Issue # 2

Medicare patients are going to be going to doctors that will be paid 5 to 10% less for having them as a patient. People are trying to come up with a plan to lower the cost of medicare but keep doctors doing quality work. Right now doctors get paid for how many patients they see not by how well they treat them. A pay-for-performance program was approved which lets medicare pay doctors 1.5% more if they report their treatments and if it is quality work. Administrators are going to work with medical experts to put in guidelines for what quality care is. People that support the pay-for-performance plan think that guidlines are a good way to have better communication on which treatments work the best. People that support this researched hospitals with the program and saw that they had 1300 less deaths from heart attacks. People that are against this don't think that federal officials don't know enough about medicine to decide what is the best medicine. They also say that 1.5% will not cover the wasted time and resources that have to be used to fill out the paper work for the bonus.



I don't think that there should be a pay for performance program. Doctors shouldn't have to fill out paper work to get a bonus when they should be doing their job right in the first place. Federal officials don't know enough about medicine to make requirements so they should just leave things alone. The government shouldn't have cut doctors pay in the first place because it's not their fault that not everybody can afford health care. If doctors get paid for curing people of their illness then why would they ever take a patient that smokes or is obese. Dr. Deane Waldman agress with that and thinks that pay for performance should stop. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deane-waldman/stop-pay-for-performance_b_233208.html

http://bryceholm.blogspot.com/2010/11/3-health-care-safe-to-eat.html

http://briannalynn22.blogspot.com/2010/11/issue-1-comprehensive-vs-incremental.html

Terror verdict deals blow to Obama Gitmo plan

On November 17th, Ahmed Ghailini was the first person being held at Guantanamo bay in cuba to have a trial and people have been put into this terrorist prison starting 8 years ago. He was tried for trying to blow up government buildings in 1998 and was sentenced to life in prison. This was tried in civilian courts and they had a split decision. This shows that Obama's plan to try prisoners of Guantanamo bay in civilian courts isn't for sure going to work. Representative Peter King says that "We must treat them as wartime enemies and try them in military commissions at Guantanamo." This is not going to help Obama close Guantanamo bay like he had said he’d have closed by his first year in office.

I don’t think that the terrorists should be moved into the U.S. They should stay where they are. The people in Illinois aren’t going to be happy if all the terrorists we have contained are moved to their state. The terrorists at Guantanamo bay shouldn’t be tried by a civilian court because they are not like normal civilians. They should be tried as wartime enemies in a military court because they killed many people and they don’t deserve to be let off easy. I don’t think it’s surprising that Obama didn’t follow through with what he said. This is just another thing he hasn’t done that he promised he would.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40248961/ns/us_news-security/

Facebook says apps shared user data, promises fix

Facebook said that some of its applications violated the social networking company’s policy for sharing user information and Facebook said the problem will be fixed. They also said that the information sharing was not intentional. Farmville was one of the applications that gave id information to outside companies. The vice president of facebook wrote a letter to congressman Joe Barton and Edward Markey saying that the applications would be deleted and that the id info would be deleted too.
It annoys me that information can be given to other companies from applications. Facebook has privacy settings that shouldn’t have been violated. Facebook should be a safe website where people don’t have to worry about their information being stolen. Even though facebook said they didn’t know that applications were taking information, I still think it is there fault. They should check into applications more before they let them start up on facebook. I’m glad that Facebook is trying to stop this problem and get rid of the bad applications though.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39994197/ns/technology_and_science-security/

Experts ask: Did U.N. troops infect Haiti?

In Haiti, 442 people have died from an outbreak of cholera and researchers are trying to figure out if the UN peace keepers were the source of the outbreak. U.S. center of disease control thought that the strand came from south asia. There is debate whether time should be spent on investigating the outbreak or not. People are worried that the disease started from a Nepalese base with men from Nepal. Experts can’t prove anything but they are pretty sure that it was carried into Haiti.

I think that outbreaks in diseases happen too much. People don’t usually know what to do about them either. It’s not fair that Haiti had to suffer through a bad earthquake, and is now struggling from disease. People should spend time trying to figure out where the disease came from and how it works because then they can prevent it from spreading and killing other people. If there was an outbreak of cholera in Nepalese then those men should have been tested for the disease before they were allowed to enter Haiti which was already suffering.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39996103/ns/health-infectious_diseases/

After 'shellacking,' Obama laments disconnect with voters

The Republicans now control the House and improved in the Senate too. They want to roll back government and the health care law. Obama thinks that the democrats lost the election because they lost track of the ways they connected with the people that got them there in the first place. He says he has to do a better job. Boehner thinks that the people want less government and want the health care law changed or repealed.

People should have to work hard to pay for what they have, it shouldn’t just be given to them. Obama just wants to raise taxes so that he can give people food stamps and other free money. We shouldn’t have to be responsible for anybody else because this is a free country. People want less government and the health care law changed. Before Obama was elected he talked about change and he hasn’t done anything to help anyone which is why they voted opposite. We are just in more debt nohttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39987154/ns/politics-decision_2010/w and unemployment is still high.