FDA warns consumers not to purchase or use certain eye drops from several major brands due to risk of eye infection

Recalled eye drop brands include:
CVS, Rite Aid, Target, Leader, Rugby, Velocity and Walmart (Equate)

From CBS News, "Bloomberg News reported that Kilitch produced the eye drops in an unsanitary factory in India where some workers went barefoot and others made up test results that purported to show the products were sterile."

From the New York Times, "Two brands of eyedrops were pulled from shelves in January and February after they were linked to a drug-resistant bacteria strain that has been found to have caused at least four deaths and serious health issues in several others. Weeks later, two other types of eyedrops were recalled because they posed a different kind of contamination risk."

It seems a little scary to buy store brands of medicines. I used to think the name brand manufacturers provided the store brand products. Apparently not so.

A perfect example of the idiocracy we must suffer.

From the Brevard County Republican Executive Committee (BREC),

"Whereas We the People of the State of Florida were told that COVID-19 presented a grave danger to ourselves, our families, and our communities. We were then subsequently told to and in many cases mandated to take the experimental COVID-19 injections for the following reasons: That it would prevent transmission and thus stop the spread of COVID-19. That doing so would protect our families, ourselves, and the public. Doing so would allow us to keep our jobs and/or benefits to be able to support our families. By doing so we were doing our patriotic duty for our country, state, and communities. We didn’t have a choice because of President Biden’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates. Whereas strong and credible evidence has recently been revealed that COVID-19 and COVID-19 injections are biological and technological weapons..."

The BREC proposal passed in a landslide vote.

"Members of the Brevard County leadership committee adopted a resolution, calling on the governor to make the COVID-19 vaccines illegal. Other GOP chapters in Seminole, Lake, St. John's, Santa Rosa, Hillsborough and Lee Counties have passed similar resolutions."

Healthcare providers in Florida must be cringing by hearing what some of their patients believe annd want to push on society.

The Washington Post did an analysis of credit scores across the U.S.A.

According to the Post, "The region’s poor credit means Southerners are paying more to borrow money, assuming they can qualify for loans at all. That sets them back in everything from car and home purchases to credit card rewards."

At first they thought it might have to do with race. But Black populations in the South fare pretty much the same as in other regions.

Then, they thought it might have to do with poverty. "After all, the South has the highest poverty, lowest income and lowest education rates of any region in the country. " But no, "Within every income bracket, the typical Southerner has a lower credit score than someone who lives in the Northeast, Midwest or West."

Finally, they figured it out. "The reason why credit scores are so low in the South has gotta be connected to medical debt, because that’s the most common type of unpaid bill that people have."

Why is high medical debt concentrated in the South?

Less healthy region.

And, ... "a recent analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found that medical debt “became more concentrated in lower-income communities in states that did not expand Medicaid” ..."

"Of the 11 states that have yet to expand Medicaid, eight sit in the South."

Alas, it may be that the State of Tennessee has lost billions of dollars in Medicaid funding because of no Medicaid expansion. And, the Tennessee governor and legislature don't care.

"Late last month, staffers at Amazon Care — the company’s in-person and virtual primary care service — were called into a meeting and given bad news: Amazon was shutting it down."

Amazon Care was launched in 2019.

It would appear Amazon was trying to sell the Amazon Care service to its corporate customers. However, ... Amazon Care was failing to please its corporate customers.
...
"Amazon’s health-care division in particular has seen high-profile projects come and go. In 2018, Amazon announced it was partnering with finance behemoths JP Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway on a health insurance project called Haven that was supposed to revolutionize the employer-based health-care model. But in January 2021, Haven announced it was shutting down,..."

"Amazon is in the process of acquiring primary care start-up One Medical for $3.9 billion, although regulators said Friday they are taking a closer look at the deal."

CNBC article, "Amazon is shutting down its telehealth service, Amazon Care."

Amazon seems to be having a high learning curve when it comes to healthcare offerings. It's not at all like selling books and cheap consumer goods.

"Summit View of Farragut’s Medicare provider agreement with the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) was ended on September 1 due to the facility’s “failure to attain substantial compliance with Medicare’s health and safety requirements,” according to a release from CMS. In addition, All residents have to be removed by October 1."

The Summit View website indicates they are a locally owned and operated business.

The article says, "For those who currently live within the facility, CMS recommends visiting the Care Compare Website and Hospital Compare Website for assistance with the relocation process."

Are there many people in a nursing home that can visit websites and manipulate the sites in order to find another nursing home? Let's hope there are family members or others who can help the residents relocate.

From Jeff Yarbro, State of Tennessee Democratic Senator,

From WATE,

"Kevin Parton, who served as interim senior director after the retirement of Dr. Martha Buchanan earlier this year, has been named senior director of the Knox County Health Department, Knox County officials announced Monday."

Degrees in accounting from Liberty University.
Worked for Knox County, Aqua Clear Water Systems, Altar’d State.

Well, well, well. What more need be said from a wrestler turned mayor.

For over 20 years the Leapfrog Group has been doing hospital surveys to grade hospitals in a variety of areas including infections, problems with surgeries, safety problems, practices to prevent errors, and doctors, nurses and hospital staff.

You can search by city, state and a few other criteria.

Knoxville and Nashville hospitals appear to rate overall better than hospitals near/around Atlanta and Birmingham.

Not all hospitals agree with the Leapfrog Groups methodologies. In 2019, "NCH Healthcare in Naples, Florida, filed a suit to challenge its "D" rating in an effort to keep the grade from being published. The suit alleges deceptive and unfair trade practices, as well as defamation, saying the health system did not participate in the 2019 survey and, thus, Leapfrog had to rely on secondary information for more than half of its measures to compare it against hospitals that did provide those measures."

CMS (Medicaid) is opening a new 30-day federal comment period for TennCare III, Medicaid block grants.

Previous commentary,

Tennessee Medicaid block grant proposal does not meet CMS Federal focus. "Tennessee designed its proposal to allow Tennessee to keep 50% of any unspent block grant funds." "In 2018, Tennessee came in $2 billion lower than projected. Under the block grant, Tennessee would have been able to pocket $1 billion,..."

This should not be approved or allowed. Our state government is irresponsible and cannot be trusted.

Oklahoma will become the latest state to adopt the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion after voters passed a ballot measure Tuesday
...
The result also marks the fifth time voters implemented Medicaid expansion at the ballot box after waiting years for their Republican governors and legislatures to act.
...
The Sooner State’s 14% uninsured rate is the second-highest in the nation, behind only Texas and tied with Georgia.

Check out this map indicating the states that have and have not implemented Medicaid expansion. Seven of the 14 that have not implemented Medicaid expansion are in the southeast (of course).
The remaining six that have not implemented Medicaid expansion are Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

From the Knox County Health Department,

The internet is chock-full of information, especially health information. Most of us have used it to search for health advice or to address concerns we may have for ourselves or our families. And, while there is credible, helpful information, there’s also a lot of misleading, inaccurate information. After all, it’s not as if the internet is checked for accuracy or quality. So, how do you tell the difference? How do you know what’s good, quality information about something as important as your health?

They've "created a guide to help navigate the massive world of online health information." It is not the end all of information on navigating health care on the internet. That might be impossible. It is a starting point to make sure you practice good care when researching healthcare.

It includes a list of "trusted health resources and websites" as well as various frequently asked questions.

One of the most important tips, "talk with your health care provider before making any major health changes."

Health care was a central focus of last night's debate. Bernie and Warren advocated Medicare for All. Moderates advocated for variations and incremental approaches to achieve single payer. Both sides lied.

Bernie claims Medicare for All will instantly give everyone free health insurance with no deductibles and no co-pays, and would also cover prescriptions, vision and dental. (Maybe it includes free lollipops and a pony, too?)

Here are some inconvenient truths about Medicare:

State Sen. Maureen Walsh, R-Walla Walla, made a comment last week "saying nurses in smaller hospitals “probably play cards for a considerable amount of the day” during their shifts." The comment was made while "debating a bill that would give nurses uninterrupted meals and breaks at work and protect them from mandatory overtime." She feels that if smaller hospitals in under served areas "are forced to comply with the bill, they “may not be able to survive.”

She had to apologize. Sort of. She says she "was simply trying to differentiate between the staffing needs of the small rural critical access hospitals with a handful of patients, versus the large urban hospitals with hundreds and hundreds of patients.”

I worked at a large hospital for five years. I have spent time being with family and friends at various hospitals. The only thing I have noticed is how hard nurses work. You have to be a special person to be a nurse (doctor, teacher, social worker, etc.).

Sure, there are different needs at different locations. Either way, IMO, nurses work hard and need time to eat, relax, and decompress.

Thank a nurse today for all the good work and care they give.

Premiums for benchmark silver plans on the federal individual market exchanges will drop [1.5%] in 2019, marking the first decrease since the Affordable Care Act was implemented, CMS Administrator Seema Verma announced on Thursday.

According to this article, "Tennessee will see the sharpest premium decline, as average monthly premiums for silver plans fell more than 26% from more than $600 last year to $449. "

In August, Tennessee Dept. of Commerce and Insurance announced rate changes for Obamacare providers. BC BS TN proposed an average decrease of 14.8%, whereas Cigna proposed an average premium decrease of 12.9%.

Obamacare open enrollment this year for 2019 is from November 1 to December 15.

Note, The Trump administration plans to shut down the federal health insurance exchange for 12 hours during all but one Sunday in the upcoming open enrollment season. The shutdown will occur from 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET on every Sunday except Dec. 10.

Nearly 4,400 people in Arkansas have lost Medicaid coverage because they didn't meet the new work requirements.

"People subject to the rules have to report 80 hours a month of work or other activity such as job training, education, or volunteering. If they’re out of compliance for three months out of the year, their coverage is revoked for the rest of the year.

"The Arkansas Department of Human Services on Wednesday said another 5,000 people on the program will lose coverage if they don’t meet the work requirement by the end of this month."

Gov. Matt Bevin's, R-Kentucky, plan for Medicaid work requirements was the first (January, 2018) state approved by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Then, in June, 2018, a federal judge with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia blocked Kentucky's plan, saying,

CMS, had been “arbitrary and capricious” in approving Kentucky’s plan because it had “never adequately considered” whether Kentucky’s plan “would, in fact, help the state furnish medical assistance to its citizens, a central objective of Medicaid.”

Currently CMS is reviewing whether to re-approve Kentucky's plan.

These work requirement changes do not affect residents of Tennessee because there is no Medicaid expansion in Tennessee. Tennessee has lost nearly $11 billion in federal funding because of refusing to expand Medicaid. This does not take into account how many people have lost out on access to health care.

“There is no way the Congress is going to repeal preexisting conditions,” vowed Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the top Republican on the Senate committee that handles health policy, at the outset of the effort.

Guess that means repeal is imminent.

Gov. Ralph Northam signed a state budget bill Thursday that gives 400,000 low-income Virginians access to government health insurance.

Utah putting it on the ballot in November.

Still crickets in Tennessee.

In an op-ed article at the NYT....

In Tennessee, the current administration earmarked $25 million (TN Together) for treatment to address the opioid crisis. According to state estimates, TN Together will treat 6,000 to 10,000 addicted Tennesseans, while the number of Tennesseans who actually abused opioids in 2016 was 317,647. And approximately 82,000 of them were already addicted.

The Tennessee General Assembly failed to expand Medicaid in the state through a federally approved, budget-neutral compromise to the Affordable Care Act. In keeping with a long tradition of defying common sense, statehouse legislators said no. If they had said yes, Tennessee would likely be enjoying addiction news similar to Kentucky’s: “After expanding Medicaid,” notes the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Kentucky experienced a 700 percent increase in Medicaid beneficiaries using substance-use treatment services.” That number coincides with a 90 percent drop in overdose hospitalizations of uninsured Kentuckians.

Thanks again to our state legislatures for their lack of caring and lack of common sense. Besides the opioid problem, the state would be much better off on a lot of other health care issues if they had adopted Medicaid expansion. But, hey, who needs over $10 billion in federal funding to help out low income citizens? States rights! States rights!

Washington Post: "On Tuesday, Maine became the first state to expand Medicaid with a ballot initiative. And it passed overwhelmingly: Maine voters agreed to grant health care to an estimated 70,000 low-income residents by a nearly 20-percentage point margin by the time the measure was called by election watchers. In other words, a sizable number of voters in Maine just voted to do the exact opposite of what the state's Republican governor and Republicans in Washington have been trying to do."

Current authorization for spending has expired for the CHIP Program (Children's Health Insurance Program). The CHIP program "helps lower- and middle-income families that otherwise earn too much to be eligible for Medicaid." It covers 9 million children across the country and 370,000 pregnant women a year.

Funding lapsed Sept. 30, 2017. Some states have only enough funding to last to the end of the year. "Minnesota, however, was among the most imperiled because it had spent all its CHIP money. State officials said Tuesday that the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services was giving Minnesota $3.6 million from unspent national funds to cover CHIP this month."

"The funding renewal was not a priority among Republican leaders, who have spent most of this year trying to replace the Affordable Care Act and dramatically overhaul the Medicaid program. Some in Congress also thought the Sept. 30 deadline was squishy since states could extend their existing funds beyond that."

CHIP was created in 1997 as a joint state-federal health insurance program for low to moderate income children and pregnant women who are not Medicaid eligible.

"Under current law, the program has to be reauthorized every few years; Saturday’s deadline was the product of a two-year extension negotiated in 2015, the most recent episode of brinkmanship over whether Congress would act in time to avoid disruption. This time it failed."

The Senate Finance Committee advanced a bill this week to extend funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for five years. Now it has to be approved by the Senate, the House, and the President.

Hopefully they will get this done before the end of the year.