HIDALGO COUNTY - A Mission neurologist is struggling to keep his practice afloat as he waits to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars from insurance companies.

Dr. Miguel Gutierrez said the companies owe him for services he already provided to patients.

Since the rollout of managed care, several insurance companies now coordinate coverage for those patients on Medicaid or Medicare. He said the change brought a whole new world of paperwork and past-due bills.

Gutierrez said he works at least 70 hours a week. He has to see at least 55 patients just to break even.

Lisa Luna is one of those patients.

"He's the one that's been helping me. The other doctor didn't help me at all," Luna said.

"One after another, one after another ... all day long. If I go slow, I'm in trouble in the afternoon," he said.


http://www.krgv.com/news/neurologist-unable-to-get-payment-from-managed-care-organizations

http://www.krgv.com/news/doctor-struggles-to-keep-practice-afloat

Everything changed last year when managed care made its way to the Valley. Gutierrez said he had to take out a loan in early 2013 to keep his practice afloat.

Gutierrez said he wrote a letter to President Obama asking for help. He said it is ultimately the patients who suffer the consequences of managed care.

Gutierrez said many doctors are closing their practices and moving out of the Valley.

Gutierrez said most of his patients are on Medicare or Medicaid.

"You should see the stacks of paper in billing. They send it back if there is a little mistake ... and they don't tell you what the mistake is. You have to do everything," Gutierrez said.

He said the paperwork is just the beginning.

Mexico's Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the release of a Frenchwoman who had been sentenced to 60 years in prison for her alleged role in a kidnapping ring.

...

One justice had proposed that a lower court reconsider its sentence against Cassez, calling witness testimony identifying Cassez as a kidnapper invalid. But ultimately, the court ruled that there were so many significant irregularities during Cassez's detention and trial that she should be released from prison immediately.

"These violations of the human rights of Florence Cassez are so serious that they create a corrupting effect in the entire process that makes it impossible for the Supreme Court to validate this process, this detention, all of these violations," said Arturo Zaldivar, one of the justices.

...

But a well-known anti-crime advocate in Mexico criticized the high court's decision.

"It seems to me that this opens the door to impunity and leaves the victims empty-handed," said Isabel Miranda de Wallace, president of a prominent Mexican anti-kidnapping group.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/23/world/americas/mexico-frenchwoman-freed

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - A Texas man told authorities he carved a pentagram into the back of his 6-year-old son "because it is a holy day" in reference to the numerical date of 12-12-12, police said.

Brent Troy Bartel, 39, of the Fort Worth suburb of Richland Hills, was in jail Wednesday on a $500,000 bond, charged with aggravated assault of a family member with a deadly weapon.

Police officers responded to an emergency dispatch call shortly after midnight from a man who said, "I shed some innocent blood," according to an audio recording of the emergency 911 call, released by police.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/13/us-usa-crime-texas-idUSBRE8BB1TM20121213

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Holy fuck!

Source: Liz Goodwin, Yahoo! News - The Ticket

Brown is facing a challenge from Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren this November. Brown called Akin's comments "outrageous" in a statement:

As a husband and father of two young women, I found Todd Akin's comments about women and rape outrageous, inappropriate and wrong. There is no place in our public discourse for this type of offensive thinking. Not only should he apologize, but I believe Rep. Akin's statement was so far out of bounds that he should resign the nomination for US Senate in Missouri.

Earlier on Monday, Mitt Romney called Akin's comments "insulting" but stopped short of asking him to step aside. Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom is also an adviser on Brown's campaign. At least four other Republican Senate candidates have criticized Akin since Sunday, Talking Points Memo reported, and no national Republican has ventured to defend Akin.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/scott-brown-says-rep-akin-step-down-legitimate-145729298.html

This was back in Houston, in one of the suburbs around the Johnson Space Center.

On a hot summer day, my boys were playing in the back yard with a bunch of neighborhood friends. I was in charge of keeping an eye on them, but I was distracted inside. Can't remember what I was doing. Suddenly several of the kids burst in through the back door, screaming that there's a snake in the yard. This is Houston, we're surrounded by rice paddies, so my first thought is copperhead or cotton mouth. Both deadly vipers. I run to the garage, grab a machete and race to the backyard. I can see rustling in the raised flower beds. It's a big one, but I can't tell what it is; the ferns are three feet tall and thick. I track it to the corner. There's about a dozen kids in the yard and I feel I have no choice but to whack first, ask questions later. So I do.

One, two, three slashes, and I finally nail the snake. Head severed a few inches back from the neck. I pull the body out and, lo and behold, it is a garter snake. Absolutely harmless. I feel like shit.

I wanted to make the best of a bad situation, so I decided this was a good moment for an anatomy lesson. I grab some X-acto knives and head back to the back yard. I cut the snake lengthwise along the belly, exposing stomach, the one lung and a still beating heart. The kids recoil in horror. All save one; a little girl, about four years old. She is fascinated. She is squatting in front of the snake, mesmerized. She asks me to open the stomach to see what's inside. The rest of the kids including my sons have already moved to the other side of the yard. They want no part of this. I open the stomach and there's a couple of small mice, and a frog. She looks at them intently and asks me to turn them over to see them from all sides...

THAT!, my friend, is what a scientists looks like. Male, female, or otherwise, that's the hallmark; that insatiable curiosity.

That little girl is a surgeon now.

She may be the very same person who holds your life in her hands the next time you go to the hospital.

Pray that she is, for then you will be in the best hands. You will be in the hands of a real scientist.

By a colossal mistake, I turned right when I should have turned left.

Instead of watching this historic flight with the rest of the contractors, I was seated in the VIP section in Mission Control, surrounded by military brass and the families of the astronauts.



If I had to do it over, I'd screw up just the same.