Today’s news summary – December 28, 2011

Here is a summary of the important news from today.

• Cases of Tamiflu-Resistant Flu Concern Experts
• Avastin May Help Some With Ovarian Cancer: Studies
• Adding Lovenox Didn’t Reduce Blood Clot Death Risk in Study
• Doubt Cast on Use of Genetic Test Before Plavix
• Vitamins, Omega-3s May Keep Brain From Shrinking: Study
• Fungus Found in Sinks Can Cause Serious Infections
• Health Highlights: Dec. 28, 2011
• New Painkiller Worries Experts

Medicare changes payment plan to fight drug fraud
By Kelly Kennedy, USA Today ~ Dec 13, 2011

Medicare will not pay prescription-drug bills if officials see evidence of fraud, which will let them avoid chasing down money after it has been paid out, Vice President Biden announced Tuesday…

The Federal Government’s Deeply Flawed System For Controlling Medicare Costs
By Sally Pipes; Forbes ~ Dec 12, 2011

Medicare’s hospital trust fund is set to be exhausted by 2024, according to the latest report from the program’s trustees. Federal officials are understandably looking for easy ways to cut spending in the entitlement program in hopes of shoring up its finances…

Report: Health care reform law causing Americans to lose insurance ahead of implementation
By Alexis Levinson; The Daily Caller ~ Dec 09, 2011

As a result of President Obama’s health care reform law, some Americans are already losing their health insurance coverage before the law’s regulations even go into effect, according to a new report…

Home Health Advocates Push Remote Monitoring In Medicare
By Jessica Marcy; Kaiser Health News ~ Dec 07, 2011

Home care technology can play a critical role in keeping patients out of hospitals and at home, but many providers believe new policies should be used to encourage its adoption.

10 Signs It May Be Time To Fire Your Doctor
From Deborah L. Jacobs; Forbes ~ Dec 08, 2011

There’s no such thing as a “best doctor,” despite the many books and lists compiling them. But there is such a thing as the wrong doctor for you…

Uncle Sam Can Help You Pay For Long-Term Care Insurance
By Ashley Ebeling; Forbes ~ Dec 06, 2011

Can a tax deduction help you afford long-term care insurance? If you’re buying it as an individual, maybe. If you’re self-employed and buying it through your business, absolutely…

Health Law’s Drug Discount Saves U.S. Elderly $1.5 Billion, Medicare Says
By Alex Wayne; Bloomberg ~ Dec 06, 2011

President Barack Obama’s administration says the health-care overhaul he championed has this year saved Medicare recipients an average of $569 a person in drug costs…

Feds to allow use of Medicare data to rate doctors
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, AP; The Bulletin ~ Dec 05, 2011

The government announced Monday that Medicare will finally allow its extensive claims database to be used by employers, insurance companies and consumer groups to produce report cards on local doctors – and improve current ratings of hospitals…

How to pay less for your medications
By Kristen Gerencher; MarketWatch ~ Dec 05, 2011

If you take prescription or over-the-counter medicine, you could be overpaying if you’re not part of a store discount program…

The Visual Thesaurus and their word of the Day is a tremendous learning tool. It is based on the Thinkmap® software environment. At $20/yr it is the best investment we can make in our ongoing knowledge quest. They have a forum of guest writers who write on the various subjects that are introduced in the words of the day It is my goal to feature the works of a different writer a week, plus to introduce you to the various other tools they have developed.

I have been a “Mind Mapper” for almost ten years (I am age 70) and this is the best “Mind Mapping” kind of application that I have run across. I wish that I could convince the “Thinkmap® software” people that they should adopt the more “open source” software model, that they would make at least 10x factor in the increase of their profitability.

Why you may ask?

Market place share! The growth of the interest would grow at exponential rates. They risk losing their advantage by someone developing a much better product. Take a look at what has been happening with the development of the Axon Idea Processor.

“Axon Idea Processor was written in Visual Prolog by Mr. Chan Bok from Singapore as a tool for computer-assisted thinking and problem solving. Mr. Bok is a life member of the Operational Research Society of Singapore

The processor is used for organizing ideas, brainstorming, concept mapping, mind mapping, analysis, flowcharting, and creative writing. A highly heuristic multi-level user workspace is manipulated using a wide array of linguistic, analytical, graphical and compositional idea generation tools. As a sketchpad for visualizing and organizing ideas, the Idea Processor exploits visual attributes such as color, shape, size, scale, position, depth, shadow, links, and icons. Visual cues help the user to facilitate recall, association, and discovery. Diagrams assist modeling and solving complex problems. Visualization tools reinforce short term memory and stimulate creativity.

Pre-defined templates as well as models provided by collaborative users have been developed for a wide variety of pre-defined creative, analytic or problem-solving graphical formats, such as:

1. hierarchical
2. flow-chart
3. critical-path
4. logical
5. data-flow
6. associational
7. contextual
8. pathway

”
Excerpted from:

Axon Idea Processor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I have used Mr Bok’s program for several years (both the free and the commercial version)as well as some 15+ different mind mapping programs. I find it appalling that the educational institutions of our country(USA) have chosen to ignore to a large extent these excellent learning tools.

One question – does anyone know of a complimentary type of tool to the Visual Thesaurus for construction (particularly grammatical compliance)? If we could do that along the lines of sentence diagramming we would have a “real world” application.