NATION/WORLD
Thursday, December 22, 2016
East Oregonian
Page 7A
Obamacare holding its own,
6.4 million signed up so far
Associated Press
Mark Henle/The Arizona Republic via AP
Margaret Baudinet, right, is congratulated on the birth of her quintuplets by Santa
Claus, Wednesday at the St. Joseph’s Nursery Intensive Care Unit in Phoenix. Look-
ing on is Margaret’s husband, Michael Baudinet. The babies were born at 32 weeks,
with weights ranging from 3 to 4 pounds.
After worry, joy arrives
Quintuplets born
against the odds
By JACQUES BILLEAUD
Associated Press
PHOENIX — The new
mother of quintuplets kept
her excitement in check for
the first six months of her
pregnancy — even putting
off setting up a nursery.
But Margaret Baudinet
could finally take a sigh of
relief after a team of Phoenix
doctors delivered five early
Christmas presents, all
wrapped in hospital blankets.
Baudinet
and
her
husband Michael welcomed
four girls and one boy on
Dec. 4 at Dignity Health
St. Joseph’s Hospital and
Medical Center.
The Virginia couple
temporarily
moved
to
Arizona to be closer to Dr.
John Elliott, a specialist in
multiple-birth pregnancies.
She said it wasn’t until
she was discharged from the
hospital that her fear of things
going wrong had lifted.
“I have a very odd rela-
tionship with hope,” she said
Wednesday at the hospital,
where Santa Claus stopped
by to see the quintuplets.
Friends and family in
Mark Henle/The Arizona Republic via AP
Luke Baudinet, one of a set of quintuplets recently
born, rests at the St. Joseph’s Nursery Intensive Care
Unit, Wednesday.
Virginia have prepared the
nursery for Baudinet, who
plans to return next month
with her five healthy babies.
The children, all of whom
weighed a little more than
3 pounds at birth, were
delivered within 17 minutes
with the help of a team of 24
medical professionals that
included two anesthesiolo-
gist, three surgeons, and 15
employees from an intensive
care unit.
“It takes a lot of people
doing their job correctly,”
Elliott said.
Dr. William Chavira,
who assisted in the delivery,
said things went smoothly
because the team was
prepared. “It was pretty much
a routine cesarean section,”
Chavira quipped, “except
that instead of one baby, it
was like a clown car. They
just kept coming — one, two,
three, four, five.”
The children, who remain
in the intensive care unit, can
now breathe on their own and
are being bottle-fed.
“I would imagine having
five newborns, I will feel a
lot of feelings over the next
two years or so,” Baudinet
said. “But I’m OK with that.
That’s what we wanted.”
BRIEFLY
Germany had monitored truck Researchers: Nearly 400 drug
attack suspect for months
addicts helped in police effort
BERLIN (AP) — German officials had
deemed the Tunisian man being sought in a
manhunt across Europe a threat long before
a truck plowed into a Christmas market in
Berlin — and even kept him under covert
surveillance for six months this year before
halting the operation.
Now the international manhunt for Anis
Amri — considered the prime suspect in
Monday’s deadly rampage — is raising
questions about how closely German
authorities are monitoring the hundreds of
known Islamic extremists in the country.
The issue puts new pressure on Chancellor
Angela Merkel, who is running for
re-election next year. Critics are lambasting
her for allowing hundreds of thousands of
asylum-seekers to enter the country, allegedly
without proper security checks.
Among them was Amri, a convicted
criminal in both Tunisia and Italy with little
chance of getting asylum who successfully
evaded deportation from Germany even
as German authorities rejected his asylum
application and deemed the 24-year-old a
possible jihadi threat.
He is suspected in the attack that left 12
people dead and 48 injured Monday evening
in Berlin. Health officials said 12 of the
injured had very serious wounds.
In bitter divide, repeal of
N. Carolina LGBT law fails
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Amid
deepening acrimony, a supposedly bipartisan
deal to kill the North Carolina law known
as the “bathroom bill” fell apart Wednesday
night, ensuring the likelihood that global
corporations and national sports events will
continue to stay away from the state.
The law limits protections for LGBT
people and was best known for a provision
that requires transgender people to use public
restrooms corresponding to the gender on
their birth certificates. It was passed earlier
this year after Charlotte officials approved a
sweeping anti-discrimination ordinance.
The repeal compromise touted by both
Democratic Gov.-elect Roy Cooper and
GOP Gov. Pat McCrory called for Charlotte
to do away with its ordinance. In exchange,
lawmakers would undo the LGBT law.
But both sides balked: GOP lawmakers
cried foul when Charlotte leaders initially
left part of the city’s ordinance in place.
And when the Senate bill called for a
months-long ban on cities passing similar
ordinances, Democrats said Republicans
were going back on their promise. Cooper
said the moratorium essentially doubled
down on discrimination.
BOSTON (AP) — A novel drug addiction
program developed in a small Massachusetts
fishing town and since replicated in dozens
of cities nationwide was able to place almost
400 addicts into treatment nearly each
time they sought it during the first year of
operation, researchers say in a report being
published Thursday in the New England
Journal of Medicine.
The team from the Boston Medical
Center and Boston University’s School
of Public Health say 376 addicts sought
assistance 429 times from the Gloucester
Police Department’s Angel program from
June 2015 to May 2016. They received the
help they needed nearly 95 percent of the
time, researchers say.
Davida Schiff, a Boston Medical Center
doctor and lead author of the report, said that
rate is far higher than the 50 to 60 percent for
similar, hospital-based initiatives.
Part of the reason, she said, is that
Gloucester’s addicts were voluntarily
coming to police seeking help. “They were
motivated individuals that came to the
station ready to engage in care,” Schiff said.
Before Trump’s presidency,
U.S. privacy board in disarray
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal board
responsible for protecting Americans against
abuses by spy agencies is in disarray just
weeks before President-elect Donald Trump
takes office.
The five-member Privacy and Civil
Liberties Oversight Board will have only
two remaining members as of Jan. 7 — and
zero Democrats even though it is required
to operate as an independent, bipartisan
agency. The vacancies mean it will lack the
minimum three members required to conduct
business and can work only on ongoing
projects. Trump would have to nominate new
members, who would have to be confirmed
by the Senate.
The board was revitalized after former
National Security Agency contractor Edward
Snowden’s disclosures on the scope of U.S.
spying in 2013. It notably concluded that
the NSA’s phone surveillance program was
illegal.
Since then, it has been crucial in ensuring
members of Congress and the public have
a window into the highly secretive and
classified world of intelligence agencies.
But it’s unclear if Trump will support robust
intelligence oversight. During his campaign,
Trump appeared to support strengthened
intelligence overall and surveillance of
mosques, but he’s more recently expressed
distrust of intelligence agencies.
WASHINGTON
—
“Obamacare” seems to be
holding its own. The admin-
istration said Wednesday
that 6.4 million people have
enrolled for subsidized
private coverage through
HealthCare.gov, ahead of
last year’s pace.
Despite rising premiums,
dwindling insurers and the
Republican vow to repeal
President Barack Obama’s
health care law, about
400,000 more people signed
up through Monday than
for a comparable period in
2015, the Health and Human
Services Department said.
“Today’s
enrollment
numbers confirm that
doomsday
predictions
about the marketplace are
not bearing out,” said HHS
Secretary Sylvia Burwell.
Still, it’s too early for
supporters of the Affordable
Care Act, or ACA, to say “I
told you so.”
It’s unclear if the admin-
istration will meet its target
of 13.8 million sign-ups.
That’s partly because the
share of new customers is
down when compared with
current consumers re-up-
ping for another year.
New customers are 32
percent of the total this
year versus 40 percent
around the same time last
year. Administration offi-
cials said they’re going to
focus on getting more new
customers between now and
the end of open enrollment
Jan. 31.
Other vital signs for
HealthCare.gov
were
encouraging.
“There are zero signs
that the ACA’s marketplaces
are in danger of imminent
collapse,” said Larry Levitt
of the nonpartisan Kaiser
Family Foundation, who
has followed the health care
law from its inception.
That carries an implicit
warning for President-elect
Donald Trump and congres-
sional Republicans, who
have promised to move
quickly to repeal the law.
That repeal would be
followed by a GOP-inspired
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
In this Oct. 19 photo, Health and Human Service
(HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell speaks during a
news conference at the HHS in Washington.
replacement.
Although
immediate
changes
affecting 2017 are unlikely,
the whole process could
take several years, creating
uncertainty for people with
coverage.
As if on cue, Democratic
governors Wednesday fired
off a letter to GOP congres-
sional leaders, calling
the repeal plan “nothing
more than a Washington,
D.C.,
bait-and-switch”
that would leave millions
uninsured and shift to states
an estimated $69 billion in
uncompensated care costs
over a decade.
The statistics released
Wednesday are for 39 states
served by the federal online
insurance
marketplace.
Numbers
from
states
running their own markets
have not been fully tallied
and will be added later,
raising the total. Toward the
end of this month, several
million current customers
who are being re-enrolled
automatically will be added
to the count.
Some of the biggest
sign-up numbers so far are
coming from states Trump
won in the presidential elec-
tion, including Florida (1.3
million); Texas (776,000);
North Carolina (369,000);
Georgia (352,000) and
Pennsylvania
(291,000).
Vice President-elect Mike
Pence’s home state of
Indiana had 119,000 resi-
dents enrolled.
Premiums for a midlevel
benchmark plan in Health-
Care.gov states are going
up an average of 25 percent
next year, driven by lower-
than-expected enrollment
and higher medical costs.
At the same time, about
one-third of U.S. coun-
ties will have only one
marketplace insurer next
year because some major
commercial carriers have
left the market, and many
nonprofit insurance co-ops
created by the law have
collapsed.
The impact of premium
increases has been softened
by the law’s subsidies,
which are designed to rise
if the cost of insurance goes
up.
A study last week from
the nonpartisan Center for
Health and Economy found
that the average monthly
subsidy will increase by
$76, or 26 percent, from
$291 currently to $367 in
2017.
But that means taxpayers
will fork over nearly $10
billion more for subsidies.
And subsidies don’t help
all customers. Some make
too much money to qualify.
And an estimated 5 million
to 9 million people buy
individual policies outside
HealthCare.gov and state
markets that offer financial
assistance.
Independent
analyst
Caroline Pearson of the
consulting firm Avalere
Health said the administra-
tion should be concerned
about the apparent slow-
down in new consumers.
21st Annual
Christmas Spirit Award Presentations
The Good Shepherd Community Health Foundation is pleased
to announce Cathy Putnam and Virginia Miller as the 2016
Christmas Spirit Award Winners.
The Good Shepherd Community Health Foundation is pleased to honor
CATHY PUTNAM as a recipient of the 21st Annual Christmas Spirit Award.
This award is given to one who exemplifies the spirit of Christmas by giving
of themselves to others all throughout the year.
Cathy is the owner of Carlson Drug in Umatilla and is a prodigious supporter
of many community activities. Her caring attitude is evidenced by the many
times she has delivered medication to residents after a long day’s work. She
has been known to open the pharmacy on many occasions after hours just to
provide medication and expertise to many who are in need.
She uses her considerable talents and abilities to help young people develop
leadership skills and donates to many worthwhile community youth projects.
She instructs students on the value of being community-minded and shares
life experiences that help build and enhance their lives.
Cathy’s importance to the Eastern Oregon Mission and its two outreaches, Agape House and Martha’s Ho use, is
priceless beyond monetary value. She serves as a member of the board of directors and has been a pa st president,
guiding these outreach organizations to greater levels of success. Her leadership and support is a m ajor reason this
organization continues to serve those in need within our local communities.
Cathy may be found many mornings, prior to her work schedule, visiting the residents of Sun Terrace. Many just
want to talk and have someone to listen. She is an exceptional listener and cheerfully interacts wi th the residents to
make them feel comfortable.
It is for these reasons that the Good Shepherd Community Health Foundation, which strives to make ou r community
a better place to live, has selected Cathy Putnam as a 2016 Christmas Spirit Award recipient.
The Good Shepherd Community Health Foundation is pleased to
honor VIRGINIA MILLER as a recipient of the 21st Annual
Christmas Spirit Award.
This award is given to one who exemplifies the spirit of Christmas
by giving of themselves to others all throughout the year.
Virginia is a beacon of generosity and blesses our community with
her example of service and long term dedication to the growth and
prosperity of the Hermiston and surrounding areas.
She has volunteered with integrity and extensive service on projects
with Altrusa International of Hermiston, the Board of Realtors, and
the Umatilla County Department of Land Use Planning.
Most recently, Virginia is a dedicated meal preparer at the Open
Table for First United Methodist Church. She shops for, plans, and
serves hot meals 2-3 times per month for Hermiston’s most needy individuals.
Virginia is always the first to volunteer and assist in any way to improve the lives of those around
her. Her benevolence, caring attitude, and enthusiasm for life is infectious to those around her wi th
hope and a desire to move forward.
She has blessed our community with many years of service and is held in high regard by those with
whom she comes in contact. She participated in the Ford leadership program and was an active
participant in the repurposing and repair of the Umatilla Community Center.
It is for these reasons that the Good Shepherd Community Health Foundation, which strives to make
our community a better place to live, has selected Virginia Miller as a 2016 Christmas Spirit Award
recipient.
The Good Shepherd Community Health Foundation is proud to recognize
Cathy Putnam and Virginia Miller as the 2016 Christmas Spirit Award winners.
The Foundation mission is to enhance the quality of life and general health of
residents living in West Umatilla and Morrow County communities by raising funds
and giving to community projects. Good Shepherd Community Health Foundation
reviews funding requests and makes awards for worthwhile projects twice a year.
The next deadline for submitting grant applications to the Foundation is January 31,
2017.
Groups or individuals interested in making a donation or being considered for
funding are encouraged to call the Foundation office at 667-3419.
Best Wishes For A Happy Holiday Season.