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Sleep Apnea Boosts Risk Of Death In Middle-Aged Man

A government funded study found that sleep apnea, which is an airway blocking condition robbing millions of people of their restful sleep, especially those who are over-weight, also rises the risk of death.

Doctors of seven institutions, including Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, measured the sleeping and breathing patterns of over 6,400 people and they were followed for the next 8 years. Adults who were more than 40 years of age and whose sleeping and breathing was disrupted very often were 50% more likely to die as compared to those who had a normal sleep.

Over 12 million people in US are believed to be suffering from sleep apnea. The National Institutes of Health said that four out of every five people do not even know that they are going through this condition and as a result, they do not get any treatment for it.

The rates of sleep apnea are also rising with the obesity levels for the reason that excessive fat in the throat and neck may block the airways, temporarily choking them, resulting in people gasping for breath.

Jonathan Samet, chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine in the University of Southern California and the co-author of the study said in a phone interview that with the increasing number of obese people in US, this is an important matter of concern. Around 65% of the adults are obese or over-weight and this is causing increased cases of sleep-disordered breathing.

NIH reported that men are more likely to suffer from sleep apnea than women as 24% of adult men have this condition as compared to only 9% adult women. The most frequent cause of deaths among the men suffering from sleep apnea is heart disease.

A machine was used to measure the subjects of the study when they were sleeping at their homes. The machine recorded the length and number of interruptions that came in their breathing. In the 8 years during which they were followed, 1,047 subjects of the study died. Among men aged between 40 and 70 years whose breathing was blocked more than 30 times in an hour had double the risks of dying. The PLOS Medicine journal also published a report about a study conducted on women and the results found were not significant.

Samet, the former chairman of Department of Epidemiology of Johns Hopkins said that people who feel sleepy in the day and snore at nights should consult professional doctors. Weight loss or getting the treatment for boosting oxygen supply during sleeping reduces risks of getting heart disease and many other health related problems.

Night time equipment, known as CPAP or Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, is used for treatment which helps in keeping the breathing regular. Some of the companies that are marketing this equipment are Respironics Inc. from Murrysville, Pennsylvania and ResMed Inc. from Poway, California.

Car Dealers Waiting To Get Paid As Cash For Clunkers Program Coming To An End

According to Carroll Smith, the owner of the Pasadena dealership said that since the inception of Cash for Clunkers program in July, many have taken advantage of this incentive program to purchase Monument Chevrolet.

Under this program, up to $4,500 off the value of a new vehicle is taken up by the dealership and the amount is reimbursed by the federal government. But Smith is facing a problem and it is that he has not yet received any payment from the federal government for any of the transactions made till now.

Because of the Cash for Clunkers program, a large number of consumers rushed towards vehicle showrooms and bought cars, thus giving a boost to the sales of the dealers that they really needed. But Smith and several other dealers say that the government is too slow in paying back to the dealers, as a result of which they have come under financial constraints.

In the mean time, the National Automobile Dealers Association has recently announced that they had a meeting with the US Department of Transportation in which they had discussed about suspending the program. According to NADA, the dealers who are accepting additional deals under the Cash for Clunkers program are increasing their risks of not getting reimbursed because $3 billion is just about to finish.

In another developing news, Ray LaHood, the Transportation Secretary has assured the dealers that they will surely be paid and announced that more details of the program will be provided.

With every car sold taking off $3,500 - $4,500 from the vehicle’s price, Carroll Smith is coming under more cash deficit position due to the Cash for Clunkers program. Smith said that the dealers earn a profit of around $1000 or even less with every new car on an average.

Dale Early, the owner of Deerbrook Forest Chrysler Jeep, said that it is a huge financial strain for a person who does several transactions in a short period of time. He also said that handling the volume was not a part of the government’s preparation for the program.

He said that the government has not paid for the transactions he made under the Cash for Clunkers program. But fortunately, he has been able to make other deals in his showroom because of the people who found more attractive deals that do not come under the program or those who did not quality for the program. The program of Cash for Clunkers allows the customers to bring their gas guzzlers and get a voucher of up to $4,500 with purchase of a new and more fuel efficient vehicle.

Rebecca Linland, the industry analyst at the HIS Global Insight, said that the pace of the federal government to reimburse the dealers is very slow across the nation and this is a big problem. If the dealers are not paid soon, they may get into very serious problem in terms of their cash flow.

Linland noted that the dealers are not ready for floating money as she heard about a Virginian dealer who is owing $3 million that the government has to reimburse him.

NADA reported that the dealers have received only a fraction of the reimbursements to be made by the government. The spokesman for NADA, Charles Cyrill, said that there is an urgent need to fix the problems. Earlier, Cyrill had noted that the US Department of Transportation had informed NADA that it is going to increase its staff size so that the processing can be made faster.

Sasha Johnson, the spokeswoman of the department said that they are working overtime and incorporating several resources into the program so that the applications can be processed both responsibly and quickly. Sessions are also being held between the department and the dealers to stress upon the significance of submitting complete applications, without any mistakes.

Obama’s Health Care Reform Turns Into Health Insurance Reform?

Obama and his ministerial team have made a small but important change in the ways they are expressing their heath reform policy. Obama, initially when speaking about this new system, talked mainly about the massive shift or transformation in the country’s health care system which would cut the ever increasing costs spent in medication. But the president has now altered his language and now speaks exclusively about the health insurance reforms.

Speaking about this, even Obama’s visit to the town hall meeting in New Hampshire was referred by White House as the health insurance reform hall. But this was not the case when all these proceedings started back in March and the Obama’s campaign to renovate the country’s healthcare system was named the White House Health Reform Forum.

This change in plan had let to the worries of many healthcare experts as this new plan clears signals that Obama will only settle expanding the health insurance coverage to uninsured people rather than bringing the escalating health care costs under proper control as mentioned in the original policy. The economists are also not very happy with this decision as they feel just covering the insurance cost without any methods to cut additional healthcare costs will only create further financial mess. Speaking about this David Knott, Head of the Booz & Co’s global health practice said that the team has lost the true plot on the health care reform. He also feels that the initial debate started out as a full fledged solution to the country’s health care system but now has nailed down to only meet the affordability problem.

It is clearly obvious that Obama’s current language and the one he used while the start of the debate is completely different. Speaking to the crowd in New Hampshire the president said, health insurance reforms are the key to build new foundation to the country health care system. He highlighted the fact that almost 46 million Americans are without health insurance today. He also stressed that these health insurance reforms are not only for the uninsured as most of these policies favor the insurance companies. These remarks are contradictory to Obama’s speech which he laid on March 5 at health reform summit. There the President said that cutting the overall health care costs would be the first step forward in rebuilding the country’s economy. The President then said that these investments in health care reform will definitely not add up to the budget and these investments would prove really profitable.

What has lead to this change? Right from the start it was obvious that the Congress has not got any plans to change the fee-for- the service method that is currently in practice for paying the hospitals and doctors. This method rewards the healthcare providers not for the quality but quantity. So if you assume that these doctors and hospitals account for almost two thirds of the nation’s health related spending, not touching this part means that the legislators have not many option to cut costs. Added to this, the legislators have even proposed paying doctors a lump sum of $245 billion in the Medicare reimbursements for the next 10 years to ensure their support for the health reform.

The government’s reluctance in this can be directly owed to the fact that hospitals are largest employers in most districts and also give them the political clout. Even the public rates these doctors at top among the other professions. In this context, insurers are the one who are quite unpopular with the public and thus are much easier target.

This change in plan has lead to arguments and people are started making it these days for passing the universal coverage. Many feel that this governments approach is concentrating on universal coverage and worrying about the overall cost cutting changes later. Massachusetts also did the same in the year 2006 when it proposed a universal coverage law. But now the city is facing escalating costs and is now planning to overhaul the fee structures of doctors. It is sure that this strategy won’t be possible in a nationwide basis where the current health care spending is projected to consume almost 20% of the GDP by 2017.

Hearing to the president’s change in tone, Robert Laszewki, Health insurance consultant wrote in his blog named health care policy & market review that he had been insisting for months that heath care reform bills passed by the government have not been true healthcare reform bills but are expansions to the health insurance reforms. He also feels that the country needs lot more than mere health insurance reforms and they truly needed health care reforms.

Student Loan Repayment Program - More Agencies Paying Off Their Employee’s Student Loan Debt

The Office of Personnel Management released a report recently according to which the federal agencies have increased their expenditure on programs for student loan repayment for the employees by 22% from 2007 to the year 2008. John Berry, the director of OPM said that he is pleased with this increase. He said that there are several skills gaps within the federal government and all the possible ways should be adopted to bring best possible services to the public of America.

During the year 2008, 6,879 employees were provided with $51.6 million by 35 federal agencies in the student loan repayments. For the fiscal year 2007, 33 federal agencies took part in the repayment program by distributing $42.2 million of loan repayments to 6,619 employees. In the last cycle of reporting, OPM switched to collecting calendar year data from fiscal year data.

Since the fiscal 2002, the program has substantially grown. At that time, agencies were able to offer repayments of student loans as incentives for the employees for the first time to continue in the government. In 2002, only 16 federal agencies took part by spending $3.2 million loan repayments for 690 employees. The agencies are able to supply as much as $10,000 per year and a total of $60,000 for every employee, in return of which, the recipients are required to commit to 3 years in federal service.

According to the report, although there has been a recent growth within the program, only 39 out of 80 independent agencies and departments have either provided repayments of student loans or are planning to begin in near future. 17 agencies told the OPM that they are not able to spend money on the student loan repayments mainly because of the budget process.

Out of all the agencies that participated, most of the assistance is provided by the Justice Department which spent $23,420,746 on relief of loans for 2,610 employees. Some other major participants are Defense and the State departments, Securities and Exchange Commission and Government Accountability Office.

Officials of the state department told the OPM that according to an employees’ survey who received repayments of the loan, the program has a major impact on the retention. Since the beginning of the program in the year 2002, 2,300 employees of the state have received loan payments and out of these employees, only 127 have resigned before completing their 3 years of required federal service.

Max Stier, the president of non-profit Partnership for Public Service, appreciated the efforts of the agency to take part in this repayment program, especially during these tough economic times. He said that this is a very significant incentive towards recruitment. By all the means of research, this is one of the most momentous ways for encouraging talent from the university campuses to serve to the government.

Cash For Clunkers Program Still Hot With Sales

Car purchasers showed signs of easing after the lunatic rush a week ago but sales were not far from being on the top over the last weekend given the popularity of “Cash for Clunkers” program.

Last week, the senate voted to push in an extra 2 billion dollars into the very notable auto discount program. This shall be good enough to stretch the program till Labor Day. As anticipated, this brought the traffic to a relative halt in terms of arrival at the dealer’s desk. This has been a departure from the trend last week when the buyers rushed to dealers gripped with fear that the program would run short of money.

Yes, the sale of cars hasn’t doubled akin to the weekend prior yet it is 25 to 50 percent in excess of the general fare at many dealers in Los Angeles County. This is a peaking seemingly associated with the clunkers discount. Don Rohde, sales manager at Galpin Ford in North Hills suggested that his group was still quite busy and he is falling short of salesmen to tackle the demand. The dealership had sold as many as 70 new cars over the last weekend. It is lesser than 115 cars a week prior but half as much in excess of sales in past few months. According to Rohde, about 80 to 90 percent of this fresh car sale is owing to the clunker show.

According to Sammy Kobeissi, sales manager at Power Ford in Valencia, the program has been nothing short of amazing and he felt that though not at last week’s position, the clunkers show was still a true winner.  The clunkers program that took off on July 24 provided the car purchasers with a mammoth discount of $ 3500 to $ 4500. This is when they buy gas guzzlers for better and more fuel-friendly vehicles. Till date, 220,000 and more vehicles have already found their way out of dealer’s house via this program providing a much required emancipation to the auto industry. If sales tracker Autodata Corp is to be believed, then the industry has already shoved some 11.2 million units of light trucks and cars to the customers in July. This incidentally is the highest level of sales in last 10 months.

Kobeissi stated that by early parts of Sunday morning, the Ford dealership had sold 18 fresh cars in comparison to 30 over the just culminated weekend. Having said this, the clunkers trade-in was responsible for as much as half of the weekend’s fresh car sales.

At frontier Toyota, Teresa Webber of Stevenson Ranch got close to trading in her 2000 Ford Explorer for a just generated Toyota RAV4. Webber felt that the timely rebate has allowed them to pre-pone their car buying wish that they had slated for 6 months hence. The cumbersome paper formalities and government’s failure in having paid out the rebate money notwithstanding, the program is doing well, according to David O’Brien, general sales manager at Frontier Toyota. He suggested that the program has worked every bit that was asked of it giving people a chance to grab their clunker trade-in and amassing response form public in unprecedented style. The sweet anxiety for the dealers is that they have to really gear up for keeping up with the demand schedule. Nationwide, dealerships have suggested that they have fallen short on some of the more popular vehicles like Toyota Prius, Ford Focus and Dodge Caliber. Rohde summed it up brilliantly saying that “It’s kind of a good problem to have”.