Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

___

Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

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Man sought to videotape girlfriend's murder for Christmas, DA says

A south Orange County man who solicited his ex-girlfriend's murder and asked that the killing be videotaped so he could watch it on Christmas was sentenced Thursday to 31 years to life in state prison.

Mark Alan Jarosik, a Ladera Ranch resident, was in custody at the time of the murder solicitation, being held on suspicion of raping his former girlfriend.

Jarosik, 46, was found guilty in October of forcible rape, solicitation to commit murder and attempted murder with premeditation and deliberation, according to the Orange County district attorney's office.

Prosecutors said Jarosik went to the Ladera Ranch home of his 41-year-old ex-girlfriend in May 2009 to use her computer. They had broken up a month before, after living together and dating for several years.

The woman was at dinner with friends and when she returned, prosecutors said, the two got into an argument. The woman allegedly thought Jarosik had been spying on her, driving past the restaurant where she had been having dinner.

Prosecutors said the argument escalated into a physical and sexual assault, with Jarosik raping the woman.

On May 16, 2009, the incident was reported to law enforcement, and within days, prosecutors had filed rape charges. Jarosik was held in lieu of $100,000 bail. 

A protective order was issued requiring him -- should he make bail -- to stay more than 200 yards away from the woman at all times and forbidding any contact, directly or through a third party.

But after he posted bail, prosecutors said, Jarosik attempted to break into the woman's home. The woman's two children saw a hand come through a window near the front door of the house and screamed, and Jarosik fled.

The next morning, prosecutors said, Jarosik violated the protective order, attacking the woman outside her home. He pushed her to the ground, punched her in the face and banged her head against the curb, according to prosecutors.

Neighbors who witnessed the attack pulled Jarosik off of her, called authorities and pinned him down until police arrived. The woman was left in serious condition with a concussion and lacerations to the head.

While he was in custody at the Orange County Jail, prosecutors said, Jarosik asked another inmate to have a relative murder the woman, requesting that he have it videotaped.

The solicitation was never carried out.

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Photo: Mark Alan Jarosik. Credit: Orange County District Attorney.

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Chinese Court Said to Punish Tibetan Students with Prison Terms

BEIJING — A Chinese court has sentenced eight Tibetan students to prison for their role in street protests last month that unnerved security forces already coping with a wave of self-immolations, many of them by young people who have become increasingly radicalized in their opposition to Chinese policies in the region, a Washington-based advocacy group reported on Wednesday.

According to the group, the International Campaign for Tibet, the students, from a predominantly Tibetan part of Qinghai Province, were sentenced to five-year terms on Dec. 5 for organizing demonstrations in response to government booklets that vilified the self-immolators and disparaged the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader.

The group said news of the verdicts was based on a Tibetan exile with contacts in the region. Local government officials reached by telephone on Thursday declined to comment.

Word of the trials and convictions comes amid a growing crisis for Beijing as it tries to stop the surge in self-immolations that began more than two years ago. So far, nearly 100 people in Tibetan areas of the country have set themselves on fire, nearly a third of them since November. The majority have been in their teens and 20s.

The authorities have responded harshly, locking down some monasteries, requiring Buddhist monks to attend “political education” classes and issuing new regulations that criminalize any act seen as encouraging the protests. Earlier this week, the official Xinhua news agency said a Tibetan monk and his nephew had been detained for their role in eight self-immolations.

The student demonstrations in Tsolho Prefecture, known in Chinese as Hainan, began late last month after the authorities distributed the pamphlets. Infuriated by several passages, students from the Tsolho Professional Training School marched to a government building chanting slogans that called for “freedom” and Tibetan language rights, according to Radio Free Asia.

At one point, some protesters burned the pamphlets, drawing a violent response from paramilitary police who arrested a number of participants. “They beat up the students, hurled tear gas at them and there was also some kind of explosive used on the student crowd,” according to an account published by Radio Free Asia, quoting a local source. More than 20 students were injured, several critically, the report said.

Although the literature was designed in part to convince local students to support bilingual education, it also took aim at the Dalai Lama, calling him a “political itinerant who wants to split the Chinese Motherland.” It also described the self-immolators as puppets controlled by “foreign imperialist forces.”

Kate Saunders, communications director for the International Campaign for Tibet, said such protests, including a series of student-led demonstrations last month in a nearby city, Rebkong, underscored the intense antipathy young people feel toward Chinese educational policies, which often emphasize Mandarin over Tibetan.

“This is a new political moment in Tibet, with a new generation prepared to directly confront the authorities despite the risks,” Ms. Saunders said. “But it seems the authorities have no strategy other than oppression and as we can see it is not working.”

She said that at least 18 students from the school remained in police custody in addition to three monks who have been accused of sending news of the protests to the outside world.

Mia Li contributed research

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Lidl Christmas dinner offer goes viral on Twitter

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Discount retailer Lidl faces a 200,000-euro ($ 260,000) Christmas dinner bill after an offer of chicken vol-au-vents and ice cream cake for the poor went viral.

The supermarket launched a Twitter campaign in Belgium on Monday, saying it would hand out five four-course Christmas dinners to food banks for each tweet on a hash tag.

Lidl had expected to hand out about 1,000 of the 20-euro dinner packs, consisting of tomato soup, vol-au-vents with chips, an ice-cream cake and chocolates, a spokesman for the German-based company’s Belgium unit said on Wednesday.

But local newspapers wrote about the offer and people retweeted using the hash tag – #luxevooriedereen, Dutch for “luxury for everyone”.

By the end of the 24-hour campaign, 1,500 people had tweeted, meaning Lidl has to deliver 7,500 dinners. That sparked reports the supermarket had been caught out by its campaign.

To quash such talk, Lidl rounded up the number of dinners to 10,000, and branded the campaign a success.

Lidl said it had not yet decided whether to repeat the exercise next year.

“We’ve learnt quite a few lessons over the past 48 hours, to say the least,” the spokesman said.

($ 1 = 0.7693 euros)

(Reporting By Ben Deighton. Editing By Sebastian Moffett.)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Stephen Fishbach Blogs About Lisa Whelchel's End-Game Survivor Strategy

TV Watch

Survivor

By Stephen Fishbach

12/13/2012 at 11:45 AM EST

Stephen Fishbach and Lisa Whelchel

Monty Brinton/CBS (2)

"You're going to want to show that either you were the top villain or the top hero or the top something. You're going to want to show you had the gameplay to get you there, and you even turned on your own to get you there. That is the game."
– Rupert Boneham, Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains

Oh, Lisa. I don't know why week to week I let you toy with my heart the way you do.

Almost every episode, Lisa announces her Survivor coming-out. She's been passive – but she's finally ready to take control of her destiny and make a big move. Tonight. Seriously. Right now.

Except it never quite comes together. The wrong person wins immunity or the right person makes a heartfelt appeal. "I could've played a great game," Lisa told her brother last week, channeling Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront.

Lisa's excuse for not voting out Denise is that she's thinking about whom she wants to sit next to at the final tribal. And I know how hard those last few days can be.

The challenge of the end-game is that group decision-making gets shunted aside for individual decision-making. You need to think about what's best for you, not what's best for your alliance. Your erstwhile allies are making the same calculations.

Every tiny decision has impossibly complex repercussions. Skupin says it best: "Everything matters so much when you get down to the end game like this. And you have to consider every scenario if you want to come out on top."

Just track Lisa's thought process. She wants to sit at the end with Abi. But if she keeps Abi instead of Denise this week, Malcolm will be likelier to take Abi instead of her next week, because Denise is more threatening to Malcolm. Malcolm and Denise are likely to turn on each other, as they're each other's biggest competition for jury votes. So by keeping Denise, Lisa basically ensures that she and Skupin will make the finals. Get all that?

The problem with Lisa's thinking is that she's devised a foolproof plan to get to the end – and a foolproof plan to lose. Sure, either Denise or Malcolm will be gone. But then the other one will still be there to rake in the million. So Lisa and Skupin are guaranteed to make final tribal ... along with someone who's sure to beat them.

Lisa wins an anti-Fishy for her inaction. By taking out Denise, Lisa could give herself at least a shot of making it to the final three with Abi, and without a jury threat.

She might actually have been a contender.

Rupert Boneham on Survivor Juries
I asked America's favorite player, Rupert Boneham, for his insight into what the jurors are thinking while they contemplate who to crown Sole Survivor. Rupert has served on more juries than any other contestants – on Pearl Islands, All Stars and Heroes vs. Villains. He recently ran for governor in Indiana; now, he's once again mentoring Rupert's Kids.

Do juries have a favorite going in?
Almost everyone in the jury goes in with the idea of who they hate least. It's usually not a favorite as much as who you are least mad at.

Does the final tribal actually change the vote?Final tribal can change jury members' votes. I've seen it work both ways. If you are good at explaining why you did what you did in the game, I have seen jury members change their opinion about you in the middle of tribal council. The same way, when you are pitiful at answering questions, I have seen people lose votes for their answers.

Do jurors affect each others' opinions at Ponderosa?
At the Ponderosa, you are able to talk and interact with each other. But, when you start trying to influence votes, you can be sequestered in your own little area away from everyone else. The producers don't actively police the jury, but will respond to complaints.

Note: Other jurors dispute the Ponderosa sequester.

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Dozens sue pharmacy, but compensation uncertain

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Dennis O'Brien rubs his head as he details ailments triggered by the fungal meningitis he developed after a series of steroid shots in his neck: nausea, vomiting, dizziness, drowsiness, blurred vision, exhaustion and trouble with his speech and attention.

He estimates the disease has cost him and his wife thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses and her lost wages, including time spent on 6-hour round trip weekly visits to the hospital. They've filed a lawsuit seeking $4 million in damages from the Massachusetts pharmacy that supplied the steroid injections, but it could take years for them to get any money back and they may never get enough to cover their expenses. The same is true for dozens of others who have sued the New England Compounding Center.

"I don't have a life anymore. My life is a meningitis life," the 59-year-old former school teacher said, adding that he's grateful he survived.

His is one of at least 50 federal lawsuits in nine states that have been filed against NECC, and more are being filed in state courts every day. More than 500 people have gotten sick after receiving injections prepared by the pharmacy.

The lawsuits allege that NECC negligently produced a defective and dangerous product and seek millions to repay families for the death of spouses, physically painful recoveries, lost wages and mental and emotional suffering. Thirty-seven people have died in the outbreak.

"The truth is the chance of recovering damages from NECC is extremely low," said John Day, a Nashville attorney who represents several patients who have been sickened by fungal meningitis.

To streamline the process, attorneys on both sides are asking to have a single judge preside over the pretrial and discovery phases for all of the federal lawsuits.

This approach, called multidistrict litigation, would prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings and conserve resources of all parties. But unlike a class-action case, those lawsuits would eventually be returned to judges in their original district for trial, according to Brian Fitzpatrick, a law professor at Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville.

Even with this approach, Fitzpatrick noted that federal litigation is very slow, and gathering all the evidence, records and depositions during the discovery phase could take months or years.

"Most of the time what happens is once they are consolidated for pretrial proceedings, there is a settlement, a global settlement between all the lawyers and the defendants before anything is shipped back for trial," he said.

A lawyer representing NECC, Frederick H. Fern, described the consolidation process as an important step.

"A Boston venue is probably the best scenario," Fern said in an email. "That's where the parties, witnesses and documents are located, and where the acts subject to these complaints occurred."

Complicating efforts to recover damages, attorneys for the patients said, NECC is a small private company that has now recalled all its products and laid off its workers. The company's pharmacy licenses have been surrendered, and it's unclear whether NECC had adequate liability insurance.

Fern said NECC has insurance, but they were still determining what the policy covers.

But Day says, "It's clear to me that at the end of the day, NECC is not going to have sufficient assets to compensate any of these people, not even 1 percent."

As a result, many attorneys are seeking compensation from other parties. Among the additional defendants named in lawsuits are NECC pharmacist and co-founder Barry Cadden; co-founder Greg Conigliaro; sister company Ameridose and its marketing and support arm, Medical Sales Management.

Founded in 2006 by Cadden and Conigliaro, Ameridose would eventually report annual revenue of $100 million. An NECC spokesman didn't respond to a request for the pharmacy's revenue.

While Federal Drug Administration regulators have also found contamination issues at Westborough, Mass.-based Ameridose, the FDA has said it has not connected Ameridose drugs to infection or illness.

Under tort law, a lawsuit has to prove a defendant has a potential liability, which in this case could be anyone involved in the medical procedure. However, any such suit could take years and ultimately may not be successful.

"I would not be surprised if doctors, hospitals, people that actually injected the drugs, the people that bought the drugs from the compounding company, many of those people will also be sued," said Fitzpatrick.

Plaintiffs' attorneys said they're considering that option but want more information on the relationships between the compounding pharmacy and the hundreds of hospitals and clinics that received its products.

Day, the attorney in Tennessee, said the clinics and doctors that purchase their drugs from compounding pharmacies or manufacturers could be held liable for negligence because they are in a better position to determine the safety of the medicine than the patients.

"Did they use due care in determining from whom to buy these drugs?" Day said.

Terry Dawes, a Michigan attorney who has filed at least 10 federal lawsuits in the case, said in traditional product liability cases, a pharmaceutical distributor could be liable.

"We are looking at any conceivable sources of recovery for our clients including pharmaceutical supply places that may have dealt with this company in the past," he said.

Ten years ago, seven fungal meningitis illnesses and deaths were linked to injectable steroid from a South Carolina compounding pharmacy. That resulted in fewer than a dozen lawsuits, a scale much smaller than the litigations mounting up against NECC.

Two companies that insured the South Carolina pharmacy and its operators tried unsuccessfully to deny payouts. An appellate court ruled against their argument that the pharmacy willfully violated state regulations by making multiple vials of the drug without specific prescriptions, but the opinion was unpublished and doesn't set a precedent for the current litigation.

The lawsuits represent a way for patients and their families recover expenses, but also to hold the pharmacy and others accountable for the incalculable emotional and physical toll of the disease.

A binder of snapshots shows what life is like in the O'Briens' rural Fentress County, Tenn., home: Dennis hooked up to an IV, Dennis in an antibiotics stupor, bruises on his body from injections and blood tests. He's had three spinal taps. His 11-day stay in the hospital cost over $100,000, which was covered by health insurance.

His wife said she sometimes quietly checks at night to see whether her husband of 35 years is still breathing.

"In my mind, I thought we were going to fight this and get over it. But we are not ever going to get over it," said Kaye O'Brien.

Marjorie Norwood, a 59-year-old grandmother of three who lives in Ethridge, Tenn., has spent just shy of two months total in the hospital in Nashville battling fungal meningitis after receiving a steroid injection in her back. She was allowed to come home for almost a week around Thanksgiving, but was readmitted after her symptoms worsened.

Family members are still dealing with much uncertainty about her recovery, but they have not filed a lawsuit, said their attorney Mark Chalos. He said Norwood will likely be sent to a rehabilitation facility after her second stay in the hospital rather than return home again.

Marjorie Norwood's husband, an autoworker, has taken time off work to care for her and they depend on his income and insurance.

"It doesn't just change her life, it changes everyone else's life around her because we care about her and want her to be happy and well and have everything that she needs," said her daughter, Melanie Norwood.

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'Evil' actor killed college students, girlfriend says

A woman authorities say helped her then-fiance after he allegedly killed two people said at a news conference Tuesday night that she is "completely innocent."

Rachel Mae Buffett, 25, addressed the media at her brother's Long
Beach wine bar flanked by her brothers, sister and mother. She declared
her innocence and vowed to assist Costa Mesa police in their ongoing
investigation into the May 2010 killings of two Orange Coast College
students.

"I will meet them anywhere, anytime," Buffett said. "I'm very compliant."

Police and prosecutors have said that Buffett helped her then-fiance
Daniel Patrick Wozniak, 28, after he killed Samuel Herr, 26,
his neighbor in the Camden Martinique apartments, and Herr's friend and
tutor Juri "Julie" Kibuishi, 23. Authorities say Buffett lied to police
after the slayings, telling police Herr had family problems when he did not.

Authorities said that Herr was killed at a Los Alamitos military base and later dismembered,
and that Kibuishi was killed at Herr's apartment, her body
positioned in such a way to make authorities believe she had been sexually
assaulted.

In a previous interview with the Daily Pilot from jail, Buffett described both victims as "so sweet" and said she continues to grieve for them.

"I'm really sorry such evil has occurred," Buffett said.

In addressing the charges facing her former fiance, Buffett said: "I'm glad that I don't have to do the sentencing.

"I think that they're very justified in going for the death penalty," Buffett said.

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Cheikh Modibo Diarra, Mali’s Prime Minister, Resigns After Arrest

BAMAKO, Mali — Soldiers arrested Mali’s prime minister at his residence late Monday night, signaling new turmoil in a West African nation racked by military interference and an Islamist takeover in the north.

Associated Press

Prime Minister Cheikh Modibo Diarra appeared on state television and announced his government’s resignation on Tuesday.

Hours later, Prime Minister Cheikh Modibo Diarra appeared grim-faced on national television to announce his government’s resignation. A spokesman for soldiers who seized power earlier in the year — and later nominally relinquished it to Mr. Diarra — confirmed the prime minister’s arrest on Tuesday morning, accusing him of “playing a personal agenda” while the country faced a crisis in the north. The soldiers arrived at Mr. Diarra’s home around 11 p.m. Monday as he was preparing for a flight to Paris for a medical checkup, said the military spokesman, Bakary Mariko. The prime minister was taken to the military encampment at Kati, just outside Bamako, the capital, where Capt. Amadou Sanogo, the officer who led the March military coup, and others told him “there were proofs against him that he was calling for subversion,” Mr. Mariko said.

On Tuesday morning, the streets of Bamako appeared calm following what appeared to be the country’s second coup d’état in less than a year. But the new upheaval is likely to be considered a setback to Western efforts to help Mali regain control of territory lost to Qaeda-linked militants earlier in the year.

The West has watched with growing alarm as Islamist radicals have constructed a stronghold in the country’s vast north. The United Nations, regional African bodies, France and the United States have tried to aid the faltering Malian Army in a military strike to take back the lost north. Those efforts have so far not coalesced into a coherent plan, despite numerous meetings and United Nations resolutions. More meetings at the United Nations are planned for later this month.

The latest political turmoil in the capital will almost certainly slow down any campaign in the north, however. Already, the United States has expressed reluctance to provide too much direct military assistance, given the shakiness of the political order here. Those doubts are only likely to increase following the latest upheaval.

Mr. Diarra — appointed last spring as a caretaker prime minister until new elections could be organized — was known to disagree with Captain Sanogo on military policy.

He has been an advocate of immediate international military assistance to recapture the north from the Islamists. Captain Sanogo has rebuffed suggestions that the Malian military is incapable of handling the job on its own. Indeed, the captain for weeks resisted the notion that troops from other African nations should even approach the capital.

While Mr. Diarra has made the rounds of foreign capitals, pleading for help to fight the increasingly aggressive Islamists, military leaders have remained at the Kati base, grumbling.

That conflict was evident in the declarations of the military’s spokesman on Tuesday. “Since he has been in power, he has been working simply to position his own family,” Mr. Mariko said. “There has been a paralysis in government.”

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WebMD to cut 14 percent of workforce to reduce expenses

(Reuters) – Health information website WebMD Health Corp said it will cut around 250 jobs, or 14 percent of its workforce, to reduce costs.

The company, which had about 1700 employees according to Thomson Reuters data, said it would take a charge of about $ 6 million to $ 8 million in the fourth quarter, primarily on severance and other restructuring-related costs.

WebMD, which is a popular and long-trusted destination for checking health and disease related information, has lost its sheen for investors in recent times as it struggled to convert its growing user base into a steady revenue stream.

The company named a former Pfizer Inc executive Cavan Redmond as CEO earlier this year, entrusting the industry veteran with the task of reviving the website’s flagging business.

Its previous CEO, Wayne Gattinella, resigned after the company took itself off the auction block in January.

WebMD also said on Tuesday that it plans to streamline its operations and focus resources on increasing user engagement, customer satisfaction and innovation, and expects these efforts to reduce annualized operating expenses by about $ 45 million.

While most of the job cuts will be effective at the end of the year, other cost saving actions will be implemented in the first quarter of 2013, the company said in a statement.

The company reported a third-quarter loss in November, compared with a profit in the year-ago quarter, and said revenue fell 13 percent.

WebMD’s shares, which have lost nearly 40 percent of their value over the past six months, were down about 2 percent in premarket trade. They closed at $ 13.85 on Monday on the Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore; Editing by Roshni Menon)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Camille Grammer: Kelsey Won't Let My Kids Say My Name in His House

By Tim Nudd

12/11/2012 at 11:35 AM EST

From left: Camille Grammer, Rosanna Scotto and Anderson Cooper

Kelsey and Camille Grammer's bitter split has led to a fragile co-parenting relationship that Camille says is all but broken – marred by an almost complete lack of communication made even worse, she claims, by a weird rule Kelsey has at his home.

"They're not allowed to same my name in the house," the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star, 44, says in an interview airing Tuesday on Anderson Live. "These poor kids, my daughter and my son, can't say my name in their father's house."

"I think they can say 'Mom' or 'The other household,' " she adds. "But they can't say my name. They can't say 'Camille.' "

She says she consulted her lawyers to see if she could do anything about it. "I said, 'What's my recourse in this? What do I do as a parent?' " she says. "It must be stressful for them to not be able to say their mother's name. But there is no recourse because we already settled our custody."

A rep for Kelsey had no comment on the claims.

Co-Parenting a Struggle

More generally, Camille says co-parenting daughter Mason, 11, and son Jude, 8, is a daily struggle – mostly, she claims, because she wants to be amicable about things and Kelsey doesn't.

"It's very difficult to co-parent with somebody that won't speak to you, text you or email you," she says. "I've reached out to him. I think it's very important to be amicable to raise children, and he refuses to. There's just so much I can do at this point."

Asked how they do communicate, she replies: "It's usually through lawyers. So, we are spending a fortune just to try to co-parent, which is ridiculous."

Elsewhere in the interview, Camille says she and Kelsey are still not officially divorced – even though they split in 2010, and he has since married Kayte Walsh – because, she claims, he still hasn't signed the papers.

"Release me! Set me free!" she says. "You're married; you have a child. We are going to meet before a judge again very soon, so hopefully this time it will be over."

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