It is that time of year again when days become longer and nights become shorter, and when the beautiful summer weather calls everyone to enjoy the sun's rays.  Simply being outdoors during the summer months can be quite a pleasure.  But it is also important to take precautions when heading outdoors.

For those with fair skin, being over-exposed to the sun's ultraviolet rays can have harmful effects.  In fact, one in five of us will develop skin cancer in our lifetimes, making it the most common form of cancer in the country.  And as the years go on, this number has only been rising.

But skin isn't the only victim. Long-term exposure to UV rays can also cause immune system suppression and premature aging.

In particular, we need to encourage the young people in our lives to take precautions.  Most Americans receive 50 to 80 percent of their lifetime sun exposure before they reach the age of 18.  Just one or two blistering sunburns in childhood may double the risk of developing melanoma.

Getting some sun exposure does have its benefits, the most important being the direct intake of Vitamin D, helping us to absorb calcium for stronger and healthier bones.  And spending time outdoors has countless advantages as well, such as the development of a more active lifestyle.

But we need to caution our loved ones from spending too much time in the sun and encourage them to take other precautions, such as wearing extra clothing, always wearing sunscreen and wearing a hat.

Here are six basic tips for protecting yourself and your family year round:

• When outdoors, use sunscreens rated SPF 15 or higher.  Apply the lotion liberally, uniformly and frequently.  Make sure the sunscreen you are using is broad-spectrum sunscreen (to filter UVB and UVA rays).
  
  
• Stay out of the midday sun (from 10am to 4pm) whenever you can.  You also should protect yourself from UV radiation reflected by sand, water, snow and ice.  UV radiation can go through light clothing, windshields, windows and clouds.
  
  
• Wear long sleeves and long pants of tightly woven fabrics, a hat with a wide brim and sunglasses that absorb UV.
  
  
• Stay away from sunlamps and tanning booths.
  
  
• Do not sunbathe - period.
  
  
• Teach your children good sun-protection habits at an early age.

The American Cancer Association also provides greats resources to better understand how to protect ourselves.  You can find this information at  http://www.cancer.org.

Being outdoors and enjoying the great Iowa weather is highly encouraged!  Just be careful and remember that simply protecting yourself from the sun's harmful rays can help you live a longer and healthier life.

By: Jane M. Orient, M.D.

http://www.aapsonline.org

All eyes are on the BP gusher in the Gulf, spewing pollution over the shoreline, but there's another big leak that will do even more damage to our economy: the one in the Medicare well.

Ever since 1965, when Medicare was enacted, the federal Treasury has been hemorrhaging dollars. Previously, "10%" was quoted and re-quoted as the amount of fraud. More recently, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) alleged it to be 20%.

Like BP's oil containment dome, previous efforts failed to plug the hole. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars shoveled into the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program (HCFAC) by HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), federal prosecutors say they need still more "resources" and "tools."

Attorney General Eric Holder is looking for people to prosecute for both leaks?which will do nothing to stop the pollution.

Containment efforts in new Medicare rules include requiring doctors to "revalidate" their billing privileges periodically. They'll have to show that their name, address, identifying numbers, and organizational status are exactly as registered. They'll have to give Medicare access to their checking account by electronic funds transfer (EFT) so that it can make immediate "adjustments" in case of overpayment.

The Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act ("ObamaCare") imposes additional screening requirements; some providers will have to be fingerprinted.

Ever-more aggressive private bounty hunters called Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs) are descending on doctors' offices, dissecting claims and patients' records, looking for a missing "bullet point" in the documentation, or an inaccurate digit in the billing code. ObamaCare increases the penalties for errors from $11,000 per item to $50,000. The government's burden of proof, already light, has been further decreased. There is no need to prove any intent to defraud, or even to show that any money was ever collected.

Also, the definition of "fraud" is expanded to include "unnecessary" services, "ineffective" services, or those that don't comply with Medicare requirements.

Prosecutors are making examples of "greedy providers." Dr. Ronald Poulin of Virginia was smeared all over the pages of his local newspaper before being convicted of "fraud"?that previously would have been called billing errors. Pictures of his home were posted on the internet?a nice house, bought with decades of hard work, now seized, along with his cars, his bank accounts, his medical license, his reputation, and his liberty. He sits in jail awaiting assignment to a federal prison.

One less oncologist will be prescribing expensive chemotherapy to cancer patients?and there are other effects that we don't see. Deterrence works. Trying to help sick people is becoming very dangerous.

But will these methods end the fraud? Dr. Kenneth Christman, a past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) (www.aapsonline.org), states that the amount of fraud is actually 100%, because Medicare is a Ponzi scheme. Today's soon-to-be-retiring Baby Boomers have been bilked as surely as Bernie Madoff's investors were, and their "trust fund" is full of internal government IOUs that can be redeemed only by borrowing from a bigger sucker.

Leaving ultimate Medicare reform aside, can we eliminate true billing fraud? Eliminating doctors does eliminate billing?of all types, by those doctors. But organized crime is said to be moving in.

As Malcolm Sparrow pointed out in a book by that title, third-party payment is A License to Steal. Payment is made for a "clean claim," not for a messy service. And despite the government's legal advantages, it takes time to go through the process of destroying doctors. So here's the overnight solution.

Make insurance fraud, like credit-card fraud, self-revealing. Do away with "assignment of benefits," which means paying the "provider." Mail all insurance payments to patients, in the form of a dual-payee check.

Dead or fictitious patients don't cash checks. Real people who did not receive a worthwhile service generally do not pay for it.

Fire the RACs, and put prosecutors to work fighting real crime, not creating crimes from arcane codes.  Restore the natural regulatory system of customers reading understandable bills. Don't put medical dollars into a huge bank vault that criminals can open with computer codes, and the practice of medicine into a bureaucratic prison.

Prisons don't stop leaks.

http://www.aapsonline.org

IOWA, June 1 ? To reach its goal of educating 1 million Americans about CPR during CPR Week (June 1-7), the American Heart Association is calling on a new audience -- teens.

"We are reaching out to teens to create the next generation of lifesavers," said Michael Sayre, M.D., chairman of the American Heart Association's Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee. "Teens can learn how to save lives and play an important role by setting an example for their friends, families and neighbors about the need for CPR and AED training -- and they can encourage the adults in their lives to learn CPR."

During CPR Week, the association will increase awareness about CPR and automated external defibrillators (AEDs) so more people will know the simple steps to save a life if someone suddenly collapses from cardiac arrest.

Anyone - teen or adult - can help the association reach its goal by:

· Playing the "Be the Beat" educational game or watching the Hands-Only CPR video at cprweek.org

· Taking a classroom-based course. To find a course, go to americanheart.org/cpr and click on the ECC Class Connector.

· Training on CPR Anytime, a self-directed, at-home CPR kit.  Kits can be ordered at cpranytime.org

Once people have learned about CPR via traditional instructor-led training or a CPR Anytime kit, they can log their experience at CPRweek.org. People who play the educational game or watch the Hands-Only video on the CPR Week site will be automatically counted toward the goal. A real-time heat map will track the number of people who have taken action in communities nationwide.

The association recently expanded its outreach to teens with Be the Beat, a program that encourages teens to learn what to do when someone collapses from cardiac arrest. Visitors to BeTheBeat.heart.org learn the basics of CPR and how to use an AED through a series of video games and interactive quizzes. There's also a playlist of 100-beat-per-minute songs to set the right pace for chest compressions.

Sudden cardiac arrest can strike anyone, anywhere. And when it does, a victim's survival depends on the people around them.  Skilled emergency personnel treat about 300,000 victims of out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest in the United States, but more than 92 percent of people who suffer cardiac arrest outside the hospital die from it.

Training more people to perform CPR - in its 50th year as a lifesaving measure -- increases survival by enabling more possible bystanders to handle an emergency.  Less than one-third of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims receive CPR from a bystander.  Without immediate CPR, the chance of surviving out-of-hospital cardiac arrest drops up to 10 percent for each minute that passes without defibrillation.  This means that by the time EMS personnel arrive on the scene it could be too late.

"CPR and AED training are critical to saving lives," Sayre said. "CPR Week is one way we hope to increase awareness about cardiac arrest as a significant health problem and get teens and adults to take action so more lives can be saved."

For more information about CPR Week, visit CPRweek.org.

WASHINGTON - May 20, 2010 - Senator Chuck Grassley said today that changes proposed today by the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, to its conflict of interest policies for federally funded medical research would be an important step in the right direction.

The NIH has drafted new regulations in response to investigations by Grassley and others that showed that researchers failed to accurately disclose their financial relationships with industry.  The proposal announced today is now open for public comment for 60 days under the federal rulemaking process.

"Disclosure of financial relationships and the resulting accountability have been sorely lacking in federally sponsored research," Grassley said.  "I've worked for greater transparency through legislative reform and administrative changes.  I've urged the NIH to flex its muscle and use the power of its grants, which are prestigious and sizeable, to bring about transparency.  Enforcement of current requirements has been lax, and the federal agency has failed to send a message to grantees that accountability in this area matters."  The NIH awards approximately $24 billion a year in grants for medical research.