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Renuka Rayasam | (TNS) KFF Health News In April, just 12 weeks into her pregnancy, Kathleen Clark was standing at the receptionist window of her OB-GYN’s office when she was asked to pay $960, the total the office estimated she would owe after she delivered. Clark, 39, was shocked that she was asked to pay that amount during this second prenatal visit. Normally, patients receive the bill after insurance has paid its part, and for pregnant women that’s usually only when the pregnancy ends. It would be months before the office filed the claim with her health insurer. Clark said she felt stuck. The Cleveland, Tennessee, obstetrics practice was affiliated with a birthing center where she wanted to deliver. Plus, she and her husband had been wanting to have a baby for a long time. And Clark was emotional, because just weeks earlier her mother had died. “You’re standing there at the window, and there’s people all around, and you’re trying to be really nice,” recalled Clark, through tears. “So, I paid it.” On online baby message boards and other social media forums , pregnant women say they are being asked by their providers to pay out-of-pocket fees earlier than expected. The practice is legal, but patient advocacy groups call it unethical. Medical providers argue that asking for payment up front ensures they get compensated for their services. How frequently this happens is hard to track because it is considered a private transaction between the provider and the patient. Therefore, the payments are not recorded in insurance claims data and are not studied by researchers. Patients, medical billing experts, and patient advocates say the billing practice causes unexpected anxiety at a time of already heightened stress and financial pressure. Estimates can sometimes be higher than what a patient might ultimately owe and force people to fight for refunds if they miscarry or the amount paid was higher than the final bill. Up-front payments also create hurdles for women who may want to switch providers if they are unhappy with their care. In some cases, they may cause women to forgo prenatal care altogether, especially in places where few other maternity care options exist. It’s “holding their treatment hostage,” said Caitlin Donovan, a senior director at the Patient Advocate Foundation . Medical billing and women’s health experts believe OB-GYN offices adopted the practice to manage the high cost of maternity care and the way it is billed for in the U.S. When a pregnancy ends, OB-GYNs typically file a single insurance claim for routine prenatal care, labor, delivery, and, often, postpartum care. That practice of bundling all maternity care into one billing code began three decades ago, said Lisa Satterfield, senior director of health and payment policy at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists . But such bundled billing has become outdated, she said. Previously, pregnant patients had been subject to copayments for each prenatal visit, which might lead them to skip crucial appointments to save money. But the Affordable Care Act now requires all commercial insurers to fully cover certain prenatal services. Plus, it’s become more common for pregnant women to switch providers, or have different providers handle prenatal care, labor, and delivery — especially in rural areas where patient transfers are common. Some providers say prepayments allow them to spread out one-time payments over the course of the pregnancy to ensure that they are compensated for the care they do provide, even if they don’t ultimately deliver the baby. “You have people who, unfortunately, are not getting paid for the work that they do,” said Pamela Boatner, who works as a midwife in a Georgia hospital. While she believes women should receive pregnancy care regardless of their ability to pay, she also understands that some providers want to make sure their bill isn’t ignored after the baby is delivered. New parents might be overloaded with hospital bills and the costs of caring for a new child, and they may lack income if a parent isn’t working, Boatner said. In the U.S., having a baby can be expensive. People who obtain health insurance through large employers pay an average of nearly $3,000 out-of-pocket for pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care, according to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker . In addition, many people are opting for high-deductible health insurance plans, leaving them to shoulder a larger share of the costs. Of the 100 million U.S. people with health care debt, 12% attribute at least some of it to maternity care, according to a 2022 KFF poll . Families need time to save money for the high costs of pregnancy, childbirth, and child care, especially if they lack paid maternity leave, said Joy Burkhard , CEO of the Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health, a Los Angeles-based policy think tank. Asking them to prepay “is another gut punch,” she said. “What if you don’t have the money? Do you put it on credit cards and hope your credit card goes through?” Calculating the final costs of childbirth depends on multiple factors, such as the timing of the pregnancy , plan benefits, and health complications, said Erin Duffy , a health policy researcher at the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. The final bill for the patient is unclear until a health plan decides how much of the claim it will cover, she said. But sometimes the option to wait for the insurer is taken away. During Jamie Daw’s first pregnancy in 2020, her OB-GYN accepted her refusal to pay in advance because Daw wanted to see the final bill. But in 2023, during her second pregnancy, a private midwifery practice in New York told her that since she had a high-deductible plan, it was mandatory to pay $2,000 spread out with monthly payments. Daw, a health policy researcher at Columbia University, delivered in September 2023 and got a refund check that November for $640 to cover the difference between the estimate and the final bill. “I study health insurance,” she said. “But, as most of us know, it’s so complicated when you’re really living it.” While the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover some prenatal services, it doesn’t prohibit providers from sending their final bill to patients early. It would be a challenge politically and practically for state and federal governments to attempt to regulate the timing of the payment request, said Sabrina Corlette , a co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. Medical lobbying groups are powerful and contracts between insurers and medical providers are proprietary. Because of the legal gray area, Lacy Marshall , an insurance broker at Rapha Health and Life in Texas, advises clients to ask their insurer if they can refuse to prepay their deductible. Some insurance plans prohibit providers in their network from requiring payment up front. If the insurer says they can refuse to pay up front, Marshall said, she tells clients to get established with a practice before declining to pay, so that the provider can’t refuse treatment. Related Articles Health | Which health insurance plan may be right for you? Health | California case is the first confirmed bird flu infection in a US child Health | Your cool black kitchenware could be slowly poisoning you, study says. Here’s what to do Health | Does fluoride cause cancer, IQ loss, and more? Fact-checking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims Health | US towns plunge into debates about fluoride in water Clark said she met her insurance deductible after paying for genetic testing, extra ultrasounds, and other services out of her health care flexible spending account. Then she called her OB-GYN’s office and asked for a refund. “I got my spine back,” said Clark, who had previously worked at a health insurer and a medical office. She got an initial check for about half the $960 she originally paid. In August, Clark was sent to the hospital after her blood pressure spiked. A high-risk pregnancy specialist — not her original OB-GYN practice — delivered her son, Peter, prematurely via emergency cesarean section at 30 weeks. It was only after she resolved most of the bills from the delivery that she received the rest of her refund from the other OB-GYN practice. This final check came in October, just days after Clark brought Peter home from the hospital, and after multiple calls to the office. She said it all added stress to an already stressful period. “Why am I having to pay the price as a patient?” she said. “I’m just trying to have a baby.” ©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.By Sheila Dang and Krystal Hu (Reuters) – U.S. billionaire businessman Frank McCourt is crafting a fundamental overhaul of TikTok’s business model as part of a plan to bid for the Chinese-owned short-form video app, he told Reuters. McCourt, who formerly owned the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, said he has received verbal funding commitments totaling $20 billion from a consortium of investors to rescue the app from legal purgatory as it awaits a Supreme Court decision to determine if it will be forced to sell its U.S. operations. His vision for TikTok includes revamping the company’s advertising model so that users will have control over the ads and type of content they want to see. Over time, TikTok could earn revenue through ecommerce and licensing data for artificial intelligence training models – with users’ consent – which will diminish the business’ reliance on ads. “When you give permission for your data to be used and you receive compensation, it’s flipping this 180 degrees and giving the user the power,” McCourt said this week. The plan faces several hurdles, including TikTok’s repeated assertions that it cannot be divested from its owner, Chinese tech firm ByteDance. McCourt said the bid for TikTok would exclude the algorithm that determines the content that users see, in order to reduce complications for ByteDance. The Chinese government in 2020 added content recommendation algorithms to its export-control list, requiring a divestiture or sale of TikTok’s algorithm to go through its administrative licensing procedures. TikTok’s appeal to the Supreme Court is a last-ditch effort to overturn a law signed by U.S. President Joe Biden that seeks to force a sale over national security concerns, or else the app will be banned on Jan. 19. McCourt said he believes the Supreme Court will uphold the law, after which ByteDance could be open to negotiations. Until then, he is focused on smoothing the path to an acquisition. McCourt said he and his team have had “preliminary conversations” with members of President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration. Trump tried to ban TikTok in 2020 but has since reversed his view, saying on Dec. 16 that he has “a warm spot in my heart for TikTok.” A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to a request for comment. The team is also speaking with potential CEO candidates for the new TikTok, McCourt said. One source familiar with the matter said the team approached V. Pappas, TikTok’s former chief operating officer. Pappas did not respond to a request for comment. McCourt declined to name who he is speaking with for the CEO role. The plan for TikTok will also include migrating its technology onto an open-source protocol developed by Project Liberty, an organization founded by McCourt. The protocol would allow users to control their data and easily move it elsewhere on the internet. The plan is influencing the search for a CEO. “This is both a big project to scale the technology that we’ve built, but it is also a vision for a better internet. We’re talking to people who share that vision and have the capacity and skills to do both,” McCourt said. (Reporting by Sheila Dang in Austin and Krystal Hu in Toronto, additional reporting by Katie Paul in New York; editing by Kenneth Li and Richard Chang) Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content. var ytflag = 0;var myListener = function() {document.removeEventListener('mousemove', myListener, false);lazyloadmyframes();};document.addEventListener('mousemove', myListener, false);window.addEventListener('scroll', function() {if (ytflag == 0) {lazyloadmyframes();ytflag = 1;}});function lazyloadmyframes() {var ytv = document.getElementsByClassName("klazyiframe");for (var i = 0; i < ytv.length; i++) {ytv[i].src = ytv[i].getAttribute('data-src');}} Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Δ document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() );InGaAs Detector Market Forecasted for Strong Growth from 2024 to 2032kijiji medicine hat 。

NEW YORK — A slide for market superstar Nvidia on Monday knocked Wall Street off its big rally and helped drag U.S. stock indexes down from their records. The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 0.6%, coming off its 57th all-time high of the year so far. The Dow Jones industrial average dipped 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite pulled back 0.6% from its own record. Nvidia’s fall of 2.5% was by far the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 after China said it’s investigating the company over suspected violations of Chinese anti-monopoly laws. Nvidia has skyrocketed to become one of Wall Street’s most valuable companies because its chips are driving much of the world’s move into artificial-intelligence technology. That gives its stock’s movements more sway on the S&P 500 than nearly every other. Nvidia’s drop overshadowed gains in Hong Kong and for Chinese stocks trading in the United States on hopes that China will deliver more stimulus for the world’s second-largest economy. Roughly 3 in 7 of the stocks in the S&P 500 also rose. The week’s highlight for Wall Street will arrive midweek, when the latest updates on inflation arrive. Economists expect Wednesday’s report to show the inflation that U.S. consumers are feeling remained stuck at close to last month’s level. A separate report Thursday, meanwhile, could show an acceleration in inflation at the wholesale level. They’re the last big pieces of data the Federal Reserve will get before its meeting next week on interest rates. The widespread expectation is still that the central bank will cut its main interest rate for the third time this year. The Fed has been easing its main interest rate from a two-decade high since September to offer more help for the slowing job market, after bringing inflation nearly all the way down to its 2% target. Lower interest rates can ease the brakes off the economy, but they can also offer more fuel for inflation. Expectations for a series of cuts from the Fed have been a major reason the S&P 500 has set so many all-time highs this year. “Investors should enjoy this rally while it lasts — there’s little on the horizon to disrupt the momentum through year-end,” said Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide, though he warns stocks could stumble soon because of how overheated they’ve gotten. On Wall Street, Interpublic Group rose 3.6% after rival Omnicom said it would buy the marketing and communications firm in an all-stock deal. The pair had combined revenue of $25.6 billion last year. Omnicom, meanwhile, sank 10.2%. Macy’s climbed 1.8% after an activist investor, Barington Capital Group, called on the retailer to buy back at least $2 billion of its own stock over the next three years and make other moves to help boost its share price. Super Micro Computer rose 0.5% after saying it got an extension that will keep its stock listed on the Nasdaq through Feb. 25, as it works to file its delayed annual report and other required financial statements. This month, the maker of servers used in artificial-intelligence technology said an investigation found no evidence of misconduct by its management or by the company’s board after the resignation of its public auditor. All told, the S&P 500 fell 37.42 points to 6,052.85. The Dow dipped 240.59 points to 44,401.93, and the Nasdaq composite lost 123.08 points to close at 19,736.69. In the oil market, a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude rallied 1.7% to $68.37 after the overthrow of Syrian leader Bashar Assad, who sought asylum in Moscow. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 1.4% to $72.14 per barrel. The price of gold also rose 1% to $2,685.80 per ounce amid the uncertainty created by the end of the Assad family’s 50 years of iron rule. In stock markets abroad, the Hang Seng jumped 2.8% in Hong Kong after top Chinese leaders agreed on a “moderately loose” monetary policy for the world’s second-largest economy. That’s a shift away from a more cautious, “prudent” stance for the first time in 10 years. A major planning meeting this week could also bring more stimulus for the Chinese economy. U.S.-listed stocks of several Chinese companies climbed, including a 12.4% jump for electric-vehicle company Nio and a 7.4% rise for Alibaba Group. Stocks in Shanghai, though, were roughly flat. In Seoul, South Korea’s Kospi slumped 2.8% as the fallout continues from President Yoon Suk Yeol’s brief declaration of martial law last week in the midst of a budget dispute. In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.19% from 4.15% late Friday. Choe writes for the Associated Press. AP business writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.Chelsea striker Nicolas Jackson mesmerised his teammates with his outfit choice as he returned from the international break The 23-year-old tapped into his African culture by rocking unique all-white attire paired with black half-shoes He is expected to be in action when the Blues take on Leicester City in Saturday's early kickoff in the Premier League Don't miss out! Join Legit.ng's Sports News channel on WhatsApp now! Nicolas Jackson brought a touch of African elegance to Chelsea’s Cobham training ground as he returned from international duty. The Senegalese striker, who has been a pivotal figure for the team this season, turned heads with his distinctive attire, celebrating his heritage with style. Jackson rocks kaftan to Chelsea training Dressed in an all-white kaftan paired with sleek black shoes, Jackson carried a matching white purse, exuding confidence as he rejoined his club teammates. PAY ATTENTION: Follow us on Instagram - get the most important news directly in your favourite app! His bold choice sparked curiosity, with Moisés Caicedo light-heartedly asking, “What’s that?”. In response, Jackson playfully replied, “You don’t like it?” before explaining his penchant for standing out. Read also "I'm going to live until 100": Ronaldo talks about longevity with YouTube King Mr Beast While many of his colleagues opted for high-end designer labels like Gucci, the 23-year-old proudly showcased African culture, making a statement beyond the pitch. The focus now shifts back to football , where Jackson will aim to end a two-match goal drought as Chelsea prepare to face Leicester City at the King Power Stadium on Saturday, November 23, as noted by Sports Mole . With six Premier League goals to his name, the former Villarreal star stands as the Blues' second-highest scorer this term. Rediscovering his scoring form will be key as the Blues look to maintain momentum in the league. Chelsea currently sit in third position behind Manchester City and Liverpool on the Premier League table. Jackson turns heads with vibrant shirt In an earlier report, Legit.ng highlighted Nicolas Jackson's striking appearance at the Chelsea edition of London Fashion Week. Read also Atalanta icon names what makes Ademola Lookman special ahead of CAF awards The 23-year-old forward turned heads wearing a vibrant Hakuna Matata-themed shirt during the Cobham showcase. The Swahili phrase "no worries" gained global fame through the Lion King soundtrack, composed by Elton John. Jackson’s fashion statement quickly became a trending topic. PAY ATTENTION : Legit.ng Needs Your Opinion! That's your chance to change your favourite news media. Fill in a short questionnaire Source: YEN.com.gh

Pay first, deliver later: Some women are being asked to prepay for their babyUSRA Mourns the Loss of Dr. Berrien Moore III, a Distinguished Member of the Board of Trustees

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The Atlanta Hawks are officially back to being must-watch basketball. Fresh off a stunning come-from-behind victory over the Chicago Bulls—highlighted by an explosive 50-point fourth quarter—the national spotlight is beginning to shine on this team’s potential. Fred Katz of The Athletic recently spotlighted some Hawks players in the early-season NBA awards conversation. Dyson Daniels earned a mention in the Defensive Player of the Year race, while both De’Andre Hunter and Jalen Johnson were listed as contenders for the Most Improved Player award. “Could a perimeter player vault to the spot behind Wembanyama? Defensive Player of the Year is usually reserved for big men, but Dyson Daniels might have something to say about that. Daniels is getting steals on 4.4 percent of his possessions, the highest steal rate for any player since Tony Allen in 2010-11. He has 72 more deflections than De’Aaron Fox , who is second in the league. For reference, that’s the same difference as the one between Fox and 147th place. Daniels isn’t just a gambler. He’s a pest on the ball. Dribblers can’t jolt past him. As long as he keeps performing like this, he’s a lock for All-Defense, but he has two main knocks against him,” Katz writes. Daniels has been a complete and total revelation for an Atlanta Hawks club that has struggled on the defensive end of the court with Trae Young in the fold. However, as Katz continues, Wembanyama’s impact far exceeds Daniels’ own contributions for the Hawks. “First, a perimeter player can’t affect team defense like a big man can. And second (which may just be further proof of the previous point), the Hawks are actually better defensively with Daniels off the court. And that’s not just because Daniels plays many of his minutes alongside the defensively challenged Trae Young . When Daniels is on the court and Young is off, the Hawks defense is a sieve,” the national pundit continued. Katz continued with the two most improved player candidates, Hunter and Johnson. “De’Andre Hunter is another player who’s hitting jumpers like never before, though he’s developed in other ways, too. He’s getting to the line more than ever. Hunter used to avoid contact. Now he finishes through it, a big sticking point for Hawks head coach Quin Snyder,” he wrote. Hunter should be in the running for Sixth Man of the Year and MIP. He’s averaging a career-high 20.3 points on the most efficient shooting of his career, 48.5% from the field and an incredible 44% from beyond the arc. Hunter has found his niche and has an excellent chance of taking home the Sixth Man of the Year award. “Another Hawk, Jalen Johnson , should be on the list. Atlanta has handed more opportunities to Johnson this season, who is a better facilitator than ever. He’s never created his own shot this much and has never set up teammates like this. The Hawks offense is not just the Young show anymore. And Johnson is putting up the counting stats we normally associate with winners of this award: 19.4 points, 10.1 rebounds and 5.6 assists. He might be an All-Star this season.” There’s no doubt that JJ deserves to be considered the frontrunner for the MIP award. The Hawks forward can impact the game in so many different ways, from offense to defense to the transition game. He can rebound, defend, facilitate and score. Jalen Johnson deserves MIP consideration, but even more, the former lottery pick deserves All-Star consideration. This article first appeared on SportsTalkATL and was syndicated with permission.