Below is a list of felony cases that were filed by the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday, October 17, 2013.
Joseph Floyd                    Domestic Battery-Class A Misdemeanor
(Enhanced to D Felony Due to Prior Convictions)
Tammy Loy                        Possession of Methamphetamine-Class D Felony
Disorderly Conduct-Class B Misdemeanor
Amid all the tussling over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling, a couple of bombshells went off in the blogosphere that may prove of more enduring importance.
They suggest that there is a nontrivial possibility that Obamacare may implode.
The first bombshell went off on Tuesday, from Ezra Klein of the Washington Post’s Wonkblog.
Klein was one of those young writers who formed JournoList a few years ago so that like-minded Obama fans could coordinate their lines of argument. It was like one of those college sophomore clubs, not really necessary in an age of ready contact through email, but it shows him as a guy inclined to play team ball.
So it’s noteworthy when he writes, “So far, the Affordable Care Act’s launch has been a failure. Not ‘troubled.’
Not ‘glitchy.’ A failure.”
Klein notes that the rollout of the Medicare prescription drug program was also rocky two weeks into the process. But later it got smoothed out.
Klein fears Obamacare won’t. It’s not just a problem of overloaded servers. Everyone knew there would be lots of traffic in a nation of 312,000,000 people. Information technology folks say it’s easy to add servers.
It’s harder to get software systems to communicate. And as Klein quotes insurance consultant Robert Laszewski, “the backroom connection between the insurance companies and the federal government is a disaster.”
The reconciliation system isn’t working and hasn’t even been tested, Klein reports. Insurers are getting virtually no usable data from the exchanges.
Bloomberg.com columnist Megan McArdle, who unlike most Obamacare architects actually worked at an IT firm for a couple of years, sees the possibility of even more trouble ahead.
She points out that the administration delayed writing major rules during the 2012 campaign to avoid giving Republicans campaign fodder.
The biggest contractor did not start writing software code until spring 2013. They were still fiddling with the healthcare.gov website in September.
Instead of subcontracting the responsibility for integrating the software of the multiple contractors, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services decided to do it in-house — “a decision,” she writes, “equivalent to someone who has never even hung a picture deciding they should become their own general contractor and build a house.”
“If the exchanges don’t get fixed soon,” she writes, “they could destroy Obamacare.” You need the exchanges to enroll enough young healthy people to subsidize those who are sick and old, which is one of the central features of Obamacare.
Otherwise, premiums shoot up and up, pushing others out of the system — a death spiral that can continue year after year.
“At what point,” she asks, “do we admit that the system just isn’t working well enough, roll it back and delay the whole thing for a year?” She suggests that if the system can’t enroll 50 percent of its users by November 1, such a hugely drastic step would be in order.
That sounds like a nightmare of the first order — for individuals, for insurers, for employers and for the Obama administration. A far worse nightmare than when Congress in 1989 repealed the Medicare prescription drug plan it passed the year before because of widespread dissatisfaction.
By: Michael Baron
Of course it’s possible this nightmare will not happen. Things will get ironed out somehow.
But if they don’t, who’s responsible? First, a president who is not much interested in how government works on the ground. As a community organizer he never did get all the asbestos removed from the Altgeld housing project.
Politico reports that his “universal heath care” promise was first made when his press secretary and speechwriter needed a rousing ending to a 2007 campaign speech to a liberal group.
Second, lawmakers and administrators who assume that, in an Information Age, all you have to do is to assign a task to an IT team and they will perform it. Cross your fingers, and it gets done.
Third, government IT procurement rules are kludgy. Apple didn’t bid on this. The IT work went to insider firms that specialize in jumping through the hoops and ladders of government procurement rules.
Unfortunately, the consequences of a meltdown are enormous when a system is supposed to be used by everybody. If a private firm’s software fails, it can go bankrupt. No one else much cares.
But if Obamacare’s software crashes, the consequences will be catastrophic — for the nation and for the Democratic Party.
Source: RCP
Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art)
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On Saturday October 19th, Evansville Police Department Records Clerk Kathy Grossman will be on top of the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia. A few seconds later, Kathy will be at the bottom of the New River Gorge Bridge.
Kathy will be doing the 876 foot tandem base jump during the annual Bridge Day event. Kathy won the chance to jump during a recent online contest. As the contest winner, she also will be presented with a $1,000 check that will go to “It Takes a Village Canine Rescue” here in Evansville.
We wish Kathy the best of luck and we can’t wait to see the video of her adventure.
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On Saturday, October 19th, Evansville Lodge #73 of the Fraternal Order of Police will be hosting a hayride and dance for hundreds of area residents with special needs.
The festivities will begin at 7:00pm at the FOP camp on Happe Rd. Each year, the FOP coordinates this event with ARC and would not be possible without the many volunteers who ensure the party goers have a great time.
The media is invited to attend.
INDIANAPOLIS – State Rep. Gail Riecken (D-Evansville) said a town hall she has scheduled for Evansville this Saturday (October 19) will focus in part on gaining public input on ways to improve the lives of children across Indiana.
The town hall will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday at the First Presbyterian Church, located at 609 E. Second Street.
Riecken’s plans to gain information come as part of her service on the state Commission on Improving the Status of Children, a group that grew out of efforts the lawmaker helped lead to reform the delivery of services to neglected and abused children across Indiana.
“In our meetings so far this year, we have focused upon specific areas of service,†Riecken said. “Two of those areas are Infant Mortality and Child Health and Data Sharing and Mapping.
“I believe the success of our commission will depend greatly on the input we receive from individuals and groups of our area who can bring a local perspective to identifying problems and finding solutions,†she continued. “I intend to give those individuals a chance at Saturday’s town hall to discuss what can be done to help.â€
Here are the issues of concern within the two areas identified by The Commission:
INFANT MORTALITY AND CHILD HEALTH
– Improving Medicaid access and coordination for children and youth   released from detention.
– Addressing Medicaid barriers for youth released from detention.
– Increase well-child visits for preventive care/monitoring child development.
– Create policies to improve child health indicators such as infant mortality, obesity, underage smoking/drinking.
– Enforce lead-based paint prevention standards.
– Address Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS).
– Increase public education on child health policy, especially Medicaid issues.
– Improve public education around Internet safety for children.
– Develop a plan to decrease high incidence of child fatalities.
– Improve public education/awareness of NAS.
DATA SHARING AND MAPPING
– Identify gaps in the array of mental health services, especially in rural areas.
– Identify gaps in the array of substance abuse services, especially in rural areas.
– Implement technology initiatives to improve data collection and create capacity for sharing data for all systems serving children.
– Develop a repository linking all relevant data relating to children in multiple systems-for transparency and accountability.
– Identify barriers associated with confidentiality requirements.
They may have lower levels of protective antibodies to the virus than in years past(HealthDay News) — Today’s teens may be at higher risk than ever of contracting genital herpes because they don’t have enough immune system antibodies to shield them against the sexually transmitted virus, a new study suggests.
This increase in risk may be the result of fewer teens being exposed in childhood to the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), a common cause of cold sores, researchers reported Oct. 17 in the online edition of the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
“HSV-1 now is the predominant herpes strain causing genital infection,” explained Dr. David Kimberlin, chair of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, and the author of a journal editorial.
According to Kimberlin, the new findings suggest that almost one in 10 adolescents who a decade ago would have already acquired HSV-1 and built up some immunity may now encounter HSV-1 when they first become sexually active. That could leave them more susceptible to genital herpes than young people were in the past.
“This [also] has potentially significant consequences on neonatal herpes transmission,” which occurs when a baby contracts the herpes virus from a genitally infected mother, Kimberlin said. “We must continue to monitor these changes and watch for shifts in neonatal herpes infection that possibly could result.”
Of the eight types of herpes, the two that are most important in terms of disease transmission are HSV-1 and herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), both of which cause lifelong infections with no known cure. These viruses can have dormant periods after an initial outbreak. HSV-1 is usually contracted in childhood, by skin-to-skin contact with an infected adult, whereas HSV-2 is most often sexually transmitted.
However, recent research indicates that HSV-1 is becoming a major cause of genital herpes in industrialized countries. One study found nearly 60 percent of genital herpes infections were caused by HSV-1, the researchers noted.
A shift by young people toward participation in oral sex might help explain the trend, experts said, since the herpes virus can easily be transmitted in this way from the mouth to the genitals.
“I tell patients herpes is like your credit history — whatever you did you can never get rid of,” said one expert not connected to the study, Dr. Marcelo Laufer, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Miami Children’s Hospital.
“Every year the proportion of patients who get infected with HSV-1 through oral sex is increasing,” he said. “Adolescents who reach that age without being exposed to HSV-1 might, through oral sex, be more susceptible to the infection.”
The virus is usually passed through saliva, but in more recent years better hygiene may have kept the virus from spreading to young children, Laufer theorized. That means that fewer children are now exposed and are producing antibodies against HSV.
HSV-1 and HSV-2 can also cause significant problems for newborn infants, who don’t yet have mature immune systems capable of fighting the viruses. As many as 30 percent of infected babies die from this infection if they have the most severe form of the disease, Kimberlin noted.
In the new study, a team of researchers led by Heather Bradley of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used data from federal government surveys to track the prevalence of herpes among 14- to 49-year-olds in the United States.
Overall, they found that 54 percent of Americans in this age range were infected with HSV-1.
Among 14- to 19-year-olds, however, the prevalence of protective HSV-1 antibodies fell by nearly 23 percent from 1999 to 2010, the research team found.
Among those aged 20 to 29, HSV-1 prevalence dropped more than 9 percent. HSV-1 prevalence remained stable among those in their 30s and 40s.
These data suggest that more teens lack HSV-1 antibodies at their first sexual encounter now than in decades past, and so are more susceptible to genital herpes.
“In combination with increased oral sex behaviors among young people, this means that adolescents may be more likely than those in previous time periods to genitally acquire HSV-1,” the researchers concluded.
More information
There’s more on genital herpes at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A team of USI students representing USI’s radiologic and imaging sciences took first place in the Quiz Bowl hosted by the Indiana Society of Radiologic Technologists (ISRT) at their annual conference this month at the Holiday Inn Airport, Evansville. The students competed against 16 teams from across the state. Team members included: Alyssa Schutte, Janessa Sproles, and Claire Tuggle. They were coached by Jarrod Brown, clinical instructor for Deaconess Gateway Hospital. The Quiz Bowl consisted of 30 certification exam-type questions in two timed rounds for a total of 60 questions.
Joy Cook and Heather Schmuck, both clinical assistant professors of radiologic and imaging sciences, chaired the conference. Both were installed as new ISRT officers for the 2013-14 term—Cook as president and Schmuck as secretary.
The ISRT, an affiliate of the American Society of Radiologic Technologists, has 1,000 members, representing medical professionals and students who work in radiography, radiation therapy, nuclear medicine, sonography, magnetic resonance imaging, computerized tomography, and all other imaging modalities.
Additional IMPACT Visit Days:
Registration for these events occurs closer to the event date
Registration begins at 8:00 a.m. (CT). By visiting campus during an IMPACT Visit Day, you will have the opportunity to:
If you are interested in attending an IMPACT Visit Day, please use the following online registration form. A confirmation packet will be sent with directions to campus and parking information. All information must be completed to schedule your attendance. If you have questions about the event, please e-mail e-mailadmission@evansville.edu.
