Infinite Unknown

New York wants all health workers to get flu vaccines.

NEW YORK (CNN) — A New York state Supreme Court judge Friday granted a temporary restraining order against a requirement that all health care workers in the state get H1N1 flu vaccinations.

The state health commissioner had said the workers had to be vaccinated against both seasonal and H1N1 flu by November 30 or risk disciplinary action.

The Public Employees Federation filed suit, and Judge Thomas McNamara on Friday granted the restraining order, which will be in effect at least until the State Supreme Court can review the case during a hearing scheduled for October 30.

In a news release, federation President Kenneth Brynien called the decision “a big step in the right direction.”

Peter Banks, a council leader for the organization, added that its members “are not against the vaccination program; what we are against is the mandating, putting conditions of service over an unproven vaccine.”

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Tags: Flu, Health, Healthcare, Law, New York, Politics, Supreme Court, Vaccination, Vaccine

Date: 15th Oct 09

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Tags: New York, Police, Police State, Protesters, Society, U.S., Violence

It was created 40 years ago to provide health care for the poorest New Yorkers, offering a lifeline to those who could not afford to have a baby or a heart attack. But in the decades since, New York State’s Medicaid program has also become a $44.5 billion target for the unscrupulous and the opportunistic.

It has drawn dentists like Dr. Dolly Rosen, who within 12 months somehow built the state’s biggest Medicaid dental practice out of a Brooklyn storefront, where she claimed to have performed as many as 991 procedures a day in 2003. After The New York Times discovered her extraordinary billings through a computer analysis and questioned the state about them, Dr. Rosen and two associates were indicted on charges of stealing more than $1 million from the program.

It has drawn van services, intended as medical transportation for patients who cannot walk unaided, that regularly picked up scores of people who walked quite easily when a reporter was watching nearby. In cooperation with medical offices that order these services, the ambulettes typically cost the taxpayers more than $50 a round trip, adding up to $200 million a year. In some cases, the rides that the state paid for may never have taken place.

School officials around the state have enrolled tens of thousands of low-income students in speech therapy without the required evaluation, garnering more than $1 billion in questionable Medicaid payments for their districts. One Buffalo school official sent 4,434 students into speech therapy in a single day without talking to them or reviewing their records, according to federal investigators.

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Tags: Fraud, Global News, Medicaid, New York

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Minnesota is deep in the hole financially, but the state still owns a premier golf resort, a sprawling amateur sports complex, a big airport, a major zoo and land holdings the size of the Central American country of Belize.

Valuables like these are in for a closer look as 44 states cope with deficits.

Like families pawning the silver to get through a tight spot, states such as Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts and Illinois are thinking of selling or leasing toll roads, parks, lotteries and other assets to raise desperately needed cash.

GOP lawmakers are pushing to privatize the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and the state lottery. Both steps require a higher authority – federal legislation in the case of the airport, a voter-approved constitutional amendment for the lottery. But one lawmaker estimated an airport deal could bring in at least $2.5 billion, and the lottery $500 million.

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Tags: Debt, Economy, Government, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Politics, Recession

With Wall Street hemorrhaging jobs and assets, even many of the wealthiest players are retrenching. Others, like the Lehman Brothers bankers who borrowed against their millions in stock, have lost everything. Hedge-fund managers try to sell their luxury homes, while trophy wives are hocking their jewelry. The pain is being felt on St. Barth’s and at Sotheby’s, on benefit-gala committees and at the East Hampton Airport, as the world of the Big Rich collapses, its culture in shock and its values in question.

Illustrations by Barry Blitt.

A snapshot: East Hampton, late summer, a lawn party at a house on the ocean overlooking the dunes. The host is a prince of private equity known for dressing well. One of his guests is Steven Cohen, the publicity-shy billionaire whose SAC Capital, with $16 billion under management, is perhaps the most revered of the 10,000 or so hedge funds spawned by this giddily rich time. Nearby is Daniel Loeb, of Third Point, one of the better-known “activist” hedge funds, who hopes to move soon into a 10,700-square-foot, $45 million penthouse at l5 Central Park West, a Manhattan monument to the new gilded age. Gliding easily between them is art dealer Larry Gagosian, so successful at selling Bacons and Serras to Wall Street’s new titans-including to Cohen-that he now travels in his own private jet and has his own helicopter to take him to it.

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Tags: Banking, Credit Crisis, Credit Crunch, Economy, Financial Crisis, Hedge Funds, Lehman Brothers, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, New York, Society, Stock Market, Unemployment, Wall Street

At least 29 states plus the District of Columbia, including several of the nation’s largest states, faced an estimated $48 billion in combined shortfalls in their budgets for fiscal year 2009 (which began July 1, 2008 in most states.) At least three other states expect budget problems in fiscal year 2010.

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Tags: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Bubble, budget deficit, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Economy, Financial Crisis, Florida, Georgia, Government, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Politics, Recession, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Taxes, Taxpayers, Tennessee, U.S., Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin

Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spoke to the National Urban League, a group “devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream.” When an audience member asked him how he planned to reduce urban crime, McCain praised Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s efforts in New York Cirty before invoking the military’s tactics in Iraq as the model for crime-fighting:

McCAIN: And some of those tactics – you mention the war in Iraq – are like that we use in the military. You go into neighborhoods, you clamp down, you provide a secure environment for the people that live there, and you make sure that the known criminals are kept under control. And you provide them with a stable environment and then they cooperate with law enforcement, etc, etc.

Listen here:

Now that our military experts advocate approaching the “war on terror” with more policing and intelligence gathering, McCain wants to approach urban policing with more military power. (HT: Political Radar) Continue reading »

Tags: Crime, Iraq, John McCain, Law enforcement, Martial Law, Military, New World Order, New York, New York City, Police State, Politics, U.S., War on Terror

Community-based organizations, hospitals, and health clinics throughout New York City will voluntarily test every adult resident between the ages of 18-64 living in the Bronx for HIV, The New York Times reports.

The decision, announced by The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, comes on the heels of a recent report which shows New York City residents have the highest rate of practicing unsafe sex, and one of the highest HIV rates in the United States.

The Bronx, the report shows, has been hit especially hard.

In 2005, an estimated 250,000 Bronx residents aged 18-64 had never been tested for HIV, and one in four people with HIV did not know they were infected. The report also shows that one out of every four people that found out they were HIV-positive also found out they had full-blown AIDS at the same time.

The department of health website reports the goal of the initiative is that every Bronx resident learns his or her HIV status and has access to quality care and prevention services.

“The Bronx has the opportunity to lead the city in the fight against HIV/AIDS by being the first borough to have all residents tested,” says Thomas R Frieden, MD, MPH, and commissioner of the city’s health department.

“This will set a model not only for the city but for the whole country,” he says.

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Tags: AIDS, HIV, New York

NEW YORK (AP) – A city Health Department study finds that more than a fourth of adult New Yorkers are infected with the virus that causes genital herpes.

The study, released Monday, says about 26 percent of New York City adults have genital herpes, compared to about 19 percent nationwide.

The department says genital herpes can double a person’s risk for contracting HIV.

Herpes can cause painful sores, but most people have no recognizable symptoms.

Among New Yorkers, the herpes rate is higher among women, black people and gay men.

The health department urges consistent use of condoms, and says its STD clinics offer free, confidential herpes testing.

June 09, 08

Source: AP

Tags: Herpes, HIV, New York

Saving the living has always been the No. 1 priority for a New York City ambulance crew. But a select group of paramedics may soon have a different task altogether: saving the dead. The city is considering creating a special ambulance whose crew would rush to collect the newly deceased and preserve the body so that the organs might be taken for transplant.

The “rapid-organ-recovery ambulance,” still in the early planning stages, could raise a host of ethical questions and strike some families as ghoulish. But top medical officials in the Fire Department and Bellevue Hospital say it has the potential to save hundreds of lives.

Generally in the U.S., only people who die at hospitals are used as organ donors, because doctors are on hand with life-support machinery and other equipment to preserve the organs and remove them before they spoil. Surgeons have only a few critical hours before kidneys, livers and other body parts suffer damage that renders them unusable.

(When I read this article I had a lot of second thoughts what this might be all about. – The Infinite Unknown)

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Tags: Medicine, New York, organ, transplant surgery