NEW YORK – Drugstore operator Walgreens will offer free clinic visits to the unemployed and uninsured for the rest of the year, providing tests and routine treatment for minor ailments through its walk-in clinics — though patients will still pay for precriptions.

Walgreens said patients who lose their job and health insurance after March 31 will be able to get free treatment at its in-store Take Care clinics for respiratory problems, allergies, infections and skin conditions, among other ailments. Typically those treatments cost $59 or more for patients with no insurance.

Hal Rosenbluth, chairman of the Take Care Health Systems division, described the plan as something close to an experiment: He said Walgreens isn’t sure of patient demand or how much providing the services might cost the company.

It’s likely to generate more attention for the clinics, however. Rosenbluth said a typical Take Care patient tells eight other people about his or her experience. So far, about 30 percent of Take Care patients were new customers to Walgreens.

The program is expected to last through the end of 2009. Walgreens runs 341 Take Care clinics in 35 markets around the country, including Chicago, Atlanta, Miami and Cleveland.

Free services will be offered only from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Walgreens said it will not offer free checkups, vaccinations or other injections because it is focusing on providing services patients might otherwise get at an urgent-care center or even an emergency room.

Patients must present proof they are unemployed, including a federal or state unemployment determination letter and an unemployment check stub. They will have to sign a form at the clinic saying they have lost their jobs and health benefits. If they find a new job or get new health insurance, they will no longer be eligible for free care.

Spouses and children are also eligible for free services if they don’t have insurance of their own.

Medical lab operator Quest Diagnostics is participating in the program by offering free tests for step throat and urinary tract infections.

Walgreens bought the Take Care clinics in May 2007. Take Care says it has seen about 1.2 million patients since its launch in November 2005 and estimates that up to 30 percent of them were uninsured.

from Yahoo News!

“Otzi was frozen 5,300 years ago and he was found in an unprecedented conservation state for its age. Researchers took 150,000 high definition images from 12 different angles, including 3D and UV views.” (icemanphotoscan.eu)

Ötzi the Iceman (pronounced  [ˈœtsi] (help·info)), and Similaun Man are modern names of a well-preserved natural mummy of a man from about 3300 BC (53 centuries ago).[1] The mummy was found in 1991 in the Schnalstal glacier in the Ötztal Alps, near Hauslabjoch on the border between Austria and Italy. The nickname comes from Ötztal (Ötz valley), the region in which he was discovered. He is Europe’s oldest natural human mummy, and has offered an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Europeans. The body and his belongings are displayed in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, northern Italy.

This is what News Outlets do here in America.

Being rated "number 1" doesn’t make your product good, just popular.

Britney Spears, Jonas Brothers, Kelly Clarkson, are pop stars for the same reason. and of course, the TRUTH is NEVER popular.

Dear Mr. Limbaugh,
The Associated Press reports your new contract with Premiere Radio Networks will enrich you with at least $38 million a year over the next eight years. You are making this money on the public property of the American people for which you pay no rent.

You, Rush Limbaugh, are on welfare.

As you know, the public airwaves belong to the American people. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is supposed to be our trustee in managing this property. The people are the landlords and the radio and TV stations and affiliated companies are the tenants.

The problem is that since the Radio Act of 1927 these corporate tenants have been massively more powerful in Washington, DC than the tens of millions of listeners and viewers. The result has been no payment of rent by the stations for the value of their license to broadcast. You and your company are using the public’s valuable property for free. This freeloading on the backs of the American people is called corporate welfare.

It is way past due for the super-rich capitalist–Rush Limbaugh from Cape Girardeau, Missouri–to get himself off big time welfare. It is way past due for Rush Limbaugh as the Kingboy of corporatist radio to set a capitalist example for his peers and pay rent to the American people for the very lucrative use of their property.

You need not wait for the broadcast industry-indentured FCC and Congress to do the right thing. You can lead by paying a voluntary rent–determined by a reputable appraisal organization–for the time you use on the hundreds of stations that carry your words each weekday.
Payment of rent for the use of public airwaves owned by the American people is the conservative position. Real conservatives oppose corporate welfare. Real corporatists feed voraciously from hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare gushing out of Washington, DC yearly.
Whose side are you on? Freeloading? Or paying rent for the public property you have been using free for many years?

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely yours,
Ralph Nader
PO Box 19312
Washington, DC 20036

We all know the impact that the current economic slowdown has had on Circuit City, but the question over what ultimate impact Circuit City’s collapse will have on the economy will take a little longer to figure out. One thing is for sure, the company’s collapse could not have come at a worse time for the overall economy.

The first ripple that the market is going to feel is the vacancies that the company is going to leave in its wake after closing its doors. The company was operating 567 stores at the time it announced it was going under, and these stores represented a total square footage of 18.71 million square feet.

The real estate market is fragile enough at this time, and adding this much unused property to the mix is not going to help things out. Shopping centers that are already feeling the impact of a slowdown in consumer spending are going to be hit with less rental income at a time when every penny counts.

But the ripple effect is only beginning at this point.
The country is dealing with a sharp rise in unemployment over the past year, and Circuit City is about to unleash a massive amount of workers into an already fragile workforce. The company employed roughly 40,000 workers that are going to be looking for new work, and this is on top of an additional 7,000 employees that the company was forced to lay off during 2008.
What impact will all these workers losing their jobs have on the economy is tough to say. We already know that they are increasing an already rising unemployment situation, but it goes deeper than that. What percentage of these people are going to find themselves behind on their bills, mortgages, credit cards, etc.? This would create even further pressure on the housing market and the credit markets.
The company’s suppliers are also going to take a hit. Companies such as Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ), Samsung and Sony (NYSE: SNE) are just a few that will find it hard to collect monies owed to them. The company owes Hewlett Packard $120 million, Samasung $115 million and Sony $60 million. While these companies are big enough and diverse enough to deal with these losses, all of these companies have been dealing with tough times of their own, and this will definitely not help the situation. continued at BloggingStocks.

Bill O’Reilly will not report on rumors of Caroline Kennedy having an affair. (03:12)

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Stephen Colbert dishes it on republicans, on 1/29.

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