ARTHUR   ARTHUR:
It’s true! It’s true! The IETF RFC 1855 has made it clear.
The Online Chat Protocols must be perfect all the year.
A law was made a Flash moon ago here:
July and August cannot be too Encrypted
And there’s a legal limit to the Spam here
In Netiquette In Netiquette

The  Off-topic Posting is forbidden till December
And exits March the second on the dot.com
By order, MouseTrapping lingers not through September
In Netiquette! In Netiquette!
I know it sounds a bit bizarre,

But in Netiquette Netiquette
That’s how conditions are.

The Browsers may never fail till after sundown.
By eight, the morning Web Server Errors must disappear.
In short, there’s simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Netiquette.
Netiquette Netiquette
I know it gives a person pause,

But in Netiquette Netiquette
Those are the legal laws.
The Hijacked Discussion Thread may never happen here.

By nine p.m. your Bloggies must appear.
In short, there’s simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Netiquette  In Netiquette!

In Netiquette! In Netiquette! is a post from: OldSchoolBill

As a new blogger I am always on the lookout for new ways to increase traffic; here is something I ran across on my quest to be the next great…….. http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/97-ways-to-build-traffic/I have completed the 1^st of 97 steps which leaves 96 which reminded me of the cover below.   Now all I have to do is get my new best friend for life let me write a Guest post.   Please check back to see how I’m doing.

http://www.96tears.net/

OldSchoolBill says:

Dec 27, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Your are a superb blogger, excellent human being, terrific person, marvelous dancer, extraordinary talented writer, amazing teller of tales, brilliant yet humble person, incredible artist, mind-boggling rock & roll singer, well that takes care of #1.

Only 96 to GO is a post from: OldSchoolBill

12-26-09
Coach Meyer resigned Saturday as Florida’s football coach after five seasons and two national titles because of health concerns that came to light when he suffered chest pains following the SEC championship game earlier this month.

UPDATE 5:25 p.m. ET: 12-27-09
Urban Meyer confirmed that he will be taking an indefinite leave of absence.

“I was offered and encouraged to take a leave of absence,” Meyer said in Sunday’s press conference.

He explained that he accepted the offer to improve his health and when asked if he believed he would be coaching again, Meyer replied, “I do in my gut believe that will happen.”

“I want to make sure I do right by my family,” Meyer said. “My second family is my players and my staff.”

12-28-09
“In a rather incredible news conference to explain his decision not to step down as Florida’s football coach but rather take a ‘leave of absence,’ he used terms such as ‘full speed ahead,’ said he expected to coach the 2010 opener and discussed the need to ‘keep this thing rolling,’ ” Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel writes. “Then he’d say something such as, ‘You put business before God and family, you’ve got a problem.’ He’s right about that, you just hope he figures out how. The way he tried to explain himself Sunday revealed a man trying to head in two directions, argue two things, live two lives at once. He sounded like a guy who was still putting business before God and family.”

12-28-09 5:46 p.m. ET

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — As Steve Addazio listened to Florida coach Urban Meyer talk about his health and his future, it never crossed his mind what kind of reaction players would have when he was picked to be the Gators’ interim coach.

Addazio was unprepared for their response.

They gave the longtime assistant an overwhelming reception, an ovation so long and loud that it even caught superstar quarterback Tim Tebow off guard.

1-02-2010
NEW ORLEANS — Tim Tebow had promised to find a way to help Urban Meyer find ways to relax more amid concerns for his coach’s health.

For a night, Tebow and the fifth-ranked Gators figured out just how to make things a little less stressful for the Florida head coach — with a 51-24 Sugar Bowl blowout Friday night of No. 4 Cincinnati before 65,207 at the Louisiana Superdome.

It was one point shy of the bowl record of 52 points, also scored by the Gators in winning the 1996 national title by beating Florida State in the Sugar Bowl.

As Florida Head Coach Urban Meyer Turns is a post from: OldSchoolBill

With Democrats having worked feverishly to pass sweeping Senate and House health care bills before year’s end, it is worth remembering that legislative success can be short-lived.

Few people outside health policy circles may recall it, but two decades ago, after Congress congratulated itself on the passage of another health care bill, a public uproar forced its repeal a mere 16 months later.

That legislation was the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act, which President Ronald Reagan signed into law in July 1988. The law’s intent was to give better financial protection to people enrolled in Medicare by limiting their out-of-pocket payments for things like hospital stays and doctors’ fees if they became very sick.

But this was not a free new entitlement, as Medicare beneficiaries were quick to realize. The new benefits would be financed by higher monthly premiums for Medicare enrollees and by a surtax paid by the more affluent enrollees.

What is more, many of the people being asked to pay more did not need the expanded coverage because they already had it through supplemental policies from their former employers. (That was back when companies tended to be more generous with health benefits for retirees.)

“It was a revolt of middle-class old people,” said Elaine Kamarck, a former adviser to Vice President Al Gore who is now a policy expert at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. If you were well enough off, she said, “you were getting a benefit you already had and suddenly your premiums were going up.”

The response was swift and ugly. And for a politician, it was a stark lesson in the perils of misreading your constituents. Dan Rostenkowski, a former Democratic congressman from Illinois who was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee at the time, went home to Chicago — only to find himself surrounded by angry elderly voters protesting the new law. Mr. Rostenkowski, as documented by CBS News, was forced to beat a hasty retreat during one run-in.

Ms. Kamarck considers the entire episode a warning that any sweeping legislation affecting an area as critical as health care can have significant unintended consequences. In the case of the 1988 bill, Congress “didn’t get the consequences right,” she said, despite the legendary prowess of Mr. Rostenkowski. “You had a very skilled politician,” she said, “and it blew up in his face.”

The intensity of the response over the higher premiums persuaded members of Congress to scrap the legislation when they could find no other way to pay for the expanded coverage.

Historical Parallels

Some health policy experts see parallels to what is going on now in Washington. Because the current health care legislation is complex, with changes yet to come when the House and the Senate meld their bills, many members of the public may have a hard time seeing what is in it for them. But they may not have much trouble grasping the reality of higher insurancepremiums or scaled-back Medicare benefits, if those are in the cards.

“What is similar is a lack of understanding,” said Jon Gabel, a health researcher who helped write a post-mortem of the repealed bill for the journal Health Affairs in 1990.

Another similarity, Mr. Gabel said, is in the built-in delay between the legislation’s passage and its effective date. People were being asked to start paying the higher premiums and taxes before the benefits would be delivered, he said, just as many important aspects of the current legislation, like the creation of new insurance exchanges, would not begin until years after President Obama signed it.

Such delay is “a political risk,” agreed Timothy S. Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who has been closely following the proposals as they move through Congress. He said the legislation might not deliver soon enough to adequately discourage possible repeal, especially given the highly divisive debate around issues like a government-run insurance planand coverage for abortion.

But Mr. Gabel predicted that enough benefits from the legislation would kick in soon enough — like the ability of people in their 20s to stay on their parents’ policies and the creation of high-risk pools so more people can find insurance — that their popularity would encourage public support for the whole package.

Lessons Learned

Some veterans of the late 1980s experience say its lessons have been well learned by members of Congress and proponents of the legislation, including the need to educate the public about the benefits of the new law.

“I don’t think history will repeat itself,” said John Rother, executive vice president of policy and strategy for AARP, the influential lobbying group for older Americans, many of whom are enrolled in the Medicare program.

He said members of Congress voting for the legislation would be acutely aware of the need to sell it back home, if it is passed. Mr. Rother also pointed to several clear benefits for individuals currently enrolled in Medicare, like more generous prescription drug coverage through a provision that would close the so-called doughnut hole, a gap in Medicare drug coverage that can mean beneficiaries pay thousands of dollars for drugs each year.

The support of groups like AARP is also a critical difference, said Thomas Rice, a health policy expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is also one of the authors of the 1990 Health Affairs piece. What is more, Mr. Rice said it was extremely unlikely that Congress could come up with enough votes to override an almost-certain veto by Mr. Obama of any attempt to repeal the law.

Back in 1989, President George Bush allowed the repeal to go through, despite his support of the law when he was vice president. As long as there is a Democrat in the White House, Mr. Rice said, any law that passes is likely to stand.

But Mr. Rice, for one, did not discount the perseverance of the Republican opposition, which could turn all of the energy now being expended to block the passage of a health bill into efforts to overturn it if it passed.

“The specter of repeal is going to be around for a while,” he said

Health Care???? is a post from: OldSchoolBill

Terms you must really know to understand what is going on.

Benefit package – The list of services and products that a health plan covers. Typically, the more expansive the benefit package is, the more expensive the health insurance coverage is.

Capitation – A system of paying doctors and health providers a set amount per patient per year regardless of how much health care that person uses. In theory, this creates incentives to keep people healthy and avoid using expensive services.

Cherry-picking – A process where an insurer tries to cover only the healthiest people with the lowest risk of using health services.

Community rating – This rule would require insurance companies to set premium rates based only on geography and not health status. Sometimes gender and age also are considered in rate setting.

Guaranteed issue – This rule would require insurance companies to offer health coverage to any one willing and able to pay regardless of health status or pre-existing conditions.

Comparative effectiveness research – Research that compares two or more drugs, treatments or medical interventions to see which is most effective for which type of patient. In theory, insurance providers, whether it is the government or a private company, would use this research to guide decisions on which medical treatments to cover.

Employer mandate – A requirement that businesses offer their employees health insurance. It may only pertain to businesses of a certain size. Massachusetts, for example, requires businesses with 10 or more employees to provide coverage or to pay a set amount on their behalf to purchase coverage.

Fee-for-service – The traditional and most widespread method of paying doctors and health care providers for each service provided.

Health insurance cooperative – A nonprofit health plan owned and operated by a collection of small businesses or individuals that group together to purchase health insurance so they have greater negotiating power.

Health insurance exchange – A marketplace where people can buy insurance. An exchange could be set up in many ways at the state, regional or national level. The government could regulate what plans are offered, how much insurers charge and set other rules insurers must follow. Sometimes called a “connector,” it often is compared to a menu of insurance options people can choose among similar to what is available to federal government employees. Its primary users likely would be small businesses and people buying individual insurance.

High-risk pool – Some states have insurance pools for people who insurance companies will not cover due to pre-existing conditions or poor health status.

Individual mandate – A requirement that all individuals purchase health insurance coverage. Proponents say an individual mandate is necessary to achieve universal coverage and to avoid a system where only the elderly and unhealthy purchase insurance. Opponents say it infringes on personal freedoms and is unenforceable.

Medicaid – The government health insurance program for the poor. The $333-billion program is paid for through a combination of federal and state funding, but administered by states. In 2007, about one in five people in the U.S. were enrolled in Medicaid.

Medicare – The government health insurance program for people who are 65 and older, blind or permanently disabled. In 2008, the $460-billion program provided health coverage to about 45 million people.

Medicare Advantage – This program allows Medicare beneficiaries to enroll in a private HMO or other health plan to receive their benefits.

Medical underwriting – An insurance process of evaluating an individual’s health status to decide if they should be offered insurance and how much they should pay in premiums. Underwriting is not used in the employer-sponsored insurance market only the individual market.

Pay for performance – A system that would pay doctors, hospitals and health care providers based on how well they take care of patients and not just on how much care they provide to patients.

Pre-existing condition – A prior health condition that may make people ineligible for health insurance coverage in the individual market.

Premium – The amount an insurance company charges to provide coverage. In 2008, the average annual premium for a family was $12,680 – more than twice the cost in 1999.

Public plan – The government could offer a public plan similar to Medicare as one of choice in the health insurance exchange to compete with private insurers. Republicans strongly oppose creating a public plan.

Purchasing pool – Health insurers lump the premiums people pay together to pay for health care services. In this pool, people who use few health services subsidize the costs of people who use many. This ability to “spread risk” gives large employers an advantage over small employers when buying health insurance.

SCHIP – The State Children’s Health Insurance Program was created in 1997 to provide health coverage to children not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. The program is funded by the federal and state governments, but each state operates its program differently. In 2008, the $10-billion program provided health coverage to about 4.5 million children.

Single-payer system – A health care system in which all the funding comes from one source, usually the government. Private insurance, however, can and does exist in countries with a single-payer system, such as Canada and the United Kingdom.

Socialized medicine – A health system in which the government provides the health insurance coverage, owns the hospitals, and employs the doctors. The Veterans’ Administration health system is an example of socialized health care.

Uncompensated care – Care that doctors and hospitals provide to patients for which they never receive payment.

Underinsured – A term describing people who have insurance but are still considered financially vulnerable to high health expenses because of the limitations or cost-sharing of their plans.

Health Care Glossary is a post from: OldSchoolBill