Staffing Firm Can't Pay Its Doctors

 Staffing firm NES Health told emergency physicians that it doesn't have enough money to pay them this month, sources told MedPage Today.

The company sent an email from CEO Jose Aguirre, MDopens in a new tab or window, to emergency physicians explaining that due to "necessary operational transitions," the company experienced a "temporary shortfall in monthly revenue."

It intended to bridge the shortfall with a loan, but that loan "did not come through in time for payroll."

Instead, NES Health said it would make weekly partial payroll payments "until regularly scheduled payrolls can resume," and it promised that "everyone will be paid and be made whole."

Emergency physicians interviewed by MedPage Today -- who asked to remain anonymous -- said they were concerned about the potential for deeper financial instability at the company.

"I'm worried that one day they will say, 'Sorry, it's over, best of luck,'" said one emergency physician, who noted that it seemed like the company may have been rejected from receiving the loan.

The doctor was also concerned that the company didn't specify how long it would take to pay the money owed.

"How much do I lose?" the physician asked, noting that should they walk away right now, they would be out only 2 months' salary. Doctors are paid at the end of the month for the previous month's work -- so the October pay date would compensate doctors for hours worked in September, the physician explained. "Next month I could be even further in the hole."

Robert McNamara, MD, chair of emergency medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia, said doctors are rightly concerned because it "seems like a replay of APP," or American Physician Partners, which filed for bankruptcy in 2023opens in a new tab or window -- not long after another physician staffing firm, Envision, had done the sameopens in a new tab or window.

The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) posted a statement to Instagramopens in a new tab or window noting that it is "aware of potential concerns regarding NES Health" and was "working to find out more details about how emergency physicians and their patients might be impacted."

An ACEP spokesperson did not return a request for further comment.

At least twoopens in a new tab or window Reddit threadsopens in a new tab or window discussed the inability of the company to pay its physicians.

NES Health staffs 35 emergency departments across the country, according to data from Ivy Cliniciansopens in a new tab or window. For comparison, the largest emergency medicine staffing companies, TeamHealth and U.S. Acute Care Solutions, staff 562 and 301 emergency departments in the nation, respectively.

While the exact ownership of NES Health is unclear, physicians have raised concerns about the impact of private equity firmsopens in a new tab or window becoming involved in ownership of physician staffing companies.

NES Health did not return a request for comment to MedPage Today as of press time.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/112710

Thousands of Britons 'permanently disabled' by AstraZeneca Covid jab could get payouts

 Covid vaccine compensation could be given to thousands left 'disabled' by the AstraZeneca jab, it has emerged.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting is understood to be considering plans to set up a programme for those suffering from life-changing conditions as a result of the Covid jab.

There are concerns that the existing government-funded Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) is struggling to cope with an overwhelming number of people claiming they are suffering side-effects from the injection.

Campaigners from the Vaccine Bereaved and Injured UK group argue the VDPS is no longer fit for purpose, and officials are thought to be looking at whether the scheme should be reformed or overhauled.

Some of the families represented by the group are involved in legal action against AstraZeneca, which admitted in court documents earlier this year that its Covid vaccine can 'in very rare cases' cause a side effect that leads to blood clots and a low platelet count.

The pharmaceutical company is being sued in a class action over claims that the jab, developed with Oxford University, caused death or serious injury in dozens of cases

Health Secretary Wes Streeting is understood to be considering plans to set up a programme for those suffering from life-changing conditions as a result of the Covid jab

The pharmaceutical company is being sued in a class action over claims that the jab, developed with Oxford University, caused death or serious injury in dozens of cases.

Read More

New Covid vaccine compensation scheme could be set up for people 'left disabled' after jabs 

Shadow attorney general Sir Jeremy Wright attended a meeting with Wes Streeting and Andrew Gwynne, a health minister, along with campaigners last month.

He has another follow-up meeting with the health secretary scheduled in the coming weeks.

'The two options are reforming the VDPS and also setting up a bespoke compensation scheme,' he told the Sunday Telegraph.

'But it is not an option for the government to put its head in the sand and do nothing.

'If you are in the very small minority of those injured [by the Covid vaccine], those people have a right to expect the state to look after them properly - they were only doing what the state asked them to do.'

More than 15,000 people have applied for compensation from the VDPS for alleged harm caused by Covid vaccines, but only 188 have been told they are entitled to payout.

More than 15,000 people have applied for compensation from the VDPS for alleged harm caused by Covid vaccines

Researchers believe the rare side effect occurs due to the modified cold virus lurking in the jab having an adverse effect on platelets in the blood, triggering clotting

Figures show the majority of successful claims relate to the AstraZeneca jab with fewer than five in connection to Pfizer and Moderna.

Those awarded so far include for conditions such as stroke, heart attack, dangerous blood clots, inflammation of the spinal cord, excessive swelling of the vaccinated limb and facial paralysis.

The VDPS awards a one-off £120,000 tax-free payment to people who have been severely injured, and to the families of those who have died, as a result of vaccination against certain diseases including Covid.

In order to qualify, individuals have to be deemed 60 per cent disabled.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14008715/Compensation-thousands-disabled-AstraZeneca-Covid-jab-health-wes-streeting.html

Joe Rogan Says He Gave Harris Campaign "Open Invitation", Offer Still Stands

 Podcaster Joe Rogan said in an Oct. 30 episode of his show that he gave Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign an “open invitation” to sit down for an interview at any time.

“I said anytime. I said if she’s done at 10, we’ll come back here at 10. I’ll do it at 9 in the morning, I’ll do it at 10 p.m. I’ll do it at midnight if she’s up, if she wants to, you know, drink a Red Bull,” he said, recalling what he told the campaign.

Rogan’s show features around 14 million subscribers on Spotify, making it the top show on the platform, but it also generates significant traffic and engagement on YouTube.

His interview with former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, released late last week, has garnered more than 41 million views on YouTube so far.

While speaking to comedians Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster during episode 2220 of The Joe Rogan Experience...

...Rogan said that Harris “actually reached out when she found out that [Trump] was coming on.”

“So their camp reached out to me,” he said.

“So I said, ‘Great, I would love to talk to her.’ But it was very difficult to tie it down. They wanted [me] to travel, and see, the thing is, if I go somewhere, then there’s going to be other people in the room. And they want to control a lot of things, I’m sure.”

As The Epoch Times' Jack Phillips reported, Harris was in Houston last week and held a rally there featuring an endorsement and speech from pop singer Beyoncé.

In a social media post earlier this week, Rogan said that the Harris campaign had conditions for the Democratic presidential nominee to do the interview.

The Epoch Times previously reached out to the campaign, which has not responded to Rogan’s remarks, for comment.

“For the record, the Harris campaign has not passed on doing the podcast,” Rogan wrote in a social media post on Tuesday.

“They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her, and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin. My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being. I really hope we can make it happen.”

During the episode with Kisin and Foster, Rogan also addressed speculation that he might be a covert Trump supporter.

“Just because of my appearance, there’s always been this assumption that I’m some right-wing MAGA guy,” he said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

“I’m a politically homeless person for sure. You know, I always considered myself a left-wing person. I never thought I would ever vote right-wing, but then the tides of culture shifted in a very bizarre way. And it just made me, over time, much more aware of what this stuff is really all about.”

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), will also air on Rogan’s show after being interviewed at Rogan’s Austin studio on Wednesday.

Both Trump and Harris have engaged in a flurry of campaigning as the race draws to a close. Both candidates have taken part in several podcasts ahead of the 2024 General Election as they attempt to reach new audiences.

More than 60 million people have cast early ballots so far ahead of the Nov. 5 contest, according to data released by the University of Florida’s Election Lab.

The Epoch Times contacted the Harris campaign for comment about Rogan’s claims but didn’t receive a reply by publication time.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/joe-rogan-says-he-gave-harris-campaign-open-invitation-offer-still-stands

'Close election that ended in a rout: Could 2024 be a replay of 1980?'

 Polls have consistently indicated that this year’s presidential race is exceedingly close.  

At the same time, there have been a few murmurs among analysts that the election endgame could repeat that of 1980, when pollsters erroneously projected a close race between President Jimmy Carter and California’s former Republican governor, Ronald Reagan. 

That election ended in a near-landslide for Reagan, who won the popular vote by nearly 10 percentage points. The outcome, said the New York Times, left Americans scratching their heads “over how Ronald Reagan won an overwhelming victory in what was supposed to be a close presidential election.” 

It was an outcome pollsters had not foreseen, and afterward, they quarreled openly about why their surveys had failed to provide an accurate sense of what the election would bring. “Pollsters spat over why they erred so badly,” read a post-election headline in the Los Angeles Times. 

Could this year’s race turn out similarly, in a decisive result unanticipated by the polls? Might the expected tight race morph into a clear popular vote victory, if not a landslide, for former President Trump or Vice President Harris?  

As Nate Cohn of the New York Times has pointed out, if polls are even modestly in error this cycle, the result could be “very different” from the tight race they now indicate. Either candidate, he wrote recently, “could win decisively.” 

That possibility is far from implausible, as the Reagan-Carter election suggests. Some — but not all — national pollsters concluded after the 1980 election that millions of voters had made up their minds to support Regan in the campaign’s closing days and hours, confounding expectations that polls had set.

Many pollsters ended their fieldwork before the closing weekend of the 1980 campaign — a cost-saving move that has contributed to predictive failure in more than a few elections. 

“I could kick myself,” Warren Mitofsky, polling director for CBS News, said afterward. “Clearly our mistake was not to have polled in the last two days” before the election. The final CBS-New York Times poll before the 1980 election estimated Reagan’s lead at 1 percentage point. The final Washington Post poll indicated Carter was ahead by 4 points. 

Of course, no two presidential elections are quite the same in their rhythms, personalities or issues. But at least a few leading issues this year — especially the economy and the Middle East — are prominent enough to invite comparisons to 1980, when Carter was seeking reelection.  

His term had been battered by high inflation and defined by turmoil in the Middle East — notably, the taking of U.S. diplomatic personnel as hostages in Iran in 1979. On election day 1980, Iran’s theocratic regime still held 52 Americans hostage. Tantalizing suggestions about their imminent release went unfulfilled. 

Carter and many Democrats depicted Reagan, a former actor and two-term California governor, as a divisive and reckless politician who as president would be too eager to send the Marines into global hotspots. Carter sought to frame the election starkly, as a choice between peace and war.

Among the commentators to have noted parallels in presidential politics of 1980 and 2024 is Dick Morris, who served as an aide to former President Clinton.

“If, in October of 1980, you had predicted that Ronald Reagan would defeat incumbent president Jimmy Carter in a landslide, you would have been met with the same derision I encounter in saying that Trump will decisively defeat Kamala Harris,” Morris wrote earlier in October.  

“Landslides take time to build and they are by no means evident weeks before an election,” he added. “And so it is with Trump v. Harris.” 

As in 1980, no poll is hinting at a blowout win for either Trump or Harris. And similarities between the campaigns of 1980 and 2024 are inevitably imprecise. Trump and Harris, for example, face no serious third-party opponent, as Reagan and Carter did in 1980 — independent former Rep. John Anderson (R-Ill.) won 6.6 percent of the popular vote.

Reagan and Carter met in one head-to-head debate, convened in Cleveland a week before the election. Such timing would be unthinkable today; after all, Trump and Harris convened their only face-to-face debate Sept. 10.

During the 1980 debate, Reagan came across as good-natured and cheery — hardly the extremist or fearsome warmonger. His closing remarks incorporated a memorable line, one recalled nowadays as a devastating indictment of Carter’s administration: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” 

In the final analysis, then, could 2024 become 1980 redux? 

The parallels are inviting, but a comparable outcome seems unlikely. Too many voters are just too eager to vote for Trump, or to vote against him. That probably means the election will not be a popular vote rout.  

Just as no two presidential elections are quite alike, so it is with polling failures. When they fail, polls fail each in their own way. Should that pattern hold, the unanticipated rout of 1980 won’t be replicated this year.

W. Joseph Campbell is a professor emeritus at American University in Washington, D.C., and the author of seven books including, most recently, “Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections.” 

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4959524-2024-1980-parallels-reagan-carter-trump-harris/

Senators release ‘site-neutral’ plan to stop Medicare paying hospitals more for same service

 Two key senators released a bipartisan plan Friday to require Medicare to pay the same rate for the same service, regardless of where the service is delivered. 

The “site-neutral” payment reform plan from Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) is aimed at stopping hospitals from getting more money from Medicare for procedures that can be done in less expensive settings, like a physician office or an ambulatory surgical center. 

According to Cassidy and Hassan, the plan will save taxpayers billions of dollars. They proposed equalizing payments for some services provided in off-campus hospital outpatient departments with what Medicare pays for physician offices.  

“Patients should not be forced to pay higher bills just because their regular doctor’s office was purchased by a hospital,” Hassan said. “There is bipartisan agreement that by pursuing site neutral payment in Medicare, we can lower costs and ensure that more people can get the health care that they need.”  

But hospitals have long fought off any attempts to equalize payment rates, arguing such a move would hurt rural providers and those that rely on a high proportion of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement. Hospitals also argue they have higher overhead costs, and so need higher reimbursements.  

To combat that issue, the plan would reinvest some of the savings into rural and safety net hospitals through Medicare. The plan would also create another bonus for hospitals to keep providing services like maternity care, trauma centers, burn units and neonatal intensive care units. 

“If the same care can be safely provided in different settings, patients should not pay hundreds more simply because their doctor works in a hospital. Our framework provides a path to ensure that,” Cassidy said in a statement. 

Cassidy is currently ranking member of the Senate health committee and stands to take over the chairmanship if Republicans win control.  

There has been a disconnect between House and Senate Republicans on site neutral payments, and the proposal faces long odds as currently designed. It was also released as a policy paper, not legislative text. 

Last year, House Republicans wanted to use the savings from a site neutral services policy to pay for extending expiring health programs. But Senate Republicans feared rural hospital losses and weren’t on board. 

Despite the reinvestment provision, hospital groups immediately blasted the proposal.  

“Simply put, this framework from Senators Hassan and Cassidy will limit and eliminate critical hospital-based care, resulting in increased wait times and decreased access to care for patients,” said Stacey Hughes, executive vice president of the American Hospital Association. She said the framework proposes “dramatic and untenable Medicare cuts, reducing seniors’ access to critical hospital-based care.” 

The Federation of American Hospitals similarly said the plan equates to Medicare cuts that “threaten access to 24/7 hospital care – a framework Congress has rejected time and again,” said Charlene MacDonald, the organization’s executive vice president of public affairs.  

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4966764-site-neutral-medicare-payment-plan-cassidy-hassan/

'North Korean Official In Moscow: US & S.Korea Plotting Nuclear Strike'

 There's been more fallout in the wake of Thursday's North Korean test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), widely described as registering the country's longest ever flight time for a ballistic missile.

First, South Korea has slapped new sanctions on over a dozen North Korean individuals and entities. Seoul has roundly condemned the launch. The US is also likely to ramp up its sanctions even further. 

But to be expected, Kim Jong Un has hit back. He was cited in state KCNA as saying: "The new-type ICBM proved before the world that the hegemonic position we have secured in the development and manufacture of nuclear delivery means of the same kind is absolutely irreversible."

Pyongyang officials have since identified the massive rocket, which they dub "the world's strongest strategic missile," as a new Hwasong-19 ICBM. Given that nuclear warhead-capable ICBMs can reach several thousands of miles away, such a missile would have the capability of hitting the continental United States. And the timing has not been lost on anyone, as it was a mere days before the US presidential election.

"It can be stored and moved anywhere, allowing for excellent mobility, stealth and survivability," said Kim of the rocket. State media has subsequently released carefully edited, high quality footage of the 'perfected' missile launch, which has been widely circulating on Friday:

"The increased length likely means a greater fuel capacity, which directly affects thrust and potentially increases range," Kim added.

And new statements from North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui suggest tensions with the West are higher than ever. She said from Moscow, where she is meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, that her country is coming under nuclear threat by the US and South Korea.

She "accused the United States and South Korea of plotting a nuclear strike against her country," Reuters reports Friday. "She did not provide evidence to back her assertion, but spoke of regular consultations between Washington and Seoul at which she alleged such plotting took place."

The top diplomat also pledged that North Korea will not stop helping Russia until it achieves 'victory' on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Pyongyang and Moscow have over the past year been deepening their defense ties, having inked a new pact this past summer, and the Kremlin has cited this as the legal basis for North Korean troops being hosted in Russia.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/north-korean-official-moscow-us-skorea-plotting-nuclear-strike

Cardinal Health Raises 2025 Profit Outlook Again, Helped By Strong Drug Distribution Business

 Friday, Cardinal Health Inc. (NYSE:CAH) reported first-quarter 2025 adjusted EPS of $1.88, up 9% year over year, beating the consensus of $1.62.

Sales decreased 4% to $52.28 billion, beating the consensus of $50.90 billion. Adjusted operating earnings increased 12% to $625 million.

First-quarter revenue for the Pharmaceutical and Specialty Solutions segment decreased by 5% to $48.0 billion. Excluding the customer contract expiration, revenue increased by 16%, driven by brand and specialty pharmaceutical sales growth from existing customers.

Pharmaceutical and Specialty Solutions segment profit increased 16% to $530 million, driven by a higher contribution from brand and specialty products, including the earlier seasonal launch of COVID-19 vaccine distribution and positive generics program performance.

The Pharmaceutical and Specialty Solutions segment distributes branded and generic pharmaceuticals, specialty drugs, and OTC products and offers services for specialty pharmaceuticals, supporting both manufacturers and healthcare providers and pharmacy management services.

Revenue for the Global Medical Products and Distribution segment increased 3% to $3.1 billion, driven by volume growth from existing customers.

Global Medical Products and Distribution (GMPD) segment profit decreased to $8 million, primarily due to higher manufacturing and health and welfare costs, largely offset by improved net inflationary impacts, including mitigation initiatives and growth from existing customers.

GMPD segment manufactures, sources, and distributes Cardinal Health brand medical, surgical, and laboratory products, as well as distributes medical, surgical and laboratory products known as national brand products

“We began fiscal 2025 by delivering strong operational and financial performance, led by the Pharmaceutical and Specialty Solutions segment,” said Jason Hollar, CEO of Cardinal Health.

“The strength and resiliency of our largest and most significant business continues to shine, giving us confidence to raise our fiscal 2025 enterprise guidance only a quarter into the year,” Hollar added.

Outlook: Cardinal Health has raised its fiscal year 2025 outlook for adjusted EPS to $7.75-$7.90 from prior guidance of $7.55-$7.70 versus consensus of $7.63.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cardinal-health-raises-2025-profit-122520946.html