Source: Associated Press

According to a new study, small doses of chocolate every day could decrease your risk of having a heart attack or stroke by nearly 40 percent.

German researchers followed nearly 20,000 people over eight years, sending them several questionnaires about their diet and exercise habits.

They found people who had an average of six grams of chocolate per day — or about one square of a chocolate bar — had a 39 percent lower risk of either a heart attack or stroke. The study is scheduled to be published Wednesday in the European Heart Journal.

Previous studies have suggested dark chocolate in small amounts could be good for you, but this is the first study to track its effects over such a long period of time. Experts think the flavonols contained in chocolate are responsible. Flavonols, also found in vegetables and red wine, help the muscles in blood vessels widen, which leads to a drop in blood pressure.

“It’s a bit too early to come up with recommendations that people should eat more chocolate, but if people replace sugar or high-fat snacks with a little piece of dark chocolate, that might help,” said Brian Buijsse, a nutritional epidemiologist at the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Nuthetal, Germany, the study’s lead author.

Not in the workplace

The people tracked by Buijsse and coleagues had no history of heart problems, had similar habits for risk factors like smoking and exercise, and did not vary widely in their Body Mass Index.

Since the study only observed people and did not give them chocolate directly to test what its effects were, experts said more research was needed to determine the candy’s exact impact on the body. The study was paid for by the German government and the European Union.

Doctors also warned that eating large amounts of chocolate could lead to weight gain, a major risk factor for heart problems and strokes.

“This is not a prescription to eat more chocolate,” said Dr. Robert Eckel, a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado and a past president of the American Heart Association. He was not linked to the study. “If we all had (a small amount) of chocolate every day for the rest of our lives, we would all gain a few pounds.”

Eckel said it was amazing to find such a small amount of chocolate could have such a protective effect, but that more studies needed to be done to confirm its conclusions.

Alice Lichtenstein, a nutritionist at Tufts University School of Medicine, said it was difficult to link the reduction in heart disease and stroke risk to the chocolate alone, since there may have been other differences between the study participants.

“The relationship between chocolate and good health outcomes is still uncertain,” she said. “If somebody really enjoys eating chocolate, then they should have a small amount of that and just really enjoy it,” she said.

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My Take: Could there be better news for chocolate lovers than this? I personally am a fan of the darkest chocolate I can get my hands on. I’ll bet the annual salary of any Los Angeles court reporter, Dallas DWI attorney, or business payroll solutions provider out there that chocolate is among the top-selling legalized soft drugs in America, right behind good old caffeine.

TX criminal attorneys may be busy working to bust the drug flow over the Mexican border, making it more challenging for pot or cocaine users to get their hands on their drug of choice. I couldn’t care less. Give me good old dark chocolate right from the heart of the Belgian chocolate factory and I’m in heaven. It’s legal and I don’t need a permit or special license to buy it, store it, eat it or even sell it. I also know you don’t need to be hire a consultant to make chocolate on your kitchen stove and sell it in mass quantities. Perhaps we chocolate lovers of the world should unite and take over by putting and chocolate bar into the hands of all the drug users. See how they like that down in Juarez.

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Source: Associated Press

An attorney and friend of a U.S. doctor who performed late-term abortions called the doctor’s murder a “gutless act of terror.”

Attorney Lee Thompson asked District Judge Warren Wilbert to give the harshest possible sentence to anti-abortion zealot Scott Roeder, who admitted he gunned down Dr. George Tiller in the back of Tiller’s Wichita church last May because he felt doing so would protect unborn children.

Eugene Frye, an anti-abortion activist and friend of Roeder’s, told the court that Roeder connected with “babies being killed through abortion.” He said Roeder was driven to kill Tiller by his belief that abortion was murder.

Roeder was facing a mandatory life prison term, although Wilbert had to decide whether to make him eligible for parole after 25 or 50 years. The judge indicated during the hearing that the evidence showed that the 52-year-old Roeder stalked Tiller before killing him, which could qualify him for the harsher of the two sentences.

Roeder, of Kansas City, Mo., was expected to be the last person to speak at the hearing and was expected to discuss his beliefs.

Thompson described his friend Tiller as a devoted husband, father and grandfather and a strong believer in women’s rights. He said his office still receives calls from women seeking medical services. As he spoke about Tiller as a devoted grandfather, Tiller’s widow, Jeanne, cried. Roeder at times looked away, yawned and took a drink of water.

“The impact of his death on women throughout the world is like an earthquake,” Thompson said. “They ask, where can I go? What will I do?’ I have to say, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you.’ That’s the impact of this crime.”

Thompson said if Roeder didn’t receive the harshest sentence, it would invite other anti-abortion fanatics to follow in his footsteps.

“It will happen again and again,” Thompson said. “This is domestic terrorism. This act will be repeated by this person if he ever sees the light of day again.”

Prosecutors seeking the harsher sentence must show an aggravating circumstance, such as whether Roeder stalked his victim before killing him. Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston argued that the longer sentence was warranted because Roeder stalked Tiller for years, and he put others at the church in danger when he shot the doctor and when others chased him afterward.

Roeder testified in January that he had previously taken a gun into the doctor’s church and had checked out the gated subdivision where Tiller lived and the clinic where he practiced.

Foulston said the murder hurt Tiller’s church and “wounded the country.” Thompson said Roeder targeted Tiller in a “hate crime” because Tiller provided abortion services.

Other State issues
Whether a New Jersey family lawyer or a Monmouth County criminal defense lawyer, the social divides over abortion cases is more contentions than ever.  And more and more abortionists across the country must take extraordinary precautions to protect themselves from attacks.

Security was tight for the hearing. Law enforcement officers had explosive-detecting dogs sniffing reporters’ equipment before the hearing. Four Sedgwick County sheriff’s deputies were on duty outside the courtroom Thursday, along with several agents from both the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Several of Roeder’s friends and fellow anti-abortion activists have said Roeder asked them to testify as character witnesses — although it’s up to the judge to decide how much, if any, such testimony he will hear.

Although he could spend the rest of his life in prison, Roeder may have gotten what he wanted all along: In the months since Tiller’s death and his clinic was closed, it has been markedly more difficult to get an abortion in Kansas.

The state was left with no facility where women can have the late-term procedure. Just three clinics in the state — all located in or near the Kansas City area — offer limited abortion services for women up to their 21st week of pregnancy.

An early vow by one of Tiller’s contemporaries to fill the gap hasn’t materialized, and state lawmakers are moving to enact tough new rules to dissuade other doctors from taking Tiller’s place.

But outside Kansas, abortion-rights supporters say there’s been a surge in late-term abortion practices by doctors emboldened to pick up where Tiller left off.

“What he really did was murder a doctor in church, and the effect on abortion is negligible,” said Dr. LeRoy Carhart, a Nebraska doctor who worked part-time for Tiller and said he hasn’t given up on the idea of opening a practice in Kansas where late-term abortions would be performed.

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My Take: You couldn’t pay me enough money to be a lawyer, even if it meant being one of the highest paid New Jersey child support lawyers in the country, or a high-profile NJ  divorce attorney.  Somewhere down the line I’d surely have to represent someone with whom I did not agree on a social or moral principal.  This has to be difficult in the cases involving anti-abortionists, like the one here.  Imagine being pro-life and being assigned to serve as a public defender for this guy?  You’d have to do some serious soul searching in order to get the guy the fairest trial possible.  Clearly he did not win his case and his life now rests in the hands of the sentencing judge.

If you are a Paramus NJ divorce lawyer, for example, and you are asked to represent the wife of a close friend, it still wouldn’t be as tough as having to represent a murderer who has killed someone in the name of a belief that you are vehemently opposed to.  I’d rather provide hard drive recovery services or work in a basement for some little known NY IT consulting services than be a lawyer.  The money just isn’t worth it.

At least if I were involved in helping people with remote backup or providing some kind of computer help in New York, I would have the ability to leave my job each day without looking over my shoulder.  Sure, the money and recognition may not be very high, but at least I could sleep in peace at night.

Other Resources:

New Jersey Legal Search
Looking for a good Monmouth County defense lawyer? Perhaps you should do a search online at findlaw.com, where, in addition to lawyer referrals you’ll also have a link over to a legal dictionary to help you become familiar with all of the jargon you’ll have to understand as you move through your case.

Source: Associated Press

If an airline loses your luggage, you might want to think about going out first thing and buying a change of clothes after you’ve reported the loss.

But while airlines are required to reimburse passengers for clothing and toiletries in the event of a lost or delayed bag, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, getting that cash back may require persistence.

Many airlines’ contract of carriage — the contract between carriers and passengers — don’t specify clothing reimbursement in detail, but standard DOT policy demands they provide some compensation.

“Some airlines were declining for necessities, like clothing, needed immediately,” said Bill Mosely, spokesman for the DOT. “(Airlines) cannot limit them to only outbound flights or how soon they expect the bags to arrive.”

Mosely said some airlines also try to deny compensation to passengers for purchases made within the first 24 hours following the reported loss. But he said that’s a violation of DOT regulations. Passengers should be able to purchase necessities after they file a missing bag claim, rather than having to wait to see if the bag turns up.

“It’s not a new rule or new policy,” Mosely said. “We expect (airlines) to compensate the consumer for their loses.”

While the majority of checked bags reach their destination without incident, a total of 2,193,711 bags were reported mishandled by all airlines last year in the United States, with 188,254 reports filed in January alone.

A maximum liability of $3,300 for domestic flights can be claimed by the passenger should checked luggage be lost in transit. International limits are lower, roughly $100 for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of luggage, for a maximum total of $640.

Passengers can buy excess valuation for luggage as secondary insurance. A dollar buys $100 worth of extra insurance on domestic flights, with a ceiling of $17 for $1,700 in coverage.

George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, a consumer travel Web site, said the DOT has been much more aggressive with airlines over passengers’ rights under Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. According to Hobica, the department has been actively advocating on passengers’ behalf when demonstrating a need for necessities.

“You can’t just offer a tube of toothpaste and a pair of clean underwear,” he said. “You have to treat (passengers) more fairly.”

Note, however, that airlines are not required to refund baggage fees when they lose your bags.

While airlines are required to reimburse for clothing, the amount is negotiable. Hobica advises passengers to keep receipts for all clothing and personal items that they ever expect to take on a trip, since airlines will ask you prove the value of your clothing. “They won’t buy you a new wardrobe, but you are entitled to a change of clothes,” he said.

Mosely said the DOT has a hands-off approach on reimbursement rates. “How they arrive at their figure, we do not stipulate,” he said.

And even though passengers are entitled to recoup funds, don’t expect the airlines to fork over cash easily, said Anna Banas, executive editor of SmarterTravel.com. Passenger confusion and frustration often work in the airlines’ favor. When customers don’t follow up claims, airlines benefit.

Sometimes airlines will also offer things like free movie downloads on your computer or air miles. But don’t expect the movie download to match the cost of your missing Armani suits you packed for that Monday morning business meeting.

There’s also no guarantee airlines will accept your claim.

On a recent flight from Los Angeles to New York City, my carry-on bag was checked at the gate last-minute and was then left at the connecting airport, Philadelphia.

By the time my luggage was delivered to me two nights later, I had bought a shirt to wear to work. I submitted a receipt but my carrier refused to compensate me for two reasons. One, I was an inbound flight passenger, and the airline said in a letter that passengers on the home leg of a round trip presumably have clothes at home; and two, my receipt for the shirt was time-stamped several hours after the airline logged in the delivery of my bags. I was not home to receive the bag on that first delivery attempt, however, so I am challenging the denial of the claim.

“Everything is extremely difficult for the consumer,” Banas said. “It’s up to the consumer to do all the legwork. They have to jump through a million hoops.”

In the event an airline denies a claim, Mosely suggests filing a claim with the Aviation Consumer Protection and Enforcement Office.

“If there are a pattern of complaints that indicate an airline might be violating DOT consumer rules, the department would investigate,” he said. “If we found there was a violation, they would take enforcement action.”

You can avoid these hassles altogether by not checking luggage at all. “If you’re traveling domestically, go to Kinko’s and send it ahead of time,” Hobica said. “It’s usually cheaper and easier to track.”

You can also reduce the likelihood of lost baggage by arriving early so there’s ample time for your luggage to be screened and sent to the correct gate, according to Susan Foster, author of “Smart Packing for Today’s Traveler.”

“Allow two hours,” Foster said. “Maybe have lunch in a real restaurant rather than taking some crappy food on a plane.”

Foster always packs a survival kit in her carry-on, including phone charger, medication, clean shirt and underwear, everything she needs to “hit the ground and do what I need to do.”

“I don’t want to miss a day,” she said.

____________________________________________

My Take: I recently flew from Ontario Canada to Houston and the airlines lost my luggage. It took more than a visit to the baggage claim office to get the ball rolling. In fact, you’d think I’d threatened to bring in an Ottawa fraud attorney by the way I was treated. My bag was never located and I had to spend a lot of money replacing my clothes, including my favorite lowrise jeans from Diesel. Now, I know you can buy low rise stretch jeans just about anywhere in Canada’s major cities, but the pair I lost fit me like a glove and I’ve never been able to replace them. I’d heard about the risks of getting an Ontario traffic ticket for simple things so I didn’t plan on driving there. I spent an entire day shopping around for new clothes to get me through what was supposed to be a five day vacation. Ultimately, I ended up spending about $500 on a few items that worked for the trip, but nothing will replace my Diesel jeans.

I have a friend who works as a personal injury lawyer in Columbia. She recently flew back from New York to her personal injury attorney law firm and the airline she chose lost her luggage. Instead of repaying her for the value of the luggage and its contents, they gave her a $200 Visa gift certificate to use toward the purchase of some new clothes. As she pointed out, that barely covered the cost of her luggage and, had she been a high-powered Houston construction accident lawyer she might have been able to replace a tie with that amount of money.

I think the best advice is to arrive early so the check in procedure is not as hectic and the chances of your distracted baggage claim representative losing your stuff by putting it on the wrong plane are not so great. Let’ face it: We are all human after all, which means that we often have “other” things on our minds besides the job in front of us. We can be working on a research project on the origins of the Halloween costume and suddenly find ourselves investigating airfare to Mexico. That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with Halloween, but if you do get caught researching adult costumes while you’re supposed to be working on other things, you might want to re-think your focus level.

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Other Resources:

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Source: AFP

Roughly 40 percent of Christian churches in the United States in 2009 saw a decline in offerings according to a new survey by Christianity Today International.  

“For the first time in consecutive years there is a notable decline for a significant number of churches,” said Matt Branaugh, one of the report authors.

Branaugh, editor of “Your Church magazine” — part of the CTI group — told AFP that one of the most important factors in the drop in donations was increased unemployment.

According to the survey of 1,000 churches across the United States taken for a second consecutive year, 38 percent of churches registered a drop in donations, against 29 percent the previous year.

The “State of the Plate” survey did not report the value of the offerings.

One third of the churches surveyed — 32 percent against 14 percent the previous year — cut expenses between one and 20 percent, which included cutting back on trips, conferences, renovations and parish expenses, according to the report.

CUTS FOR GOD?
Not surprisingly, custom design invitations to Sunday sermons are on the budgetary chopping block.  Stripped down sermons, cheaper cookies and coffee out on the social table, and luxury items such as new lawns and other facility upgrades are all on hold as even the houses of God struggle with the economic downturn that has had the country in a financial tailspin since 2005.

Think big business and the banking industry are the only companies struggling?  Think again.  Churches are also businesses, too, and they have had to address issues of financial strain right alongside corporate America.  They may not have played a significant part in the massive mortgage loan restructuring fiasco the country has been grappling with since the real estate market took a nosedive in 2005-06.  But no church is immune to the needs of some form of a commercial loan workout, as many of them own their own buildings, which means they pay a mortgage.

Nevertheless, 45 percent of the churches surveyed increased their budget allocated to help people in need, Branaugh said.

Especially hard-hit were the “megachurches” surveyed — churches that have room for between 2,000 and 5,000 faithful for a typical Sunday service.

Forty-seven percent of the “megachurches” saw a drop in contributions, compared to 23 percent in the previous year.

West coast churches — those located in the states of California, Washington and Oregon — were also hard-hit, the survey reported.

Representatives of Evangelical, Baptist, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches, along with a small percentage of Catholic churches, responded to the survey.

According to a 2007 Pew Research survey, nearly 80 percent of US adults identify themselves as being Christian.

________________________________

My Take: Churches across the country may be tightening their belts, but the rampant spending that goes on behind the scenes of the biggest religious organizations in the world continues.  The money the Catholic church rakes in each year is enough to put the majority of California’s in their own Costa del Sol homes on Spain’s southern coast.  Even renting out villas in Marbella for every Californian could be covered by the church’s coffers, supported, by the way, by a consortium of politicians and extremely wealthy community players, from Hillsboro OR bankruptcy attorneys to the highest-paid San Diego real estate lawyer. 

If the Catholic church in Oregon, for example should have someone slip inside a pew on a Sunday morning, they don’t need to hire a Beaverton OR slip and fall lawyer to cover a lawsuit. They have their own in-house lawyers for that.  If they want to buy property in Solana Beach, CA to build a new church, they can hire the most expensive Solana Beach real estate attorney to find a location and, if necessary, payoff current land and business owners to make way for the new facility.  

I personally prefer to give my extra cash to charities that help people in other ways.  Somehow, I just never felt confident that my two bucks in the plate was ever going to make its way to Africa, the streets of Calcutta, or the poor families of the Central American highlands. 

Anything extra I get these days goes for fun, but not for me.  My daughter and her friends are at concert-going age, so you can bet I’ve spent a fair amount on Bon Jovi tickets, tickets to see the Jonas Brothers, and, lately, tickets to see their current “fav”: Taylor Swift.  If there’s anything left over for me, I buy theater tickets to see the latest movies, but even there I tend to compromise and go for the early show to take advantage of matinee pricing.

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Source: New York Times

Now that President Obama has signed the sweeping new health care law, which is said to eventually provide insurance coverage for 32 million uninsured Americans, many are still wondering what it will do for them and when it will kick in.

In the long term, the legislation will require most Americans to obtain health insurance. It will also offer federal subsidies to lower premiums and significantly expand eligibility for Medicaid.

The changes will mean that 94 percent of legal residents not covered by Medicare will have health insurance, up from 83 percent now, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

While the biggest changes will not take effect until 2014, some important provisions will begin as early as June, while others will kick in by the end of the year. These include significant new restrictions on the insurance industry and new protections for consumers who already have health insurance. There are also perks for Medicare recipients and help for young adults. And in just 90 days there will be new coverage for people who have lost health insurance and can’t qualify for an individual policy.

“The basic thrust of this law is that all of these nooks and crannies, all these gaps where private insurance has left you without any option, those are going to be taken away,” said DeAnn Friedholm, the campaign director of health reform for Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. “It’s complicated, but it does establish a very key, important policy that you’re going to have options, regardless of your health situation or your employment situation.”

Some of the specific details will be outlined in the coming weeks by the Health and Human Services department. However, here are answers to some commonly asked questions about the health care changes coming within the next year.

Q. I don’t have health insurance. How soon will the new law help me?

The answer depends on your age and reasons for not having insurance. If you haven’t had insurance for six months, and you can’t afford or don’t qualify for insurance because of a pre-existing medical problem, you may be eligible for a new federal “high risk” pool to be offered by the end of June.

The cost of the monthly premiums hasn’t been announced, but the rates are to be based on a “standard population,” suggesting they will be based on a healthier group than typically used to calculate premiums for high-risk plans. On average, an enrollee won’t pay more than 35 percent of covered benefits, and annual out-of-pocket costs won’t be more than $5,950 for individuals and $11,900 for families. In addition, there are no lifetime limits — meaning the policy won’t be canceled if someone requires expensive medical treatment

Q. How many people can sign up for the new plan?

Until national health officials specify the premium costs and exactly what will or will not be covered, nobody knows how many people can sign up. The $5 billion set aside by Congress must last until 2014, when other options become available. By comparison, 35 states already spend a combined total of $2 billion annually on high-risk insurance pools that cover 200,000 people.

Q. How is the new federal pool different from what is already offered by state high-risk pools or Medicaid?

The federal plan is expected to offer more-affordable coverage than the existing state plans and will not impose the same income restrictions as Medicaid. State plans also typically impose high deductibles and premiums (some charge as much as $1,200 a month), and up to 12-month waiting periods before covering pre-existing health problems.

The experience of April and Steve Kohrherr of Afton, Va., shows how existing public plans fall short for many families. Their oldest son, Griffin, 6, has hemophilia, a severe bleeding disorder. His care, which has included brain surgery for a life-threatening bleed as well as twice-weekly infusions with a clotting drug, totals $500,000 or more a year.

The high cost of Griffin’s care would disqualify him from most state plans. Adding Griffin to the small group plan at the restaurant where Mr. Kohrherr works would have increased premiums for all the workers, making it unaffordable for everyone. Griffin now is covered by Medicaid, but he will lose the benefit if his family’s income exceeds about $40,000. Ms. Kohrherr works part time, but goes without insurance because the family of four cannot afford the $200 monthly cost to add her to her husband’s policy.

“If anybody was in my shoes and held their kid who was close to death, and if they had to worry about insurance at that moment, then they would never have been against this bill,” Ms. Kohrherr said. “All of the sudden I feel like I can think about my child’s future without worrying.”

Business owners who have been putting off paying for extras as the economy settles, such as for used copiers, custom cutting boards or imprinted bags, are now going to have to take another look at their overall budgets and figure out how the new health care law will impact their bottom lines. Meanwhile, children are expected to see the first changes in the industry take place as pre-existing conditions will no longer be barriers for coverage.

Q. How will the law affect children with pre-existing conditions?

Beginning in September, the new law is expected to stop insurance companies from rejecting children or excluding coverage because of pre-existing medical problems. That’s what happened to Diane Knight, 52, of Orem, Utah, when she tried to get health insurance for her 17-year-old daughter.

Although Ms. Knight and her husband had family insurance in the past, they lost it when they left their jobs to start a small business. When they discovered that they were unable to get new insurance because both had a past cancer diagnosis, they sought an individual policy just for their daughter. But she was rejected, too, because she had used expensive prescription acne cream when she was younger and the insurance company did not want to pay for that in the future.

“To deny a perfectly healthy 17-year-old girl, and then for the rest of her life she has to say, ‘Yes I’ve been denied health insurance’ — that’s unacceptable,” said Ms. Knight, who returned to teaching public school to obtain insurance for her family. “I’m a conservative Republican, but I have lived the nightmare of health insurance.”

Since the law passed, insurers have argued that it uses vague language and does not require them to provide insurance to all children right away. Legislative experts say that the intent of Congress was clear and that the federal government will probably write the rules to reflect this, which may lead the industry to take the battle to court.

Q. Will Medicare recipients receive any immediate benefits?

This year Medicare recipients with high drug costs will get a rebate of up to $250. And in 2011, the plan will pick up a larger share of brand-name drug costs. In addition, Medicare recipients won’t be charged co-pays or deductibles for preventive care like immunizations and cholesterol screening.

The drug rebate is the first step in a 10-year plan to close the “doughnut hole,” the gap that occurs because Medicare Part D stops reimbursing for prescriptions after the first $2,830 in costs a year. The retiree must then pay all drug costs until they reach $6,440, at which point Part D pays again.

Rosale Bertrand, a 69-year-old Medicare recipient in Salt Lake City, says that early in the year, her 10 prescriptions for diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, ulcers and chronic depression cost her about $200 a month because Part D covers much of the cost. But the doughnut hole starts in late March or April, and she must spend $600 a month until Part D kicks in again in the fall, she says.

To maintain her prescriptions, Ms. Bertrand has twice borrowed against her home and has maxed out her credit cards. Under the new law, she will save about $250 this year and about $540 next year. “It’s a start,” she said. “I was very relieved anything good could come out of it.”

Q. Will young, healthy adults who don’t have insurance be helped by the reforms?

Starting in September, adult children younger than 26 can be added to their parent’s health policy. Some plans already extend coverage to adult dependents as long as they are full-time students. Although Health and Human Services still must announce the exact eligibility requirements, Congress deleted a restriction related to marital status.

“We may see a loosening of requirements around who qualifies as a dependent child,” said Jennifer Tolbert, associate director of the Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured for the Kaiser Family Foundation. “When they removed the requirement that a dependent child didn’t have to be unmarried, that was a signal to say, ‘We want this to a apply to a larger group.’ ”

The provision will offer some relief to Sarah Lynch, 25, of Austin, Tex., who was kicked off her parents’ plan at 23 when her course work dropped to just two classes in her final semester. Ms. Lynch has paid about $460 a month to extend coverage under a provision known as Cobra, but that plan expires in June. She has been unable to find full-time work with benefits, and her application for private insurance was rejected without explanation. The new law will give her about six months of insurance coverage on her parents’ plan before she turns 26. “It gives me a little more time to find a job with benefits,” she said.

Q. What are the immediate benefits for people who already have insurance?

Beginning in September, insurance companies will no longer be able to rescind a policy once someone gets sick, nor can they impose lifetime limits on coverage.

Today, honest mistakes on a lengthy insurance application — like forgetting to disclose a parent’s high blood pressure — could be grounds for losing your insurance.

Under the new rules, companies generally can’t rescind a policy for a minor application error. “The law takes away the incentive for insurance companies to look for application mistakes,” said Marian Mulkey, senior program officer with the California HealthCare Foundation. “There have been some egregious examples of someone getting cancer triggering a review of years of health history that seems very targeted and punitive.”

Patricia Sevchuk of Ewing, N.J., said her daughter Laura scrupulously paid her Cobra premiums while being treated for late-stage breast cancer. But more than a month after she died in 2008, the insurance company notified her husband that as much as $400,000 would no longer be covered because the medical bills had exceeded a $1 million lifetime cap. Although one oncologist waived her fees after hearing about the family’s plight, other creditors have demanded payment, and bankruptcy remains a possibility.

“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about her and what she went through,” Mrs. Sevchuk said. “To know that as much as we tried to save her, all it did was cause more anguish to the people who were left — her husband and her daughter. It’s heartbreaking.”

Q. Won’t all these changes increase my health care premiums?

How the changes will affect existing insurance costs is a source of fierce debate. Over all, the Congressional Budget Office has said that by 2016, the provisions in the new law will result in little if any increase in premiums for people with employer-sponsored plans. People with nongroup plans (those not offered by employers) may see increases, but more than half the enrollees in nongroup plans will qualify for federal subsidies, lowering costs for middle- and moderate-income families on average by about 60 percent, the C.B.O. said.

Beginning in September, insurance firms will face new limits on administrative costs and executive compensation. Violations will trigger rebates to consumers. In addition, the overhaul package includes additional money for states to review unreasonable increases in insurance rates.

“Middle- and moderate-income families will have tremendous help in the pocketbook as a result of federal subsidies that will significantly lower the out-of-pocket burden,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of the consumer health group Families USA. “And there is now a process where the federal government as well as states will review premium increases to determine their reasonableness.”

Q. Will small-business owners notice any immediate benefits?

This year tax credits as high as 35 percent of premiums will be available to many small businesses that offer health coverage to employees. Dale B. Cole Jr., co-owner and chief financial officer of Consolidated Trailers in Baltimore, said that he did not yet know how the legislation would affect him but that he hoped it would ease his costs and allow him to shop around for better coverage.

“We’ve used mirrors and smoke to try to get the premiums to where they’re bearable,” he said. “We went from a full plan with a small deductible and great prescription coverage to a plan now that is basically a high-deductible plan. It ain’t much.”

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My Take: It seems to me that you’d have to be a pretty savvy attorney with a high powered NJ juvenile defense law firm to decipher exactly how the new health care bill is going to impact children over the long run, who will pay for their coverage and how much. There is so much vagueness within the language of the new bill, that it’s impossible to tell how the changes will impact workers, not to mention business owners.

If we are all supposed to have some form of health care insurance by 2014 how do we know the government is going to give us the best deal possible? What about the home-based, self employed workers, like the buy who installs and fixes your color Imagerunner when it breaks down, or sells personalized shopping bags or custom plates on E-bay, or the one-man legal firm for the Middlesex County NJ criminal attorney or the new Redwood City criminal defense lawyer? Will these guys have access to the most affordable health care? Will their children?

I don’t know about you, but I think I’d rather take a month of New Jersey safety courses than try to read through the fine print of the bill and determine where I stand on it. Come to think of it, a NJ defensive driving program might be more enjoyable than the paperwork and documentation I think is going to be required just to find out where I might qualify for some government run healthcare program and how I’ll pay for it.

It would be great if they could come up with a one-sheet that tells everyone what the plans are, how they will work, what we can expect to pay based on our salaries and employment status, and how we can compare rates and coverage plans before making a choice.

Other Resources:

The Lawyer Files

San Mateo CA criminal attorneys are available to help with cases involving criminal law violations, including DUI, theft, shoplifting, robbery, assault, white collar crimes and domestic abuse charges.

Source: New York Times

For lawyers offering free legal information at large immigration detention centers in remote parts of Texas, there is also the challenge of discovering that many of the detainees are either too mentally ill or mentally disabled to understand anything.

The detainees, mostly apprehended in New York and other Northeastern cities, some right from mental hospitals, have often been moved to Texas without medication or medical records, far from relatives and mental health workers who know their history. Their mental incompetence is routinely ignored by immigration judges and deportation officers, who are under growing pressure to handle rising caseloads and meet quotas set by the government.

These are among the findings of a yearlong examination of the way the nation’s immigration detention system handles the mentally disabled in Texas, where 29 percent of all detainees are held while the government tries to deport them. The study, conducted by Texas Appleseed, a public interest law center, and Akin Gump, a corporate law firm that provided 38 lawyers for the study, documents mistreatment at every stage of the process.

Among many examples in the 88-page report, to be released Tuesday, is a 50-year-old legal permanent resident with schizophrenia who had lived in New York City since 1974. In November, a New York criminal court declared him incompetent to stand trial on a trespassing charge and ordered him to serve 90 days in a mental institution. Instead, he was transferred to the Willacy County Regional Detention Facility in Texas, to face a deportation proceeding without counsel — so abruptly, the report said, that his family and lawyer did not know what had happened to him.

At Willacy, he received no medication for weeks, and in March, he was deported to the Dominican Republic. “My mother is devastated,” his sister, Janet Jiminez, said on Sunday. “She says he will die out there on the streets.”

“I’ve been a U.S. citizen for many, many years,” Ms. Jiminez added. “I’m law abiding, I pay taxes. If we have a law system and the law system has declared that you are incompetent and should be taken to a mental hospital, why are you taken to Texas to be deported?”

Physician diagnostics are supposed to be upheld in court, but many of the deportees are said to never get close enough to a doctor to have their physical and mental state analyzed. Instead, they are letting intrusion prevention tactics and immigration quotas guide their instincts.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the report said, is routinely ignoring its discretionary authority to leave such mentally ill detainees in appropriate community settings rather than lock them up, at great expense, in distant jails where they can rapidly deteriorate.

The agency is reviewing the report, Brian P. Hale, a spokesman, said Monday, adding that “in cases where I.C.E. is required by law to detain certain aliens with serious medical and mental health issues, we work to ensure the person receives sound, appropriate, and timely care.” An evaluation of such cases is under way, he said.

A recent government memo shows that agents are under intense pressure to detain and deport as many people as possible. James M. Chaparro, the Obama administration’s chief of detention and removal operations, congratulated agents in the memo for reaching the agency’s goal of “150,000 criminal alien removals” for the year ending Sept. 30. But urged them to overcome a shortfall in the goal of 400,000 total deportations by making maximum use of detention, including an extra 3,000 slots added this year.

Despite the administration’s vow to focus resources on detaining and deporting the most dangerous criminals, the Feb. 22 memo, posted online by The Washington Post on Saturday, instructed agents to pick up the pace of deportations by detaining more noncitizens suspected only of unauthorized residence. Such illegal immigrants can typically be deported more quickly than legal immigrants with criminal convictions.

The publication of the memo clearly embarrassed the administration. A spokesman, Sean Smith, said that “our focus continues to be on the criminal side,” and that Mr. Chaparro was to be publicly reprimanded on Monday by John Morton, the chief of the immigration enforcement agency, at a meeting with immigrant advocacy groups. The memo, Mr. Smith added, was sent without Mr. Morton’s approval and “is completely unrelated” to the findings of the Texas study.

But Ann Baddour, who directed the study, disagreed. “Setting these kinds of quotas only encourages the process of detaining people and taking them far from their infrastructure,” she said. “When you take a mentally ill person from New York to rural Texas, you’re basically setting them up for almost certain deportation.”

Noting that the memo shows that agents are being rated on the speed of their deportations, she added, “It doesn’t prioritize justice, it doesn’t prioritize humane treatment.”

Other examples in the report include a Haitian man found incompetent to stand trial in an assault case and ordered to undergo six months of treatment at a state mental hospital in Boston. The day he arrived at the hospital, however, immigration agents sent him in shackles and without medical records to the Port Isabel Detention Center near Los Fresnos, Tex.

In that case, the man was eventually returned to the Boston hospital, said Maunica Sthanki, a lawyer who was involved in the study. More typical, she said, is the mentally disabled refugee from Southeast Asia who was wrongly taken into custody in Providence, R.I., sent to Texas, then abruptly released without notice at a rural gas station at 11 p.m.

The report details several such releases: a schizophrenic woman who spoke only Russian, left in a dangerous area at 1 a.m.; a man lost for a week on his way back from Texas to his family in Maryland; a delusional man who was deported four days earlier than planned, though his parents had arranged for his voluntary departure to Mexico, where his mother was to pick him up.

Two years later, the man has not been found, but a body matching his description is in a morgue in Mexico.

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My Take: It should not matter whether a detainee is a legal citizen of this country or a distant cousin of an Austin divorce lawyer who happens to be schizophrenic and living on the streets. Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, whether their custom birth announcements were forged so they can come here for a better life, or they manage to fly beneath the radar and work for an iPhone repair company. They deserve to be fully and fairly examined for mental illnesses before they are sent off to some netherworld where they are more likely only going to get sicker, if not worse.

Every lawyer in the country, even a mediocre divorce attorney in Austin TX, should be jumping on the opportunity to find out what’s happening to these people in Texas and why. You would think that with all the technology our government has in place with respect to network security software that it could do a better job of tracking the status of the people they incarcerate on immigration violation charges. We live in a time when construction cost estimating software is being used to design the most intricate buildings ever; it takes a moment to fix GPS glitches, or conduct an in-office smoke check to see if patients are at risk of disease. Why can’t we take better care of people, regardless of where they come from?

Other Resources

Easy Builder
Blueprints are being created digitally these days, just like everything else. If you are an architect, you can conduct what’s known as a PDF takeoff, essentially this is a digitized version of a set of blue prints that you can send to builders via online. Takes a lot of the hassle out of the hard copy file management of the old day.

Source: New York Times

Couched first as a joke, a plan by Max Chafkin, a senior writer for Inc. magazine to have everyone work remotely for one entire issue of the magazine, goes off with few hitches.   

“I thought it would involve so much change that it wouldn’t be feasible,” Mr. Chafkin said.

Then Jane Berentson, Inc.’s editor, gave the go-ahead. And in February, the staff of about 30 — editors, reporters and producers — created the April issue outside of the business magazine’s office in Downtown Manhattan. The issue goes on sale o April 6.

The production went off without a major hitch, with the staff members using nothing more than readily available technology, including Skype and instant messaging. And Ms. Berentson described Mr. Chafkin’s cover piece, “The Office Is Dead. Long Live the Office,” which is infused with first-person details, as richer and more unusual than it would have been without the experiment.

“I think about the magazine industry and how we’re going to use all of this new technology, such as the iPad, but there’s innovation in this very basic way as well,” Ms. Berentson said. “Why are we in the office in the first place?”

Away from the office, some staff members struggled to adjust, Mr. Chafkin said, as minor technical hiccups arose and parents working at home had to find ways to separate their work from their children. But in the end, most employees discovered that they could and should work out of the office more often — though they did not want to eliminate the office entirely.

In the P.J.s:
Imagine IF a significant percentage of the country’s workforce were to telecommute?  Would you be meeting the small business lender at his or her home over coffee and a muffin?  How exactly would you be able to trust a small business finance company if their store front was a two-bedroom bungalow in West Los Angeles and the owner answered the door in shorts and a flip flops? 

For some, there is an inherent need to physically visit a bank, a store, or a retailer.  The need to interact, whether you’re selling promotional golf shirts, work as a Bronx construction accident lawyer, or market the HCG Drops diet plan.  Nothing can replace human contact when it comes to trust and product confidence.  That also goes for workers. 

Mr. Chafkin, 27, who has been at the magazine since 2005, found himself working more hours than usual in February and pining for the company of his colleagues.

“I was way more productive, but way less happy,” he said. “I think one of the reasons people get into magazines is that it’s collaborative.”

The collaboration that did happen needed to be arranged in advance, like setting a time for a conference call, rather than relying on an encounter in a hallway or chatting at a desk. Only once during the month did the entire staff gather, at Ms. Berentson’s home on the Upper West Side.

When everyone got together, she said, it was “exactly like seeing old friends.” 

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My Take: The whole telecommuting industry has really turned the world upside down for me.  I’ve been a stay-at-home worker since the late 1990s, and I can tell you that the joys of being alone in my p.j.s with my cat purring nearby and the hum of my laptop, are often accompanies with a good deal of isolation and sometimes frustration.

Working alone from home without the network of office friends to chat with or go to lunch with can be isolating.  I think everyone from Denver civil law attorneys  to the best Brooklyn slip and fall lawyer has imagined what it would be like to not have to go inside a courtroom.  But even the newest criminal lawyer in Denver Co knows, you gotta have human contact in order to get some jobs done right.

I’ll admit, it’s much harder to take time out of your day at work and get on the phone to make personal calls for personal needs, like trying to compare car insurance rates or line up a house painter.  Let’s face it: you can obtain a car insurance quote over the internet in about a minute these days, but you never know what’s going to happen during that minute you’re surfing the Net at work.  In the privacy of your own home,  you’re free to allocate your time to the tasks you have on your plate in any way you see fit, provided you meet your deadlines.

But there are a lot of things you miss out on when you don’t have a cubicle to visit on your morning break.  Perhaps most critical is the need for tech support should things go wrong with your network or your hard drive all of a sudden decides to die.  Working from home is a trade off: you give up the corporate gifts of having access to office supplies and in-house networking opportunities in exchange for being able to take a lunch break and mow the front lawn before that 3:30 conference call. 

Other Resources:  

Healthy Dieting

Have you heard of the HCG drops?  HCG stands for Human Chorio Gonadotropin, which is reported to work directly with the Hypothalamus gland, which controls body fat, emotions, and helps to develop the reproductive organs during puberty.  Over time, our HCG levels drop because of certain chemicals we put into our bodies, and we lose our ability to properly metabolize food and other issues.  The HCG drops diet is intended to help you give your body the proper level of HCG so you can eat healthier and take off extra pounds.   Click here for more information.

Source: Los Angeles Times

The Obama administration on Thursday announced changes to its controversial initiative to ease home foreclosures, expanding public outreach and eligibility in response to sharp criticism that the $75-billion program had been ineffective.

Among the changes to take effect June 1 is a requirement that companies servicing mortgages must prescreen every borrower who has missed two or more payments to determine whether he or she is eligible for the Home Affordable Modification Program. If so, the servicer “must proactively solicit those borrowers” to participate. Those companies also are required to make quicker decisions about eligibility and speedily process documents.

And the program is being expanded to include borrowers who have filed for bankruptcy protection.

Assistant Treasury Secretary Herbert M. Allison Jr. announced the changes at a hearing about the program by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Lawmakers from both parties have been critical of the program’s effect on home foreclosures.

The program was launched last spring and offered cash incentives to banks and other companies servicing mortgages to reduce monthly payments for borrowers in an attempt to keep them in their homes. The goal was to modify 3 million to 4 million modifications through 2012.

But the program got off to a slow start, and as of the end of February, just 168,708 mortgages had been permanently modified. More than 1 million three-month trial modifications have been started, but conversion to permanently reduced payments has been difficult amid complaints from homeowners of bureaucratic runarounds and delays by servicers.

“We continue to hear numerous reports of borrowers who want to participate in HAMP, but just don’t know where to begin,” said Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), the committee chairman. “If they do begin, they often encounter unresponsive lenders, repeated incidents of lost paperwork and a variety of other administrative frustrations.”

Towns said the number of permanent modifications “appears to be extremely low.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) was more blunt. He said the program had been a failure and actually had increased the pain for some homeowners who had been given the false impression that their mortgage payments could be permanently lowered.

“People are making payments in hopes that it would lead to a solution, when it appears as though a great many of them should be looking for more affordable alternate housing,” Issa said.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R- Ohio) blasted the Obama administration for constant “technocratic tinkering” with the program and attempts to disguise the program’s failures. Those points were echoed by Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which is providing most of the funding for the program. In a report released this week, Barosfky’s office slammed the mortgage modification program as poorly planned and ineffective. The goal of permanently modifying 3 million to 4 million mortgages would not be met, he said.

In prepared testimony, Allison defended the program while noting that changes were still being made to make it more effective.

“The administration has made substantial progress in implementation and has seen initial signs of housing stability, but a number of critical challenges remain,” he said.

Allison said the program was on track to have at least trial modifications offered to 3 million to 4 million people by the end of 2012. But Barofsky and others said the administration was changing the goal of the program to make it seem more effective.

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My Take: I have heard so many horror stories from homeowners who say they have waited six, seven even 10 months to hear about a decision on whether or not they qualify for a modification on their mortgages. Many of these people are on trial periods already and are making reduced payments while waiting for a final modification decision. What they don’t know is that the difference between the original loan amount and the reduced trial period payments has to be repaid somehow. If the loan is approved for a modification, it will get re-worked into the new loan. If not, the homeowner can expect a big, huge balloon payment and that’s not helping them at all.

There are people out there with Louisville KY home loans, for example, who are more underwater now with what they own on the difference between their trial period payments and the regular payments than they were when they signed up for a trial period modification in the first place. If they could have afforded to get themselves into a more comfortable KY refinancing program, they would never have relied upon the government’s trial period to begin with. But for now, they are biting their nails and just waiting.

Meanwhile there are other homeowners out there having to sell junk cars and home office furniture in garage sales just to buy groceries. Others are working part time selling office supplies while holding down full time jobs in sales somewhere else, while gas, food, clothing and basic necessities for everyday living are getting more and more expensive. It seems to me that if the government really wanted to help these struggling homeowners out they would at least agree to cover the trial period payment differences and let these people start fresh with new loan. And, they would hire more people to assist these loan servicers so that paperwork is handled more efficiently and the trial periods themselves don’t have to drag on for months and even years.

By the way, if you’re looking to junk a car for cash, you can now go right to your internet. Today you can sell any car for cash, not just clunkers or junkers. The companies out there will not only pay you for your junk car, they will also come and pick it up and tow it away for you. This is a great way to make money, give to a charity and get rid of that old clunker all in one fell swoop.  Sure, kids like getting model trains and other toys and these are the things that charitible groups will get for them with the help of a donated car.  They can also buy them things likd hobby tools for putting together models and craftss, as well as clothing and beds and strollers.

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Other Recourses:

Comparison Shopping

You probably compare health insurance quotes when it comes to your managed care programs at work, right?  So, why on earth wouldn’t you compare insurance car quotes? There are so many options online now for doing this that it’s almost crazy not to. From the comfort of your own home you can plug in a set of parameters regarding your car and other details and within minutes you will have several insurance quotes from various reputable companies to consider.

Be Seen

In case you hadn’t noticed, the Internet and ad placement are driving sales for all busiensses today, big and small.  If you run a company, whether it’s a gardening service or an Atlanta data center, you should think about finding a company to help you with you offsite data storage. A good server colocation comopany will back you up when you are home or on vacation, so you can let your company go to bed for the night and not have to worry about your Web site going down or your data being stolen by disgruntled emplyees after hours.

Source: Dallas Morning News

Red Mango, a Dallas-based frozen yogurt chain, as announced plans to open in U.S. airports in April, and it’s going to start with locations in Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Three shops will be in Terminal A, one in Terminal C and the final one, a co-branded design, in Terminal D.

The chain, which first opened in 2007, is known for its all-natural, nonfat and gluten-free offerings. Airport concession operator The Grove Inc. was awarded the licensing agreement to bring the popular frozen yogurt to airports.

“The first time I tried Red Mango, I was hooked and knew that it would be favorable to airport travelers,” said Michelle Dukler, CEO and president of The Grove. “Airport concession programs are continuing to request concepts and brands that have healthy offerings.”

Perk City - Airports across the country are having to do more to please passengers these days as they have become increasingly pressured to endure longer wait lines, thanks to new rules regarding metal detection technology, which include full body scans in the not too distant future. Longer wait lines through the metal detector aside, the perks are slowly but surely fading.

Blankets and pillows were the first to go when it was announced recently that many major carriers would do away with them because of expenses and other issues, including sanitary reasons. Then some recently announced that meals on long flights would no longer be free. This is a lot to take away from passengers who are now paying more for air travel than ever before and need a masters in Pilates exercise techniques to handle the increasingly smaller spaces provided for in-flight seating.

Red Mango will also expand to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport and New York City’s LaGuardia International Airport.

Earlier this month, Red Mango announced that it was adding parfaits and probiotic smoothies to its menu, joining the frozen yogurt and iced teas that the company already offers.

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My Take: Well, I’m no fan of Pilates exercise equipment, and I’m certainly not into Alexander technique sports and fitness. But it’s true: the seating onboard most carriers these days is getting smaller and smaller, and the little “extras” they used to give you are no longer going to be around to help take the edge of the disappointment. First we have to wait in horrendously long lines just for the privilege of getting to the boarding area. The time it takes to fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco can now nearly be handled more quickly by car. Where’s the trade off?

Smokers are banished to the outside smoking sections, but many are turning to the electronic cigarette to skirt the laws. If you haven’t heard about these, they are smokeless cigarettes that are supposed to be allowed inside airports. They don’t emit tar or nicotine or smoke and are supposed to be perfectly acceptable anywhere cigarettes are banned. Njoy products are just one of many versions of the e-cigs out there and many of them are available right online.

Traveling these days for me and my family rarely involves the airlines. We drive almost every time we hit the road. If we do fly, we go on line and scour the ads for the best deal on cheap airfare we can find. Then, we look for deals that are as equitable as the discounts you get through group rates and we try to budget out a trip without breaking our bank accounts. Otherwise, what’s the point of leaving the backyard?

Other Resources

An Old New Technique

The Alexander technique New York studios are a great way to get introduced to this odd but apparently very effective breathing and posture form of exercise. It is supposed to be a popular form of exercise for artists and musicians who rely on breath movement. Dancers and comedians and even professional speakers, too, are said to be big fans of the Alexander technique.

Better Than the Other Guy

Many details and conveniences of a charter flight are left up to an aircraft owner/operator when you use a charter broker company. However, one LA private jet charter service realized there was serious room for improvement in this area. Many charter broker companies are staffed by untrained individuals who are unfamiliar with the charter business or with aviation in general. The main purpose of these charter broker companies is profit. That is why this Los Angeles jet charter service has improved the options available to those seeking private flights. They focus on service, tangible value add-ons and fair pricing to everyone.

]]> http://www.educationfreestyle.com/red-mango-yogurt-hits-the-airports/travel/2010/03/ /feed http://www.educationfreestyle.com/europeans-battle-the-bulge-too/healthcare/2010/03/ http://www.educationfreestyle.com/europeans-battle-the-bulge-too/healthcare/2010/03/ #comments Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:41:15 +0000 Freestyler http://www.educationfreestyle.com/?p=359 Source: TIME

Obesity is no longer just an American problem, it’s spreading across the pond and, over the past two decades, Europe’s waistlines have been widening, according to new reports.

In fact, from 1990 to 2006, obesity levels in Europe tripled on the whole, according to statistics from the World Health Organization. Although they’ve yet to catch up with the 32% obesity rate in the U.S., Europeans have nothing to be complacent about. In Italy, nearly 10% of people are considered obese, and in the U.K. that figure is over 24%, according to the latest WHO figures from 2006.

Faced with such alarming statistics, the European Union is now mulling drastic changes to the way food products are labeled in an attempt to battle the bloc’s growing bulge. The most controversial of the proposals so far is a flashy label backed by health and consumer groups that’s based on the colors of a traffic light. Already fixtures in many British supermarkets, the labels use red, yellow and green circles to indicate how healthy products are in four categories: fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt. If a box of cookies is high in sugar, for instance, it’ll get a red light.

Food and drink companies are opposed to this approach and prefer to maintain the status quo — requiring only the calorie content to be displayed on the front of packages, with nutritional information listed on the back. The European Parliament is expected to vote on the issue in May or June. 

Food labels are a big issue in the U.S. at the moment, too. Earlier this month, a lobbying group called the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) issued a report calling on the U.S. government to require food and drink companies to summarize nutritional information on the fronts of packages with “easy to comprehend” symbols. First Lady Michelle Obama, who has made tackling childhood obesity one of her key goals, also said recently that she’d like to see food companies start using more customer-friendly labels “so parents won’t have to spend hours squinting at words that they can’t pronounce to figure out whether the foods that they’re buying are healthy or not.”

Drive-thru dieting - Americans have long had the car to blame for obesity rates. Drive-through fast-food chains have taken full advantage of the fact that most workers have little time to sit down at home and make a healthy meal. Instead, for many, attempts at weight management are often a combination of organic multivitamins, a quick work out two or three times a week, mixed in with an occasional home-cooked meal and a whole lot of drive-thru dieting. Some may augment that regimen with a few daily doses of sports supplements , like whey or protein powder to help boost metabolism rates or increase muscle mass.

Advocates of the traffic light proposal in Europe insist that prominent, mandatory labeling is the most effective way to inform consumers. They are backed by a growing body of research. One study from earlier this year found that just 17% of European shoppers look for nutritional information when they buy food. Another study in France showed that although 75% of consumers there say they are interested in nutrition, a full 84% of people could not explain what a carbohydrate is. And another study conducted in Australia last year indicated that people were five times more likely to identify healthy food options when they see color-coded nutrition labels. 

Dave McCullough, a spokesman for the European Consumers’ Organization BEUC, says that on average, Europeans have about a half hour each week to do all their food shopping. “The fact is that a lot of people do not have time to make decisions on what they are buying,” he says. “A housewife out with her three kids wants to make a quick decision while rushing through the supermarket aisles and does not have time for detailed comparison. When we clearly have an obesity epidemic spreading across Europe, and when consumers clearly want to make healthier choices about their diet, we really should give them the tools that work best and which they want.”

Linda McAvan, a member of the European Parliament from Britain’s Labor Party and a supporter of the color-coded food labels, echoes that sentiment. “There is evidence that consumer pressure generated through the traffic light scheme can lead to product reformulation by retailers,” she says. “One major retailer told me how their least healthy sandwich range was phased out when labeling was introduced, as people stopped buying the high fat and salt options.” 

But the powerful food and drink lobbies and their allies in the European Parliament aren’t quite so sure. Renate Sommer, a parliamentarian from Germany’s Christian Democratic Union party, favors limiting front-of-package labeling to calorie content information and allowing food companies to decide how much nutritional content they wish to list on the back. “It would be wrong to overload consumers, otherwise you would need a calculator to work out your diet,” she says. “The more you label, the less people read. The U.S. has more and more food labeling but obesity rates keep rising. We should learn from their mistakes.”

The CIAA, the European food and drink industry body, also believes the voluntary back-of-package guideline daily amount (GDAs) labels are good enough. “While there is no silver bullet to tackling obesity, we are already doing a lot,” says Mella Frewen, the head of the group. “Issues such as obesity require a complex mix of solutions. We need a more coherent approach covering a multitude of factors, like education, physical activity, portion size and frequency of consumption.” Frewen also contends the traffic light proposal is too subjective.

“It makes a blanket judgment about foodstuffs and suggests that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ choices which can be applied to everyone. This is not the case. Consumers have different dietary needs,” she says.

Traffic light opponents may have gotten the upper hand on Tuesday when a European Parliament committee recommended backing the simpler front-of-package labels that list only calorie counts. But with a couple of months to go in the debate, health activists say there’s a chance the multi-colored labels could still get the green light.

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My Take: Here’s the deal: You don’t need a calculator to tell you that the piece of chocolate cake or that double cheeseburger you just woofed down are going do some damage to your diet for the day. Counting calories is a simple and straightforward approach to weight management and, when coupled with some sensible exercising routine and founded on food groups with green leafy veggies and fruits at the top end, the rates of successfully keeping weight under control are more likely to be positive.

Smoking is one of the leading factors of heart disease, and combined with obesity it’s a downright health hazard, if you ask me. I’ve long-advocated for required health checks for the insured and, for those who do smoke, I think they should be given free prescriptions for 90 days to buy electronic cigarettes as a way to possibly begin to wean themselves off the nicotine. I’m not suggesting the electronic cigarette is a sure-fire way to get someone to quit, I’m saying it may help some kick the habit sooner rather than later. And, those who are overweight and proven to sustain themselves on a diet of drive-thru junk should be penalized somehow for not taking responsibility for their own health management.

There’s a reason shy seeing a Tallahassee Fl plastic surgeon is not part of the standard benefit in most company sponsored health care plans. HMOs don’t want to pay for something like Destin FL breast implants or face lifts because they are considered cosmetic. Maybe they should consider managing the smokers and junk food eaters more effectively through limiting benefits until lifestyle changes are made. I know this idea is about as popular as getting the doctor’s phone answering service in an emergency, but it makes sense. Some elected officials have back the idea, and I’m sure they got some pretty nasty messages for it on their answering service , but the fact is, people need to take responsibility for their health. Counting calories is a good start, and so is monitoring the sugars and carbs inside the food you buy before you buy it.

Other Resources:

Texas Legal Help

If you are in the Dallas Fort Worth area and have an accident and you need to hire a good Fort Worth car accident law firm, one way to learn about who’s who is to check their blogs online and find out what cases they’ve won or what areas of concentration they are working on. For example, here’s a blog related to a four-wheeler accident and case results which might help if you are in need of a good Fort Worth Texas trucking accidents lawyer. Click here to read.

Fitness Clubs

Just because you don’t think you have a swimming pool, basketball or tennis court in your area doesn’t mean there isn’t one. There is one place where you can find the fitness health clubs in your area and even the ones that offer in-house pause and massage treatments. Finding fitness health clubs is now as easy as turning on your computer. That means the time you spend burning calories typing all those reports at your desk will not be the only calorie burning activities you can do. One website offers the ability to find local gyms and fitness resources that offer weight loss programs and even personal training.

Spa Indulgence

Not everyone can experience a Lebanon day spa salon on a daily basis, but many can at least get a couple of hours a week. What you can do is try one of the massages offered or pamper yourself with a therapeutic bath or shower at your Lebanon beauty spa. If you have more time, you can go a bit further and sign yourself up for a stay-in program over a couple of days. Don’t procrastinate, read through whatever interests you and then get on the phone and call one of your local spas. At least you get in some personal time.

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