PC's Cure Cancer

Researcher David Baker believes the key to an AIDS vaccine or a cure for cancer may be that old PC sitting under a layer of dust in your closet or the one on your desk doing little else but running a screen saver.

Those outdated or idle computers may be just what Baker needs to turn his ideas into scientific breakthroughs.

Using software made popular in a massive yet so far fruitless search for intelligent life beyond Earth, he and his research team are tapping the computing power of tens of thousands of PCs whose owners are donating spare computer time to chop away at scientific problems over the Internet.

Baker's work could one day lead to cures to diseases from cancer to Alzheimer's. The project takes a more direct approach to other diseases, including the search for an HIV vaccine. In that case, his team hopes to develop a way to help the body recognize critical parts of the virus' proteins so that it can no longer hide from the body's immune system.

Read More

Who is Reading Your Medical File?

Liu, a radiology resident at UC San Diego Medical Center, scanned through shots of the patient's kidneys, noting the abnormal fluid around one.

It wasn't long before the phone rang. A fax had arrived.

"That's NightHawk," Liu said.

In a time zone 17 hours ahead, a radiologist in Australia, working for a company called NightHawk Radiology Services, had been sitting before the same images. He functioned as a nighttime supervisor a world away, and through the fax confirmed her preliminary diagnosis: The patient's kidney had a small tear.

This is not Star Trek but reality.

In an effort to hold down costs, hospitals and other medical practices are outsourcing certain functions half way around the globe.

A little known side effect, and one that is rarely debated, is the privacy issues. Most are aware of the privacy laws that come as part of HIPAA but few stop to think about how much of that law is lost once your medical information leaves the shores of the United States. Once your medical information travels to Australia, India or wherever you basically lose your HIPAA rights.

Over the next few years I wonder how many court cases will occur as a result of PHI (protected health information) being leaked as a result of foreign outsourcing.

Read More

Cavalcade of Risk -- Reminder (Bumped)

Look for the Debut edition of the C of R on Wednesday.

The debut edition of the C of R is later this week (Wednesday, to be precise), and the deadline for submissions is today.

The Cavalcade's purpose is to help folks understand what risk is, and how to manage it. It's about business and finance, of course, but it's also about risks in our everyday lives and personal relationships.

Read More

Sunny Money Monday

Mapgirl hosts this week's Carnival of Personal Finance. Despite being at the hospital with family, our hostess managed to organize 47 submissions...that's a lot!
Christine Kane has a helpful post telling us why cheaper isn't always less expensive.

The Carnival of the Capitalists is up, hosted by the folks at Rethink. They've dusted off the spreadsheet template, which makes sorting through the 60 posts much easier. Plus, the included insights help to make each post's subject crystal clear. Super job!

While you're there, check out this post at MarketPlace MD. It's about Consumer Driven Finance, sort of the flip side of CDHC.

Read More

Claim Denied

What can be more frustrating than getting denied health care coverage just when you really need it?

If you cannot get your claim paid then you bought insurance you did not need.

One attorney who deals with these issues, Mala M. Rafik of Rosenfeld & Rafik in Boston, says knowing the ropes is key. She handles cases of chronically ill patients in which health care costs can run some $200,000 annually.

Medical insurance denials, she says, most frequently come in these two areas that health insurance salesmen conspicuously omit when they sell your policies.

I will take exception to the comment “insurance salesmen conspicuously omit”. Of course there is a big difference in a salesman and a professional agent.

A salesman just wants your signature and your money.

A professional agent will take the time to find out what you really want, explain what you really need, and help you find the plan that suits both.

Insurer "caps" or limits. Most health insurance policies have annual spending limits on coverage such as skilled nursing care; durable medical equipment, such as wheelchairs and ventilators; and occupational therapy.

OK I may be making a step in the wrong direction, but it appears this comment refers to major medical policies. In that case the statement is true. There are policies that do cover these items but they are not major medical plans.

Services deemed "medically necessary." Want a private nurse to stay in your home to help you go to the bathroom after surgery? Your insurer may not consider this necessary and refuse to cover the cost.

Medical necessity is at the root of most health insurance policies. Again, there are ways to cover items such as private duty nursing with something other than a major medical policy.

When you purchase an insurance policy it is important that you actually READ your policy and make note of what is covered, what isn’t. In many cases you will want to consider purchasing insurance to cover some of the items listed above.

Read More

And Losing at SOLItaire...

Several weeks ago, we examined Stranger Owned Life Insurance (SOLI), a potentially useful cash flow tool. Seems, though, that there are more nefarious uses for such:

"A pair of Los Angeles women may have insured the lives of homeless men, then arranged fatal hit-and-run “accidents” so that they could collect the death benefits, officials say."

That's just sick.

Apparently, the perps would befriend a homeless person, offering him room and board (and perks?), thus building trust. They would then have the victims sign off on life insurance applications, with themselves as beneficiaries.

I have my doubts about the veracity of this story:

■ If there was no insurable interest, how was the policy underwritten and issued?
■ If the victims were, indeed, homeless, what underwriting dim bulb approved the application?
■ One of the victims apparently had 16 policies; what, exactly, did the agent *think* was going on?

Of course, it's possible (likely?) that these were all purchased on-line, and that no agent was involved. Still, there should have been *some* red flags: insurable interest, moral hazard, possible medical issues. And, each of these policies could have been small enough to fall "under the radar:" no exam, no inspection, no real underwriting.

I'm not sure that really works, though: the sum involved (over $2 million) seems to indicate that at least some of these policies should have triggered at least a cursory examination.

Yikes.

Read More