DR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR: "All I Want To Say To America Is Be True To What You Said On Paper"

DR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR (JAN 15, 1929 - APRIL 4, 1968):

"I'VE BEEN TO THE MOUNTAIN TOP"

"All I want to say to America is be true to what you said on paper!"

"Somewhere I read that all Men are created EQUAL".

Circa April 3, 1968

Source: YouTube

JESUS CHRIST'S RACE NO LONGER MATTERS TO ME

JESUS CHRIST'S RACE NO LONGER MATTERS TO ME:

I HOPE HIS COLOR & RACE DOESN'T MATTER TO YOU EITHER.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

"For unto us a Child is Born, unto us a Son is given." Isaiah 9:6

On today December 25th we celebrate the Birth of JESUS CHRIST.

Even though JESUS was actually born in the month of SEPTEMBER, due to the Judeo-Christian calendar we celebrate his Birthday on December 25.

We all know JESUS was a real Human Being, born in the Middle East to JEWISH parents.

As a curious Christian, I used to be caught up in Foolish arguments about JESUS' race, his Skin color, Eye color and Hair texture.

But no more!

I no longer care what Color JESUS was because such arguments keep Human Beings divided and at odds about Race Relations.

I now only care about the Truth of JESUS' Birth, his Ministry on Earth, his Crucifixion, his Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven where he now sits beside his Heavenly Father GOD Almighty.

Hallejuah!

~ Insisting Jesus Was White Is Bad History and Bad Theology

In trying to police his depiction, Megyn Kelly is wrong on both the facts and the essential universality of the Christian message.

Fox News television host Megyn Kelly told viewers on her December 11 broadcast that Jesus and Santa are both white men.

"Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change," Kelly said. "Jesus was a white man, too. It's like we have, he's a historical figure that's a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?"

Setting aside the ridiculousness of creating rigidly racial depictions of a fictitious character that does not actually exist—sorry, kids—like Santa, Kelly has made a more serious error about Jesus.

The scholarly consensus is actually that Jesus was, like most first-century Jews, probably a dark-skinned man. If he were taking the red-eye flight from San Francisco to New York today, Jesus might be profiled for additional security screening by TSA.

The myth of a white Jesus is one with deep roots throughout Christian history. As early as the Middle Ages and particularly during the Renaissance, popular Western artists depicted Jesus as a white man, often with blue eyes and blondish hair.

Perhaps fueled by some Biblical verses correlating lightness with purity and righteousness and darkness with sin and evil, these images sought to craft a sterile Son of God.

The only problem was that the representations were historically inaccurate.

Modern Western Christians have carried these images over into their own depictions of Jesus. Pick up a one of those bright blue “Bible Story” books in a Sunday School classroom and you’ll find white Jesus waiting for you, rosy cheeks and all. Or you could survey the light-skinned Jesus in any number of modern TV or film portrayals, including History Channel’s hit series The Bible.

Interestingly, the Bible is far less descriptive on the matter of Jesus’ skin color than we are. Christian scriptures say very little about Jesus’ physical appearance. They do not comment on his nose, eye color, skin pigmentation, or hair.

The glaring exception is Isaiah 53:2, which prophesies that the messiah won’t be much to look at, another fact that places the Bible at odds with the “well-groomed surfer-dude Jesus” who's often put forth.

If the Bible is silent on the matter of Jesus’ skin color, does it really matter that Megyn Kelly says Jesus is white?

Yes, actually.

As some historians and theologians have posited, the silence of the Scriptures on the issue of Jesus’ skin color is critical to Christianity’s broad appeal with people of various ethnicities. In a world where race often divides communities and even churches, the Biblical depictions of God’s son positions him as one who can bridge those divides.

For this reason, one American Presbyterian minister in the 1880s warned his flock not to trust popular images of Christ:

If He were particularised and localised—if, for example, He were made a man with a pale face—then the man of the ebony face would feel that there was a greater distance between Christ and him than between Christ and his white brother.’ Instead, because the Bible refused to describe Jesus in terms of racial features, his gospel could appeal to all.

Only in this way could the Church be a place where the ‘Caucasian and Mongolian and African sit together at the Lord’s table, and we all think alike of Jesus, and we all feel that He is alike our brother’.

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Advice for Living” column for Ebony in 1957, the civil-rights leader was asked, “Why did God make Jesus white, when the majority of peoples in the world are non-white?” King replied, “The color of Jesus’ skin is of little or no consequence” because what made Jesus exceptional “His willingness to surrender His will to God’s will.”

His point, as historian Edward Blum has noted, is that Jesus transcends race.

Those warnings hold just as true for believers today. Within the church, eschewing a Jesus who looks more like a Scandinavian supermodel than the sinless Son of God in the scriptures is critical to maintaining a faith in which all can give praise to one who became like them in an effort to save them from sins like racism and prejudice.

It's important for Christians who want to expand the church, too, in allowing the creation of communities that are able to worship a Jesus who builds bridges rather than barriers.

And it is essential to enabling those who bear the name of Christ to look forward to that day when, according to the book of Revelation, those “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” can worship God together.

Until that day arrives, though, can someone please tell Megyn Kelly that Jesus is not white?

Sources: The Atlantic, Fox News, YouTube

DENNIS RODMAN UPDATE: He Apologizes But It's NOT His Job To Help Free KENNETH BAE (It's Pres Obama's!)

#RODMAN


UPDATE: DENNIS RODMAN APOLOGIZES FOR HIS REMARKS & BEHAVIOR

I repeat. Dennis Rodman is NOT a Politician, Nor a Statesman.

It is Pres OBAMA'S Job to help Free KENNETH BAE, Not Dennis Rodman!



ARTICLE: "Dennis Rodman Apologizes For Kenneth Bae Comments"

Dennis Rodman apologized Thursday for comments about captive American missionary Kenneth Bae in an interview with CNN.

A day after the former basketball star sang “Happy Birthday” to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and led a squad of former NBA players in a friendly game, Rodman issued the apology through publicist Jules Feiler in an email message to The Associated Press.

“I want to apologize,” Rodman said. “I take full responsibility for my actions. It had been a very stressful day. Some of my teammates were leaving because of pressure from their families and business associates. My dreams of basketball diplomacy was quickly falling apart. I had been drinking. It’s not an excuse but by the time the interview happened I was upset. I was overwhelmed. It’s not an excuse, it’s just the truth.

“I want to first apologize to Kenneth Bae’s family. I want to apologize to my teammates and my management team. I also want to apologize to Chris Cuomo. I embarrassed a lot of people. I’m very sorry. At this point I should know better than to make political statements. I’m truly sorry.”

Rodman has been slammed for not using his influence with Kim to help free Bae, the missionary in poor health who is being confined in the North for “anti-state” crimes. On CNN on Tuesday, Rodman implied Bae was at fault.

Bae’s sister, Terri Chung, said his family couldn’t believe what Rodman said.

“Here’s somebody who is in a position to do some good for Kenneth and refuses to do so,” Chung told KOMO Radio in Seattle on Wednesday. “And then after the fact, instead, he decides to hurl these unqualified accusations against Kenneth. It’s clear he has no idea what he’s talking about. I’m not sure who he’s talking to, where he’s getting his information, but he’s certainly no authority on Kenneth Bae.”

The U.S. State Department distanced itself from Rodman and said it did not want to “dignify” his activities or comments in Pyongyang by commenting on them. But spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the department was open to speaking with Rodman on his return.

“We have not reached out to him. We’ve said before, if he wants to reach out to us, we’re happy to hear from him and what he has to say,” she told reporters.

Rodman dedicated the game to his “best friend” Kim, who along with his wife and other senior officials and their wives watched from a special seating area. The capacity crowd of about 14,000 at the Pyongyang Indoor Stadium clapped loudly as Rodman sang a verse from the birthday song.

Rodman said he was honored to be able to play the game in the North Korean capital and called the event “historic.” Some members of the U.S. Congress, the NBA and human rights groups, however, say he has become a public relations tool for North Korea’s government.

The government’s poor human rights record and its threats to use nuclear weapons against rival South Korea and the United States have kept it a pariah state. Kim shocked the world in December by having his uncle, once considered his mentor, executed after being accused of a litany of crimes including corruption, womanizing, drug abuse and attempting to seize power.

The 52-year-old Rodman has refused to address those concerns while continuing to forge a relationship with Kim, whose age has never been officially disclosed. The government did not say how old he turned Wednesday but he is believed to be in his early 30s.

At the start of the game, Rodman sang “Happy Birthday” to Kim, who was seated above in the stands at the stadium, and then bowed deeply as North Korean players clapped.

To keep it friendly, the Americans played against the North Koreans in the first half, but split up and merged teams for the second half.

The North Korean team scored 47 points to 39 for the Americans before the teams were mixed. Rodman played only in the first half and then sat next to Kim during the second half.

“A lot of people have expressed different views about me and your leader, your marshal, and I take that as a compliment,” Rodman told the crowd. “Yes, he is a great leader, he provides for his people here in this country and thank God the people here love the marshal.”

Rodman is the highest-profile American to meet Kim. He has carefully avoided getting involved in overtly political activities, saying that he is not a statesman and instead is seeking only to build cultural connections with the North through basketball that may help improve relations between Pyongyang and Washington.

The game is a new milestone in Rodman’s unusual relationship with Kim, who inherited power after the death of his father in late 2011 and rarely meets with foreigners. He remains a mystery to much of the outside world and until recently, his birthday was also not widely known, though it was quietly observed elsewhere around the capital Wednesday.

Along with Rodman, the former NBA players included ex-all-stars Kenny Anderson, Cliff Robinson and Vin Baker. Also on the roster were Craig Hodges, Doug Christie, Charles D. Smith and four non-NBA players.

Smith said he and the other players did not join Rodman in singing the birthday song.

“We always tell Dennis that he can’t sing. He is tone deaf,” Smith said. “He did it alone.”



Sources: AP, CNN, Politico

DENNIS RODMAN: Sings "Happy Birthday" To Kim Jong Un! Leave RODMAN Alone! He's NOT A POLITICIAN!

#RODMAN


LEAVE DENNIS RODMAN ALONE

It is NOT DENNIS RODMAN'S Job to help Free KENNETH BAE.

It's Pres OBAMA'S Job!

CHRIS CUOMO vs DENNIS RODMAN: GOV'T MEDIA PROPAGANDA

It's quite obvious CHRIS CUOMO'S recent Attack on RODMAN was Planned.

DENNIS RODMAN took CHRIS CUOMO'S bait, but CNN knew he would behave in such a manner because it's well documented RODMAN has a short fuse.

FYI: Yes, CHRIS CUOMO is the Brother of NY Gov ANDREW CUOMO.

ANDREW CUOMO is a good friend of Pres OBAMA'S.

Rumor has it ANDREW CUOMO may run for U.S. President in 2016.

Can anyone please explain what does DENNIS RODMAN'S Sports-related trip to NORTH KOREA have to do with the Imprisonment of KENNETH BAE?

DENNIS RODMAN has NO business involving himself, Nor his Basketball teammates in POLITICS to help free KENNETH BAE.

DENNIS RODMAN is NOT a POLITICIAN.

Nor is DENNIS RODMAN a Statesman.

He is a former Star ATHLETE.

It is the U.S. State Dept's Job to help free KENNETH BAE.

Not DENNIS RODMAN'S!

CHRIS CUOMO knows this.

DENNIS & His Basketball Teammates were visiting NORTH KOREA on a PAID Sports-related mission PERIOD!

NOT a POLITICAL or CIA Assignment!

However since the OBAMA Admin has FAILED to help free U.S. Prisoners held captive in other countries, Pres OBAMA will do anything to Divert attention away from what his Administration has NOT done to help free U.S Prisoners.

Even it means directing the MEDIA to attack a former Star Athlete with a Short fuse......i.e., DENNIS RODMAN.

And if you don't believe Pres OBAMA'S Administration Controls the MEDIA, you are living in a Fantasy world because he DOES.

It's called GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA!

In fact EVERY legally elected U.S. President Controls the MEDIA via GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA.

I repeat.

DENNIS RODMAN is NOT a POLITICIAN.

Nor is DENNIS RODMAN a Statesman.

He is a former Star ATHLETE.

It is the U.S. State Dept's Job to help free KENNETH BAE.

Not DENNIS RODMAN'S!

CHRIS CUOMO knows this.

It is NOT DENNIS RODMAN'S Job to help Free KENNETH BAE.

It's Pres OBAMA'S Job!

LEAVE DENNIS RODMAN ALONE




ARTICLE: "Give Dennis Rodman A Break"

This week, we've been treated to the increasingly familiar sight of former NBA star and provocateur Dennis Rodman attending events in Pyongyang, North Korea. It's his fourth trip in less than 12 months.

On Tuesday, an angry Rodman defended his visit in a CNN interview straight from Pyongyang, at one point saying to "New Day" anchor Chris Cuomo, "I don't give a rat's ass what the hell you think ..." in response to question about Kenneth Bae, an American detained in North Korea.

When will we tire of this circus?

In case you don't watch cable news, you might miss that the media really loves this kind of thing. No story about North Korea is too weird to go unreported, even if there is no real information to disseminate. Recall the recent rumor that Kim Jong Un's uncle was executed by being fed to hungry dogs, which most likely was started as satire on Chinese social media but was at first reported widely in the media (CNN was unable to confirm and did not report the story).

In media discourse, North Korea is the classic enemy. The regime's injustices, quirks and dysfunctions are reassuring to Americans that their own country is just the opposite: Normal, well-functioning, a land of peace and liberty.

But add in Rodman to the North Korea story, and it's bound to produce eye-popping headlines:

"The Weird American Athlete Goes to Weird Country story is just too easy not to cover."

Rodman himself seems to be thriving on finding a strange smidgen of relevance through his visits to North Korea (and perhaps a Paddy Power paycheck). Though often described as quite shy, he has always enjoyed challenging the values of Middle America. North Korea is providing him a new avenue to be in the spotlight.

The most passive player in this tragicomedy is Rodman's home country, the United States. The U.S. State Department has deployed the rhetorical equivalent of an embarrassed teenager whose dad has shown up to dance at his prom. Something along the lines of "this has nothing to do with us" is what the State Department has said with every one of Rodman's trip. Last winter,the State Department criticized Rodman's timing as it followed a nuclear test and rocket launch. This time, it has merely said a private individual can do what he wishes.

This is an understandably cautious position. After all, Rodman has professed his love and undying affection for Kim, and he is probably not a canny enough operator to spearhead any form of political outreach along the lines of the "Ping-Pong diplomacy."

On this trip, Rodman addressed the unavoidably political nature of a relationship with North Korea, saying his visits could "open the doors" to "talk about certain things." In the CNN interview, he argued that it's a "great idea for the world."

Rodman's celebrity status and sporting prowess has given him access to Kim. At some point, when both the U.S. and North Korean governments are feeling a little brave, perhaps they can try to thaw the ice with more professional diplomats tagging along on cultural or sporting exchanges.

There are precedents. For example, the U.S.-China Ping-Pong diplomacy of the 1970s had its genesis in table tennis player by the name of Glen Cowan. Once he broke the ice, the governments began talking.

The kind of engagement that Rodman is pushing cannot always be seen as merely rewards for a naughty regime, as much as we appear locked into a carrot-and-stick way of thinking about relations with North Korea. It can be mutually beneficial. We have the potential to gain as much as they do. Breakthroughs might be sudden and surprising, but they are usually underpinned by creative thinking, dialogue and the mutual acceptance that no one can get exactly what they want.

Unfortunately, this particular trip does feel somewhat like a gift, coming as it does on Kim's birthday and less than a month after the violent and very public purge of his uncle and second-in-charge, Jang Song Thaek.

Had Rodman pulled out or delayed, the channel for opening may well have closed. If he really is in it for the long haul, he probably couldn't afford to slight the leader on his birthday.

Domestically, it is great PR for Kim. He gets to appear gregarious and inclusive in front of his people. Notwithstanding Jang's execution, this is the image he has been assiduously cultivating. He's eager to promote his friendly, approachable image while at the same time enjoying watching some former stars play his favorite sport.

For now, little will come out of Rodman's visits other than extraneous news. But as Pyongyang continues to devote resources and energy to sports development, its appetite for athletic exchanges will increase.

Let's warily hope, to use Rodman's phrase, that this can "open the doors" to other things.


Source: CNN

"Obamacare"/ Affordable Health Care Act Changed The American Health Care System Forever

Pres. Barack Obama signed the Health Care Reform bill into Law on March 23, 2010.


Health reform at 2: Why American health care will never be the same

In February 2009, Michael Zucker told a group of high-paid surgeons something they did not want to hear: The way they earned a salary was about to change.

Zucker is the chief development officer at Baptist Health System, a five-hospital network in San Antonio. For 37 common surgeries, such as hip replacements and pacemaker implants, it would soon collect “bundled” Medicare payments. Traditionally, hospitals and doctors had collected separate fees for each step of such procedures; now they would get a lump sum for treating everything related to the patient’s condition.

If a hospital delivered care for less than the bundled rate, while hitting certain quality metrics, it would keep the difference as profit. But if costs were high and quality was too low, Baptist would lose money. For the first time in their careers, the doctors’ paychecks depended on the quality of the care they provided.

Four surgeons quit in protest.

“I’d describe the reception as lukewarm at best,” Zucker says. “There was a lot of: ‘How could you do this?’ and ‘I’m not going to participate.’ ”

The program launched in June 2009 with a checklist of quality metrics. To earn a bonus, surgeons would, among other things, need to ensure that antibiotics were administered an hour before surgery and halted 24 hours after, reducing the chances of costly complications.

Only three doctors hit the metrics that first month, but their bonuses caught the attention of others. “There was a lot of, ‘Why are those doctors getting more, and I’m not?” Zucker says. Eight doctors got bonus payments in July; two dozen got them in August. Compliance with certain quality metrics steadily climbed from 89 percent to 98 percent in three months.

Two-and-a-half years later, Baptists’ surgeons have earned more than $950,000 in bonuses. Medicare, meanwhile, has netted savings: Its bundled rate is about 5 percent lower than all the fees it used to pay out for the same services. “It wasn’t a home-run,” says Zucker, noting the start-up costs in administering the program — not to mention a handful of lost employees. “But I’d call it a solid triple.”

The Affordable Care Act is mostly known for its mandate to expand health insurance to 30 million more Americans within a decade. That’s the side of the legislation Democrats touted last week, when the law hit its two-year anniversary. It’s also the point that has roused the most ire from opponents. Insurance expansion is at the heart of legal challenges the Supreme Court will take up on Monday, which argue that forcing people to buy insurance coverage is unconstitutional.

But much of the law’s 905 pages are dedicated to an effort that’s arguably more ambitious: an overhaul of America’s business model for medicine. It includes 45 changes to how doctors deliver health care — and how patients pay for it. These reforms, if successful, will move the country’s health system away from one that pays for volume and toward one that pays for value. The White House wants to see providers behave more like Baptist Health Systems, rewarding health care that is both less costly and more effective.

The health-care industry was moving toward value-based payments even before health reform passed. But the Affordable Care Act has played an important role, economists say, by signalling that America’s biggest health-care spender — the federal government — is also headed in that direction.

“The Affordable Care Act is like two laws in one,” former Medicare administrator Don Berwick said. “There’s the coverage piece, and I think that’s proceeding well. On the other side, there’s health-care delivery reform.”

Even as Congress was debating the Affordable Care Act, economic and demographic trends were steering the industry’s business model off a cliff. As costs ticked higher, Americans were losing insurance coverage. They were making fewer trips to the doctor, which meant less revenue. Baby Boomers landed in Medicare, which pays less than private insurance, further shrinking health-care providers’ income. Health systems reevaluated their volume-dependent bottom lines.

“There was a patient mix shift happening that, unless hospitals changed, they were going to be losing money in about five years,” says Chas Roades, chief research officer at consulting firm the Advisory Board Co.

In Washington, the Obama administration was facing a different problem: Medicare was eating up a growing share of the federal budget. The program’s costs had more than doubled in a decade, from $212 billion in 1999 to $499 billion in 2009. Since it started in 1965, the program has paid providers based on volume. Most private insurance works this way, too: In 2008, 78 percent of health plans paid for coverage on a fee-for-service basis. That system, economists argued, was driving up costs: It pushed doctors to provide as much care as possible, regardless of whether it was effective.

Across the country, however, a few health-care systems had made high-profile moves in another direction. Places like Kaiser Permanente in California and the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota were setting strict budgets for their patients and demonstrating, in study after study, that they could deliver higher quality outcomes at a lower cost than other hospitals and doctors.

What these systems had in common was a model called integrated care, where doctors, hospitals and insurers work together to deliver the most cost-effective treatments. In integrated care systems, doctors are often paid a flat salary, rather than charging for each procedure they perform. They often receive incentive payments for hitting certain quality metrics.

Alongside a handful of success stories, there were dozens of cautionary tales. Health-care costs did decrease in the mid-1990s, when Health Maintenance Organizations limited patients’ access to more costly, speciality providers, but patients left such payment plans in droves, which encouraged providers to stick with a volume-driven system.

For the Obama administration, this represented an opportunity. Insurance premiums had grown by 131 percent between 1999 and 2009. If Congress was going to extend insurance to millions more Americans, it wanted a guarantee that those benefits would be affordable. The integrated-care model, they hoped, could control those costs even as it improved the quality of care. No “rationing” needed.

Payment reforms became “massively and unstoppably important,” says Bob Kocher, a former White House health-care adviser. “There was a sentiment among the Democrats that the problem is spending, and a real desire to finance the coverage expansion, as much as possible, from delivery system reforms.”

It was unclear how quickly the federal government could move. Medicare’s whole infrastructure, from its billing software to its reimbursement levels, is built around paying doctors a fee for each service. Kocher remembers suggesting that the law should require that 20 percent of Medicare’s payments be bundled by 2015. A senior Medicare official, he recalls, nearly had an “allergic reaction” to that timeline.

The Affordable Care Act ultimately included 45 delivery system reforms. Fifteen of those change how Medicare doctors and hospitals are paid, according to an analysis by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). The six that have rolled out thus far are largely voluntary, allowing those who think they can deliver more cost-efficient care to opt-in to new payment models.

But the remaining changes will be mandatory. Beginning in October, hospitals stand to lose 1 percent of their Medicare revenue if they can’t hit key metrics on “preventable readmissions” — patients who turn up at the hospital with a complication from an earlier procedure. That’s a big change from the current, volume-based system in which those readmissions generate additional revenue for a hospital.

Although it’s not fully implemented, some say the Affordable Care Act has already significantly catalyzedthe health-care system. Leaders know where Medicare wants to go, even if they didn’t chart an especially aggressive path for how it would get there. “Forever and a day, everybody had been saying we had to change the way we paid for health care,” Roades says. “Now, we have a sense of direction of where the country’s biggest payer is headed. And that provides cover for everybody else to move in that direction.”

Roades calls the past two years ones of “breathtaking change.” When the Advisory Board Co. surveyed 69 hospital executives in November, just 16 percent said they had bundled payments in place. But of those who didn’t, 75 percent expected to within two years. Two-thirds expected they would have such payment arrangements with Medicare.

The health-care system has become increasingly integrated, with hospitals and insurance plans buying up doctors’ offices. Consulting firm Irving Levin Associates saw health-care merger activity shoot up 11 percent, from $205 billion in 2010 to $227 billion. Their analyst, Stanford Steever, attributed that largely to the Affordable Care Act.

Others, however, point out that it’s too early to see any data on health-care outcomes, as only a handful of the payment reforms have come online. And there are signs that the industry may not be ready to leave the payment model it’s depended on for decades.

The Obama administration stumbled in launching its most sweeping effort, the Accountable Care Organization program. The hope was to get health-care providers to band together and accept a flat fee for all the care provided to a set population of Medicare patients. That way, different providers would have an incentive to coordinate the care a given patient was getting by different specialists. Currently, individual patients can be treated by many different doctors who aren’t full aware of what the others are doing, much less working in close cooperation with them.

“Initially, there was a lot of euphoria about the ACO concept,” says Anders Gilberg, senior vice president of government affairs at the Medical Group Management Association.

When draft regulations came out, providers balked, contending in thousands of comment letters that it was too much of a gamble. If patients’ care costs didn’t decrease, health systems would find themselves in the red.

“There’s a lot of risk, and it’s frankly for an unknown reward,” Gilberg says.“So I’d question, as this is structured, whether it will fundamentally change our health-care system.”

The White House revised the rule, and eventually attracted 32 health systems to kick off the program, as so-called ACO Pioneers. But those systems, so far, report little change in how they deliver care: The ones who felt confident enough to participate were already delivering integrated care and, with the start up costs of administering the program, are not certain they’ll see significant savings.

“We’re not projecting this to be a windfall,” says Mark Eustis, president of Fairview Health System in Minnesota, an ACO site. “We’re hopeful we’ll cover the revenue lost that we would have received in a fee-for-service plan. We’re not expecting big increases in what we’re actually paid.”

Other providers who like the idea of more value-based reimbursement also question its limits. Baptist Health Systems managed to net $8 million in savings when it started accepting flat fees. But most of that came from negotiating lower prices on the medical devices it used. Only about 10 percent of savings came from making the hospital’s care model more efficient. “What we got first was the low-hanging fruit,” Zucker says.

Value-based reimbursement comes with a bevy of logistical challenges. A health-care system must figure out what counts as quality care, the metrics by which it ought to judge its doctors and hospitals. It also has to decide who gets what share of the savings. At Baptist, surgeons have questioned how the hospital divvies up its own savings (which is, in some ways, constrained by the terms Medicare set).

“The hospital got $8 million, and the surgeons got $1 million,” says Ty Goletz, a orthopedic surgeon at Baptist. “That’s not necessarily looked on favorably by physicians.”

The obstacles likely explain why, for its part, Medicare does not expect volume-driven medicine to disappear overnight. “For the time being and the future, we’re going to have a large proportion of Medicare who are paid through fee-for-service,” Medicare’s deputy administrator Jonathan Blum said.

But the system, he says, is shifting away from it. “The goal, quite simply, is to improve our quality metrics and bring down per-capita costs,” Blum continued. “That’s going to be the ultimate success.”

When Baptist Health Systems started down this path in 2008, it had little idea where it would lead or whether the doctors would revolt. Now that 78 percent of his doctors have received bonus checks, Zucker is more confident.

“It’s created a different relationship between us and our physicians,” he says. “For a long time, we’ve kept each other at arm’s length. And this really changed how we looked at physicians.”

Baptist Health System recently applied for the Affordable Care Act’s new bundled-payment program, which will shift more procedures to flat fees. That program will also expand the amount of cost savings that doctors are allowed to receive. It’s another step in the right direction, says Goletz, who has operated at Baptist for three decades.

“The way I look at it, Medicare used to pay a bunch of money into a bunch of little buckets, and some were ours, and some were theirs,” he says. “We decided that rather than paying into those little buckets, we should pay into one big bucket. We cleaned up the waste, saved money and lowered our costs.”


Sources: C-Span, Washington Post, White House.gov, Youtube

Happy Birthday Health Care Reform! "Obamacare"/ Affordable Health Care Law Turns 2

Pres. Barack Obama signed the Health Care Reform bill into Law on March 23, 2010.


Health reform turns 2


Health-care reform turns two today, and it's not going to be a particularly happy birthday. On Monday, the Supreme Court will begin to hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of the individual mandate.

The law remains unpopular among the public and loathed by Republican politicians, who have pledged that repeal will be their first order of business if given power in 2012. Implementation is proceeding jerkily, in part because many states are waiting till the legal and political uncertainty clears to commit to the law.

And yet, out in the health-care system, the law's second birthday will be a happy one. As Sarah Kliff reports, the hundreds of pages devoted to moving American health care away from fee-for-service and towards pay-for-quality are having a dramatic effect on the way medical providers across the country actually do business.

The Affordable Care Act included 45 reforms aimed at changing how health care is delivered. Fifteen of those reforms focus on payment practices. At the moment, most are voluntary, but they are quickly becoming mandatory. Starting in October, for instance, hospitals with high rates of "preventable readmission" -- that is to say, high rates of patients returning with complications from earlier procedures -- will lose one percent of their Medicare revenue. In the current system, conversely, a patient turning up with a complication from a previous procedure actually provides the hospital with more revenue.

In answer to some of these reforms and in preparation for others, health-care systems across the country are either undertaking or accelerating long-overdue changes to the way they do business. Kliff follows Baptist Health System, a five-hospital network in San Antonio, Texas, which saw four surgeons quit as they moved to implement the new, quality-based payments metrics, but which has now seen performance on those measures rise to 98 percent.

Kliff's article -- which you should read, now -- is an unusually concrete look at a dimension of the health-care reform law that is often passed over in the public debate but is perhaps the single most ambitious effort ever launched in this country to lower costs and improve quality in the system. And unlike most of the bill, which hasn't been implemented yet and may or may not survive the election, it's happening now, all around us.

Two years later, health care reform has faced some challenges in implementation. "When the health-care overhaul became law after a bitter debate, many Democrats predicted Americans would grow to like it as they started enjoying some of the early benefits. The day after the president signed the bill into law, which happened exactly two years ago, an average of major polls collated by the website Real Clear Politics showed 50.4% of Americans opposed. This week, that had changed only by a tenth of a percentage point, ticking up to 50.5%.

The health law remains a tough sell for reasons that go beyond the drumbeat from Republicans for its repeal and questions about its constitutionality that will be debated next week at the Supreme Court. Several of the law's early pieces, designed to win public support, haven't worked as well in the real world as on paper and have irked even some of the Americans they were designed to help." Janet Adamy and Louise Radnofsky in The Wall Street Journal.

But it is already transforming the health-care system. "The Affordable Care Act is mostly known for its mandate to expand health insurance to 30 million more Americans within a decade. That’s the side of the legislation Democrats touted last week, when the law hit its two-year anniversary. It’s also the point that has roused the most ire from opponents. Insurance expansion is at the heart of legal challenges the Supreme Court will take up on Monday, which argue that forcing people to buy insurance coverage is unconstitutional.

But much of the law’s 905 pages are dedicated to an effort that’s arguably more ambitious: an overhaul of America’s business model for medicine. It includes 45 changes to how doctors deliver health care — and how patients pay for it. These reforms, if successful, will move the country’s health system away from one that pays for volume and toward one that pays for value. " Sarah Kliff in the Washington Post.


Sources: C-Span, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Youtube

Twitter Turns 6 Today! Happy Birthday! Social Media Success!

Happy 6th Birthday, Twitter!


"Just setting up my twttr," Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent from a service that no one had heard of exactly six years ago. It was the first tweet, or 140-character message, to ever be sent on Twitter.

Twitter hasn't changed all that much since Dorsey fired off that tweet at 3:50PM on March 21, 2006. However, while the format is the same -- 140 characters to make a statement, hashtags used to sort by topic, and an @ symbol attached to a username – the service has changed the way millions of people consume information, share and communicate.

"It's really been about how people have changed around the platform and they've gotten very used to conversing in these short text bursts," says Mashable editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff, who uses Twitter daily. He says people are turning to Twitter first as a way to get their news out.

"It's become incredibly important in people's lives to share information first with their audience, with their friends, you know, people they've never met before, but it's just become a truly powerful platform."

Powerful, indeed. Once criticized as a place where people go to share what they ate for breakfast, the micro-blogging site is now the first place many people go to get their news.

Tech evangelist Robert Scoble tells ABC News Twitter has become part of our media diet. "I don't see it going away, I see it becoming more and more important."

Think about that famous picture of Captain Chesley Sullenberger's US Airways plane landing on the Hudson River. It appeared first on Twitter.

And what about the Arab Spring? A 2011 study from the University of Washington says Twitter and other social media sites played a central role leading up to the toppling of the Tunisian and Egyptian dictators. Turns out Twitter is a great way to organize a revolution.

And the death of Osama bin Laden? If you were on Twitter, you knew about it before President Obama gave his televised address to the nation.

And then-candidate Barack Obama certainly wasn't the first politician to use social media on the campaign trail, but he was the first to realize and harness the money-raising powers of Twitter and other social networks. His followers were kept updated on his progress and when he won the presidency, he tweeted: "We just made history. All of this happened because you gave your time, talent and passion. All of this happened because of you. Thanks."

Since then, politicians have taken to Twitter to reach their constituents and get their message out.

"Politicians understand that if people feel like these tweets are coming directly from them, they may be able to understand the politician a little bit better and they certainly feel like they have a more direct connection, or a more personal connection to these people," says Ulanoff.

About a year ago, Twitter was valued at about $10 billion, while it struggled to explain its business model to people. Now it's firmly planted in the world of advertising and is using promoted tweets as a way to make money, bring in $139 million last year in ad revenue.

Scoble says there's "a number of different ways to make money but the top one is going to be advertising."

Twitter has used cash from a round of private investment funding last year (there's talk of a public share offer at some point) to invest in services and talent. Most recently it bought Posterous, a micro-blogging service, similar to Tumblr.

The company hasn't revealed what it intends to do with the service, but Gartner research director Michael Gartenberg says, "It appears Twitter is looking to evolve from the status update service it started as to an information service optimized for sharing and consuming information and content."

Based on that, maybe in its sixth year Twitter might see its biggest changes.


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Sources: ABC News, Twitter, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

Michelle Bachmann Celebrates Elvis Presley's Birthday On 34th Anniversary Of His Death (More Gaffes)

Michele Bachmann's Elvis Birthday Message Comes On Anniversary Of 'The King's' Death

During a stop in South Carolina on Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann wished the late Elvis Presley a "Happy Birthday."

The problem: the message from the conservative congresswoman comes on the anniversary of the death of the "King of Rock and Roll."

"Before we get started, let's all say 'Happy Birthday' to Elvis Presley today," said Bachmann while speaking in the Palmetto State. "We played you a little bit of promise land when we pulled up. You can't do better than Elvis Presley."

Elvis was born on January 8, 1935.

While it's unlikely the gaffe will cost Bachmann, the presidential contender is no stranger to making questionable remarks. Over the weekend, Bachmann emerged victorious in the Ames Straw Poll, a table-setter for next year's Iowa caucuses.


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Sources: AOL, Fox News, Huffington Post, Youtube, Google Maps

Romney Attacks Obama's Chicago Jobs Record; Rahm Refutes Romney's Lies!

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Romney Slams Chicago Economy in Anti-Obama Ad, Emanuel Hits Back


Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is out with a new ad against Obama that slams Chicago’s economy, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel is not happy about it.

The ad starts with Election Night 2008 in Grant Park, then talks about how the unemployment rate in Chicago has gone up under Obama, Chicago’s slumping housing market and businesses leaving Illinois.

“If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition,” you hear Obama’s voice say in the video.

Emanuel showed a glimmer of his former role as White House chief of staff when he addressed Romney at an unrelated press conference Wednesday.

"I'd just like to note to the governor, in case he needs a rendezvous with his record, when he was governor, Massachusetts was 47th out of 50 in job production. In case he forgot that, I'd like to remind him of that," Emanuel said.

Emanuel also said he can get Romney a good deal on a seat for this fall's Chicago Ideas Week festival.

Since the video came out, FactCheck.org noted that the Romeny ad says Chicago unemployment is up 48 percent under Obama, but that starts counting on Election Night. Obama didn’t take office until Jan. 20, 2009 FactCheck notes, from which point unemployment is up 26.7 percent.



Romney’s Windy Web Video


A Mitt Romney online video overstates the growth of Chicago's unemployment rate under President Obama. The ad says that Chicago's unemployment is up 48 percent, which is true since November 2008. But Obama didn't take office until Jan. 20, 2009, and the city's unemployment rate has increased 26.7 percent since then. That's still a large jump, to be sure, but not nearly as high as the video claims.

The Web video — titled "Obama Isn't Working: Chicago" — was released Aug. 2, a day ahead of Obama's 50th birthday fundraiser in the Windy City.

The video — which has no narrator — is intended to demonstrate Obama's failure to change the economic situation, even in his hometown. It starts with a clip of Obama delivering his victory speech in Grant Park on election night in 2008, and then displays the words, "GRANT PARK, CHICAGO 3 YEARS LATER." It shows a series of dilapidated Chicago structures overlaid with negative economic news about the city. The first is a billboard that reads, "Chicago Unemployment [up] 48%."

We contacted the campaign to ask how it arrived at a 48 percent increase in the city's unemployment. Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said the campaign compared the city's unemployment rate from November 2008 with May 2011, the most recent month at the time the ad was being produced. The data came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (To access the city's unemployment rates, enter LAUPS17010003 as the series ID).

Sure enough, BLS shows a 48 percent increase during that time frame. But there's one obvious flaw in the campaign's methodology: Obama did not take office until Jan. 20, 2009. During Obama's time in office, the city's unemployment rate went from 9 percent (January 2009) to 11.4 percent (June 2011) — a 26.7 percent increase.

Fehrnstrom said the campaign used the lower unemployment rate from November 2008, because "the video specifically deals with that night in Grant Park when he promised change was coming to America." But that's simply misleading to viewers. The ad does not explain that the 48 percent figure includes two particularly bad employment months before Obama even took office. The city's unemployment rate rose from 7.3 percent in November 2008 to 9 percent in January 2009 before Obama's inauguration.

Some news outlets were even deceived by the campaign's sleight of hand. The National Review wrote that the Romney campaign is "highlighting the 48 percent jump in unemployment in the Chicago area since the president took office." That, of course, is wrong. But the article is featured on the campaign's website, anyway.

Chicago's unemployment situation is bad. But even Obama's most ardent critics cannot fault him for job losses that occurred before he became president.


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Sources: AP, Fact Check, MSNBC, My Fox Chicago, Youtube, Google Maps

Obama Officially Shifts Into 2012 Campaign Mode; He Can Still Win Again!!

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Obama 2012 Re-election Campaign: 'Hope' And 'Change' Aren't Enough To Inspire Voters

As he weighed a presidential run back in 2006, President Barack Obama displayed a realistic sense of self-awareness: All the adulation he was receiving, he conceded then, was because he was a blank slate on which people could attach their aspirations.

As he seeks re-election, his self-awareness is on display again, with a new conclusion.

"It's not as cool to be an Obama supporter as it was in 2008, with the posters and all of that stuff," he acknowledged to an intimate gathering of donors in Miami this week.

It's a line he delivered with a chuckle, a variation on a theme that he is using with his base of supporters. But it holds an important truth for the Obama campaign: Obama is now a known quantity and he will not inspire voters this election the same way he did in the previous one.

Complicating things for Obama is what the Pew Research Center calls an "intensity gap" between Obama's conservative opponents and the liberals who would be most likely to support him. A recent Pew survey found that 84 percent of staunch conservatives strongly disapprove of the president, but only 64 percent of solid liberals strongly approve of him.

Intensity, or enthusiasm, is an important factor in driving voters to the polls. Obama benefited greatly from it in 2008 with a record-shattering turnout. But conservative intensity played a significant role in the 2010 midterm elections that put Republicans in control of the House.

For the president, crafting his message for 2012 is a balancing act.

He must re-energize his base, the voters moved by his 2008 mantra of hope and change. But he also must reassure moderate and independent voters that he is still focused on righting the economy and that he is not the radical, ineffective agent portrayed by the Republican field of presidential candidates.

Obama bridges the two with a line meant to be both a defense of his first two years in office and a rationale for his re-election: "Big changes don't happen overnight."

Still, Obama this week was reminded of the results many of his supporters have come to expect from him, no matter how unrealistic. While speaking to more than 900 supporters Monday at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, one man in the audience stood and shouted, "Keep your promise, stop AIDS now!" before the crowd drowned him out with cheers of "Obama, Obama!"

To hear First Lady Michelle Obama tell it, the president has even had to reassure her at times.

"In those moments when we're all sweating it, when we're worried about whether the bill is going to pass, the negotiations might fall through – `Barack, what are you doing?' – I know you all have thought that," she told donors at a San Francisco fundraiser Tuesday. "I hear it. I put him through it, too.

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"Barack always reminds me that we're playing a long game here. He reminds me that change is slow."

Obama also faces the full force of the Republican presidential field. The GOP debate in New Hampshire on Monday night displayed how a central feature of the Republican candidates' pitches was that they were the antithesis of Obama, variously denouncing his health care plan as "Obamacare," his time in the presidency as the "Obama depression" and his policies as anti-job and anti-business.

While Republicans know whom they are running against, Obama does not.

Obama political adviser David Axelrod maintains that Obama voters will regain their intensity once they have a flesh and blood candidate to compare with Obama.

But that is still months away and Obama needs enthusiasm from his supporters now to build a grass-roots base and to raise money.

In his speeches to donors these days, Obama recalls the euphoria displayed by his backers during his election night acceptance speech in Chicago's Grant Park.

"Now, two and a half years have passed since that night in Grant Park, and I've got a lot more gray hair," he said at the Arsht Center, where supporters paid from $44 to $2,500 to hear him. "And what seemed so fresh and new, now – `we've seen Obama so many times on TV, and we know all his quirks and all his tics and he's been poked apart.'"

He knows what his liberal critics say, and he asks for their forbearance. To be sure, they have a litany of complaints. Many Democrats wanted him to push for a public option in health care, a government alternative to private insurance providers. Others wanted an immigration overhaul or a quicker end to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I know the conversation you guys are having," he said to laughter. "I understand that. There have been frustrations, and I've got some dings to show for it over the last two and half years."


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Sources: AOL, Huffington Post, MSNBC, Google Maps

Happy 50th Birthday President Obama! Jennifer Hudson Serenades

HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA! MAY GOD RICHLY BLESS YOU WITH 50 MORE HEALTHY YEARS & A SUCCESSFUL RE-ELECTION!

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Obama calls for end to 'partisan games' at 50th birthday bash

President Barack Obama was back in full-throttle campaign mode Wednesday night, attending two high-profile fund-raisers in Chicago during which he took aim at congressional Republicans after weeks of drawn-out debt negotiations.

"I hope we can avoid another self-inflicted wound like we saw over the last couple weeks," he told an enthusiastic crowd of 2,400 in Chicago's historic Aragon ballroom, where the ventilation system struggled to keep the room temperature below 90 degrees.

"We don't have time to play these partisan games," continued the president, huddled over the podium with his voice breaking at times. "We have too much work to do. Over the next several weeks I hope Congress is focused on what the American people are focused on: Making sure the economy is growing.

"It doesn't matter what kind of week I have in Washington, because I know you have my back," Obama added, scoring his loudest applause of the night.

Obama was introduced by Rahm Emanuel, his former chief of staff and the current Chicago mayor, while singer Jennifer Hudson led the crowd in singing "Happy Birthday" as he came on stage. Also in attendance were Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Jan Schakowski.

Before addressing the ballroom, the president delivered a video message to more than 1,100 house parties around the country while top surrogates fanned out to several cities to hold smaller fund-raising events -- all part of the president's renewed focus on 2012 after a weeks-long battle with congressional Republicans that resulted in a debt deal many of his supporters oppose and an approval rating that has stubbornly sagged to below 45%.

Addressing the ballroom crowd, Obama acknowledged the change he promised three years ago has been slow to come.

"When I said change we can believe in, I didn't say change we can believe in tomorrow," he said to laughter. "Not change we can believe in next week ... we knew these challenges weren't made overnight and they aren't going to be fixed overnight."

Also among the president's fund-raising events Wednesday was a high-dollar dinner with 100 supporters -- most of whom paid $35,800 each to attend, the max contribution allowed to both the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The first $5,000 of each ticket sold will go to Obama's re-election effort while the remainder is allotted to the DNC's coffers.

The Obama campaign isn't saying how much they expect the events to net, but it's safe to estimate the total will soar well into the high seven figures.

The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, was quick to pounce on Obama ahead of his fund-raising trip with a tongue-in-cheek jab suggesting the president is trying to avoid the latest round of indicators of a still-struggling economy.

"With 9.2% unemployment, he could work on creating jobs, but I suppose the White House is thinking he should stick to the part of his job he really likes," RNC spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said.

But the president was all smiles on the eve of his 50th birthday, telling the crowd, "We have made some incredible strides together. Yes, we have. But the thing we all have to remember that as much good as we have done, precisely because we inherited so many challenges, we aren't even there yet."

Despite Wednesday night's expected cash windfall, the president has some work to do to keep pace with his fund-raising clip last quarter, which resulted in an eye-popping $86 million for his campaign and the DNC. While the third fund-raising quarter began more than a month ago, Obama and his surrogates were forced to postpone or cancel several events while the debt ceiling negotiations dragged on in Washington.

Adding to that challenge is the fact that August is traditionally a difficult month to raise funds, with most donors' minds on vacation, the beach and summer's waning weeks. The result is a campaign that has to go into overdrive to report a big cash haul by September 30.


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Sources: AP, CNN, MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps