Month: November 2013

By David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Up to 40 percent of the technology needed to run the new Obamacare health insurance marketplace has not yet been built and will not be ready when insurance companies start sending in bills when coverage begins January 1, the project manager of HealthCare.gov told the U.S. Congress on Tuesday. The missing “back-end” technology may not be ready until mid-January, Henry Chao, deputy chief information officer for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told a House of Representatives oversight subcommittee. The disclosure added to an atmosphere of uncertainty that has engulfed President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement since HealthCare.gov crashed soon after its October 1 launch. The absence of the back-end technology behind healthcare marketplaces that have sprung up in all 50 states and the District of Columbia does not prevent consumers from enrolling for coverage through market portals such as HealthCare.gov.

The first batch of Chinese relief supplies has arrived in the Philippines, Chinese state television said, days after Beijing drew criticism for not doing more to help victims of one of the world's biggest typhoons. "The Philippine Department of Social Welfare and Development head has said the Chinese relief goods are very useful," Chinese embassy official Wu Zhenping told the station. "They will distribute some goods to evacuated victims in Cebu and the rest to victims in the worst-hit area Tacloban." Tension between China and the Philippines has risen in recent months over disputed claims in the South China Sea and Beijing's response to the disaster raised eyebrows.

By Caroline Stauffer and Guido Nejamkis BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – President Cristina Fernandez's new Cabinet picks this week confirmed a deepening of Argentina's left-leaning economic model rather than a policy switch needed to confront escalating inflation and dwindling foreign currency reserves. After the president's first public appearance since an October 8 operation to remove blood that pooled on her brain, her office late on Monday announced the promotion of leftist economist Axel Kicillof to economy minister and the replacement of the central bank director and agriculture minister. Kicillof has served as deputy economy minister. Analysts said the 42-year-old Kicillof already had more influence on Fernandez than the man he replaced, Hernan Lorenzino, who was given the job of ambassador to the European Union.

By Lawrence Hurley and Lisa Garza WASHINGTON/DALLAS (Reuters) – A split U.S. Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to block implementation of a new abortion law in Texas that already has prompted a dozen clinics in the state to stop performing the procedure. The four liberal justices said they would have overturned the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals October 31 ruling that allowed the law to take effect. Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by two of his conservative colleagues, wrote an opinion explaining the rationale in favor of leaving the appeals court decision intact. Scalia criticized the four dissenters, saying that their suggested outcome would “flout core principles of federalism by mandating postponement of a state law without asserting that the law is even probably unconstitutional.” Writing for the four dissenters, Justice Stephen Breyer said he would have favored blocking the law to “maintain the status quo” while the lower courts handled “this difficult, sensitive and controversial legal matter.” Abortion rights groups and clinics that provide abortions are challenging the sweeping anti-abortion law, passed in July by the Republican-led Texas Legislature, that also requires abortion clinics to meet heightened building standards, bans abortion after 20 weeks and requires strict adherence to federal guidelines in prescribing abortion pills.

By Roberta Rampton and Caren Bohan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama, who has portrayed himself as surprised by technical problems with the government's new health care website, was briefed earlier this year on a consultant's report that warned of possible widespread site failures, the White House said on Tuesday. There have been weeks of questions about whether Obama understood the depth of the site's problems and let it open anyway, or simply "did not have enough awareness" of them, as the president stated at a November 14 news conference. Even as the administration fended off criticism of the so-called "front end" of the system, officials revealed Tuesday that they had not completed development of the "back end," the financial management component needed to finalize federal subsidies for consumers who buy health plans. A spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the lead agency for the website, said it would not be completed until mid-January, weeks after the first enrollees are scheduled to begin receiving benefits under the Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010 as Obama's signature domestic policy.

By Jessica Dye NEW YORK (Reuters) – A unit of Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay an estimated $2.5 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits from individuals allegedly injured by the company’s artificial hip implants, the company announced Tuesday. The settlement, announced during a hearing in federal court in Ohio on Tuesday, would compensate an estimated 8,000 patients who underwent surgery to replace their hip implants, according to a statement from Johnson & Johnson unit Depuy Orthopaedics Inc and lawyers for the plaintiffs.

President Barack Obama is not depressed over his low job approval ratings, a top adviser said on Tuesday. A Washington Post-ABC News poll on Tuesday said the troubled rollout of the Affordable Care Act had pushed Obama down to a 42 percent job approval rating, the lowest he has experienced in this survey. The Post-ABC poll said opposition to the healthcare law hit a record high with 57 percent saying they opposed it. Susan Rice, Obama's national security adviser and a long-time member of Obama's inner circle, told CNN that Obama is not letting the polls bother him.

By Bill Berkrot and Ransdell Pierson DALLAS (Reuters) – A new blood clot and stroke preventer from Daiichi Sankyo proved as effective and safer than widely used warfarin in a large, late stage trial of patients with atrial fibrillation, paving the way for it to compete with other new warfarin alternatives on the market. The drug, edoxaban, met the main efficacy and safety goals of the study by demonstrating "non-inferiority" to warfarin in preventing strokes and blood clots and led to significantly less major bleeding – the greatest danger of blood thinning medicines. The trial, dubbed Engage AF, tested two doses of edoxaban against warfarin in 21,105 patients with atrial fibrillation – a dangerously irregular heartbeat – at moderate to high risk of stroke. It followed patients on average for nearly three years, making it the largest and longest study to date of any of the new generation of blood thinners.

Whether in your home town, your place of work, house of worship or social network, we all bear the responsibility and possess the opportunity to bring some light to our environments and our world.

By Cameron French TORONTO (Reuters) – Toronto Mayor Rob Ford vowed on Tuesday he would stay away from drugs, alcohol and "bad company" as he tries to rebound from a drug scandal that prompted city council to strip away much of his power. Ford, who insists he is neither an alcoholic nor a drug addict, said he had not had a drink in three weeks. 100 percent." Ford made the comments one day after the city council voted to remove much of his power.

U.S. Representative Trey Radel, a Tea Party Republican from Florida, is due to be arraigned in a Washington, D.C. court on Wednesday on a misdemeanor charge of drug possession, according to court documents. The Tampa Bay Times reported on its website on Tuesday that the drug possession charge involved cocaine. According to the Times, “A court document said on October 29 Radel ‘did unlawfully, knowingly, and intentionally possess a quantity of cocaine, a controlled substance.'” In a statement Radel apologized to his family and constituents in southwest Florida, saying that he struggled “with the disease of alcoholism, and this led to an extremely irresponsible choice.” Radel, a freshman member of Congress who calls himself a “Hip Hop Conservative, Lover of #liberty” on his Twitter page, faces a possible six months in jail. Had he been arrested in Florida, where cocaine possession is a felony, Radel could be facing even more serious legal problems, including loss of his voting rights and the right to carry a firearm.