Lovely & Sexy

Pink Sequin Perfect Pink Undies Victoria's Secret

Pink Sequined Converse

Pink Sequined Converse

Saturday: Kelly Rowland Spotted in Versace For H&M

 I love Kelly Rowland’s style. Whoever helps style her does an amazing job with her looks! She was recently out & about prancing around in a cute pink tee,leggings and Versace for H&M studded leather jacket. The soft leather crop jacket retails for $299. She looks too Pinktastic! She definitely deserves to be my Pinktastic Saturday for the week!

Make pseudoephedrine available only by prescription and see what effect it has on methamphetamine making, editorial argues

The 2012 General Assembly should make the cold medicine pseudoephedrine available only by prescription  to see if that curbs methamphetamine production, an editorial in the Lexington Herald-Leader argues.

The editorial notes the plan of Democratic Rep. Linda Belcher, D-Shepherdsville, to file another bill to require a prescription for pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient in meth, but with some changes. "Medicines in the form of gel caps would be excluded from the prescription requirement because it's hard to extract the precursors from gel caps," the editorial says. "Also, the requirement would sunset in three years to give everyone a chance to assess its effects and give Kentuckians a chance to adjust to the 130 cold and allergy medicines that cannot be put to use in meth labs."

Rep. Brent Yonts, D-Greenville, said recently that he wants to tackle the problem in another way,  blocking meth-related offenders from being able to buy pseudoephedrine unless they have a prescription. "Unfortunately, there's no reason to think that Yonts' bill would make a dent in methamphetamine production," the editorial reads. "Meth cookers could find plenty of 'smurfers' who have no criminal records to make the buys." (Read more)

Federal cuts, financial instability and competition leave many rural hospitals fearing the future

Many rural hospitals could be forced to close because of cuts to the Critical Access Program and the fact that, according to the National Rural Health Association, , 41 percent of critical-care hospitals are losing money, reports Jenny Gold of Kaiser Health News. This would be devastating to many rural communities, with a great impact felt by low-income and elderly residents. "A small hospital is often one of the biggest employers in a rural town, and closures 'can have an outsized economic impact,'" Eric Zimmerman, a health care lawyer and Washington lobbyist, told Gold.

More than 1,300 U.S. hospitals and nearly one in four acute-care facilities are designated as "critical access," giving them slightly higher Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements in return for limits on care they can provide. Many such hospitals like Hood Memorial, about an hour outside New Orleans, are dealing with uninsured patients, inability to collect payments from patients, and fewer funds from federal and state agencies, Gold reports. Many of these hospitals "tend to provide lower quality care" and are "less financially efficient than other facilities, according to a 2010 study published in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. Hood, for example, had $700,000 in losses last year despite the higher reimbursements. "It's a lot of variables, and all of them right now are working against us," CEO Hoppie Jones told Gold.

To prevent closures of rural hospitals and ensure "Americans in in isolated areas would still have access to health care," the federal government started the critical access program in 1997. To qualify, hospitals had to have 25 or fewer beds and be at least 35 miles away from another facility. However, states could waive the distance requirement, and many did, leaving hospitals like Hood with at least four other competing hospitals "within a 26 mile radius," Gold reports.