| House Democrats to unveil health bill

House-Democrats-to-unveil-health-bill WASHINGTON -

House Democrats reached agreement Wednesday on key elements of a health care bill that would vastly alter Americas medical landscape, requiring virtually universal sign-ups and offering a new government-run insurance option for millions.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi planned a formal announcement Thursday morning in front of the Capitol. Lawmakers said the legislation could be up for a vote on the House floor next week.

The rollout will cap months of arduous negotiations to bridge differences between liberal and moderate Democrats and blend health care overhaul bills passed by three separate committees over the summer. The developments in the House came as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., tried to round up support among moderate Democrats for his bill, which includes a modified government insurance option that states could opt out of.

Reid met Wednesday with Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who faces a potentially tough re-election next year.

The final product in the House, reflecting many of President Barack Obamas priorities, includes new requirements for employers to offer insurance to their workers or face penalties, fines on Americans who dont purchase coverage and subsidies to help lower-income people do so. Insurance companies would face new prohibitions against charging much more to older people or denying coverage to people with health conditions.

Bill tops $1 trillion over 10 years
Pelosi has also said the bill would strip the health insurance industry of a long-standing exemption from antitrust laws covering market allocation, price fixing and bid rigging.

The price tag, topping $1 trillion over 10 years, would be paid for by taxing high-income people and cutting some $500 billion in payments to Medicare providers. The legislation would extend health coverage to around 95 percent of Americans.

Im pretty confident that weve got the right pieces in place, said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, one of the three panels involved in writing the bill. We can quibble over parts of it, but the fact is when youre taking a 60-year-old system that grew up in a rather haphazard fashion and youre trying to bring some coherence to it, these are sort of the things you have to do at the beginning of that process.

Plenty of work remains to be done before a bill could land on Obamas desk — and theres still no guarantee that Congress can complete the legislation before years end, as the president wants. If Obama does sign a health overhaul bill, he will have bucked decades of failed attempts by past administrations, most recently by former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

House leaders want to begin debate on their bill next week, with the aim of finishing before Veterans Day, Nov. 11. The Senate is aiming to start debate sometime in the next several weeks.

Bills passed by the House and Senate would have to be merged before a final product could be sent to Obama, and there are a number of differences between the two chambers that would have to be reconciled. Among them are the different approaches to the public plan — the House does not include the opt-out provision for states; more stringent requirements for employers in the House bill; and a tax on high-value insurance plans that the Senate uses to pay for the bill but thats absent from the House version.

In the end, Pelosi, D-Calif., and other House leaders were unable to round up the necessary votes for their preferred version of the government insurance plan — one that would base payment rates to providers on rates paid by Medicare. Instead, the Health and Human Services secretary would negotiate rates with providers, the approach preferred by moderates and the one that will be featured in the Senates version.

That marked a defeat for liberal lawmakers, who argued for months that a public insurance plan tied to Medicare would save more money for the government, and offer cheaper rates to consumers. Moderates feared that doctors, hospitals and other providers, particularly those in rural states, would be hurt, and in the end they looked poised to prevail, despite constituting a distinct minority in the 256-member House Democratic caucus.

‘We were laughed at in August’
Some liberals were prepared to accept the negotiated rate structure. Others were still withholding support, even while pointing to Reids inclusion of a government insurance plan in the Senate bill as a victory in itself.

We were laughed at in August. Who would have thought that the Senate bill would have a public option? said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Woolsey was noncommittal about whether progressives would accept the negotiated rates. This is not walkaway time and it is not acceptance time, Woolsey said.

Members of the progressive caucus, along with lawmakers from the black and Hispanic caucuses, were scheduled to meet with Obama at the White House on Thursday, she said.

The legislation would set up a new purchasing exchange where small businesses and individuals without affordable health care options could shop for and compare insurance plans. The new public plan would be one offered in the exchange, and it would be optional; an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office of early versions of the bill said that the public plan would be expected to cover 9 million to 10 million people by 2019.

The House plan also envisions a significant expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for low income people.

Democratic leaders still faced disputes over prohibiting taxpayer money for abortions and health care for illegal immigrants, issues they hoped to resolve after the bills unveiling.

- | House Democrats to unveil health bill |

| EBay holiday outlook disappoints shares down

EBay-holiday-outlook-disappoints,-shares-down

SAN FRANCISCO –
EBay Inc forecast results for the current quarter at the low end of Wall Street estimates, disappointing hopes of a substantial turnaround for the holidays and pushing shares down 5 percent.

Investors had warmed to the idea of a comeback by the global e-commerce and payments company, which is overhauling its main marketplaces division. Since January, the company's stock had shot up 79 percent after years of languishing.

But its forecast on Wednesday put a dent in that confidence, suggesting a fix for eBay would come more slowly.

For the fourth quarter, eBay sees adjusted earnings to range between 38 cents to 40 cents per share. Wall Street had been expecting 40 cents per share.

EBay expects fourth-quarter revenues to range between $2.20 billion to $2.30 billion, versus Wall Street's estimate of $2.57 billion. Some of the shortfall comes from its plans to sell control of Web telephone company Skype, in a deal expected to close in the coming weeks.

"EBay has a long history of providing very conservative guidance and then breaking it, but people were hoping for evidence of much more recovery," said Bernstein Research's Jeffrey Lindsay.

EBay also faces a fierce price war among retailers on- and off-line during the holidays. Wal-Mart Stores Inc pledged on Wednesday "hundreds of millions of dollars" in price cuts each week, pressuring shares in its rivals from Amazon.com Inc to Safeway Inc .

EBAY POINTS TO EARLY IMPROVEMENTS

The company said it was cautiously optimistic as the holiday season approaches and pointed to signs of improvement, including stronger-than-expected gross merchandise volume, which measures the dollar amount of all goods sold on eBay.

"EBay has stabilized and is beginning to show some positive trends," said Chief Executive John Donahoe. "Simply put we're seeing our turnaround efforts begin to pay off."

Fixed-price, gross merchandise volume grew 37 percent in the quarter, eBay said. The company has been concentrating on fixed-price sales, which consumers find convenient, and moving away from auctions, where GMV declined 12 percent.

EBay, which also owns online payments service PayPal, said third-quarter net profit fell to $350 million, or 27 cents per share, from $492 million, or 38 cents per share, a year earlier.

On an adjusted basis, earnings were 38 cents per share, a penny above the average analyst forecast, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue was $2.2 billion, the San Jose, California-based company said, compared to the Wall Street expectation of $2.14 billion. In the marketplaces division, revenues fell 1 percent. They rose 15 percent at PayPal and 29 percent at Skype.

Last month a group led by top Internet financiers agreed to buy a 65 percent stake in Skype for $1.9 billion. Skype's founders are suing eBay and the investor group.

EBay shares fell to $23.66 after-hours from its close of $25.03.

- | EBay holiday outlook disappoints shares down |

| Caterpillar 3Q profit drops 53 pct on weaker sales

Caterpillar-3Q-profit-drops-53-pct-on-weaker-sales -Caterpillar said Tuesday its third-quarter profit tumbled 53 percent as customers bought fewer of its bulldozers and other yellow-and-black machines.
But the company said the latest quarter was its low point in the recession and raised its profit outlook for 2009. It also expects higher demand next year.
Sales in the third quarter slid 44 percent to $7.30 billion.
The worlds largest maker of construction and mining equipment has struggled with lower demand since the world economy worsened late last year. Lower prices for commodities such as iron ore, a key steel ingredient, have undercut orders for its giant mining trucks. A battered housing market also has eaten into the companys sales.
Caterpillar has responded by dramatically cutting production and laying off thousands of workers. Analysts say renewed demand from developing countries such as China and Brazil, a weaker dollar that makes the companys products less expensive in overseas markets and rising commodity prices could brighten Caterpillars prospects next year.
The company boosted its 2009 profit forecast to a range of $1.10 per share to $1.30 per share compared with an earlier forecast of 40 cent to $1.50 per share. And it expects 2010 sales to rise 10 percent to 25 percent compared with the midpoint of 2009, partly due to dealers using up their stockpiles of Caterpillar products.
Caterpillar said it earned $404 million, or 64 cents per share, during the July-September period. That compares with $868 million, or $1.39 per share, during the same period a year earlier.
Shares of the Peoria, Ill.-based company rose $2.85, or nearly 5 percent, to $60.70 in pre-market trading. - | Caterpillar 3Q profit drops 53 pct on weaker sales |

| Battling breast cancer made her stronger

Battling-breast-cancer-made-her-stronger When Michelle Eskengren-Brown was in the shower one evening in March 2008, she noticed a large lump on the underside of her right breast. It was odd, she thought, but she wasn’t especially concerned. At 38, Eskengren-Brown, a former model from Sweden who had become a successful New York City casting director and the mother of two young sons, was in sturdy good health. Breast cancer was so far from her mind that she waited almost a week before consulting her doctor.

Her physician examined the lump “and said it was way too big to be anything,” Eskengren-Brown recalls. “She told me it was probably because I drank too much coffee” — usually three cups a day — “which I thought was hysterical. But of course I was very accepting. ‘Yes! I drink too much coffee! Get me out of here!’” Still, she says, her doctor added, “You know what? Just go and have a mammogram and get it over with, just to feel comfortable that it was nothing.”

And so, on April 3, 2008, a reluctant Eskengren- Brown found herself sitting in a mammography office following her screening, waiting for her name to be called so that she could receive her results and leave. “They called names and names and names.... I was sitting there thinking, Oh my God, I have to get back to the office! What is going on here? It was irritating.”

Finally, her turn came, “and they said, ‘You have to come back into the room and do more pictures.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I’m not doing that.’ And they said, ‘You have to.’ So they did mammos, and then they did a sonogram, and then all the doctors kept coming in. And then this one girl handed me a box of tissues, and I was like, ‘What? What do you want me to do with these tissues?’”

Though the doctors told Eskengren-Brown that the lump in her breast looked suspicious and warranted a biopsy, she didn’t reach for the Kleenex. Instead, she headed back to her office and promptly resumed work after telling her husband the news. Today, she thinks her intense focus was not so much an extraordinary ability to compartmentalize, but simply disbelief that what she’d learned at the mammography office could be true.

The doctors’ assessment was confirmed by a biopsy several days later: infiltrating ductal carcinoma, a cancer that forms in the ducts that carry milk to the nipple. Ductal carcinoma is the most common form of breast cancer, making up about 70 percent to 80 percent of all breast cancers. The infiltrating form can quickly spread to other parts of the body, so doctors recommend surgery.

Despite the diagnosis, Eskengren-Brown was still so deep in denial that when meeting her surgeon for the first time, she says, “I still was very optimistic that it was nothing. Finally the surgeon said, ‘Michelle, I’m a breast cancer surgeon. What do you think you’re doing here?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe you’re checking my results?’”

As a woman in her 30s, Eskengren-Brown had only a 1-in-233 chance of having breast cancer, according to data from the National Cancer Institute; for women in their 20s, the chances are far lower. But breast cancers in younger women are often faster-growing and thus more aggressive, says Kathie-Ann P. Joseph, medical director of Women at Risk at Columbia University Medical Center. Detection in young women is relatively tricky, says Julia A. Smith, director of the breast cancer screening program at the New York University Cancer Institute. Premenopausal women have denser breasts, with a higher percentage of glandular tissue than fat, she explains; the X-rays of mammography don’t penetrate dense tissue, making the images there less clear. MRIs can be an additional test to help the screening process in high-risk patients, Joseph says, but these scans aren’t considered an alternative to mammograms on their own; their extreme sensitivity can result in a high rate of false positives.

Upon learning that she had breast cancer, Eskengren-Brown says, “I just shut down.” For months, she says, she went into a kind of emotional cocoon, numb to the world. Her husband, Ray, a photographers’ representative, and a handful of close friends shuttled her to and from doctors’ offices and helped her determine her course of treatment; her friend Faith Kates Kogan, president of the Next Model Agency and of the board of directors of the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, provided introductions to sought-after local cancer specialists.

At one point, Eskengren-Brown’s husband asked her doctor what she would recommend if Eskengren-Brown were her own daughter. “A mastectomy” was the answer, and so, less than three weeks after her mammogram, Eskengren-Brown went to Mount Sinai Medical Center to have her right breast removed. Two months after that, she underwent the first of four chemotherapy sessions, each three weeks apart, to reduce the chance of the disease affecting her other breast.

I didn’t even look the doctors in the eye. I couldn’t,” Eskengren-Brown says. “That was my way of dealing.” A self-described “control freak,” she was used to being on top of all the details of a bustling New York life. “But then I discovered that there are two types of cancer patients,” she says. “There’s the one that takes control and needs to talk to the doctors and understand — they want to see pictures, and they want to know what they’re doing in their breast. And then there’s the person that shuts down, and that’s me.”

Eskengren-Brown focused her energy on her work — she scheduled castings around her chemotherapy sessions and says that she completed her biggest job yet, an advertising campaign for Elizabeth Arden, while she was undergoing treatment. Eskengren-Brown’s two boys — Markus, then three years old, and Alex, then five — never knew their mother was sick or struggling in any way, never even heard the word “cancer,” a fact their mother reveals with pride.

“I didn’t care what did to me; I just wanted my kids to be OK. There are times when you’re so tired, you’re so sore, and you’ve got pouches of blood you have to drain,” Eskengren-Brown says, referring to the drains that are installed after a mastectomy to prevent buildup of fluids where the tissue was removed. “But you still have to be a mom. You still have to put them to bed and cuddle them. So I think that was the hardest thing. I could deal with a lot of stuff, but I could not deal with the idea that they’d be affected.”

Change in hairstyle
Eskengren-Brown began cutting her long, brown hair in radically different ways before beginning chemotherapy, aiming to make its side effects less alarming for her boys. She cut it shoulder-length, then very short, and then bleached it blonde. It’s an idea she now recommends to other mothers undergoing cancer treatment when they have young children. “Kids want their mom to be just the way she is; they don’t want her to change,” she explains. “So it gets them used to just a bit more change than usual. Then, when the hair falls out, it’s just another crazy thing that Mom did.”

Eskengren-Brown says that her hair loss from chemotherapy — which led her to wear a blonde wig — was much more unnerving than she had anticipated. “I thought it would be a walk in the park to lose the hair, but it was the hardest thing,” she says. Her hair would fall out in clumps, and she dreaded the thought of that happening in front of the models she worked with: “I’m surrounded by beautiful people .. .to go from having long, beautiful hair to not having hair was more of an identity crisis than losing my breast.”

Her mastectomy did worry her, though, especially the prospect of losing the nipple on her right breast. Her doctors believed that it was unlikely to survive the procedure and that a large scar would be left in its place. She was told the likelihood of being able to spare her nipple was about 2 percent, but she begged her doctors to try. She says, “For me to have one nipple and one not-nipple would not be acceptable for me, because then my boys would ask, ‘Why isn’t there a nipple there?’ Or, ‘Why does that nipple look weird?’”

During Eskengren-Brown’s mastectomy, her surgeon carefully removed her nipple, scraped away the tissue behind it, and then reattached it. “Sometimes they sew it back on and then it dies, so you have to have another surgery to remove it,” Eskengren-Brown explains. But in her case, she says happily, “it’s just, like, a perfect nipple, and they did such a wonderful job, and any surgeon or doctor that looks at it, they can’t believe it. The scars are just minimal.” Last November, she had another surgery to receive a silicone breast implant, and the result is “more beautiful than my other breast,” she says.

Because her cancer was hormone receptor positive, involving breast cancer cells that grow in response to estrogen, Eskengren-Brown is taking the estrogen-blocking drug Tamoxifen for five years to help prevent recurrence. She began to get her period when she was 10 years old and has suffered from endometriosis since the age of 13, both of which suggest that high levels of estrogen were cycling through her body; before her diagnosis, she had never been told that these things could put her at higher risk. “Estrogen is one of the drivers of breast cancer,” Smith says, noting that “every month, the breast is exposed” to the hormone during the menstrual cycle. She adds that estrogen is stored in body fat, and since exercise and weight management reduce the percentage of fat, they’re thought to decrease risk, although this link hasn’t been firmly established.

Researchers are still investigating other contributors to breast cancer, including the potential role of diet in preventing or prompting its development. For now, alcohol consumption has consistently been implicated. A 2009 study from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that with each additional alcoholic drink that women consume per day, their risk of breast cancer increases by 12 percent. But folic acid appears to counteract this effect, other research has shown; the recommended daily amount, 400 micrograms, is available in a multivitamin. As for coffee, there is no link between caffeine consumption and breast cancer, according to a large, 22-year study by researchers affiliated with Harvard University.

Now, many months after her treatment and recovery, Eskengren-Brown is friendly, funny, and seemingly in ideal health. With her cropped hair pinned back — “It’s still short, but I have hair,” she says — she is as effortlessly pretty as the teenage model she once was.

“Today, I don’t mind talking,” she says, adding that she loves speaking with people who have just found out that they have breast cancer. “I need to tell them that everything’s going to be OK.”

Her recovery inspired her to take up fencing, tennis, and golf to get back in shape. After her implant surgery, she found that fencing helped dispel fear about her fragile-seeming new breast, since “the attack of the foil is supposed to go straight to one’s chest. I freaked out in my first class, but soon got used to the idea and realized how much it actually helped me in the healing process.”

She credits her cancer experience with putting her job into perspective. “Work used to stress me out so much — but now I will say, ‘Stop!’” she says. “If I look at myself today and a year ago, I like the person I see today much better,” she attests. “I feel I am stronger, more confident, more patient, more understanding, but most important: I’m here.”

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| SC retiree wins $260 million Powerball

S.C.-retiree-wins-$260-million-Powerball COLUMBIA, S.C. - A retired South Carolina state employee who spent two bucks on the lottery was all smiles Tuesday as he claimed a $260 million Powerball jackpot. For once in my life, I really experienced the old saying, pinch me to see if Im still alive, or if this is real, Solomon Jackson Jr. said.

South Carolina Education Lottery officials say the Powerball jackpot is the largest ever won with a ticket bought in the state, which has the nations fifth-highest unemployment rate. Powerball is played in 30 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Jackson, a lifelong Columbia resident, shared few details about himself or his plans for the money. He did say he is married and has 10 siblings, though he would not say how many children he has or give his age.

He also did not say whether he will take his winnings in yearly payments over three decades or in a $129 million lump sum, which would work out to about $88 million after taxes.

He did reveal he had been an assistant supervisor for the state Revenue Department until taking early retirement in 2000 and using his free time to return to school to get a degree from Midlands Technical College.

It is a beautiful day for education, Jackson said. I said, Well, why cant I throw $2 at the lottery, to help education? Come to find out, I did not need $2 to win, so I wasted a dollar. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.

Jackson, who said he has played the lottery before, appeared at a claims center in Columbia on Tuesday with I.S. Leevy Johnson, an attorney whose wife taught Jackson in high school and said he has known the man for years. But Johnson said he was still somewhat taken aback when he fielded Jacksons call Monday.

He said to me, Mr. Johnson, I want to talk to you about something. And being a criminal defense lawyer, I said, Oh Lord, Johnson said. We matched the numbers up, and we learned that truly he was a winner.

Jackson picked up the only ticket that matched all the winning numbers for the Aug. 19 drawing — 14, 24, 31, 43 and 51, with a Powerball of 27 and a multiplier of 5 — at a Columbia gas station after shopping at a nearby Walmart. He says he wont let his winnings affect who he is, only dropping hints that eventually someone else will benefit from his good fortune.

Im already retired, Ive already got a good income, and God has blessed me, so I wont do a bunch with it, Jackson said with a smile. But somebodys going to be blessed.

Lottery officials say Jacksons chances of winning were one in 195 million.

Thats a lot of people, he said. And yet, little ol me, of all the people. 

- | SC retiree wins $260 million Powerball |

| Serve the best of August: Tomatoes and peaches

Serve-the-best-of-August:-Tomatoes-and-peaches Sliced Peaches and Heirloom Tomato Salad The Scottos of Fresco by Scotto Restaurant in New York - | Serve the best of August: Tomatoes and peaches |

| Pope holds Mass for thousands near Prague

Pope-holds-Mass-for-thousands-near-Prague STARA BOLESLAV, Czech Republic - Pope Benedict XVI held an open-air Mass on Monday for at least 40,000 cheering faithful who packed a meadow as the pontiff wrapped up a three-day visit to the Czech Republic.

The 82-year-old pope first made a stop in Stara Boleslav, 15 miles northeast of Prague, to bless relics at a shrine to St. Wenceslas. The countrys patron saint was murdered by his pagan brother at the gate to a church in 935 A.D.

Benedict then rode in his bulletproof popemobile through a sea of flag-waving pilgrims to a nearby field for the Mass, which was to be followed with a special message to young people. The Vatican said 40,000 people turned out; Czech organizers put the crowd estimate at 50,000.

The German-born pope will lunch with Czech bishops in Prague before returning to Rome later Monday.

His visit, which began Saturday, came as the heavily secular country prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of the overthrow of a communist regime that ruthlessly persecuted believers and confiscated church property.

Broadens message
Although his overall reception has been tepid, with no posters or billboards announcing the trip, an estimated 120,000 cheering pilgrims greeted Benedict at an open-air Mass on Sunday in the southern city of Brno, a Catholic stronghold.

There, the pope broadened his message to all of Europe, appealing to people across the continent to remember their Christian heritage.

Before dawn Monday, the faithful were streaming to Stara Boleslav, and by 8 a.m. there were already 15,000 people crowding a field and huddling together to ward off the morning chill. Some came from nearby Austria, Germany, Poland and Slovakia.

Its the first time Ill see the Holy Father, said Lukas Jasa, 21, who traveled with friends from the eastern Czech Republic — more than 200 miles — to glimpse the pope.

Its important for us to show that were not just an atheist nation and that there are believers here, he said.

The Czech Republic is one of the most secular countries in Europe.

In 1991, 4.5 million of the countrys 10 million people said they belonged to a church, but a 2001 census showed that number had plunged to 3.3 million. Recent surveys suggest the number of believers remains low; about one in two respondents to a poll conducted by the agency STEM said they dont believe in God.

‘A hard time’
Benedict has used his pilgrimage to recall the evils of communist-era religious repression and to coax indifferent Czechs back to the church.

In November, Czechs will mark two decades since their 1989 Velvet Revolution peacefully shook off decades of communist rule.

Anna Bozkova, 76, said the popes visit comes at a hard time.

Everybody can feel it, she said. is welcomed in all other states. Faith was common for my generation. It survived the communist era. We were marginalized, but we maintained our faith because its strong.

The pope, who has been giving his speeches in either English or Italian, is making his first foreign trip since he broke his right wrist in a fall while on vacation in July. He told reporters aboard his plane that he is finally able to write again and hopes to complete a new book by next spring.

More on: Pope Benedict XVI | Czech Republic

- | Pope holds Mass for thousands near Prague |