambling to repair the site and reach their sign up targets.
In his testimony, Woods said that pressure to have the site up led CMS to turn to outside contractors. Officials and contractors, though, never developed an understanding of what the website would need to function properly, leading to cost increases and constant changes.
“New and changing requirements drove cost increases during the first year of development, while the complexity of the system and rework resulting from changing CMS decisions added to FFM [federally facilitated marketplace] costs in the second year,” added Woods.
CMS officials also failed to closely monitor the development of the website.
“CMS delayed key governance reviews, moving an assessment of FFM readiness from March to September 2013 — just weeks before the launch — and CMS did not receive required governance approvals,” Woods said.
“As a result, CMS launched Healthcare.gov without verification that it met performance requirements.”
The GAO also noted that there was confusion over who had power to allow the contractor, CGI Federal, to spend additional money to repair the site. According to the report, as of March, the total cost for the website was estimated at $840 million.
Republicans were quick to seize on Woods’s testimony, criticizing CMS officials for mismanagement.
"As the cost of the exchange closes in on a billion dollars, even to this day the system is not fully built,” said Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.).
“The disastrous implementation of the president’s healthcare law has already led to canceled plans, lost access to doctors and higher premiums. Now add to that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars wasted on an exchange that is still not ready for prime time,” he added.
The GAO is also calling on CMS officials to review the remaining issues with HealthCare.gov and growing repair costs. The office also said the CMS needs to issue guidance on who can authorize extra funding to contractors, instruct staff on acquisition strategies, and ensure better management of new projects for the website.
Obama administration officials said they agreed with most of the report’s recommendations and had already implemented many of them.
“CMS takes its responsibility for contracting oversight seriously and has already implemented contracting reforms that are more extensive than the recommendations in the report, including ending its contract with CGI and moving to a new type of contract with Accenture that rewards performance,” said Kevin Griffis, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services.
This story was updated at 4:49 p.m.

Govt. 'Diversity & Tolerance' New Emails Show Lois Lerner (IRS) Called Conservatives "A**holes," "Crazies That Will Take Us Down" . . .

The feeling is mutual, Lois.

It’s getting harder and harder for the Obama regime to call this a “phony scandal” with a straight face.
Via The Blaze:
New emails uncovered by the House Ways and Means Committee indicate that former IRS employee Lois Lerner has a strong dislike of conservatives, and at one point called them “assholes” in an email exchange.
The committee released an email Lerner received in November 2012 complaining about the “whacko wing of the GOP.” The person wrote Lerner that there are “too many foreigners sucking the teat,” and that the “right wing radio shows are scary to listen to.”
Lerner replied, “Great. Maybe we are through if there are that many assholes.”
The other person then wrote, “And I’m talking about the hosts of the shows. The callers are rabid.”
Lerner replied, “So we don’t need to worry about alien terrorists. It’s our own crazies that will take us down.”

Thank You The Blaze and Zip. 


Heh, . . heh, . . heh.


Ya know, . . . it's getting harder to keep this blog from being blocked for unsuitable content by search engines, . . . just by reporting what our Govt. is actually up to, . . . and Down to.


She's not even supposed to Have, ANY Political opinions in her professional capacity let alone express them in this fashion. 


Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Psych Is Killing SSDI: We're Broke, Get Over It: 35.5% of Disability Beneficiaries Have 'Mental Disorder' 43.2% in D.C.

CNSnews;



Thank You Ms Meyer and CNS.


Here's Social Security from the Heritage Foundation

Social Security Trust Fund Reports Massive Deficits, Benefit Cuts By 2033



Social Security ran a $55 billion deficit in 2012, closing out three years of consecutive cash-flow deficits as the program’s unfunded obligations continue to grow.[1]
The combined 75-year unfunded obligation of the Social Security and Disability trust funds (referred to as the OASDI trust fund) is $12.3 trillion. This is a $1 trillion increase from last year’s unfunded obligation of $11.3 trillion.[2]
The combined Social Security and Disability programs are projected to remain solvent—that is, they are expected to have enough revenue from payroll taxes, interest on the trust fund balance, and repayment of borrowed trust fund dollars to pay out scheduled benefits—through 2033.[3] This is the same date as projected in last year’s report.
If no action is taken to improve the program’s solvency before 2033, benefits will be reduced across the board by 23 percent.

Social Security Is Already Adding to the Deficit

In 2033, the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted, and the program will be able to pay only three-fourths of scheduled benefits. While the Social Security system is considered solvent until that year, this is true only on paper. Social Security already adds to budget deficits.
Since 2010, Social Security has taken in less money through payroll tax revenues than it pays out in benefits, generating cash-flow deficits. Social Security’s 2012 cash-flow deficit was $55 billion.
Social Security covers cash-flow deficits by drawing down interest payments from the U.S. Treasury on previous trust fund borrowing. Cash-flow deficits mean the Treasury can no longer cover interest payments to the Social Security trust fund by issuing additional IOUs; instead, it must produce actual cash from taxes or borrowing. Thus, Social Security is adding to today’s deficits.

What About the Trust Fund?

In the past, when Social Security ran cash-flow surpluses, the federal government spent those surpluses on other federal spending, and in return, the Treasury credited Social Security’s trust fund with special-issue government securities. Although this $2.7 trillion in securities is not counted in the total amount of debt held by the public, it represents real debt that will have to be repaid over the coming decades.[4]
It is true that the Social Security trust fund represents legitimate repayments plus interest, but this distinction has no bearing on the federal budget’s bottom line. Imagine a family that sets aside money for a child’s college education but then borrows all of that money for other spending. Once the time for college arrives, the family will have to scramble to pay tuition because the IOUs in the college account represent money the family must pay itself.
So it is with Social Security’s trust fund. Congress spent all the excess revenues when Social Security was running surpluses, and now repaying those revenues is adding to deficits.
As Chart 1 shows, Social Security repayments represent a considerable portion of current and future deficits.

Earned Benefit or Entitlement?

Past and current retirees receive more in benefits than they paid into the system.
An analysis by the Urban Institute revealed that an average-earning male who reached age 65 in 1960 received $6.39 in Social Security benefits for every dollar he paid in Social Security taxes. This ratio has declined over time to $2.12 for workers who reached age 65 in 1980, 92 cents for workers who reached age 65 in 2010, and 84 cents for workers who will reach age 65 in 2030.[5]
As Social Security has shifted from a program to protect the elderly from poverty to a potential decades-long income subsidy, current workers and younger generations will inevitably bear the burden of Social Security’s drain on the federal budget. Raising payroll taxes on today’s and tomorrow’s workers to cover Social Security’s funding shortfall would only add to their burden.

Three Social Security Reforms

To address Social Security’s massive and growing cash-flow deficits, lawmakers should immediately pursue three important reforms:
  1. Fix Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustment. Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) is based on an outdated measure of changes in the cost of living that fails to account for how people react to changes in prices. Lawmakers should index Social Security’s COLA to the chained Consumer Price Index (CPI), which acknowledges that people choose less expensive and different goods and services in response to changes in prices. This would more accurately protect the value of benefits while improving Social Security’s finances.[6]
  2. Increase the early and full retirement ages. Since Social Security’s inception, life expectancy at birth in the United States has increased by about 17 years, while life expectancy at age 65 has increased by about seven years.[7] Yet Social Security’s full retirement age has increased by only two years, and the early retirement age has not increased at all. Social Security’s retirement age serves as an implicit guideline for actual retirement, as more than 70 percent of eligible workers choose to take Social Security benefits at the early retirement age of 62. For Social Security, this means greater financial strain, and for the economy, it means a smaller workforce, lower economic growth, and less revenue. Lawmakers should gradually and predictably increase the early and full retirement ages and then index both to increases in life expectancy.
  3. Focus Social Security benefits on those who need them most. Social Security was designed as a program to protect the elderly from poverty, yet it pays benefits to more than 47,000 millionaires and leaves many low-income recipients in need of additional welfare benefits.[8] Lawmakers should phase out benefits for retirees with high levels of non–Social Security income and provide a true system of social insurance that focuses on seniors who need it most. Lawmakers should also consider a minimum flat benefit level to protect all seniors from poverty in retirement.

Social Security Needs Reform Today

Social Security is already placing an increasing burden on the federal budget, and all beneficiaries face a 23 percent benefit cut at projected trust fund exhaustion in 2033. Action should be taken today to protect Social Security’s most vulnerable beneficiaries without burdening younger generations through tax increases.
Lawmakers should immediately replace the current COLA adjustment with the more accurate chained CPI, raise the early and full-retirement ages gradually and predictably, focus Social Security benefits on those who need them most, and alleviate poverty in old age with a minimum flat benefit.
Romina Boccia is Assistant Director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies and Rachel Greszler is Senior Policy Analyst in Economics and Entitlements in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.

[1]U.S. Social Security Administration, The 2013 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds, May 31, 2013,http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/TR/2013/index.html (accessed May 31, 2013).
[2]Today, the trust fund holds $2.7 trillion in government securities, and it will be exhausted by 2033. The 75-year shortfall between already-promised benefits and expected payroll tax revenues is $9.6 trillion, but paying the IOUs in the trust fund will also draw from general fund revenues, bringing the true 75-year OASDI unfunded obligation to $12.3 trillion.
[3]The Social Security trust fund (OASI) is projected to remain solvent through 2035, while the Disability trust fund (DI) will run dry in 2016. In the absence of reform, DI program benefits would have to be reduced or eligibility limited beginning in less than three years. Alternatively, lawmakers may choose to reallocate the distribution of OASI and DI payroll taxes, boosting DI solvency while weakening OASI solvency.
[4]David C. John. “Misleading the Public: How the Social Security Trust Fund Really Works,” Heritage Foundation Executive Memorandum No. 940, September 2, 2004,http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/09/misleading-the-public-how-the-social-security-trust-fund-really-works.
[5]C. Eugene Steuerle and Caleb Quakenbush, “Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits over a Lifetime: 2012 Update,” Urban Institute, http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412660-Social-Security-and-Medicare-Taxes-and-Benefits-Over-a-Lifetime.pdf (accessed May 30, 2013).
[6]See Romina Boccia and Rachel Greszler, “Social Security Benefits and the Impact of the Chained CPI,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2799, May 21, 2012,http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/05/social-security-benefits-and-the-impact-of-the-chained-cpi.
[7]U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Health, United States, 2011,” Table 22, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus11.pdf#022 (accessed May 29, 2013); “United States Life Tables, 2002,” http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr53/nvsr53_06.pdf (accessed May 29, 2013).
[8]Face the Facts USA, “Thousands of Millionaires Collect Social Security,” March 6, 2013, http://www.facethefactsusa.org/facts/millionaires-receiving-social-security/ (accessed May 28, 2013).


Thank You Ms Boccia, Ms Greszler, and Heritage.


Mood Disorders.

We're Broke. Get Over It.