Back in August I wrote about this and still wonder what’s being done with the $7 million in grants that the Orange County REC center received, so let’s do a visual this time. You can get the picture here as the Orange County office who was granted the $7 million has one page that is on the Cal-Optima’s website who administers California Medicaid, and that’s it with no information other than a link to an interest form. It has been the same page with no changes for at least a year.
Consumers get stuck again, fewer choices, higher prices. This all started back in June of 2011 when Walgreens dumped Express Scripts who is trying finish buying Medco to have around 1/3 of the prescription business in the US. The deal looks now that if you are an Express Scripts patient, you won’t be going to Walgreens any more unless your pay cash. The price Express Scripts is paying for Medco is around $29 billion.
Also, Express Scripts is also in the analytics business using Ingenix analytics (a wholly owned subsidiary of United Healthcare) to figure out who will not be taking their medications. The predictive initiatives are one part of a far broader category of programs by insurers and pharmacy-benefit managers. BD
And if that doesn’t work, then there’s alcohol and their data selling business is worth just under $800 million. Express Scripts may miss out on the additional bonus of being able to sell other purchase profiles for non-prescription data like retail chains do. BD
Darby Ziegler stopped by her local Walgreens drugstore in Huntington Beach the other day to refill a prescription. She got her meds — and some surprising news. Beginning Jan. 1, Walgreens will no longer fill prescriptions for Anthem Blue Cross members, meaning that they'll have to switch to another drugstore if they want their insurance to keep covering their meds.
In this case, though, it's not the insurance giant calling the shots. Instead, it's Anthem's pharmacy benefit manager, a St. Louis company called Express Scripts Inc. The dispute between Walgreens and Express Scripts highlights how consumers can find their healthcare choices limited by the money-minded business decisions of big corporations.
That's something Express Scripts will soon have more clout to do. The company is spending about $29 billion to acquire rival Medco Health Solutions Inc. If the deal passes regulatory muster, it would give Express Scripts control over about a third of the market for pharmacy benefits. Nearly 4 billion prescriptions are dispensed in the U.S. annually.
This is really worth watching if you have a chance and whether you know it or not if you are on the web, you are somewhere along the line using some Oracle product, Java being the most frequently accessed and used since their acquisition. Larry Ellison, CEO and Founder of Oracle talks about their new open standards cloud. Beware of false clouds, you have to love this one and throughout the video he talks about the “Roach Hotel of clouds” with Salesforce.com, where you can go in and you can’t come out.
What this means is that the other folks use a proprietary software, which he calls a false cloud. In addition, he points out too that each cloud has it’s own data base, again unlike the folks at Salesforce who combine it all into one. With healthcare, this is a big deal with privacy and security issues for sure. You can also move the cloud functions back to local servers or move it back and forth to Amazon’s cloud. Larry states it took 6 years to re-write and “fuse” all their applications, a lot of work but now they all work together and then they added on the “Oracle Social Network” to work across all “Fusion” applications.
Larry Ellison is in great form and these are some major new offerings from both the cloud and application side of the business Business intelligence is a big function and integration platform with all Oracle apps. You have to laugh listening to him with talking about SAP R/3 comparing as well as Salesforce.com.
Larry Ellison Open World Conference
It’s hysterical when he does his own demonstrations! That portion is about 2/3 of the way through and the entire video is just short of an hour, but well worth the watch, especially if you are not familiar with Oracle, it’s great tour and nice presentation from Larry Ellison. Oracle product are not working on IPads too.
We are all still trying to figure that one ourselves:) This is done to promote the doctor’s new book at Harvard Medical, Your Medical Minds from Dr. Jerome Goodman. This is so funny in Colbert style. He talks about the patient adding their values. Where do I get my medications…from Canadian fake Viagra stores…medicine is not black and white. Colbert says he needs a second opinion via either Twitter or Wikipedia. This doctor works up at Beth Israel in Boston where we I cover a lot of material from Dr. Halamka, the CIO of the medical center and Harvard Medical at the Quack. BD
These folks have not grasped the concept of “big data” yet and might still be working in the “little data” area today. Oracle yesterday in San Francisco just announced their big offering and you have had IBM out there and again many other technology companies and let’s face it the software design along with hardware needed is getting more complicated, so don’t give CMS one inch here:) Actually this is like pot calling the kettle black as we don’t see Congress doing anything in their own back yard.
It’s dangerous today to speak out when you are maybe not up to date on what’s happening around you with expectations that are maybe beyond what can be done and gee these two should be right at home with that routine. In healthcare we have ECD10 issues lurking all over the place too. Here’s a back story on that with even Harvard recommending holding off so hospitals and other Health IT organizations can catch up as they have so much on their plate, but we even listen to Harvard any more it seems. I had a client I had to break of this too with not being very observant and would just pound on deadline dates, totally oblivious to the world around them. Love this statement below…
“Accordingly, Kohl and Grassley asserted that, “The deadline for establishing procedures has passed and there has not been, to our knowledge, adequate consultation with either industry representatives or consumer advocates.”
If I were CMS I would absolutely turn the tables and ask these 2 senators why they are missing their deadlines? I think a big reason again for Congress is a big level of distraction with the “default” topic of abortion comes in and they can’t function past that at times. Congress needs big data management like real quick and perhaps they could have even queried the information themselves.
Lawmakers don’t even see a tool to help them sort the data when it hits them over the head and this can go for the Supreme Court too for that matter. You can operate like Fred Flintstone today.
This needs to be fixed but gee let’s hammer on CMS and not do anything ourselves here since the issue has been in the hands of Congress for a number of years now to fix, so it’s pass the buck time again! So guys, get yourself set up to handle some big data and analytics and you would find many of your answers on your own. It’s just obvious they keep putting the doctors last and blame game time has sadly arrived for a round of CYA.
The folks in Congress pretty much ran off the US CIO already and now it looks like they are ready to cut off their nose to spite their face and run Dr. Berwick off too, but failures to meet deadlines that require IT infrastructure, well let’s just ignore that and we will continue to hide behind the digital illiteracy curtain for as long as we can. Sad though is the fact that consumers and doctors lose but this is what they do. Last I knew we are all consumers so perhaps they could take in a little fun time with some insurer games that are out there and see how they do. Play along with what they want the rest of us to do and remain “dumbed down” if you will. They don’t see this side of the algorithmic marketing going on and beating down on consumers either, they just don’t get it. BD
As mandated by the Affordable Care Act, the deadline to draft the regulations was October 1, 2011. Clearly, CMS has failed to meet this deadline, and Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Herb Kohl (D-WI), who are the authors and sponsors of the Sunshine Act, are not happy about it.
In fact, Senators Kohl and Grassley yesterday sent a letter to Donald Berwick, MD, Administrator of CMS, complaining about CMS’s failure to issue the proposed rules.
We should note however, that once a regulation is finished, it must go over to the Office of Budget and Management (OMB), which can take up to 30 days to review and suggest changes.
When the unnamed Homeland Security executive made this statement he was right on. Look at the marketing and tell me that Bernanke, Sebelius, Barney Frank and name who you want would sit online and play a game to add data to your insurer. This is part of the problem here and what marketing is doing. Right now when we are in an era to where people need education we market and tell consumers that playing a game is going to do it? With this blog I try to look at things realistically and let’s face it, smart executives are not going to do this so what are we doing here? We are taking consumers into the “dumbed down” mode.
What I am talking about is the Aetna and Humana games that want to draw people in to playing games to add more data to their insurance files. Again, let’s get real here, are top executives and leaders going to give this one hoot of attention? Again, this is one of the marketing pitfalls we run into in the US to where some of this is out of control. It’s the brain washing effect. Let’s go one more, the software designers who create it are not going to use it, they are in it for the money to create something to be marketed. This goes against the grain on education and training our youth to come into the business world. If folks want a real game, how about World of Warcraft. Real hackers wouldn’t waste their time playing such a game either.
You have to love this flat out comment of reality here with the unnamed expert stating that we have stereotyped people interested in computers in a bad way over the years and have far more students graduating in performing arts that we can use in essence. For that matter, we have “dumbed down our Congress” too with denial and the focus on the OMG site of politics as well. We can’t even get lawmakers to consider the real big data tools they need.
I would love to see a role model such as Sebelius or someone in an executive position really playing these games, let’s get real. They don’t even talk about their own use of mobile consumer health IT products and what they use, much less a game. It becomes much more difficult to move forward when you have brain washing activities as such being pitched, again marketing to get data. If the developers are not using the program themselves, that’s’ your first big hint, they are in it for the bucks to make money and give companies something to market. Even HHS gets their values confused too in all of this with a contest for a Facebook disaster application. The real geeks on the web have had a hay day with this one with talking privacy and Facebook in the same sentence and talked about “riots’ being a disaster, would this then require an act of Congress then to rule on what is a disaster? This doesn’t look very intelligent. Does Sebelius use a PHR? Does the Surgeon General use “her” PHR that the government has?
But rest assured, to keep you totally distracted from the business side of all of this, the company created something to keep you busy so the acquisitions become less noticeable but give the overall corporation more power, play the game they created and thus what goes on behind closed doors on servers won’t create any additional stress.
I don’t know about you but as an intelligent person who used to code, this is an extreme insult and the marketing and brainwashing is scary and this is a fleece of intelligence. This is part of the math and algorithms being sold and used to brainwash and control consumers that has impacted the movement on Wall Street. Would you see a million dollar broker playing these games, heck no.
I have been blogging about such for a few years now and if you use the link above you can dig in a lot further with others, university professors and doctors and more debunking the “dumbed down” marketing that is occurring and there’s a lot more out there but this is so flagrant. Again, software developers are in it for the bucks to make money and have no interest what so ever in using it themselves, true gamers will play “real” games for recreation.
The time is here to get real and see marketing for what it is and ask questions and don’t believe all the statistics and math presented to you. With some of the really digital illiterate use of analytics one example of a Governor who would use such games could be in Arizona:) I use her as an example because she was so much in the news with her decisions, but I could be fooled too as like many consumers who are working like crazy today, she may not have the time for this either.
In closing here, why not do a promotion of Boehner playing the game <grin>. They are all consumers too last I looked, right? Brainwashing marketing is on steroids today with marketing and selling “its for those guys over there” for sure. No wonder Boehner cries all the time but he could do more to help himself too with knowledge and coming out of the 70s. Heck these folks are totally out of touch on what IT infrastructure costs today, so they don’t do much and are pretty much oblivious to the movement. This is again part of the sanity that the protesters on Wall Street object to and it’s all the math and algorithms out there as such keeping the pot stirred with distorting reality.
Again when I listen to the news and hear members of Congress talking about “secret sauce” relative to Google and hear the term “circuit breakers” used in the financial news, I just shudder.
In the real world of intelligence, we call these algorithms and the need to education and get away from “snow job” terminology would really help.
Algorithms and their abuse is what has rearranged the money in this country and the world so if we can get everyone on the “real” track and stop the First Grade language translations used, we would all benefit, including lawmakers. BD
Autonomy is basically data aggregating and machine learning technology and there’s a medical division that has been around for a long time and you can see the AMA, Kaiser and Sutter and a few other are using the software. There’s so much information out there and HP feels that $12 billion is a bargain? Larry Ellison said it was way over priced. In the video the CEO talks about the black box in the video and talks about how things change their meanings frequently. Larry could take the software or a similar offering and place it all in the new Oracle clouds and is now pushing parallel computing. BD
One other side comment, think we have any lawmakers that could appreciate this type of technology and better yet read how to use it:)
(Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard completed its $12 billion buy of British software firmAutonomy on Monday, the centerpiece of a botched strategy shift that cost ex-chief executive Leo Apotheker his job last month.
Autonomy
HP said its 25.50 pounds-per-share cash offer -- representing a 79 percent premium that many HP shareholders found excessive -- had been accepted by investors representing 87.34 percent of the company's shares, well ahead of the 75 percent threshold needed.
Buying the Cambridge, England-based firm, whose software searches unstructured data like emails, phone calls and tweets that do not fit into traditional databases, was one of a raft of surprise radical reforms announced by HP's Apotheker in August.
Apotheker also decided to close HP's Palm Web OS tablet and smartphone unit and sell or spin off its PC division.
The rushed announcements and concerns about the lofty price offered for Autonomy sent HP's stock, and Apotheker's credibility, plunging.
We all know that pharmacies collect and sell our data and perhaps by attracting more Aetna customers more data can be collected in a easier fashion by offering discounts and then too there’s the monthly fee that generates revenue.
The $4 generics still work pretty good for me and I’m not an Aetna member. I remember when working close with doctors how they get grilled when the patient’s trail of not filling a prescription was a bit point of conflict at times as the HMOs would sometimes drill the doctor on why the patient didn’t fill a prescription when in fact they did and paid cash at Target.
We have all watched in the news how United has buddied up to Walgreens so I guess it’s CVS and Aetna’s turn. No word on any pay for performance yet for CVS pharmacists. Walgreens recently started getting liquor licenses too for their stores where they could sell it they make just under $800 million a year on selling data so I don’t know what CVS makes but this make one wonder if providing drugs is a sideline business to collecting data doesn’t it?
HARTFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aetna (NYSE: AET) and CVS/pharmacy today announced the launch of a new co-branded Medicare prescription drug plan. The new Aetna CVS/pharmacy Prescription Drug Plan (PDP) is available in 43 states and Washington, DC and offers Medicare beneficiaries outstanding value along with access to experienced CVS pharmacists and the convenience of shopping at their own neighborhood CVS/pharmacy.
The plan offers a $26 monthly plan premium and has no deductible for generic drugs. Medicare beneficiaries who sign up for this plan and fill their prescriptions at a CVS/pharmacy will realize savings on their out-of-pocket prescription drug costs. By filling prescription drugs at a CVS/pharmacy, as compared to a non-preferred network pharmacy, plan members will:
pay a low $3 copayment for preferred generic prescriptions; and
save $10 on copayments for non-preferred generic and preferred brand prescriptions.
“We are committed to providing value to our Medicare beneficiaries, and this new plan is not only affordable, it increases our members’ access to one of the premier pharmacy chains in the United States,” said John Chomeau, head of Aetna Medicare. “With 75 percent of the U.S. population in the markets in which CVS/pharmacy operates living within 3 miles of a CVS drugstore, Medicare beneficiaries will have convenient access to the prescription drugs they need through this plan.”
IntriCon Corporation designs, develops, manufactures and distributes miniature and micro-miniature body-worn devices and is located in Minnesota and has offices in the US and outside of the US as well. I looked at the website but could not determine where the actual manufacturing location is. This may explain why today I had so many reads on hearing aid on the blog, the Esteem brand mainly.
IntriCon has several body monitors in their product line to include their cardiac monitoring tool that was approved by the FDA in August of this year. The company is growing with subsidiaries who all have their own contracts as well, such as this division who introduces drugs/devices to the FDA and consults to help them get approved.
Again, I don’t know where the products are actually made but wonder if this is part of the action taking place with their China Gate acquisition of a couple years ago that already had a line of communication open with the FDA and seeks to get more Chinese drugs and products distributed in the US and worldwide? Many devices companies manufacture over seas and in China but don’t have a US health insurance company to lobby and help with other processes of getting a product to market.
They are offering an online hearing test which may or may not be the best thing but it’s there. For United customers with Medicare Managed care and drug plans there will be no out of pocket expense and of course when taking a hearing test on line all that is documented and stored so the company can store it and use to tune the device. HiHealthInnovations is a newly formed subsidiary. If you are not under their plan the device cost will have a co-pay of $649. This is interesting as I wonder how this works with other insurers as well because every time one is sold outside of the United clients they make money. They make money all the way around with being a supplier on who ever gets one, plus they have full control of their reimbursement.
They also plan to sell the cheap hearing aide in retail stores but are not set up as of yet and of course the computer test is free for doctors at no charge but Walgreens, WalMart and other majors were mentioned. I wonder if it’s going to work anything like the pay for performance efforts with pharmacists getting any additional funds for pushing the product when it does arrive.
With current funding for both small biotech and device companies some folks and I were having the discussion of wondering if the insurers will be gobbling up a few or many of those next since IPOs are pretty much non existent and funding from VCs is tight right now. This looks like one more subsidiary in their entire business model to now be able to distribute the devices, so are drugs next in this new subsidiary or is there a new one waiting to be added?
Everywhere you turn today, whether it’s billing, now devices, imaging, reimbursement, banks they are in to just about any are of healthcare you can think of and again is this the future for small medical devices and biotech companies to be consumed by insurers? It’s starting to kind of look that way. With all the physician’s groups they are buying, will the doctors have other options for other hearing aids to be provided to patients since this one will be the cheapest? It does make you wonder if this will push others out. Last month they bought a huge section of HMO managed patients in Orange County along with Memorial IPA in Long Beach, CA.
Also in the OC, some hospitals won’t take United Employer insurance either and there may be other repercussions in other states as such. There’s also their legal case still ongoing to where Untied is suing the government wanting the Tri-Care contract for the southern part of the US, so they have some type of activity going on all over. Anyone on Wall Street need a hearing aide, here’s your model:) BD
Health-insurance giant UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) is adding a new dimension to its increasingly broad suite of health-care products: hearing aids.
Monday, a new UnitedHealth business launched four different kinds of hearing aids, made by supplier IntriCon Corp. (IIN), with a goal of helping reach millions of people who don't get the devices due to high costs and lack of insurance coverage.
Shares of IntriCon soared on the news and were up 30% recently at $3.98. UnitedHealth shares fell 4.7% to $43.94 as the broader market declined.
The move comes as insurers kick off marketing efforts for their 2012 Medicare-based plans. UnitedHealth is offering new hearing-aid benefits in such plans, but also is selling devices on a retail basis over the Internet, injecting it into a multi-billion-dollar market where major players include European companies Sonova Holding AG (SOON.VX), Siemens AG (SI, SIE.XE) and William Demant (WDH.KO).
UnitedHealth is using its scale--with the entire company projecting $101 billion in sales this year--plus a proprietary Web-based hearing test to offer an alternative to a supply chain it says can lead to devices that are too expensive for many people. The move drew criticism from a professional group of hearing experts, which said online hearing tests can't replace face-to-face exams.
UnitedHealth, based in Minnetonka, Minn., has been expanding its business far beyond the bounds of health insurance. It has a broad array of health-services offerings, including its pharmacy-management business, and it has acquired physician groups. The latest venture marks UnitedHealth's first foray into medical-device sales, and the company believes it is the first in the industry to make such a move.
UnitedHealth is keeping costs low by simplifying the route for patients to get hearing tests and, if necessary, hearing aids. It has an online test designed to work with earphones and is planning a mobile application for smart phones and tablet computers. Based on the results, hi HealthInnovations will custom program hearing devices.
I have been watching the news coverage just like everybody else and seen the frustration and a united grouping of no one cause, just a society of frustrated citizens and yes it is here and you can’t hide it and that is what I see the movement to be. Nobody has come along and dug and deeper though to really see how this all came about and bottom line is the math.
Math and algorithms have been used by investment bankers and many others in business to re-arrange the money in the US and the world. This has been a slow progressive movement and pretty much worked behind the scenes for those who are not into math, but this is what it is. I am not talking about technologies and software that is developed to make life better and make us smarter, but rather the dark side that is math and algorithms that are created for profit only that have an impact on the every day life of consumers. I think the protesters are making this point, although again nobody has dug deep here to see how we got to this point.
Speaking of Michael Moore, let’s go back and revisit a scene from “Sicko” to where he interviews a woman who’s claim was denied because she forgot to put down in her medical history that she, way back in time had a yeast infection. This is an algorithm used to query and sort data that created this. Was she given the benefit of the doubt that she could have forgotten something that happen years ago – no. Instead it was analytical algorithms that gave the insurance company a fine line not including one speck of data to deny her claim for her surgery.
Furthermore, was the woman the party that submitted the claim for this? No, it was her doctor who submitted to the insurance company and thus it was time to meet the sales numbers, cut costs and start cranking out numbers. This is where math and bad ethics hurt people. We all have items as such more than likely in our files from years ago that are nominal but again when it comes to poking around and denying a claim, data is used against consumers when they no part of even entering any of it that is used for such analytics.
Above was just one example of how this has grown behind the scenes and has lead to the insanity that exists today. In healthcare this is critical as people get denied care and services and it adds to the nightmares that doctors face all over the country today with averaging $83,000 a year to handle all of this. Do we all have “perfect” data health histories, no. Do the insurers think this exists? It certainly sounds like it when analytics are used and these sight of this fact. The next movie Michael made was about Capitalism and it did well and it certainly moved people and did the job, but again one last question, what do we fight against? I saw this in the papers that he was frustrated that everyone was moved but no action. Plain and simple, the consumers didn’t know what the enemy was, the results and consequences are in the news every day, but what do you fight and how do you fight against it?
As time has marched on and with current focus on transparency, and I might add too the translation of this word is over worked and misconstrued in many circles too, some of this and others are starting to speak out. We are right back to the math, whether it be the financial district or healthcare. Again I will say this is not to denounce good technologies and good solid analytics at all as we need that to find cures and treatments for sure, but it’s about those who carved out an analytical hole in the process to make money only. Our government has bee slow to keep up and that’s not any secret by any means and playing catch up is hard and creates another set of problems in just the process of doing so. Wendell Potter on the healthcare side has been a great advocate and help and gosh who better to listen too than someone who worked in that environment and talks about the brain washing that takes place while there. They forget that in the numbers game there are people’s lives attached to these numbers, again we are back to the math.
Let’s move over and talk a bit about the financial end of things here too as this is where it all begins and everything else rolls down from here to include healthcare. Our SEC functions with one hand behind their back as they have never had audit tables to track transactions, huh? Yes that is true and the industry has not done a very good job regulating itself. This thrived under the former Presidency as “they didn’t want to do math” either and it was easier to just turn a blind head. This was well evidenced by the fact that when the Obama folks moved in, the had to update and clear all the Windows 98 computer out of the White House. Does that sound scary, yes it is, but that’s what the Bush office had in there and how little attention they paid to technology.The geeks all know this and we chat on the web and but perhaps it has not been fully recognized in the public eye yet.
Trading software is all about algorithms and who can create one that out performs the next one as far as the math and speed of the data. There has been no regulation in this area and back in August of 2009 when Madoff was all over the wires I suggested at that time that perhaps we needed a Department of Algorithms and here we are a couple years later, nothing done.
Remember when one guy went to jail over algorithms and their use? I often wonder if this guy did a a real trial with enough “peers” available to full comprehend this case and again I’m not disputing the case or outcome here, but with the inability of many to comprehend the complex match today, were there enough peers there on the jury?
Let’s venture on to another area of the big business of selling out data. We are just a product out there and our data just marketed and this is way out of hand with data being matched that should not go any further than a number crunch. We have digital illiterates who don’t know how to use it and get it down to individual levels and with flawed data make bad decisions on bad data. The absolute biggest example of all of this is none other than the Governor of the State of Arizona who in what I saw in the news has to be right up at the top of the ladder in this department. When she could not find a million and a half in that huge budget for transplant patients, well we all read about it in the news.
The Arizona Governor gets the dunce hat for sure with math. They don’t come any dumber than her in my opinion and as Keith Obermann covered she used analytics provided by a subsidiary of United Healthcare to make her decisions…seeing some of what I am saying about the math yet? It can be spun for profits so again don’t always think the the math we see today is always accurate.
People that write code and the algorithmic formulas like to share and increase value and education, it is just a natural but the rest of the world and the Jan BrewerSociety for the Digital Illiterate can endeavor to educate themselves up a notch to participate and continue to live with the values of the 70s and I think too are totally bliss to how when appears to others, maybe time for a wake up call here? The state still likes doing business with United with awarding contracts.
Recently in the news too there’s another company that thinks combing flawed data on the web along with your credit ranking can do a risk analysis to determine if you will take your prescriptions and get this, they are marketing and selling this to big pharma and insurance companies, which I hope are smart enough to see through this scheme to use algorithms to make money only, as that’s what it is is when they go beyond crunching numbers and bring it down to an individual level. Heck even Netflix says their algorithm is 60% correct, so where in the heck does FICO get to over sell this. Again, this is one example of why the folks are there at Occupy New York, they are tired of unfair marketing and skewed numbers and stats being used again them. They may not know it, but this is at the bottom of it.
One other item from a while back that Rachel Maddow pointed out with the GOP and their digital illiteracy is their pledge that they made and the fact that they left the real authors names on there, lobbyists. What vote of confidence does this create? None and yet these folks still stomp around with projecting numbers and budgets and I feel if they can’t this simple item correct that everyone uses in the business world today, the rest has to be much worse.
Whether they know it or not, this is what the occupation is all about and there needs to be a real call for action here to take people to task. Granted technology has replaced jobs and that was happening anyway and this is not an attack on technology but rather speaking out on those who accelerated and abused technology with looking only for profit dollars without any sense of giving anything back in their march to triumph. There are those who have so this not attacking everyone by any means just the abusers. Remember this has had a very long roll here and remember the 8 years of the White House computers using Windows 98 when you begin to think too critically of our current White House too, they had a mess larger than imaginable and they are working their way through it. They also have some wrong folks in leadership roles and hopefully are working to get more digital literate leaders in place soon. No wonder Boehner cries all the time but he could do more to help himself too with knowledge and coming out of the 70s. Heck these folks are totally out of touch on what IT infrastructure costs today, so they don’t do much.
Everyone wants to create behavioral analytics on us, why not start collecting and publicizing them on the bankers, the people in Congress as their voices and decisions affect all of us, much more important to know than what the janitor at the hospital is going to do as his decisions don’t impact the rest of us.
Lawmakers don’t even see a tool to help them sort the data when it hits them over the head and this can go for the Supreme Court too for that matter. You can operate like Fred Flintstone today.
Listen in below and I think you will agree this is a big part of what Occupy New York is all about and the fact that we have those in executive positions that can’t do anything as they are digitally illiterate and sit in denial.
The old saying of garbage in and garbage out still hold true when you look at what is loaded in data bases for reference so again something be aware of.
So this is how I view the Occupation of New York and if you have any better opinions send them on, but deep down when you see what created all of this, it was and is the math and this is why the high levels of frustration exist as nothing gets done until the math is changed or altered, so this is a call to correct what has been done all for the sake of making money and get the math done right so we can work with real situations and not have extreme marketing for profits rule the roost and further create additional levels a disparity for all of us.
Sitting around on social networks all day is not going to do it either and let’s re-evaluate their real value too while we are at it. They belong here but not with what the financials have done with creating over rated value where it does not belong. It’s a side show with over rated values and it has taken over the entire focus our economy as we can’t live on algorithms alone, we need a mix with good human ethics. Check this video out below as Kevin Slavin states, “algorithms have teeth”…the folks that write for shear profits and marketing know this and they also know that they can use math to influence you, whether is it accurate or not.
How Algorithms Shape the World
Data scraping algorithms and the sale of data has taken the value of human lives in the US and misappropriated what a human life is worth. There’s only so much we can project and predict out there and the unknown exists for all of us, but again the problem of those who are math illiterate in positions of authority and get swayed by flawed data are killing us as well as those who put it out there to abuse.
The sooner we come to this reality the sooner those folks occupying Wall Street can go home and look forward to a better future. This is is true under root of this entire situation in this country and the world and denial sadly is still ruling. BD
This is probably the most exciting part of healthcare today with finding cures and treatments and 25 nations will be represented here. Cedars is no stranger to stem cell clinical trials themselves. Video and additional information at the link below with heart treatments. BD
This is amazing what stem cells are doing in the field of cardiology. One patient in the trial referenced has a heart attack 11 years ago and is doing better. New cells are being produced and some of the scaring from heart attacks is going away. There are also no serious side effects for the patients. Stem cells are used from the patient’s own bone marrow. We also have a trial ongoing at Cedar Sinai in Los Angeles and participants are experiencing almost miraculous results. BD
Six leaders in stem cell research from the Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute will be key presenters at the world's largest interdisciplinary stem cell meeting Oct. 3-5 in Pasadena, Calif.
The World Stem Cell Summit, co-sponsored by the Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute, is the flagship event for the global stem cell and regenerative medicine community.
The Summit will feature more than 170 scientists, physicians, medical ethicists, legal scholars and technology transfer experts discussing the latest scientific discoveries, business models, legal and regulatory solutions and best practices. The event is expected to attract more than 1,500 attendees from 25 nations and 60 exhibitors.
You do wonder what you can and cannot believe today and thanks to Mike Arrington, here’s the page with the US Patent application. Again we all know that selling data is the name of the game here and has been for quite a while. It’s really very sad that the company has evolved the way it did as it’s a far cry from what we had out there even two years ago.
So why would a company file for such a patent? I’m just asking here for a motive? Is the data selling business that competitive with all the steroid marketing we see out there today. Millionaires have been made several times over selling it. Walgreens publicly said not too long ago that their data selling business is worth just short of $800 million, so are providing prescriptions and drugs a side line business in order to keep the profitable data selling alive? It does make you wonder what type of a business model is in use here. We all know that by business business intelligence algorithm rich software that new models can be cranked out in as little as 48 hours sometimes, and the few extra hours are for the humans to approve it and make decisions to roll it out.
This is a whole other world that functions behind the scenes here with the use and control of data, why? Looks at the millionaires it has created and it’s again a huge disappointment to me to watch this continue to evolve. So who do you believe anymore? I tend to look at facts and how the algorithms work rather than words spoken these days. Even our folks running for office don’t understand the processes and thus we have the side shows and everyone flapping in the wind today with promises with a non predictable future as the algo continue to run and shift money.
This is where it’s at folks a scary and sad reality of trying to sustain an economy built on algorithms and selling of information. Government entities run by executives without enough IT knowledge are confused as well, just read the post below and you can see how the movement and the math is way over their heads and the idea of “it’s for those guys over there” continues to grow as they have long tuned out with participating or learning how it works.
This is a good article here that shows how political candidates can hire geeks that know how to work the social networks with bots to promote themselves and the Truthy project is taking a look at how they function and the geeks hired to create the bots.
I said a while back that those who sell data should be required to buy a license to do so, disclosed who and what they sell, and then last but not least, tax it. I know we can’t stop some of this type of activity but we could raise money and slow it down a bit. Our lawmakers still think they can regulate this but it’s way beyond their comprehension. When Google testified in front of Congress, the asking of the question of “is this some kind of secret sauce” kind of proves it.
In the intelligent world we call those algorithms. In the financial area we call some of the algorithms used “circuit breakers” so again we don’t use real terminology out there and have to break it down to maybe the language of a fifth grader, it just reminds of the show that asks if one is smarter than a fifth grader at times. Think about it, why does that show exist?
What even is scarier yet is the Supreme Court having to rule on all of this, with technologies they don’t understand or use and they don’t have the knowledge on how to gather all the facts they need to make a ruling sadly, and this is a scary reality of how portions of our government operate today.
It is what it is and the longer we take to acknowledge the reality, the worse it gets. Again, nice post from Mike Arrington and thank goodness we have some in the country that can see this. Mike know code and how it works and is doing his part to share the reality and his links to see the entire picture are below so check it out if you desire, the patent is all spelled out and is quite lengthy and detailed. I’ll include one final link here you might want to look at and view the video about mathematical deception as it’s alive and well out there and this is driving of the insanity along with digital illiteracy with lawmakers and those in executive positions today and we all lose and are fleeced due those couple of facts. It’s not all bad out there though and accurate analytics do make us smarter so this is not a rant to stop that process by any means, but rather just to admit and take action against those who do it for profit while creating digital gratification algorithms that addict and profit from it while turning us all into a “product to sell”.
Facebook is not alone and there are others doing it too but their platform to build upon even allows more to join the same “data cash cow” and when you look a patent application straight in the face, well, what do you think?The banks all get this as they have their own extensive collection of algorithms they have used themselves to re-arrange the money in the US and world for that matter. This has gone on for years so they are quick to stick a very high value on the algorithms as it lined their pockets well, but now a bit of transparency is bringing some of this to light, that is for those who want to see and recognize what the real underlying problem is. I would have not had a clue on the existence of the patent without the research here of Mike Arrington myself. BD
“Facebook does not track users across the web,” – A Facebook spokesperson on September 25, 2011
“Generally, unlike other major Internet companies, we have no interest in tracking people.” – Facebook employee on September 25, 2011
“A method is described for tracking information about the activities of users of a social networking system while on another domain.” – Facebook Patent application dated September 22, 2011
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curtain for as long as we can. Sad though is the fact that consumers and doctors lose but this is what they do. Last I knew we are all consumers so perhaps they could take in a little fun time with some insurer games that are out there and see how they do. Play along with what they want the rest of us to do and remain “dumbed down” if you will. They don’t see this side of the algorithmic marketing going on and beating down on consumers either, they just don’t get it. BD 
the developers are not using the program themselves, that’s’ your first big hint, they are in it for the bucks to make money and give companies something to market. Even HHS gets their values confused too in all of this with a contest for a Facebook disaster application. The real geeks on the web have had a hay day with this one with talking privacy and Facebook in the same sentence and talked about “riots’ being a disaster, would this then require an act of Congress then to rule on what is a disaster? This doesn’t look very intelligent. Does Sebelius use a PHR? Does the Surgeon General use “her” PHR that the government has? 
wonder Boehner cries all the time but he could do more to help himself too with knowledge and coming out of the 70s. Heck these folks are totally out of touch on what IT infrastructure costs today, so they don’t do much and are pretty much oblivious to the movement. This is again part of the sanity that the protesters on Wall Street object to and it’s all the math and algorithms out there as such keeping the pot stirred with distorting reality. 
technology with looking only for profit dollars without any sense of giving anything back in their march to triumph. There are those who have so this not attacking everyone by any means just the abusers. Remember this has had a very long roll here and remember the 8 years of the White House computers using Windows 98 when you begin to think too critically of our current White House too, they had a mess larger than imaginable and they are working their way through it. They also have some wrong folks in leadership roles and hopefully are working to get more digital literate leaders in place soon. No wonder Boehner cries all the time but he could do more to help himself too with knowledge and coming out of the 70s. Heck these folks are totally out of touch on what IT infrastructure costs today, so they don’t do much. 
human ethics. Check this video out below as Kevin Slavin states, “algorithms have teeth”…the folks that write for shear profits and marketing know this and they also know that they can use math to influence you, whether is it accurate or not. 
![EZClaim[4]](http://lh4.ggpht.com/_v3zjJigoAPE/TG1-9etl5ZI/AAAAAAAAgqg/CRMlet5Pi5k/EZClaim44.png?imgmax=800 "EZClaim[4]")
Screenings Too–Killer Algorithms Part 12–Medical Billing Codes Style
Assessing Consumer Credit Scores–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 21 With Flawed Data
Duping” Society Combined With A World of Rogue Algorithms & Flawed Data Continues In Markets As Seen With Knight Capital This Week-Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 36
Study Fraud With EHR Technologies, Namely Medical Records/Billing Software Used by Hospitals– HHS And SEC Continue Getting Their Non-Algorithmic Fannies Kicked–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 46
SilverScript Senior Drug Program Sanctioned by Medicare Until the Payment And Billing Algorithms are Cleaned Up-Killer Algorithms Chapter 53
