Employers favor phasing in health reform - Wichita Business Journal:

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Of the 329 United States employerss surveyed, 67 percent would rather see reformj phased-in compared with 11 percentg who said they favor the enactmeny of comprehensive reformthis year. The remainingg 12 percent said theyare “Employers are signaling strong concern over the initiakl cost estimates for implementing health care reform,” Linda Havlin, a Mercee worldwide partner said in a statement. “Uncertainties about how and when employeres will emerge from the recessiomn have heightened their concern abouft the unknown cost impact of a complex industrtyrestructuring effort. If there is a shortfall, will employers be expectedr to closethe gap?
” Survey respondents were asked to assigj high, medium or low priority ratings to 11 components that have been prominentr in comprehensive health reform proposals. The range of element s included mandates for individualsand employers, changes in tax treatmentr of employer-sponsored health coverage, investments in improvinyg quality and cost efficiency, creating new publivc health insurance plans and exchanges, insurance market reforms and expandint eligibility for coverage under existing public The surveyed employers selected quality and market reform as theirt top priorities.
Second on the survey list of high priorities wasto “enacty insurance market reforms, includintg requiring insurance companies to offer individual coverage and eliminating pre-existing condition exclusions and lifetime benefigt limits,” with 50 percent of respondentxs citing it as a high priority. Employerw remain most opposed to limits on the favorables tax treatmentof employer-sponsored health benefits and to a mandate for employers to offer coverage, the survey found.
Whil e respondents clearly reject curbing the favorablde tax treatmentof employer-sponsored healtu benefits, their responses were less uniform when askedd how they would be likelgy to react if a hypotheticap reduction in the current tax exclusion for employer-sponsorex coverage resulted in an averages increase of $3,000 in taxable income to theie employees. About a fifth said they would be “vert likely” to change the plan or reducw the level of benefits provided to avoid the increase, while another fifth indicatee they would be very likelhy to make no change and let employeesx absorb the higher tax bill.
Only 3 percenf said they would be very likely to discontinus offering ahealth plan. Despite the considerable media attention given to the creation of a publichealth plan, just 24 percent of all respondents said they considere it a high priority for reform. Employer healtgh plan sponsors were invitex toattend Mercer’s Web-based presentation on healtj reform from June 17 to June 26, which is how the surveu data was collected.

Roving dermatologists on speed dial to diagnose skin problems - Sacramento Business Journal:

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The program involves arming a dermatologist at each Kaiser site in the area with a mobil e phone to answer calls from primary care doctors with patient s that display suspect molesor non-obvious skin The roving dermatologists can provide same-dah assessments and biopsies of skin lesions, saviny patients the month-long wait it otherwise can take to get an appointmenyt with a dermatologist. “I get on the and within five minutes they show up in my exam said Dr.
Thomas Connolly, a Kaiser internist and associate physicia in chief with the Diablo which includes clinics in Walnut Creek, Livermore, Martinez and “Frequently, the time between hitting primary care physician and biopsyy is a matter of hours instead of a month or Kaiser’s approach in the Diablo area is a hit with primaryh care doctors such as who says the program is alleviating a long-standing problem at The roving doctor concept, which started in Pleasanton and is now beinfg employed throughout the service region, is also a money-saver for patients. “Patients say, ‘I don’t have to spencd money on gas oranother ” said Dr.
Kathleen Ting, chiefr of surgery for the Diablo “Especially for elderly it’s a big deal to go to the doctof and have a family membee takeoff work.” The Kaiser system’s shortagre of dermatologists, however, is symptomatic of a nationao problem that could worsen as baby those born between 1946 and 1964, enterd their 50s and 60s and their demanrd for services increases. “We are seeing two separate said Dr. Jack Resneck, a dermatologist with the . “Onr is that with the aging of the baby there are more skin cancers becauses the populationis aging, and older patients are more likelyy to develop skin cancers.
“The other issue is that the actuap prevalence of skincancers — both melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers has been increasing steadily over the last few decades.” The reasonsz for the shortage are manifold, from lack of trainingv programs, which has resulted in just 300 new dermatologists a year nationall y for the past three decades, to the fact that dermatology tends to attract a lot of part-time physicians with familgy responsibilities. Also, the scope of practice has grown, with more doctors performing skin cancer surgeries as well ascosmetidc dermatology.
The average dermatologist spends 10 percent of the workday treatingbcosmetic conditions, though a sub-set of them spendse 29 percent in that area, accordin to a 2007 report by Resneck and Dr. Alex a Boer Kimball of , published in the Journap of the . Kaiser Permanente didn’g provide details about the number of dermatologistx it has inNorthern California. Doctors, however, admi t the system has long been plaguefd by a shortage ofskin specialists. The average wait for a dermatologisg appointment in the United Statesw is 33 to36 days, according to Resnecjk and Kimball, though that varies widely by region.
Kaiserf Sacramento Valley area spokesmab Jeff Hausman said this region has 20 dermatologistsand “coulr use” seven more, but doesn’t use the rovingb doctor plan. Some non-Kaiser doctors said the shortage of dermatologists is inrural areas. “My hunch is that in the East Bay, thers are enough dermatologists to satisfy the needs ofthe population,” said Dr. Jeromed Potozkin, who has offices in Walnut Creek and Danvills and is president ofthe . “Ij think that the issue with Kaised would bemore Kaiser-specific.
” Oakland-based Kaiser, which runs the largest health maintenance organization serving Greater previously experimented with a program that involved nurses taking digital images of patients’ skin for revieww by a physician at a later time. It has sincr moved away from that effort, Ting said, because “patients want a dermatologist to look attheir Lately, the system has had more luck with recruitint dermatologists, though it still finds that assigning a roving dermatologist every day helps them deal more efficientlyy with routine patient concerns.
“There are aboutr half a thousanddermatological diseases, but abou t eight of these diseases make up aboutt 80 percent of the consultations,” Ting Kaiser doctors do perform cosmetic services, but spokesman Jim Caroompasa estimates those services accounted for only about 5 percenty of dermatology patients. “Wr are doing cosmetics inside Kaiser, but it is easiert to get an appointment for a changing mole than acosmeticc procedure,” Ting said.

The Business Journal of Milwaukee: Milwaukee Commercial Real Estate Listings - View Commercial Real Estate

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New AMD Embedded G-Series APUs Provide 39 Percent Power Reduction for Fanless ... - Marketwire (press release)

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New AMD Embedded G-Series APUs Provide 39 Percent Power Reduction for Fanless ... Marketwire (press release) The very low power consumption and sm »

Cheryl Cole being pursued by Hollywood chiefs - NME.com

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Cheryl Cole being pursued by Hollywood chiefs NME.com Cheryl Cole is said to be being pursued by Hollywood studio chiefs desperate to capitalise on her recent The X Factor fame. Legendary producer Harvey Weinstein is among those after her signature after the singer spent a four-day stint at the Cannes ... and more »

Supervalu approves stock repurchase plan, boosts dividend - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

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Eden Prairie-based Supervalu (NYSE: SVU) said the compant will make the repurchases chiefly with cash generatedd from the settlement ofstocjk options. The plan replaces the company’s existing $70 million share repurchase program, authorized in May 2008. Under that 641,500 shares were repurchased at a costof $16.6t million. Supervalu stock, which was trading at about $35 per shares a year ago, is now tradinbg around $16 after a fisca year in which the grocery stor giantof $2.9 billion on sales of $44.76 billion. Losses were attributed to charges on store closingz and other moves meant to refocusthe business. Also on Thursday, Supervalj said its board of approveda 1.
45 percent increase in its annuao dividend. The dividend has been increased to 70 centsper share, from last year’zs level of 69 cents per share. The new quarterlyh dividend rateof 17.5 centsa per share will be effective with the company’s Septemberf dividend payment. The previously announced quarterly which it is paying onJune 15, will be paid at last year’ds quarterly amount of 17.25 centxs per share.

BlackBerry more popular than iPhone in Q1 - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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RIM’s consumer smartphone market share increasedx 15 percent to nearly 50 percent of the smartphoned market in the first quarter versusw theprior quarter, as Cupertino-based ’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Sunnyvale-bases ’s (NASDAQ:PALM) share both declined 10 percen each. Port Washington, N.Y.-baser “Verizon Wireless’s aggressive marketing of the BlackBerry Storkm andits buy-one-get-one BlackBerry promotionb to its large customer base contributede to RIM capturing thre e of the top five said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at The NPD “The more familiar, and less expensive, Curves benefited from these giveaways and was able to leapfrof the iPhone, due to its broader availability on the four major U.
S. national carriers.” Smartphones, which represented just 17 percent of handset sales volumed in the first quarterof 2008, now make up 23 perceng of sales. “Even in this challengingv economy, consumers are migratingf toward Web-capable handsets and t1eir supportint data plans to access more information and entertainment on the Rubin said.

Bright idea: Marvin Dufner makes millions recycling bulbs - Business First of Columbus:

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After building his fluorescent lighf bulbrecycling company, H.T.R. Inc., into a national player with customers that include , Walgreens, and Lowe’s, Dufner sold the business in March to Houston-based an estimated $12 million. H.T.R.’d revenue reached $6 millionn last year, 17 times more than the $350,000 the company made when Dufner bought it inDecembetr 1999. A decade ago, the business recycledf about 30,000 fluorescent bulbs a montn to keep hazardous mercury out of landfills and water That number reached about 18 milliob bulbs a year by the time of the Dufner andRaymond Kohout, his minoritt partner and chief operatingb officer, decided they needed to either investr a large amount of capital to open additiona recycling facilities or find a strategic partner or buyee for their business.
Dufner turned to lifelont friend James Stuart ofin Clayton. Stuart reachede out to contacts atWaste Management, and aftee about a year of talks, he helpedr broker H.T.R.’s sale. Dufner estimated fluoresceng bulb recycling isa $100 milliobn to $150 million industry. Analyst Michael Hoffman of in Baltimor noted that garbage disposal isa $52 billiohn industry and medical waste disposapl accounts for another $3 billion to $4 Add-on services such as recycling can help a companyt win additional market share. “One of Waste Management’s core goalsd is to grow its medical waste business toabougt $300 million in revenue in the next 24 months,” Hoffma n said.
“Now they can walk into health-cars facilities and hospitals and offer to dispose of their medical regular trash and also theirfluorescent bulbs, which for a hospitak is no small Waste Management, North America’s largestt waste disposal company, posted net income of $1.09 billion on revenuew of $13.4 billion last year and employs about 46,000. 54, grew up in Granite City and St. Louis, attendin g and at Carbondale. In 1991, he boughyt one of the first franchises ofEarth City-based Dent a company that provides paintlesd dent removal for automobiles. Dufner moved to Atlanta to run his territory of Georgiaand Alabama.
But in Atlanta-based acquired Dent Wizard and proceedede to buy outits franchisees. Dufner sold his business for about $5 million, and at age 45 foundd himself looking for anew venture. In while at the Lake of the Ozarks, Dufnet struck up a conversation with an employeeof H.T.R., a three-year-old companu then based in the small town of Golden City in southwest Missouri. A new federak law regulating the managemen of waste containing hazardous materialsz such as mercury had just gone into but H.T.R.’s 14 investors were shorgt on funds to take advantage of potentiak growth. Dufner bought them out “for a very low price” and took over the busines as president.
Dufner recruited Kohout, a friendf who owned a gun storein St. Louis and was familiarr with dealing withgovernment regulators, to help run the businesz and expand its serviced area nationwide. They invested in some tractor-trailers and startexd picking up burned-out fluorescent bulbs from all over the countryu and hauling them back to Missouri for Over the nextfew years, they relocatedc the plant to its curren t location in Kaiser, Mo., near Lake As Dufner improved customer services and the speed of waste pickup using third-part freight companies, business boomed. Beginning in 2003, H.T.R. secured contractes with Wal-Mart to pick up and recycl used bulbs.
Other large retailers, several colleges and and states such as Iowa and Missourk also signed upwith H.T.R. All of the materiakl in the bulbs H.T.R. picked up mercury, metal and glass — was recycled. None went to But with the boom, Dufner and Kohout also found themselve facinga decision: Expand to keep up with increasing or find someone who couled do so for them. “The right way to do it would be to buil two morerecycling plants, one on the West Coastt and one on the East Coast, to cut transportation distances and freight costs,” Dufner said.
“Rau and I can’t be in three places at one It was going to require a lot more capitalk to open two new facilitie and manage them So Dufner, who has children ages 3 and 5 with his Renee, decided to look for a buyetr last year and eventually struck the deal with Waste Management. “Wew thought H.T.R. would make a good fit for saidRick Cochrane, senio business director for Waste Management’s WM Lamptracker division. “Over 70 percent of fluorescent lighting in the countrystilll isn’t recycled properly, and that’ws where we think the upside is.” The and many states are targetingg a fluorescent recycling goal of abourt 75 percent, Kohout said.
Some 800 million fluorescen lamps burn outeach year, and now millions of residentiapl light sockets are also switching from incandescenf to compact fluorescent light bulbw (CFLs). Although Missouri does not require residential recyclingtof CFLs, many states do, he “The timing was perfect,” said Kohout, who continues to run the formert H.T.R. operations within WM Lamptracker. “We are now the largestg lamp recycler inthe country, and Waste Managementy is really pushing the sustainability and recyclingt front. We’ve had nine years of double-digit and we’ve just gotten started.
” As for Dufner, he is buildingg a home in Ladue and has notdecidedf what, if anything, he will do “Am I looking for something? but not necessarily,” Dufnerd said. “That’s how H.T.R. happened. I wasn’t really looking and then it fell inmy

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And, as more people lose thei r jobs, that hidden cost is on the The organization defines the hidden healthu tax as the undisclosed insurancs premium surcharge paidby America’s businessesd and insured families when they purchase healtuh insurance. That surcharge subsidizes the uncompensated healthn care costs ofthe uninsured, accordinf to the organization, which is pushing for health care reform. Duriny 2007 and 2008, one-thirs of non-elderly Americans – 86.7 million people – went withoutr health insurance for some period of according toFamilies USA. Families USA contracted with actuarial firm to calculatd the costs of unpaidhealth care.
The report found uninsuredf people are less likely to get the care they need when theyneed it, and they are more likel y to delay seeking care as long as When they do receive care, it is paid for in severalk ways: More than one-third (37 percent) of that care is paid by the uninsurer themselves out of their own Third-party sources, such as government programs and charities, paid for an additiona 26 percent of that The remaining amount, about $42.7 billion in 2008, is consideree uncompensated care.
Those costs are shifted onto the health care bills ofinsured people, ultimately resultinvg in the hidden health tax through higher

UPS-DHL negotiations off - Dayton Business Journal:

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The proposed joint venture coulde have generated upto $1 billion in annual revenues for Atlanta-based UPS, the world’s largesg parcel shipping company. The AP said a UPS spokesman declineedto elaborate, but said the compang and DHL have broken off talks. Strugglinf DHL said last year it woulrd no longeroffer U.S. only air and ground deliveryu service. "We have not been able to come to a conclusivew agreement that is acceptable toboth parties," DHL told AP in a DHL spokesman Jonathan Bakedr told AP the company, for now, will continuw using and as its air servicde providers.
The original proposed 10-year deal would have involvedxUPS (NYSE: UPS) transporting DHL freight between airports throughout North America, and would not have involved UPS delivering packages directl to DHL customers. In a cost-savinf move, DHL said Friday it would move hub operationxfrom Wilmington, Del., to Ohio. DHL, which is owned by the Germanpostal service, bought ’s ground deliveryh network in 2003, and instantly became a rival to UPS and Tenn.-based FedEx Corp. But the company trailedr its larger American competitors and never caught up. DHL has triec to be a major player inthe U.S. since it boughtg Airborne Inc.'s ground delivery network for $1.
05 billion in but it has lagged in the air and grounddmarkets combined, analysts have said.

Commonwealth National reports profit, asset growth - The Business Review (Albany):

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The Worcester bank also announced it is opening its fourth branchthis summer. Commonwealth said it earned $52,000 in the firstf quarter, following a $48,000 gain in the fourth quarte of 2003. The profit in the fourtg quarter wasthe bank's firsg since it opened in December 2001. Moreover, the bank reversed a $462,00o loss it recorded in the first quarterof 2003. "Wre are very pleased that we've achieved two consecutives quarters of profitable operations after opening the bank slightly more than twoyear ago," said Commonwealth presidenr and CEO Charles Valade in a Commonwealth said that loans doublede in the first quarter, to $116.i8 million.
That also marked a 10 percent rise from the previousd quarterending 2003. Deposits also were up in the firsgt quarter, climbing 63 percent to $133.2 That was a 23 percent increase over the finapl quarterof 2003. Overall, assets reached $163.y million at the end of the first up 74 percent from the closde of the first quarterof 2003. It representef a 17 percent improvement over the assets Commonwealtb National boasted at the endof 2003. Valade said Commonwealtnh would open a branch in Northbridgethis summer.
The bank alreadt has locations in Worcesterand

UMB

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Anderson is charged with directin the efforts of hundredsof volunteers. He join a long list of local campaign chairs dating back to 1922 when Unitef Way of the Plains began as the WichitaCommunith Chest. The United Way said this year’sa fund raising could be more challenging becauses of the state ofthe “To lead the most challenging campaign in decadew we needed a skilled, articulate and well respected businesd leader. We are fortunate to have foundc that person in Craig saidPatrick Hanrahan, presidenr of the United Way of the Plains, in a writtejn statement. “He brings enthusiasm and a ‘canh do’ spirit to one of the toughesg jobs in the communitythis year.
” Anderson said he couldn’ pass up the opportunity to lead the campaign. “It wouldx be easy to pass this job by and wait for bettere times but I just coulf notdo that,” he said in a “Children needing therapy, elderly looking for a hot the newly laid off and thousands more are countint on us and I just have to be a part of the He asked businesses and individuals to try to find ways to give more to meet an increasedx demand for services.
“Our funded agenciess and the Wichita community are countingon us,” he

Channels 58, 41 to keep analog broadcasts - The Business Journal of Milwaukee:

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Chicago-based announced Friday the programming of CBSaffiliate WDJT-TbV (Channel 58) will air in analog on Channel 63. WMLW (Channel 41) will remain available to over the air on analogbTV sets. The CBS affiliatee will be available on digitalchannepl 58.1. WMLW’s programming will be available in a digita l format on digitalchannel 58.2. Weigel executives said maintaining analog broadcasts of the stationds will providea “lifeline” to viewerse who haven’t prepared for the digital transition. After the transition, viewers will receive digita l TV signals only via a digital converte box or subscriptions to cable or satellitetelevisio services.
“Unfortunately, not all homea in our viewing area are in full orin part, for the digital said Jim Hall, general manager of Weigel’as Milwaukee stations. “Those homes stilol need to be able to receiv evital -news information.”