#1
Rotsa ruck, guys. From my very limited understanding of maritime law, it is quite strict and unforgiving about right of way and fault - especially when someone is screwing around with another ship.
WILDLIFE officers have appealed to the public for information about a dolphin that was slashed across the throat and left on the lawn of a WA house. The dolphin was dumped under a tree of a property about 500m from the water at Bremer Beach on WA's south coast.
A wildlife officer from the Department of Environment and Conservation's Nature Protection Branch in Albany will travel to Bremer Bay today to investigate the incident, question locals and examine the carcass. "Calling all cars, calling all cars, be on the lookout for a dolphin-killer, large, black and white, answers to 'Shamu'. That is all."
Acting chief wildlife officer Kevin Morrison said it was not clear whether the dolphin had been hurt before or after its death. "The photos provided to us indicate that someone inflicted quite deep serious wounds to the throat of the dolphin, but it's not possible to say conclusively if it was while the animal was still alive, or post mortem," Mr Morrison said. "Whatcha think, Dr. Quincy?"
"I dunno, Sam, but there's salt water in the lungs."
"It's a dolphin, Quince, what did you expect?"
"It could have been determined only if we'd been able to access the carcass of the animal while it was still fresh and a proper forensic done. "Next time, Sam, stick it in the freezer til I get here!"
"Unfortunately now, the only way we'd be able to determine whether the animal was killed or the injury inflicted post-mortem is if we get information from members of the public.
"We're relying heavily on information from the public in order to get a result." "It's a Sicilian message. It means Flipper sleeps with the mammals."
Mr Morrison said it was believed the animal was a striped dolphin, but more would be known when the wildlife officer examined the carcass tomorrow.
The officer would be liaising with police from Ongerup investigating the disturbing incident.
"We're concerned whenever there is evidence of any animal being killed unnecessarily or where injuries have been cruelly inflicted," Mr Morrison said. "We don't know in this case for sure if the dolphin was killed and the injuries were cruelly inflicted or if it was found dead and someone caused injury to it afterwards."
"It appears the case, though, that the injury is not the sort of injury that a dolphin would sustain in the wild. It looks like a straight slit up the throat and it's not likely that a dolphin could sustain that sort of injury in the natural environment."
#2
Given the dolphins, how can it be put gently, perverse sexual proclivities, with just about anything, and even in groups, I suspect jealousy as the motive.
The oft-told tale of a whale biologist who comes home to his trailer, to find his wife in bed with a dolphin.
#3
The oft-told tale of a whale biologist who comes home to his trailer, to find his wife in bed with a dolphin
In the swimming pool would be a better idea. Anyway she is going to be disappointed since between other adaptations to living in water dolphins have developed the one of only lasting a few seconds
#6
A meter is about a yard, so 500 meters is about 1500 feet. Let's call it 3/10s of a mile. But you are right - that is a long stroll on little vestigial legs.
Fears are being raised for the famous creature following a lack of 'credible' sightings during the past year.
The Loch Ness Monster may be dead, according to a leading Nessie enthusiast.
Gary Campbell, president of the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club, said only one sighting - made just off the Clansman Hotel on June 6 last year - was judged in his opinion to have been the only 'credible' report of the monster in 2009.
Mr Campbell stated such reports are increasingly rare. He added: "That's why we're so relieved to have heard about this sighting. In June, when it was reported, nobody had seen anything for a year. If it hadn't been for that one, we would have been really, really worried. There is an embarrassment factor to seeing Nessie. The first thing people say to you is, 'Had you had a drink?'"
The Nessie enthusiast added: "Ten years ago we had a lot of good sightings, but in the last two or three years, they have tailed off. What we regard as a dependable sighting is very much down to the person who sees it....
Posted by: Mike ||
01/08/2010 16:35 ||
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This is to the tune of "The Scottish Soldier" or Grunter's parody, "The Cyber Soldier"
LOCH NESS MONSTER
(Traditional; Arr., Iain C. MacKintosh/Hamish Imlach)
There was a monster, a Scottish monster
Who lives in far Loch Ness, a very fine address
All the hoteliers and postcard selliers
Are making fortunes every year
Folk see her cruising when they've been boozing
In the pale moonlight - what a fearful sight
And if you get fu', you might see her too
What a tale to tell your wife
I sing of a monster that lives in Loch Ness
She makes the headlines in the national press
Perhaps she's employed by the Daily Express
To separate tourists from money
And from England, France and Germany and places far and wide
With their cameras they hide behind the trees
Every year a new invasion's coming from a foreign nation
They crawl about the banks on hands and knees
And they've got submarines and diving-bells and all the latest gear
They come to hunt our Nessie with high hope
They go diving in the water but till now they haven't caught her
And she's down there laughing up their periscopes
They couldnae get a picture, a picture, a picture
They couldnae get a picture, she wouldn't put her head up
They couldnae get a picture, a picture, a picture
They couldnae get a picture, she wouldn't put her head up
They couldn't see the hump o' her, they couldn't see the rump o' her
They couldn't see the hump o' her, she wouldn't put her head up
There was a student, a Scottish student
Who blew up rubber tyres and strung them all with wires
He set them floating and sat there gloating
While folk took pictures by the score
And the whole world heard Nessie's name again
And the Tourist Board played its game again
Please don't tell them you heard me sing this song
And her name will live forever more
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/08/2010 16:56 Comments ||
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#2
IIRC HISTORY CHANNEL/DISCOVERY > Presuming that NESSIE is indeed real, its ability to survive may had been severely hampered due to local construx of various small locks-n-dams leading into, out of Loch Ness, effec locking Nessie permanently in the Loch = vital external food sources.
Also, Nessie may had survived the eons due to inbreeding, which in turn would've reduced her natural genetic ability to survive environ stresses.
BUT HEY, IFF SAMPLES OF SO-CALLED "EXTINCT" ANIMALS CAN STILL BE FOUND IN THE WILD, + RADIC ISLAMIST ZOMBIES, "NESSIE" PER SE MAY STILL LIVE!
The Middle East is facing its worst water crisis in decades. For three summers, the annual rains have failed to come. Farmland has dried up across the region in Iraq, Syria, southeast Turkey and Lebanon.
While oil was the resource that defined the last century, water and its scarcity may define this one.
This winter, rain has barely settled into the hard, cracked farmland in northern Syria. There was a time when the fields were green most of the year, but the summer droughts have taken a toll. Farther east is the Badia, a vast rangeland, where thousands of people tend herds of sheep.
Addami is a traditional village where the houses are white domes of baked clay. This summer, Addami was completely abandoned during the driest months.
Life has never been easy in Addami. But Ismar Mohammed, a 43-year-old shepherd wrapped in a black wool robe against the cold, says he was wealthy by local standards as the owner of the area's largest herd. He had to drive his flock more than 150 miles for water. With no luck and no grass, he had to buy feed for his 275 sheep, and that meant he had to sell some of them to feed the rest. "No question, I had to do this otherwise they would die, and I had to feed my kids. Before the drought, I used to have 400 head," he says.
More than 160 villages are abandoned now in Syria alone. According to a United Nations report on the drought, 800,000 people have lost their livelihood. Hundreds of thousands left once-fertile land that turned to dust and pitched tents near the big cities, looking for any kind of work.
Hussein Amery, an expert on Middle East water management and a professor at the Colorado School of Mines says the policy failures that have made the emergency worse. The water crisis has been building for years. "The water refugees are a product of climate change, mismanaged water resources. It's a product of population explosion; it's a lot of things. It's a perfect storm that is wreaking havoc in the rural farming sector of Syria and Iraq," he says.
At the Syrian government office for development, Mohsan Nahas says Palmyra is experimenting with new water-saving techniques. "I have talked about the oasis we've been setting up. That's being done with drip irrigation," he says. Nahas offers visitors a slideshow to illustrate what he is up against -- a dust storm so large it could be seen from space on Google Earth. Conditions on the ground were intolerable: Sand blew into houses, mixing with food and affecting people's eyesight.
With the widespread drought, a food crisis is looming. For the first time, Syria now has to import wheat. Sukkar, the economist, says things won't get better unless the country changes a history of wasteful water management and outdated farming techniques.
Sukkar, the economist, says things won't get better unless the country changes a history of wasteful water management and outdated farming techniques. "Unfortunately, we haven't introduced modern technology, and so we are dependent on rainfall, period," he says.
But rainfall, or lack of it, is not the only culprit, he says. Syria and Iraq blame Turkey's huge network of dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for reducing water supplies by 50 percent. Turkey is the site of the headwaters of a river system that Syria and Iraq depend on. An informal agreement determines the flow downstream. Turkey says there is enough water for everyone, but Syria and Iraq waste their share. Amery, the water expert, says the Turks are partly right.
Drought Withers Iraqi Farms, Food Supplies Iraqi rice farmers don't have enough water for this critical crop, due to second year of drought, poor water-use practices, and damming of the rivers upstream in Turkey and Syria.
In the rice belt south of Baghdad, many farmers have abandoned the land and joined the urban poor. The Iraqi government has banned rice farming all together in the southern provinces because there's not enough water to sustain it.
Latif Rashid, Iraq's water resources minister, explains that Iraq is what he calls a downstream country. "This is Turkey," he says, pointing to a large regional map in his office. "There are reservoirs ... and dams on every branch." Turkey and Syria are upstream countries. The map charts every water diversion built by the two neighbors over the years.
"Saddam didn't care about it, he didn't have a relationship with them," Rashid says, referring to the late dictator, ousted in the 2003 U.S. invasion. "When I was appointed minister of water I sent a message to Turkey and to Syria saying: 'Look, let us talk about the water issue, and this is very important.' They were surprised."
The region's water ministers are scheduled to meet in September after Rashid angrily accused the Turks of broken promises to increase water flows to the Euphrates.
Obscured By War, Water Crisis Looms In Yemen
Lately, the news from Yemen has been dominated by an escalating rebellion along the border with Saudi Arabia. But for water experts, Yemen has been making news for decades because of its severe overuse of a rapidly disappearing water supply.
In 1998, Abdul Rahman al-Eryani was a young local aid worker explaining the desperate water situation in Ta'iz, south of the capital, San'a. Water was so scarce that some households only had it once every six weeks. Eleven years later, Eryani is now the Yemeni government minister of water and environment, Ta'iz residents are still waiting six weeks for water to flow from the tap, and in San'a, the situation has gone from bad to looming disaster.
"We are in crisis. And this is expected. ... We are using almost 100 percent more than the annual renewable water that's available in San'a," Eryani says.
The alluvial aquifers closer to the surface have been exhausted, and drill bits must now chew through more than 3,000 feet of earth before reaching the ancient sandstone aquifer that holds what Eryani believes is the last of San'a's reachable underground supply.
No one knows precisely when the water supply will run out, but there's no doubt that it will, and probably sooner rather than later. Yemenis are responding by drilling illegal wells and pumping more water than ever.
Yemen's water crisis is, in part, the inevitable result of a rapidly growing population, limited rainfall and finite water resources. But experts and ordinary Yemenis agree that policy blunders have accelerated the crisis and made it harder to fix.
Despite the severe shortages of drinking water, at least 85 percent of Yemen's available water goes to agriculture, where huge amounts are wasted. For centuries, Yemeni farmers captured rainwater for their crops. But in the 1970s, well-intentioned international groups such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund showed up with a raft of incentives to get farmers to drill wells and use underground aquifers instead.
Anwer Sahooly is a water expert with the German Development Corp., a major player in Yemen's water reform efforts. He says more than 1 million acres of farmland that used to be rain-fed are now irrigated with underground water, using inefficient methods that lose vast amounts of water to evaporation and leakage.
Despite a new law outlawing most private wells, the drilling goes on. The sound of water pumps can be heard on farm plots all around the capital. The most popular crop of all is khat, a plant that produces a mildly narcotic leaf that Yemenis love to chew. Small farmer Abdullah al-Jidri, sporting a softball-sized wad of khat leaves in his left cheek, says many farmers would be happy to grow fruits, vegetables and grains, but they can't live without the cash brought in by khat. "With food crops, we have to wait for a year or longer to get a harvest, and if there's a problem, you won't get a crop. But with khat, you just put some water on it and you have leaves in a month's time that you can sell immediately. It's a cash crop," he says.
Some long-term reforms are under way, notably the decentralization of water management to the local level. Officials are also replacing open-channel water lines and flood irrigation methods with more efficient pipes and drip hoses.
#2
Many years ago, in grammar school, I was told that sheep destroy a land, they bite the plants so short that they die, and drought is a direct result of sheep grazing.
Cause and effect needs to be taught those herdsmen, Goats do NOT kill the plants and are easier on the land. Raise goats, Not sheep, and no drought/desert results.
I was taught the Sahara Desert was once a grassy plain, before nomads raised sheep and killed it.
PS sheep's teeth wear away rapidly because they grind up a lot of dirt when they graze, there are therefore NO old sheep, they either starve(No teeth) Or die from gum abscesses.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/08/2010 15:12 Comments ||
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#3
I was taught the Sahara Desert was once a grassy plain
The weather was quite different back then. Can't blame it all on the damn sheepherders. Lush Sahara link
#4
We could once again make the Sahara lush and solve the claimed rising sea level problem by building a canal to flood the Qatar depression (about the size of France and perhaps a 1/4 of the Sahara desert), which is up to 200 meters below sea level.
Israel and Jordan have already agree to do this with the Dead Sea. So there are no real technical issues.
The fact this isn't under consideration is because a solution to rising sea levels would quash most of the GW hysteria.
#7
In the mid 90s I chatted with a senior Turkish official who commented mildly that Turkey would dominate the middle east when they were ready to, because they could control the flow of water in major rivers on which other countries are dependent.
Of course, they didn't take into account the ability of JDAMs to dismantle concrete dams. But the point about the value of water there was well taken.
Russian scientists are reporting to Prime Minister Putin today that the high-energy beam fired into the upper heavens from the United States High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) radar facility in Ramfjordmoen, Norway this past month has resulted in a "catastrophic puncturing" of our Plants thermosphere thus allowing into the troposphere an "unimpeded thermal inversion" of the exosphere, which is the outermost layer of Earths atmosphere. Whoa, dude, pass me some of whatever you're smokin! So that's why winter has been so severe, it's our secret experiments to reverse global warming! And it works! It WORKS! Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!!!
To the Wests firing of this 'quantum high-energy beam we had previously reported on in our December 10, 2009 report titled "Attack On Gods 'Heaven Lights Up Norwegian Sky". That was the one that turned out to be an abortive Russian missile launch...
To how catastrophic for our Planet this massive thermal inversion has been Anthony Nunan, an assistant general manager for risk management at Mitsubishi Corporation in Tokyo, is reporting today that the entire Northern Hemisphere is in winter chaos, with the greatest danger from this unprecedented Global event being the destruction of billions of dollars worth of crops in a World already nearing the end of its ability to feed its self.
So powerful has this thermal inversion become that reports from the United States are stating that their critical crops of strawberries, oranges, and other fruits and vegetables grown in their Southern States, are being destroyed by record cold temperatures. The US is further reporting record amounts of snowfall in what they are now warning may be their worst winter in 25 years.
Reports from the United Kingdom today are, likewise, showing a Nation in chaos as brutal cold temperatures continue to batter the British people suffering under the worst snow blizzards to hit them in almost 50 years. So dire has it become in the UK that their National Grid yesterday issued only its second warning in its entire history stating that their Nations gas supply was running out due to this unprecedented event.
Not just to the UK, but also to the entire European Union has this thermal inversion been affecting as reports from that region show continued chaos is occurring due to plunging temperatures and snows. In the UK, also, reports are showing that the military has been called out to rescue over 1,000 stranded vehicles.
Though the Motherland, and its people, are some of the best equipped in the World to handle such severe winter conditions, the Russian island of Sakhalin was inundated this past week by a rare Snow Cyclone setting off no less than avalanches.
But to the worst affected region of the Northern Hemisphere no one has been hit harder than China, where in what is being described as a "soul-destroying snowstorm" this Asian Nation has been plunged into such havoc the entire country has been brought to a standstill. China further reports that the massive snowstorms hitting them are their worst in 60 years and necessitating their military forces to save over 1,400 people trapped when their train became covered in snow. So overwhelmed by this unprecedented event has China become that they have ordered all of their citizens to help with snow removal too.
South Korea has not been spared either as reports from that Nation are reporting their worst snow storms in their modern history of recording these events.
Reports from Japan are also reporting record snowfall in their Northern Regions, where according to one unnamed Kushiro resident, "Snow falls hard here in Kushiro, but this is the most I have ever seen. The snows piling up and were running out of places to dump it."
Canada, another Nation used to extreme winter events, reports that the storm that had hit their maritime provinces this past week was so powerful buildings were knocked off of their foundations in what one resident, Tom Jardine, described as being "worse than a hurricane".
To the long-term consequences of this thermal inversion caused by the West, these reports further warn that by the puncturing of our atmosphere by the HHARP radars our Planet has, also, been "needlessly exposed" to the growing threat posed to us by the giant mysterious object currently approaching us (named by NASA as G1.9) which we had previously reported on in our January 3rd report titled "Russia Prepares For Asteroid Strike As New Comet Nears Sun", and which has been blamed for the rapid shifting of our Earths North Pole that was first documented in 2005. I'm not sure, but I think this was written by Joe M's russian brother
But to the most critical aspect of these events it surely lies with the Western Worlds continued arrogance in regards to experimenting on both our Planets natural species and human beings, and though who may think that they are 'gods, are continuing to give evidence that they are acting more like devils. Damn that Time Cube Guy! This is all His Fault!
Head of Venezuela's top legal body has lashed out at President Barack Obama for his undelivered vows of change in US policy.
The Venezuelan National Assembly President, Cilia Flores, strongly criticized Obama for failing to overrule former President George W. Bush's doctrines of war, adding that Obama's administration is "worse" than his predecessor's.
She slammed the US for following in Bush's 'footsteps' in "installing" military bases in South America under the pretext of combating organized crime, a reference to the recent stationing of US troops in seven Colombian military camps.
"When we thought there couldn't be anything worse than Bush," Flores noted, along came Obama "masked" as the "hero of the film" who emerged as "more of the same," the Latin American Herald Tribune quoted her as saying on Wednesday.
Obama had repeatedly spoken of major changes in US foreign diplomacy, but his failure to bring about the overhaul in America's international relations policy has drawn fire from critics worldwide.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez once referred to the improbability of significant change in Washington's policy and implied that the "young black" man, meaning Obama, would be taken over by "Washington Establishment."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/08/2010 00:00 ||
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Head of Venezuela's top legal body has lashed out at President Barack Obama for his undelivered vows of change in US policy.
Which was and will continue to be gross indifference, till you do something stupid like invade neighboring sovereign territory directly or by proxy. Till then you can economically choke on your parasitic socialism.
SYDNEY -- Defiant anti-whaling activists on Friday vowed to fight on after their high-tech superboat sank in Antarctic seas following a collision with a Japanese ship.
That's one ...
Peter Hammarstedt, first officer of the Sea Shepherd group's "Bob Barker" ship, said the celebrated "Ady Gil" was abandoned in the Southern Ocean after a tow line snapped. "At this point unfortunately the Ady Gil is on the bottom of the Southern Ocean," he told AFP.
Where, while it will not form the vasis of a new coral reef, it will provide shelter for a large variety of fish, so some good has come of it. Not to mention the fun future underwater archeologists will have trying to figure out how it came to be there.
"It leaves us with no other option but to re-take up the pursuit of the whaling fleet," Hammarstedt said. "We have no intention of backing down. We will never surrender."
Who is asking them to surrender? We just want them to act completely unlike spoilt teenagers.
Same thing.
The futuristic trimaran, which held the round-the-world record, had several metres (yards) of its front end sheared off in the collision with a Japanese security vessel on Wednesday. Footage of the incident showed the "Shonan Maru 2" ploughing across the New Zealand-registered Ady Gil's bow and firing water cannon while its crew dived for safety.
Hammarstedt said the powerboat, bankrolled by Hollywood businessman Ady Gil, was being towed to an Antarctic port when the line broke overnight.
"Last time we saw the Ady Gil, the entire engine room was fully submerged in water as well as the fuel tanks," he said. "It was going down pretty quickly. Captain Pete Bethune estimated two to three hours before being fully submerged. At that point we decided to take up the hunt for the whaling fleet again."
New Zealand and Australian authorities are investigating the incident, while Japan lodged a strong protest with the Wellington government. Both the whalers and the protesters blame each other for the crash.
After abandoning the trimaran, the "Bob Barker", financed by a former US talk show host, resumed its pursuit of the Japanese fleet along with the "Steve Irwin", another ship operated by the Sea Shepherd conservation group.
Sea Shepherd claims to have saved hundreds of whales by chasing the Japanese fleet over a six-year campaign backed by Hollywood A-listers including Sean Penn, Martin Sheen and Pierce Brosnan.
That's all I need to know to choose sides ...
The skirmishes have grown increasingly sophisticated with the activists deploying laser-like devices and stink bombs, and the Japanese fleet operating military-style acoustic weapons and water cannon.
Australia is also investigating claims that the whalers chartered flights to spy on the Sea Shepherd ships and harass them using the Shonan Maru 2 security vessel.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/08/2010 00:00 ||
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I think the Burkina Faso Coast Guard has higher seamanship standards than these guys.
#2
Whatever happened to, "The Captain goes down with his ship"?
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/08/2010 7:35 Comments ||
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#3
No insurance company in the world is stupid enough to pay off on this claim. And even if they were insured, that insurance company is going to have some pointed words to say to Lloyd's Registry.
#5
"Australia is also investigating claims that the whalers chartered flights to spy on the Sea Shepherd ships and harass them using the Shonan Maru 2 security vessel. "
WTF? It is Hollywood's criminal mercenaries who are breaking the law, not the Japanese whalers.
This is not for the whales, it is just another way the depraved gods of commercial pop-culture have of demonstrating that they have a different set of rules.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/08/2010 15:33 Comments ||
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An they're flying a false flag
The Norwegian flag flew from the Sea Shepherd ship, "Bob Barker" as the ship approached the Japanese whalers on Wednesday. Abuse of the flag is prohibited by law. PHOTO: REUTERS / The Institute of Cetacean Research
"Registrar of Ships as unjustified causes a Norwegian flag or other Norwegian nationality mark, or in Norwegian waters, leading some flag or nationality note that he is not entitled to be punished by fines or imprisonment for up to 1 year," said the Penal Code § 423
. - We have written a letter in which we make it very clear that we do not appreciate such a misuse of the Norwegian flag, "said Bjorn Svenungsen communications at the Foreign Ministry told Aftenposten.no.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/08/2010 16:02 Comments ||
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#12
. - We have written a letter in which we make it very clear that we do not appreciate such a misuse of the Norwegian flag, "said Bjorn Svenungsen communications at the Foreign Ministry told Aftenposten.no.
Jeeze Louise, what happened to the Viking spirit? Talk about neutering.....
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/08/2010 17:12 Comments ||
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#13
Under the sea
Under the sea
Darling it's better
Crashing the whaler
Take it from me
On the surface they whale all day
Out of work we have time to play
While we devotin'
Full time protestin'
Under the sea
Nonfarm payroll employment edged down (-85,000) in December, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 10.0 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment fell in construction, manufacturing, and wholesale trade, while temporary help services and health care added jobs.
Household Survey Data
In December, both the number of unemployed persons, at 15.3 million, and the unemployment rate, at 10.0 percent, were unchanged. At the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons was 7.7 million, and the unemployment rate was 5.0 percent.
The U-6 indicator rose to 17.3% (unemployed + discourages + partime wanting full time work) from 17.2%. Not everything was bad however. The November data were adjusted up by 15000 jobs, the number of workers with temporary jobs increased again, the hourly wage rate increased, the average hours/week stayed the same and productivity increased but these stats are too 'deep in the weeds' for the Obama Administration to spin very far.
Thank you for the helpful perspective, lord garth.
Posted by: lord garth ||
01/08/2010 11:33 ||
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"unexpectedly"... they don't have f*cking clue. Now they're talking about creating more jobs with tax money (see the definition of insanity)
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/08/2010 18:20 Comments ||
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Creating Jobs with taxpayers money just transfers jobs out of the wealth creating sector and just destroys jobs over the medium and longer term.
President Obama last year praised the Mayo Clinic as a "classic example" of how a health-care provider can offer "better outcomes" at lower cost. Then what should Americans think about the famous Minnesota medical center's decision to take fewer Medicare patients?
Specifically, Mayo said last week it will no longer accept Medicare patients at one of its primary care clinics in Arizona. Mayo said the decision is part of a two-year pilot program to determine if it should also drop Medicare patients at other facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota, which serve more than 500,000 seniors.
Mayo says it lost $840 million last year treating Medicare patients, the result of the program's low reimbursement rates. Its hospital and four clinics in Arizona--including the Glendale facility--lost $120 million. Providers like Mayo swallow some of these Medicare losses, while also shifting the cost by charging more to private patients and insurers.
Of course, only governments can lose that much money and pretend they don't have to change. "Mayo Clinic loses a substantial amount of money every year due to the reimbursement schedule under Medicare," the institution said. "Decades of underfunding and paying for volume rather than value in Medicare have led us to this decision."
Mayo is probably a leading indicator of where other hospitals and doctors are headed. Physicians on average earn 20% to 30% less from Medicare than they do from private patients, and many are dropping out of the program. While about 92% of family physicians participate in Medicare, only about 73% of those are now accepting new patients. In some specialties--neurology, oncology, gynecology--in places like Manhattan and Washington, patients can struggle to find any doctor who'll accept Medicare.
The $500 billion in Medicare cuts planned as part of ObamaCare won't help this trend. The hospital industry agreed earlier this year to chip in $100 billion over the next decade in lower annual payment increases for Medicare. The chief Medicare actuary estimates that up to 20% of hospitals could become unprofitable as a result of the scheme.
The irony is that the Obama Administration has repeatedly praised Mayo as an example of the efficiency and lower cost that will spread everywhere if ObamaCare passes. And it's true that Mayo is a sterling example of the kind of health reform that many economists--notably White House budget chief Peter Orszag--extol.
Mayo's doctors are salaried and work in teams, which have become known more broadly as accountable care organizations, or ACOs. Mayo would prefer to receive a bundled payment for an episode of illness, rather than the Medicare practice of reimbursing for individual procedures. As it is now under Medicare, Mayo's less-is-more model means it can't make up its true costs on volume.
We have our differences with this ACO model. It essentially converts health-care providers into the equivalent of managed care in the 1990s. While HMOs did lead to less health spending for a time, patients and doctors rebelled. Congress threatened to intervene with a "patients bill of rights" until insurers backed off. The promoters of ACOs are saying that managed care will work better this time because the providers will be reducing costs at the behest of government, instead of insurance companies.
That may work for Mayo, which has spent decades building an institutional culture by trial and error. But it takes a special kind of hubris to believe that government can replicate such a culture nationwide. The ACO model still hides the cost of care from individuals, who thus have no incentive to reduce their utilization. Mayo also serves a more affluent population than most hospitals, which may make cost-saving easier.
The double irony is that earlier this year Mayo itself came out against the House health bill as offering too little cost-saving reform. And, six months later, the truth is that neither bill in Congress includes the kind of cost-saving innovations that would lead to more Mayos. Instead, the highly touted insurance "exchanges" will essentially import Medicare's rules. Mr. Orszag and the Obama whiz kids have settled for "pilot programs" and cost-saving quarter measures because Congress doesn't want to give up political control over government health payments.
In other words, the real Mayo story is that sclerotic Medicare is preventing more Mayos, and ObamaCare is paving the way for all of health care to operate like Medicare.
#1
Physicians on average earn 20% to 30% less from Medicare than they do from private patients, and many are dropping out of the program.
I really wonder about the accuracy of this statement. A family member recently passed away after an extended bout with a serious illness and the resultant Medicare reimbursement info that I've seen indicates that *many* of the services provided were reimbursed at rates closer to 20-50% rather than the 70-80% indicated in this article. Some, radiology in particular, resulted in reimbursements closer to 10% of the billed rate (e.g., numerous x-rays billed at $500 each resulted in reimbursements of just over $55).
#2
Of course the only answer to this is to make all the doctors, nurses, et. al. public employees who work for the gov't. determined wage.
I've heard this proposed by leftist idiots of my acquintenance. When I point out that the doctors might then decide to be lawyers or carpenters instead the LI either gets angry and storms off or says the equivalent of "So what, there are too many anyway."
#4
Collective farmers in the former Soviet Union did much the same. Thier private plots were generally much, much more productive. I wonder if there is a message there Gorb?
Pakistan's parliament has fined members of it national hockey team rupees 200,000 ($2,350) after photos surfaced of them hugging a female liaison officer at the Champions Challenge tournament in Argentina last month.
Player Rehan Butt was fined rupees 100,000 ($1,175) while coach Shahid Ali Khan and manager Asif Bajwa have to pay rupees 50,000 ($588) each.
Pakistan team members took pictures with the liaison officer during the official players' night at the end of the tournament. The dinner was also attended by other participating teams and their officials. Pakistan lost the final to New Zealand, costing them a place in the Champions Trophy.
"It is not our culture to hug a lady," said Jamshed Dasti, chairman of Pakistan's lower house standing committee on sports. "The players are ambassadors of their country and they should remember this well."
Coach Khan said that the Pakistan Hockey Federation had already taken a serious note of the pictures which were even uploaded on the popular website www.youtube.com.
"The PHF has warned all the team players and officials to be careful in future," Khan said. "It was an official players' dinner and the lady requested us to have photos with her.
"But I agree with the committee members that some pictures were objectionable and it should have been avoided."
Butt, who is due to compete in the World Cup in India next month, escaped a heavier punishment, as Dasti proposed to ban the forward from the national team.
"He is our key player for the World Cup and it would deal us a severe blow if you ban him," pleaded Irfan Khokhar, chief coordinator of the PHF.
One of the female members of the committee Nasim Akhtar Chaudhry was furious after seeing the pictures.
"We live in an Islamic country," she said. "We have our own traditions, our own culture which should be portrayed abroad.
"We didn't shake hands with males when our women parliamentary delegation visited the US last year and here they are giving a hug to a lady," she said.
Dasti warned Khan not to get involved in such activities in future.
"If I would have to take the decision you all could have ended up in a lock up after the team returned home," he said. "Don't get yourselves involved in such parties in future tournaments abroad." Dasti instructed director general of the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) Amir Hamza Gilani to ensure the fine is paid, with receipts provided to the committee.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/08/2010 15:41 ||
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#1
now had it been a comely goat?
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/08/2010 18:21 Comments ||
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#1
could indeed be a bug. Typing "Koran is" gives the same range of responses as the suggestions for "Bible is" and "Torah is". if not a bug, I'd expect the "koran is" suggestions to be void as well.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Is the Loch Ness Monster dead?
