Nokia says shipping new Lumia smartphones this week

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Mass. shuts down another compounding pharmacy

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts shut down another compounding pharmacy over sterility concerns after a surprise inspection prompted by the nationwide meningitis outbreak linked to a different company, state officials have said.

Dr. Madeleine Biondolillo of the state Department of Public Health said inspectors went to the Waltham location of Rhode Island-based Infusion Resource last week and found significant issues with the environment in which drugs were being mixed.

The company was inspected when it first opened in December 2009 and there had been no complaints since. She said the manager of record at the company was a former employee at Ameridose, which is owned by the same people who ran New England Compounding Center, the company linked to the meningitis outbreak.

She would not identify the drugs or say what specific issues investigators found at Infusion Resource, but she said they were concerned about sterility. The company mixes sterile injectable drugs for people who have been released from hospitals.

The company has agreed to contact its 40 patients and their doctors and ask them to return any unused medication. Biondolillo says there is no indication any medication the company compounded is unsafe. She said the company also had an area to administer intravenous drugs, which it was not licensed to do. She says the company voluntarily surrendered its pharmacy license this weekend.

Company Chief Executive Officer Bernard F. Lambrese said in a statement that the company will take immediate action to fix issues identified by Massachusetts investigators, including a crack in a window, the condition of flooring in a clean room and a leak in a refrigerator drain hose.

“No issues were cited relating to the integrity of our products nor to the quality of our compounding practices,” Lambrese said. “I want to reassure our patients and the general public of the safety, purity and efficacy of our solutions produced at our Waltham pharmacy since we were first licensed in 2009. Patient safety is something we take very seriously.”

Lambrese said in the meantime patient needs are being served out of the company’s pharmacy in its main headquarters in East Providence, R.I.

The surprise inspections started in the wake of the nationwide outbreak of fungal meningitis, an inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord, that has sickened more than 300 people, including 23 who have died, in 17 states. The outbreak has been linked to a steroid made by the NECC and taken mainly for back pain. Compounding pharmacies like NECC custom mix solutions in doses or forms generally not commercially available.

Dr. Lauren Smith, interim commissioner of the state Department of Public Health, said Sunday that the department is adding five inspectors to help review all compounding pharmacies in the state by the end of the year. Previously pharmacies were inspected only when they opened or if they moved or were the subject of complaints.

Smith also said the state pharmacy board, which oversees compounding pharmacies, has asked member Sophia Pasedis to step down. Pasedis, a pharmacy manager for Ameridose, has been on the board since 2004. The state previously said she had recused herself from all matters related to Ameridose and the NECC, but Smith said minutes from pharmacy board meetings raise questions about whether that is true. She said Pasedis has so far declined to leave the board. Her term ends next month.

Tom Kiley, an attorney for Pasedis, said a resignation would be mostly symbolic because she doesn’t have much time left in her term and the board will mostly be dealing with issues related to NECC, which she would not participate in.

“As a practical matter it doesn’t make sense,” Kiley said. “What she’s going to do is whatever she can to contribute to the board and assist the board.”

He said she always recused herself on issues related to NECC and Ameridose. He said meeting minutes may be vague because she may have been present at some point in a given meeting but not necessarily when NECC was discussed.

Smith said the Department of Public Health is taking other steps including proposing regulations to require frequent reports from compounding pharmacies and forming a commission to look at best practices in other states.

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Labrinth, Taylor Swift top UK music charts

LONDON (Reuters) – Singer-producer Labrinth topped the British singles charts this week with the ballad “Beneath Your Beautiful” featuring Emeli Sande.

It was the first No. 1 as a solo artist for the British singer.

Boy band JLS was new in at No. 6 with “Hottest Girl in the World”, the Official Charts Company said on Sunday.

The other new entry in the singles chart was “Wonder” by British rapper Naughty Boy, also featuring Sande, which took the 10th position.

Taylor Swift swept the album charts with her fourth full-length release “Red”. It is the first time the American country singer has topped the British charts.

British band Lawson, another new entry, scored fourth position with their debut studio album “Chapman Square”.

(Editing by Jon Hemming)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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More than ever, Barca more than club for Catalans

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Nearly 20 minutes into the latest clash between Spain’s most popular football teams, Barcelona‘s 98,000-seat Camp Nou stadium erupted into a deafening roar. Tens of thousands of Catalans in the city at the heart of their separatist movement chanted in unison: “Independence!”

More than ever, FC Barcelona, known affectionately as Barca, is living up to its motto of being “more than a club” for this wealthy northeastern region where Spain’s economic crisis is fueling separatist sentiment.

Lifelong Barca club member Enric Pujol was at Camp Nou for this month’s game against Real Madrid, the team of Spain’s capital. Wearing his burgundy-and-blue Barca jersey, Pujol also held one of the hundreds of pro-independence “estelada” flags, featuring a white star in a blue triangle, which bristled throughout the stands.

“It was a beautiful emotion to see Camp Nou like that,” said Pujol. “Barca is more than a club because of the values it transmits. It is linked to Catalan culture. In this sense it is a club and a social institution that acts like our flag.”

Barca has been seen as a bastion of Catalan identity dating back to the three decades of dictatorship when Catalans could not openly speak, teach or publish in their native Catalan language. Barcelona writer Manuel Vazquez Montalban famously called the football team “Catalonia‘s unarmed symbolic army.”

Barca-Real Madrid matches have a nickname: “el clasico” — the classic — and they are one of the world’s most-watched sporting events, seen by 400 million people in 30 countries. But local passions run high. In Spain, where football has deep political and cultural connotations, many see the clashes of Spain’s most successful teams as a proxy battle between wealthy Catalonia and the central government in Madrid. If Barca is a symbol of Catalan nationalism, Real Madrid is an emblem of a unified Spain.

“Look, the truth is that ever since the Civil War there has always been tension in Spain,” said Pujol. “Having traveled in Spain, they always look at us as Catalans.”

Ahead of kickoff before any “clasico,” Camp Nou traditionally greets Real Madrid players with a huge mosaic of Barcelona’s burgundy-and-blue made up of colored cards. This year, for the first time, they held up cards forming the red-and-yellow striped Catalan “senyera” flag — an explicit nationalist message. (Barca says it can neither confirm nor deny reports that its away uniform next season will be modeled on the senyera.)

Then came the crowd’s collective shout for independence at 1714 hours — in reference to the year 1714 when Barcelona fell to the troops of Philip V in the War of Spanish Succession. It was organized by a pro-independence group through social media.

Barca fan David Fort sees his team as a vehicle to show the world that Catalonia has its own language and culture, which is distinct from what he called the “bulls and flamenco” associated with Spain.

“We have this love for Barca because we have the chance to be represented around the world,” said Fort, a 38-year-old architect from the southern Catalan town of Tarragona. “When we travel and they ask me if I am Spanish, I say not exactly, but when I mention Barca they say ‘Ah! The Catalan team’, and of course since they are champions you feel proud.”

Barca, like every institution in Spain, was marked by the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s and resulting right-wing dictatorship that ended after Franco’s death in 1975.

Franco’s soldiers killed Barca’s club president in 1936, and the club was forced to change its name from a Catalan to a Spanish version. And while Real Madrid was identified with the regime, Barca, for many, came to represent Catalan anti-fascist resistance.

“Under Franco, people could not shout ‘Long Live Catalonia!,’ but they could shout ‘Long Live Barca!’ (¡Visca Barca!)” in Catalan, said Ernest Folch, a newspaper columnist who writes about Barca for El Periodico. The chant became a kind of code for expressing Catalan pride.

“Barca is an anomaly. There is no other club with its particular history,” said Folch. “It survived the Franco dictatorship, and has always been a focal point for protest and ferment where sport has mixed with politics.”

And politics is a very hot topic these days in Catalonia.

Voters will go to the polls on Nov. 25 in regional elections sure to be judged as a litmus test of the strength of the pro-independence movement that brought 1.5 million people to the streets of Barcelona on Sept. 11 in the largest rally since the 1970s.

Catalonia is heavily in debt and has in fact asked Spain for a euros 5.9 billion ($ 75 billion) bailout. Even so, regional lawmakers voted on Sept. 27 to hold a referendum on self-determination at a date still to be determined. And although it is still unclear that a “Yes” vote would win, Spain’s central government has called such a referendum unconstitutional and will surely try to stop it from taking place.

That all puts Catalonia, and therefore Barca, in the midst of Spain’s struggles to deal with consequences of back-to-back recessions, 25 percent unemployment, and high public debt that has drawn it into the euro crisis along with already bailed-out Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Barca’s appeal, of course, transcends its regional identity. The team is beloved throughout the world, and a poll last year found that it had displaced Real Madrid as Spain’s most popular team. Barca has 546 fan clubs in Catalonia, and 841 in the rest of Spain. Some of these fans— even in Catalonia — disagree with what they perceive as the political turn the club has taken in recent years.

“It’s surreal to talk to talk about these ideas related to independence,” said fan Jamie Easton, 27, a Spaniard born in Barcelona to a British father and a mother of Catalan descent. “Barca is a Catalan and Spanish club because Barcelona is part of Spain, and fans can feel however they want.”

The upswing in separatist sentiment in Catalonia has forced both the club and its players— many of whom form the backbone of Spain’s world champion national side — to try a difficult balancing act between supporting their most fervent pro-independence fans without alienating the millions of others who are not.

“We are Barca. We represent Catalonia and we will support whatever Catalans want,” said Barca and Spain midfielder Xavi Hernandez. But he added: “We try to isolate ourselves from everything outside the game. We know the political issue is there, and the people have the right to express themselves however they wish, but we are here to play football and make sure people have fun.”

The glaring exception to the moderate tone is former coach Pep Guardiola, a hugely popular figure in Catalonia, who appeared in a video during the Sept. 11 march saying: “Here you have my vote for independence.”

Two weeks after the politically charged “clasico,” Barca president Sandro Rosell made his first official visit to southern Spain to cool tensions at a meeting of Barca fan clubs.

“I don’t know what information you are receiving here, but I preferred to come here and say on behalf of the club that Barca will never get mixed up in political issues,” Rosell told the 1,000 Spanish fans, promising that Barca would never display a mosaic of the separatist “estelada” flag at Camp Nou.

“This doesn’t mean that this isn’t a Catalan club and that of course we will defend our roots and origins, but one thing shouldn’t be mixed with the other. One thing is politics and the other is identity. Barca unites us all.”

___

AP Writer Jorge Sainz contributed to this report from Madrid.

Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Northeast hunkers down ahead of hurricane

NEW YORK (AP) — A fast-strengthening Hurricane Sandy churned north Monday, raking ghost-town cities along the Northeast corridor with rain and wind gusts. Subways and schools were closed across the region of 50 million people, the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was deserted, and thousands fled inland to await the storm's fury.

The monster hurricane was expected to make a westward lurch and aim for New Jersey, blowing ashore Monday night and combining with two other weather systems — a wintry storm from the west and cold air rushing in from the Arctic — to create an epic superstorm.

Authorities warned that New York City and Long Island could get the worst of the storm surge — an 11-foot onslaught of seawater that could swamp lower Manhattan, flood the subways and cripple the underground network of electrical and communications lines that are vital to the nation's financial capital.

Because of Sandy's vast reach, with tropical storm-force winds extending almost 500 miles from its center, other major cities across the Northeast — Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston — also prepared for the worst.

"The days ahead are going to be very difficult," Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said. "There will be people who die and are killed in this storm."

By late morning, the storm had strengthened to 90 mph and had already knocked out power to tens of thousands of people. Sandy was about 200 miles southeast of Atlantic City, N.J., where the emptied-out streets were mostly under water and where an old section of the historic boardwalk broke up and washed away.

Authorities moved to close the Holland Tunnel, which connects New York and New Jersey, and a tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Street grates above the New York subway were boarded up, but officials worried that seawater would seep in and damage the electrical switches.

Millions of people in the storm's path stayed home from work. Subways, buses and trains shut down, and more than 7,000 flights in and out of the East were canceled, snarling travel around the globe. Hundreds of thousands of people were under orders to flee the coast, including 375,000 in lower Manhattan and other parts of New York City, but authorities warned that the time to get out was short or already past.

Sheila Gladden evacuated her home in Philadelphia's flood-prone Eastwick neighborhood and headed to a hotel.

"I'm not going through this again," said Gladden, who had 5 1/2 feet of water in her home after Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

Photos: Hurricane Sandy threatens East Coast

1. 
   
   

"I think this one's going to do us in," said Mark Palazzolo, who boarded up his bait-and-tackle shop in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., with the same wood he used in past storms, crossing out the names of Hurricanes Isaac and Irene and spray-painting "Sandy" next to them.

"I got a call from a friend of mine from Florida last night who said, 'Mark, get out! If it's not the storm, it'll be the aftermath. People are going to be fighting in the streets over gasoline and food.'"

President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney called off their campaign events at the very height of the presidential race, with just over a week to go before Election Day. And early voting was canceled Monday in Maryland and Washington, D.C.

The president declared emergencies in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, authorizing federal relief work to begin well ahead of time. He promised the government would "respond big and respond fast" after the storm hits.

"My message to the governors as well as to the mayors is anything they need, we will be there, and we will cut through red tape," Obama said. "We are not going to get bogged down with a lot of rules."

Sandy, a Category 1 hurricane, was blamed for 69 deaths in the Caribbean before it began traveling northward, parallel to the Eastern Seaboard. As of 11 a.m., it was moving at 18 mph, with hurricane-force winds extending an extraordinary 175 miles from its center.

Forecasters said the combined Frankenstorm could bring close to a foot of rain in places, a potentially lethal storm surge of 4 to 11 feet across much of the region, and punishing winds that could cause widespread power outages that last for days. Up to 3 feet of snow was forecast for the West Virginia mountains.

About 90 miles off Cape Hatteras, N.C., the Coast Guard rescued 14 crew members by helicopter from the HMS Bounty, a replica 18th-century sailing ship that sank in the storm. The Coast Guard searched for two other crew members. The ship was built for the 1962 Marlon Brando film "Mutiny on the Bounty."

The rescued had donned survival suits and life jackets and boarded two lifeboats after the ship began taking on water. They were plucked from 18-foot seas just before sunrise.

O'Malley, the Maryland governor, said a fishing pier in the beach resort of Ocean City, not far from a popular boardwalk and amusement park, was "half-gone." The area had been ordered evacuated on Sunday.

Water was already a foot deep on the streets of Lindenhurst, N.Y., along the southern edge of Long Island, and the canals around the island's Great South Bay were bulging two hours before high tide. Gale-force winds blew overnight over coastal North Carolina, southeastern Virginia, the Delmarva Peninsula and coastal New Jersey.

In the morning, water was already splashing over the seawalls at the southern tip of Manhattan and had matched the levels seen during Hurricane Irene in August 2011. Still, people were out jogging, walking their dogs and even taking children out in strollers amid gusts of wind.

"We're high up enough, so I'm not worried about flooding," said Mark Vial, who was pushing his 2-year-old daughter, Maziyar, in a stroller outside their building, where they live on the 15th floor. "There's plenty of food. We'll be OK."

The major American stock exchanges closed for the day, the first unplanned shutdown since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. The floor of the NYSE, typically bustling with traders on a Monday morning, fell within the city's mandatory evacuation zone. The United Nations canceled all meetings at its New York headquarters.

New York called off school on both Monday and Tuesday for the city's 1.1 million students, and the more than 5 million people who depend on its transit network every day were left without a way to get around.

"If you don't evacuate, you are not only endangering your life, you are also endangering the lives of the first responders who are going in to rescue you," Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned. "This is a serious and dangerous storm."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was typically blunt: "Don't be stupid. Get out."

Craig Fugate, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said FEMA teams were deployed from North Carolina to Maine and as far inland as West Virginia, bringing generators and basic supplies that will be needed in the storm's aftermath.

"I have not been around long enough to see a hurricane forecast with a snow advisory in it," Fugate told NBC's "Today" show.

___

Breed reported from Raleigh, N.C.; Contributing to this report were AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington; Katie Zezima in Atlantic City, N.J.; David Porter in Pompton Lakes, N.J.; Wayne Parry in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J.; and David Dishneau in Delaware.

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In San Francisco, tech investor leads a political makeover

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - One morning in April, Ron Conway, the billionaire technology investor, sat in a conference room on the second floor of San Francisco's City Hall with about 50 representatives from the city's business community.

On the agenda was a sweeping proposal by Mayor Ed Lee to reform the city's payroll tax, a plan that would favor companies with many employees but little revenue — tech start-ups, namely — while shifting the burden to the real estate and financial industries.

The head of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce was arguing against the proposal when Conway abruptly cut him off.

"The tech industry is producing all the jobs in this city," Conway snapped, according to four people present, his voice rising as he insisted that old-line businesses "need to get on board."

In the end, they did get on board — and San Francisco voters on November 6 will decide whether to approve the change in the tax code.

Conway's success with the tax initiative demonstrates the profound transformation playing out in San Francisco's business corridors and its halls of power. As start-ups blossom, attracting a wave of entrepreneurs and investment dollars, the tech industry is wielding newfound clout in local politics — largely thanks to Conway, its brash, silver-haired champion.

The shift, local political experts say, harks back to the turn of the last century, when financial institutions like the Bank of Italy — forebear to present-day Bank of America — gradually eroded the railroad barons' grip over California politics.

Now the tech industry, led by Conway, is beginning to overshadow long-dominant local business lobbies, said Chris Lehane, a political consultant and former adviser in the Clinton White House.

"When you have a new business entity that really hasn't existed in the past and becomes a real player in local politics, that changes the balance a bit," said Lehane, who is based in San Francisco. "People like Ron Conway, he's an angel investor in companies but also an angel supporter of politicians he cares about."

Not everyone in this famously liberal city is enthused about the new tech boom, which is driving up rents and threatening to price out all but the wealthy.

"As someone who lived through the tech boom in the '90s and watched countless friends and community members get pushed out of their homes, only for the bubble to disintegrate, this is painful to watch," said Gabriel Haaland, political director for the SEIU Local 1021, the largest union in the city. "Those times are here again."

Last month, when San Francisco Magazine published an article bemoaning tech-driven gentrification, traffic on the magazine's website broke all records.

"It touched on an issue that people have been thinking about for a while," said Jon Steinberg, the magazine's editor.

Conway and Lee make no apologies.

"Tech added 13,000 out of the 25,000 new jobs we created the last couple years, which helped us bring the unemployment rate to the third-lowest in the state," Lee, a Democrat, said in an interview. "We have to work with the new jobs creators, and that's what I believe the public wants me to do."

Conway, who made his name in the 1990s by betting on small, early-stage companies and scoring a huge win with Google, says a key goal of a new civic organization he has started, San Francisco Citizens Initiative for Technology & Innovation, is to provide service jobs in tech for long-term residents and the unemployed.

"It would be great if we could create a few hundred jobs in the $50,000 to $80,000 income bracket," said Conway. "We're here to improve the living conditions for all of San Francisco. That's the responsibility tech wants to take."

ODD COUPLE

Conway and Lee have an exceptionally close relationship, one that has captivated the city's political set even while attracting accusations of favoritism from the mayor's rivals.

The two make an odd couple. Lee was a publicity-shy city bureaucrat and civil rights lawyer for decades before being named caretaker mayor of this Democratic bastion in 2011 after his predecessor was elected lieutenant governor. Conway, until recently a registered Republican, counts Tiger Woods and Henry Kissinger among his investors and considers a start-up tour with Ashton Kutcher in tow just another day's work.

In a city that faces chronic budget deficits even as it enjoys a comparatively strong economy, the relationship is symbiotic. Conway taps his access to Lee to promote his companies, from Twitter to Zynga to Airbnb; Lee persuades Conway to rally tech leaders to help fund the police, the schools, the parks.

Their alliance began only last year. As interim mayor, Lee impressed Conway when he pushed through a tax exemption for Twitter, which had considered moving out of the city to avoid the tax bill that would have resulted from an initial public offering. San Francisco imposes a 1.5 percent payroll tax on local companies, a levy that applies to any gains in an IPO.

When Lee ran for a full four-year term several months later, Conway formed an independent political action committee on his behalf. He rustled up almost $700,000 from the likes of entrepreneur Sean Parker; Zynga CEO Mark Pincus; Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff; venture capitalists John Doerr and Tom Byers; and Credit Suisse banker Bill Brady.

He also enlisted Portal A, a video production outfit consisting of three twentysomething hitmakers, to create a YouTube video that featured rapper MC Hammer, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and San Francisco Giants pitcher Brian Wilson dancing on Conway's rooftop. The clip went viral and effectively drowned out ads from Lee's rivals.

A year later, Conway rated the mayor's performance a "9.5 out of 10."

"I have a tremendous respect for Mayor Lee," he said. "He listens to people. He builds consensus, and that's an improvement from the past."

Conway said he and Lee are "too busy with our day jobs" to socialize frequently. Neither likes to publicly discuss their relationship. But when the mayor turned 60 in May, Lee and his family sat down for a three-hour private dinner with Conway and his wife, Gayle, at an Italian restaurant in North Beach, according to the San Francisco Chronicle's gossip columnists.

For Conway — whose calls to the mayor's office are considered the highest priority, City Hall insiders say — no issue facing his portfolio companies is too insignificant for him to get involved. In one instance this year, after social media company Pinterest moved to San Francisco, Conway pressed officials to repaint curbs to allow employee parking near the start-up's offices, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The city refused; Conway denied that the incident occurred.

While some cities have cracked down on services like Airbnb, which lets residents rent out spare bedrooms and can run afoul of local lodging ordinances, Lee has taken the opposite tack. This year he formed a policy-making group to consider how to regulate and foster such companies, which are part of what's known in Silicon Valley as the "sharing economy."

The mayor has also urged Conway to help city initiatives. Conway recently contributed $100,000 toward a campaign to approve bonds to restore the city's parks, and gave $25,000 to a charity founded by Lee that funds impoverished public schools. When a group of software developers tried recently to create an app that would improve public bus performance but lacked funds for a pilot program, SF Citi stepped in and cut a check.

Lee said he hoped Conway would fill a void left by recently deceased philanthropists such as Gap Inc founder Don Fisher, real estate mogul Walter Shorenstein and private equity investor Warren Hellman.

"The tech guys like Conway usually want to meet presidents and such. You never see them play so deep in local government," said one Democratic fundraiser. "It's unusual."

But the tech world says the headlong plunge into local politics is classic Conway.

"When Ron is passionate about an issue or a company or a person, it's never a secret," said Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. "He's passionate about San Francisco right now, and it's exhibiting itself in the way he helps companies in the city, the way he helps the city. It's fantastic to see."

CHANGING TAX POLICY

Conway says his top priority is passage of the payroll tax reform initiative on November 6.

The measure would tax local businesses based on their gross receipts instead of the size of their payroll, which benefits low-revenue, high-headcount companies like startups. Financial, insurance and real estate companies would see their local taxes rise by 30 percent, while taxes will remain flat for most scientific and technical companies.

Crucially, the measure would also mean that proceeds from an IPO would not be subject to taxes.

Landlords, and to a lesser extent financial services companies, conceded that they had lost their first political fight with the tech industry, but took the long view.

"We knew we were going to be socked in a big way, and we worked early and long and hard with the city for a rate that was fair," said Ken Cleaveland of the Building Owners and Managers Association. "In the end it wasn't in our best interest to fight our tenants."

(Reporting by Gerry Shih; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Douglas Royalty and Dale Hudson)

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Analysis: Employees to face healthcare sticker shock

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Visit to New York City orthopedist: $ 223. One X-ray: $ 50. One follow-up magnetic resonance imaging test: $ 766. Total bill for checking out that aching shoulder: $ 1,039 – all to be paid by the patient, rather than the insurer.

Healthcare has gone retail.

Over the next 18 months, between one quarter and one half of Americans who get insurance coverage through their employers will pay more of their doctor bills themselves as companies roll out healthcare plans with higher deductibles, benefits consultants say. The result: sticker shock.

“They have huge out-of-pocket costs before they get any insurance coverage, it’s a real slap in the face,” said Ron Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a healthcare advocacy group.

High-deductible plans set a threshold for medical expenses that an individual must pay for, often in the thousands of dollars, before insurance kicks in. Studies show people on these plans are three times more likely to delay or skip care than people on traditional plans, where doctor or emergency room visits are covered by a relatively low co-payment.

These plans have been around for years, pushed by employers, insurers and industry experts who believe that consumers with “skin in the game” will drive demand for better quality care at a lower cost. It is a rationale also backed by President Barack Obama‘s Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

But now corporate America’s adoption of high-deductible plans is accelerating, partly because of Obama’s healthcare reform, which requires insurance plans to provide more expansive coverage such as preventive care.

Several industry surveys forecast a two-percentage-point increase in the number of companies offering only high-deductible plans in 2013 to about 19 percent, and a larger jump of anywhere from 5 to 25 percentage points in 2014.

“2013 is almost a calm period before a period of intense change in 2014,” according to Randall Abbott of Towers Watson & Co, a Boston-based senior consulting leader at the human resources firm.

The shift means consumers will have to spend many more hours researching their treatment options and managing costs on websites like Healthcarebluebook.com, which helped budget the cost of examining the shoulder pain mentioned above.

It could also spur lawsuits against doctors whom patients may blame for not making clear whether a test or procedure would spare them future harm, legal experts say.

SKIN IN THE GAME

About 170 million people were covered by employer-based insurance in 2011, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Companies with workers enrolled in high-deductible plans in 2012 include General Electric Co, Wells Fargo & Co, Whole Foods Market Inc, Chrysler Group and American Express Co.

In 2013, Bank of America Corp will offer some employees high-deductible health plans. Smokers who work at the bank will also have to pay higher healthcare premiums than non-smokers.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc, which has 1.1 million people covered by healthcare plans and pays 75 percent of the premium cost for workers, is trimming the number of insurance plans that it offers. It has added “healthcare advisors” who counsel employees on care, and has struck a deal with a group of hospitals that could save money on costly procedures.

Employees are going to pay more at Microsoft Corp as well. The world’s largest software company, which covers 100 percent of insurance premium costs for employees, will next year ask workers to pay for some portion of doctor bills and other services. It has offered high-deductible health plans since 2006 and also funds employees’ health savings accounts.

Deductibles on high-deductible plans start at $ 1,250 for singles and run up to $ 12,500 for families. Once that threshold has been reached, consumers then typically make co-insurance payments, usually a percentage of the service fee.

Insurers such as UnitedHealth Group Inc, Aetna Inc and Cigna Corp are putting prices online to help customers manage their spending.

Cigna, where 2 million of its 12 million members are enrolled in high-deductible plans, is upgrading a software application for mobile devices that can be used in the doctor’s office, hospital or other provider location to help decide where to go for a lab test or cheaper prescription.

“The other thing is, and this is really hard, is to figure out what stuff is necessary and what stuff isn’t,” said Nancy Metcalf, senior program editor at Consumer Reports.

For her, that choice meant that during a check-up she passed on an electrocardiogram, which measures the electric activity or your heart and is not a routinely covered test.

FROM DOCTOR’S OFFICE TO COURT

Critics of this shift say it leaves consumers at the mercy of providers when it comes to medical costs. While insurers have been able to leverage their scale to negotiate rates down, ordinary individuals do not have that clout.

That gap may prove fertile ground to patients waging legal challenges against doctor bills.

Haavi Morreim, a lawyer and professor in the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee, notes that individuals have the legal rights of any customer covered by U.S. contract law, which assumes that there will be a “reasonable charge” for the service.

Two cases based on this notion – one in Indiana filed by a patient against a hospital and another filed in Missouri by a hospital seeking payment from a patient – have reached appeals courts in the past year.

Laws dealing with “informed consent” may also play a role in putting the onus on doctors to clearly disclose costs when explaining treatment options. Doctors may be liable for a breach of fiduciary duty if their healthcare recommendations turn out to be too aligned with their financial interest, Morreim said.

“Courts are beginning to pay increased attention to this because more people are in high-deductible plans and more people are beginning to ask, ‘What does this cost?’” said Morreim, who has written several articles on the issue for law journals.

(Editing by Michele Gershberg, desking by G Crosse)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Reports: UK police arrest Gary Glitter

LONDON (AP) — The sex abuse scandal surrounding the late BBC children’s television host Jimmy Savile widened on Sunday as police arrested former glam rock star and convicted sex offender Gary Glitter in connection with the case, British media said.

Police would not directly identify the suspect arrested Sunday, but media including the BBC and Press Association reported he was the 68-year-old Glitter.

The musician made it big with the crowd-pleasing hit “Rock & Roll (Part 2),” a mostly instrumental anthem that has been a staple at American sporting events thanks to its catchy “hey” chorus. But he fell into disgrace after being convicted on child abuse charges in Britain and Vietnam.

On Sunday, the BBC and Sky News showed footage of Glitter, who wore a hat, a dark coat and sunglasses, being taken from his home by officers and driven away.

British police do not generally identify suspects under arrest by name until they are charged. When asked about Glitter, a spokesman said only that the force arrested a man in his 60s early Sunday morning in London on suspicion of sexual offenses in connection with the Savile probe. He remains in custody in a London police station, police said.

Hundreds of potential victims have come forward since police began their investigation into sex abuse allegations against Savile, the longtime host of popular shows “Top of the Pops” and “Jim’ll Fix It” who died at age 84 last year. Most allege abuse by Savile, but some said they were abused by Savile and others.

Glitter is the first suspect to be arrested in the scandal, which has raised questions about whether the BBC turned a blind eye to the alleged sexual crimes. It was not immediately clear if Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, and Savile knew each other.

Glitter rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of U.K. hits and his look of shiny jumpsuits, silver platform shoes and bouffant wigs, but his music has often been shunned since his abuse convictions. In 2006, the NFL advised its football teams not to use the Glitter version of “Rock and Roll (Part 2)” at games.

Glitter was jailed in Britain in 1999 for possessing child pornography, and convicted in 2006 in Vietnam of committing “obscene acts with children” — offenses involving girls aged 10 and 11. He was deported back to Britain in 2008.

Police have said that though the majority of cases it is investigating related to Savile alone, some involved the entertainer and other, unidentified suspects. In addition, some potential victims who reported abuse by Savile also told police about separate allegations against unidentified men that did not involve the BBC host.

The scandal has horrified Britain with revelations that Savile cajoled and coerced vulnerable teens into having sex with him in his car, in his camper van, and even in dingy dressing rooms on BBC premises.

One witness told the BBC that she once saw Glitter having sex with a schoolgirl in Savile’s dressing room at the broadcaster’s TV center in the 1970s. Glitter has denied the allegations.

On Sunday, the chairman of the BBC Trust said he was committed to finding out the true scale of the scandal to save the broadcaster’s reputation.

“Can it really be the case that no one knew what he was doing? Did some turn a blind eye to criminality? Did some prefer not to follow up their suspicions because of this criminal’s popularity and place in the schedules?” Chris Patten wrote in The Mail on Sunday.

The BBC has set up an independent inquiry into the corporation’s culture and practices in the years Savile worked there. It also launched a separate inquiry into whether its journalists dropped an investigation into the allegations.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Sandy: East Coast braces for epic hurricane, ‘life-threatening’ storm surge

Waves crash into a pier in Nags Head, N.C., Oct. 27, 2012. (Gerry Broome/AP)

"Superstorm." "The Perfect Storm." "Frankenstorm."

Whatever you want to call it, the East Coast is bracing for Hurricane Sandy, a "rare hybrid storm" that is expected to bring a life-threatening storm surge to the mid-Atlantic coast, Long Island Sound and New York harbor, forecasters say, with winds expected to be at or near hurricane force when it makes landfall sometime on Monday.

According to the National Hurricane Center, the Category 1 hurricane was centered about 260 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C., and 395 miles south of New York City early Sunday, carrying maximum sustained winds of 75 mph and moving northeast at 10 mph.

[Slideshow: Latest photos from Hurricane Sandy]

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the immediate, mandatory evacuation for low-lying coastal areas, including Coney Island, the Rockaways, Brighton Beach, Red Hook and some parts of lower Manhattan.

"If you don't evacuate, you're not just putting your own life at risk," Mayor Bloomberg said at a news conference Sunday. "You're endangering first responders who may have to rescue you."

Earlier, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the suspension of all MTA service--including subways, buses, Long Island Railroad and Metro North--beginning at 7 p.m. Sunday. New York City Public Schools will be closed on Monday, the mayor said. City offices and the New York Stock Exchange, however, will be open for business.

[Related: Superstorm could impact 60 million]

Sandy is expected to continue on a parallel path along the mid-Atlantic coast later Sunday before making a sharp turn toward the northwest on Monday--with the Jersey Shore and New York City in its projected path.

But the path is not necessarily the problem.

"Don't get fixated on a particular track," the Associated Press said. "Wherever it hits, the rare behemoth storm inexorably gathering in the eastern U.S. will afflict a third of the country with sheets of rain, high winds and heavy snow."

(Weather.com)

A tropical storm warning has been issued between Cape Fear to Duck, N.C., while hurricane watches and high-wind warnings are in effect from the Carolinas to New England. The hurricane-force winds extend 175 miles from the epicenter of the storm, while tropical storm-force winds extend 520 miles--making Sandy one of the biggest storms to ever hit the East Coast.

"We're looking at impact of greater than 50 to 60 million people," Louis Uccellini, head of environmental prediction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Associated Press.

"The size of this alone, affecting a heavily populated area, is going to be history making," Jeff Masters wrote on the Weather Underground blog.

[Also read: Big storm scrambles presidential race schedules]

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie declared a state of emergency, ordering a shutdown of the state's casinos.

"I can be as cynical as anyone," Christie said on Saturday. "But when the storm comes, if it's as bad as they're predicting, you're going to wish you weren't as cynical as you otherwise might have been."

Similar emergency evacuations were being mulled by state officials in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and even Maine.

"This is not a coastal threat alone," said Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said during a media briefing early Sunday. "This is a very large area."

Forecasters also fear the combination of storm surge, high tide and heavy rain--between 3 and 12 inches in some areas--could be life-threatening for coastal residents.

According to the National Hurricane Center summary, coastal water levels could rise anywhere between 1 and 12 feet from North Carolina to Cape Cod, depending on the timing of the "peak surge." A surge of 6 to 11 feet is forecast for Long Island Sound and Raritan Bay, including New York Harbor.

The storm surge in New York Harbor during Hurricane Irene, forecasters noted, was four feet.

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SAP eyes "long" period of high sales growth: report

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