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Effective April 16, Walgreens drugstores across the state won’t take any new Medicaid patients, saying that filling their prescriptions is a money-losing proposition — the latest development in an ongoing dispute over Medicaid reimbursement.

The company, which operates 121 stores in the state, will continue filling Medicaid prescriptions for current patients.

In a news release, Walgreens said its decision to not take new Medicaid patients stemmed from a "continued reduction in reimbursement" under the state’s Medicaid program, which reimburses it at less than the break-even point for 95 percent of brand-name medications dispensed to Medicaid patents.

Walgreens follows Bartell Drugs, which stopped taking new Medicaid patients last month at all 57 of its stores in Washington, though it still fills Medicaid prescriptions for existing customers at all but 15 of those stores.

Doug Porter, the state’s director of Medicaid, said Medicaid recipients should be able to readily find another pharmacy because "we have many more pharmacy providers in our network than we need" for the state’s 1 million Medicaid clients.

Source/Full Story:   Seattle Times Newspaper

More charges for the man accused of killing Salvation Army Major Philip Wise.

After more than eight hours of questioning, Laquan Fitzpatrick, 19, faces burglary and robbery charges in addition to capital murder.  He reportedly confessed to committing a residential burglary November 17th plus robbing a Radio Shack two days after Thanksgiving.  Little Rock police have also named him as a suspect in the kidnapping of a minor last March.

Kuykendall says he cannot say yet whether Fitzpatrick belonged to a gang.  He credits police work as the reason Fitzpatrick is behind bars.

Police are still searching for a second suspect in the Christmas Eve murder of Philip Wise.  Wise was shot December 24 outside the North Little Rock Salvation Army where he served, in front of his three young children.
Fitzpatrick is being held without bond until his first court appearance 9 a.m. Thursday morning, March 18th.

Source/Full Story:   Channel 7 News

For hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, the check won’t be in the mail — at least not on time. New York State has stopped paying tax refunds and won’t start again until next month.

The tax refund delay is part of a bigger cash crunch.

Message to New Yorkers: don’t start spending your tax refund money because it’s going to be delayed.

Half a billion dollars’ worth of refund checks were put on hold last Friday, and state beancounters won’t start sending you your money until at least April 1.

“I apologize that we had to do this. I hope it serves notice on the public of how serious our financial situation is,” Gov. David Paterson said.
…
The governor said the move was unavoidable. He’s also planning to withhold $1.5 billion in school payments and aid to local governments.

Source/Full Story: wcbstv.com

I’d like to see the face of this Laquan Javaris Fitzpatrick.

A 19-year-old man has been arrested and charged with capital murder in connection with the Christmas Eve shooting death of a Salvation Army major in North Little Rock.

Officers arrested Laquan Javaris Fitzpatrick on Tuesday at a home in Helena-West Helena, Ark.

North Little Rock police spokesman Sgt. Terry Kuykendall said Fitzpatrick had long been a suspect in the case. Fitzpatrick was still being questioned late Tuesday afternoon.

Philip Wise, 41, was gunned down as he returned to the Salvation Army office after dropping off two bell ringers on the last day of the organization’s kettle drive. Investigators said robbery was the motive.

Police said they didn’t know if Fitzpatrick had an attorney yet.

Source/Full Story:  KHBS NW Arkansas

A magnitude 4.4 earthquake struck near Los Angeles on Tuesday, awakening residents but causing no apparent damage in the second largest U.S. city, the U.S. Geological Survey and witnesses said.

Police at the epicenter of Pico Rivera, 11 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, said there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the light quake.

It hit at 4:04 a.m. local time (1104 GMT) and lasted a few seconds, rousing many from their beds and prompting local television stations to issue bulletins. The quake was at a depth of nearly 11 miles on the Whittier fault.

Home to 10 million people, Los Angeles County had its last strong earthquake in Northridge in 1994, which killed some 60 people.

Source/Full Story:   Reuters

U.S. employers won’t hire enough workers this year to lower the jobless rate much below the level of 9.7 percent reached in February, three Obama administration economic officials said today.

The proportion of Americans who can’t find work is likely to “remain elevated for an extended period,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, White House budget director Peter Orszag and Christina Romer, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a joint statement. The officials said unemployment may even rise “slightly” over the next few months as discouraged workers start job-hunting again.

“We do not expect further declines in unemployment this year,” the officials said in testimony prepared for the House Appropriations Committee. They predicted the economy would add about 100,000 jobs a month on average — not enough to bring the jobless rate down substantially.

Source/Full Story: Bloomberg.com

As they scrambled recently to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds around the country, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention successfully used a new tool for the first time — the shopper cards that millions of Americans swipe every time they buy groceries.

With permission from the patients, investigators followed the trail of grocery purchases to a Rhode Island company that makes salami, then zeroed in on the pepper used to season the meat.

Never before had the CDC successfully mined the mountain of data that supermarket chains compile.

“It was really exciting. It was a break in the investigation for sure,” CDC epidemiologist Casey Barton Behravesh said.

At least 245 people in 44 states have been sickened in the outbreak. That includes 30 in California, 19 in Illinois, 18 in New York and 17 in Washington state.

The victims included Raymond Cirimele, a 55-year-old Chicago man. He said no one asked for his shopper-card data, but he would have provided it if someone had.

“I don’t have any secrets, so I’m not worried about it,” he said. “It’s kind of like the whole airport security and all that. I’d rather fly on a safe plane.”

…

Some privacy advocates, though, are troubled.

Longtime shopper-card critic Katherine Albrecht, director of a group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, said she worries that the practice could lead to a switch from a voluntary system to mandatory use of such cards.

“That sends chills down my spine,” she said.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief David Strickland told a congressional hearing on Thursday that the regulator is considering whether to make “black boxes” mandatory for all new vehicles. [ID:nN11246251]

The devices can capture data on speed, braking effort and other details which can be vital in reconstructing accidents.

Toyota has recalled more than 8 million vehicles globally to address the risk that accelerator pedals on a range of its vehicles could become stuck because of a loose floor mat or a glitch in the pedal assembly.

Unintended acceleration in the company’s Toyota and Lexus vehicles has been linked to at least five U.S. crash deaths since 2007. Authorities are investigating 47 other Toyota crash deaths over the past decade.

Source/Full Story: Reuters

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) intends to purchase twenty-seven (27) REMINGTON BRAND MODEL 870 POLICE 12/14P MOD GRWC XS4 KXCS SF. RAMAC #24587 GAUGE: 12 BARREL: 14″ – PARKERIZED CHOKE: MODIFIED SIGHTS: GHOST RING REAR WILSON COMBAT; FRONT – XS CONTOUR BEAD SIGHT STOCK: KNOXX REDUCE RECOIL ADJUSTABLE STOCK FORE-END: SPEEDFEED SPORT-SOLID – 14″ LOP are designated as the only shotguns authorized for ED based on compatibility with ED existing shotgun inventory, certified armor and combat training and protocol, maintenance, and parts.

The required date of delivery is March 22, 2010.

Source/Full Story: Federal Business Opportunities

The number of Americans with little or no retirement savings increased for the third straight year, according to an annual survey released Tuesday.

Those who socked away less than $10,000 for their nest egg jumped to 43 percent this year, up from 39 percent in 2009, the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s 20th-annual Retirement Confidence Survey found. Among the respondents, 27 percent said they had less than $1,000, compared to 20 percent last year.

“Americans’ attitudes toward retirement have clearly tracked the economy the last couple of years, and that seems to be the case in 2010,” said Jack VanDerhei, research director for the Washington, D.C.-based institute and a co-author of the study.

retirement-confidence-survey.JPGView full sizeThose who have said they saved for retirement fell to 69 percent, from 75 percent last year. In addition, nearly one in four respondents said they have postponed their planned retirement age in the last 12 months, compared to 14 percent in 2008.

The national survey — billed as the most comprehensive of its kind — randomly polled 1,153 individuals aged 25 and older in January. The percentage of unemployed respondents was one in 10, more than double that of 2008.

VanDerhei attributed the findings to job insecurities, layoffs, stock market losses and a trend among many companies last year to freeze 401K contribution matches. However, suspending savings and postponing retirement are only temporary solutions, he said.

Source/Full Story: NJ.com

The recall of products containing a potentially salmonella-tainted flavoring ingredient ballooned this week with the addition of 1.7 million pounds of ready-to-eat beef taquito and chicken quesadilla products from a Houston firm.

Ruiz Foods of Denison, Texas, also recalled 115,700 pounds of Tornados Ranchero Beef & Cheese roll-ups.

All the recalled products contained hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP). That is an MSG-like flavor enhancer made by Basic Food Flavors of North Las Vegas, Nev., which on March 4 announced a recall of its entire production dating to Feb. 17, 2009. The company has declined to comment.

To date, 105 products containing the ingredient have been recalled, including bouillons, dip mixes, salad dressings, gravy mixes, snacks, soups and ready-to-eat foods. The Food and Drug Administration is continuously updating the recall list at www.foodsafety.gov.

Source/Full Story: USATODAY.com

The Greek economy is set to shrink by more than expected this year, the government said on Wednesday, as it braced for nationwide strikes protesting its plans for bringing the country’s budget deficit under control.

Greece, grappling with a ballooning deficit and a 300 billion euro (272 billion pound) debt pile, told the European Union that 2010 gross domestic product (GDP) would “most likely” shrink by more than the 0.3 percent currently forecast.

It also said the drop may exceed an alternative, more pessimistic, scenario published in Greece’s Stability and Growth Programme in January envisaging a 0.8 percent contraction.

Economists and ratings agencies have warned that a sharper than expected slowdown in the economy is one of the biggest threats to Greece’s commitment to cut its budget deficit to 2.8 percent of GDP by 2012 from close to 13 percent last year.

Source/Full Story: Reuters

European countries are blocking Wall Street banks from lucrative deals to sell government debt worth hundreds of billions of euros in retaliation for their role in the credit crunch.

For the first time in five years, no big US investment bank appears among the top nine sovereign bond bookrunners in Europe, according to Dealogic data compiled for the Guardian. Only Morgan Stanley ranks at number 10.

Goldman Sachs doesn’t make the table. Goldman made it to number five last year and in 2006, and number eight in 2007, the data shows. JP Morgan was in the top ten last year and in 2007 and 2006 but doesn’t appear this year.

“Governments do not have the confidence that the excessive risk-taking culture of the big Wall Street banks has changed and they still cannot be trusted to put the stability of the financial system before profit,” said Arlene McCarthy, vice chair of the European parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee. “It is no surprise therefore that governments are reluctant to do business with banks that have failed to learn the lesson of the crisis. The banks need to acknowledge the mistakes that were made and behave in an ethical way to regain the trust and confidence of governments.”

Source/Full Story: guardian.co.uk

China’s central bank chief laid the groundwork for an appreciation of the renminbi at the weekend when he described the current dollar peg as temporary, striking a more emollient tone after months of tough opposition in Beijing to a shift in exchange rate policy.

Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, gave the strongest hint yet from a senior official that China would abandon the unofficial dollar peg, in place since mid-2008. He said it was a “special” policy to weather the financial crisis.

“This is a part of our package of policies for dealing with the global financial crisis. Sooner or later, we will exit the policies.”

Mr Zhou’s comments contrasted with recent Chinese comments on its currency policy in the face of international criticism that the renminbi was undervalued. In December, premier Wen Jiabao said: “We will not yield to any pressure of any form forcing us to appreciate.” Chinese officials have repeatedly emphasised the need for a stable exchange rate.

Source/Full Story: FT.com

You’ve accepted the idea that TV makes you dumber. You know there are lots of more edifying things you could be doing with your time than cheering on the contestants on “Survivor.”

And unless you’re working out to an exercise video, you know those hours sprawled out in front of the screen are going to make you fatter — not to mention the impact of all that junk food you’ve been tempted to scarf down during the commercial breaks.

But you’ll be surprised to learn the host of other bad things TV can do to you.

Source/Full Story: msnbc.com