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derbyblood... You are right, I was thinking the 5th was on Tuesday.... sorry
It could be on Monday... I think BMR said that POSC would make their annoucement on Tuesday.
ARCA may be trying to accumulate, and I thought I saw a comment or two yesterday about the NYSE, so maybe there is some tie in on them stocking up.
With all the good news that has come out this week as of late, I am surprised to see this stock falling today. I surely expected this to go up and be around .30 or more today.
Did I miss any bad news?
Yes ARCA is a MM. I think they are really called NYSE Arca.
They are one of two that I can use outside of normal hours or trading, but I do not recall seeing them in a OTC trade during the day. I only usually see them on higher priced stock. Someone else may have know differently.
I am surprised to see ARCA in the bidding in normal hours.
since it does not show up as as low of day, i would say it was a mistake
I would rather get in tonight than tomorrow morning.
I am sure there may be some profit taking.... possibly followed up by some buying in AH.
rkor, through .03?
The high says .24 but I must have missed it some where. Only say it in the .23s
It may be up 38% but still has not fully recovered. But I do hope to see it recover fully and continue to break new highs.
With NYSE? That does sound interesting.
I have no idea why they are trading this in thousands of a cent. 1/1000 of a cent. Trade 1,000 shares and make a dollar. I never understood it.
I hope they get this moving in hundreds of a cent soon.
Usually with as run up, you will see it flat line for a lil while for more accumulation to occur. So as you said, I agree it may be this afternoon.
I was just saying to who posted me if it was ok. It is not up to me in what they want to call someone else. Go back through the links.
i have no problem is you want to call timmy allspice.
Just figuring he will have to cover his 30,000 or + shares soon before it gets back to that level.
Most exchanges sitting at .20 and higher.
timmy is running to cover as much as he can.... not much more time as it is almost back to the 52 week high
Ace, Some of us are already tapped out and do not have a bottomless pit of cash. But we are still there for everyone.
It may help to keep your stock in a sell order status to prevent them from being looked at for possible shorting with your broker. I think so long as you put them in a sell order at a higher price and put it for sell at Good Til Cancelled, they can not touch it to give to others to short.
I think I understand what you are saying.
I guess I was taking it being a later date. But I am still very excited to have May 5th roll around.
What seemed to be this week or maybe next, now seems any contractural news is pushed out further now according to what he said.
Nice to see more and more articles coming out supporting the products.
Do More Imaging Tests Improve Cancer Outcomes?
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2010/04/27/do-more-imaging-tests-improve-cancer-outcomes/
By Katherine Hobson
The cost of scans such as CT, MRI and PET for cancer patients is rising faster than the total cost of those people’s medical care, a study published in JAMA finds. What’s harder to figure out is whether the money being spent is helping people live longer.
The JAMA study, by Duke University researchers, tracked the increase in costs between 1999 and 2006 among Medicare beneficiaries with six types of cancer. “Significant” annual increases in imaging use occurred among all the cancers, with lung cancer and lymphoma patients incurring more than $3,000 in imaging costs within two years of diagnosis.
The authors write that it’s not possible to tell “whether the rapid increase in the use of advanced imaging is a result of the novelty of the technologies, better outcomes or a shift to new revenue sources” for doctors, some of whom own their own imaging equipment.
But a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper from earlier this month finds for that middle option. The paper, “Has Medical Innovation Reduced Cancer Mortality?” estimates that 40% of the drop in cancer mortality between 1996 and 2006 is attributable to the lagging effects of imaging innovation. By contrast, the paper attributed only 25% of the drop to drug innovation.
“The types of cancer where there was the largest expansion in the use of advanced imaging saw larger drops in mortality,” says author Frank Lichtenberg, a professor at Columbia Business School. He tells the Health Blog he controlled for factors like the number of people being diagnosed with a particular cancer, what kind of chemo they used, and the overall downward trend in cancer mortality.
It’s an observational study, however, and so can only show that imaging use and mortality are correlated. It’s interesting, but like any such study, “I wouldn’t view it as a definitive answer,” says Laurence Baker, a professor and chief of Health Services Research at Stanford University, who has studied the challenges of measuring value in imaging.
Prospective trials represent the best way to pin down whether outcomes are better when advanced imaging tests are used, Baker tells the Health Blog. “These things are useful and we want to have them around,” he says. “No one wants to live in a world without MRI or PET scans.” At the same time, though, he says it’s pretty clear that imaging is overused in some cases. “We’ve had a harder time figuring out when to use them and when not to.”
Photo: Associated Press
Study: Costs of scans for older patients up
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/health&id=7410026
Updated at 06:48 PM today
Tags:healthbeat
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April 27, 2010 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- The use of high tech scans on older cancer patients has climbed substantially in recent years, according to a new study.
The research in the Journal of the American Medical Association is raising concerns about costs and radiation exposure.
Sophisticated CT and pet scans typically provide more detailed images than conventional X-rays. For example, they can tell if a lymph node is swollen from infection or cancer. But they can cost thousands of dollars and what remains unclear is whether their increasing use has improved cancer patient's survival.
Radiation from imaging scans can cause cancer many years later so any excessive amount can be worrisome to doctors.
(Copyright ©2010 WLS-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)
Is imaging being overused on Medicare cancer patients?
http://www.diagnosticimaging.com/healthcare_reform/content/article/113619/1560624
By Greg Freiherr | April 27, 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The use—and cost—of modern imaging was rising among Medicare patients with cancer as they entered the 21st century, according to research released April 27 by the Journal of the American Medical Association. From 1999 through 2006, imaging costs rose at a faster rate among Medicare beneficiaries than any other cost associated with their fight against cancer.
The trend is likely continuing, according to the Duke University researchers who carried out the study. They cite emerging technologies, changing diagnostic treatment patterns, and changes in Medicare reimbursement as likely contributors to an increasing use of advanced imaging in cancer patients.
The Duke study, which will be published in the April 28 issue of JAMA, showed a steady increase in the use and cost of imaging over the entire period, an increase that was moving at about twice the rate of any other cost center related to caring for Medicare patients with cancer.
Exemplifying this trend are the myriad imaging studies typically ordered for lung cancer and lymphoma patients. Dr. Kevin Schulman and colleagues documented that by 2006, the average patient with lung cancer was receiving 11 conventional radiographs, six CTs, a PET scan, a separate nuclear medicine test, an MRI, two echocardiograms, and an ultrasound—all within two years of diagnosis.
Similarly, by 2006, the average patient with lymphoma got eight conventional radiographs, six CTs, a PET scan, a nuclear medicine test, an MRI, three echocardiograms, and three ultrasounds, again within two years of diagnosis.
“It really gives you reason to pause and ask, ‘Are all these things essential? Are they all of value? Is the information really meaningful?” said Schulman, director of the Duke Center for Clinical and Genetic Economics. “There is a burden on the patient for going through all this, and there is an obvious a cost to the system.”
The actual impact on the system, however, is not clear cut. Even though medical imaging expenses examined in the Duke study grew twice as fast as the overall costs for Medicare cancer patients, they still accounted for less than 6% of the overall costs in 2006. Emphasizing the rising cost of imaging raises the risk that imaging will be seen as contributing disproportionately to rising Medicare costs. But Schulman demurs.
“We need to look at high-growth areas and obviously imaging is one of those,” he said. “I wouldn’t put a disproportionate burden on imaging, but I would definitely say it is low-hanging fruit.”
This is the first time the types and costs of imaging among Medicare beneficiaries with cancer have been specifically studied, according to the researchers. The analysis focused on a 5% sample of Medicare claims paid from 1999 to 2006. Included were nearly 101,000 cases of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, leukemia, lung cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and prostate cancer. From these data, Schulman and colleagues singled out PET as an outlier, increasing at an average annual rate of 35.9% to 53.6%. Lung cancer and lymphoma patients showed the largest increase (53.6%) in PET use. This leap in PET imaging implies that the modality is an unreasonable contributor to cost. But the percentages are less damning if you consider that PET entered the clinical mainstream only in 2001 with the commercial introduction of PET/CT and substantially broader Medicare coverage for cancer indications. But Schulman views this recent adoption of PET as more—not less—reason for worry.
“With PET we are watching the adoption of a new technology,” he said. “It is an expensive technology. It does not seem to be replacing other technologies, and I don’t think it has reached saturation yet. You could easily envision a world in which we are using PET like we use CT and MRI today, with multiple numbers of scans per patient.”
But PET might also be skewing the overall data regarding imaging in the Duke study. Percentage gains from an artificially low level in 1999 to mainstream use in 2006 would naturally show a huge increase in costs. Mean annual increases from 1999 to 2006 for other advanced imaging modalities were much lower across the half-dozen–plus types of cancer: from 0.7 % to 7.4% for ultrasound, 4.4% to 11.5% for MRI, 5% to 7.8% for echocardiography, and 6.3% to 20% for bone densitometry. Conventional radiography showed steady or decreasing use across the board.
And there are issues with two other modalities, namely echocardiography and bone densitometry. Neither is directly involved in cancer imaging, as echocardiography looks just at the heart and bone densitometry for bone loss typically is associated with advancing age. Schulman argues, however, that there are good reasons for including these in the Duke study.
“In regard to breast cancer, where you’re thinking about preventing fractures, bone densitometry could be supportive care. And the same goes for echocardiography, as there is a lot of toxicity [to the heart] from different chemotherapeutic regimens,” he said.
But just as one can maintain that imaging costs might be inflated for Medicare patients, so can one argue that Medicare patients underrepresent the volume of imaging studies prescribed for younger cancer patients. The advanced average age of patients in the Duke study, 76 years old, may actually have limited the number of imaging studies prescribed for them, Schulman said. Younger patients may be receiving more imaging studies.
It is a question only further research can answer.
Use and costs of diagnostic imaging increasing for patients with cancer
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/jaaj-uac042210.php
Public release date: 27-Apr-2010
[ Print | E-mail | Share ] [ Close Window ]
Contact: Michelle Gailiun
michelle.gailiun@duke.edu
919-724-5343
JAMA and Archives Journals
Use and costs of diagnostic imaging increasing for patients with cancer
From 1999 through 2006 the use of diagnostic imaging for Medicare patients with cancer increased, with use of positron emission tomography (PET) increasing the most significantly, according to a study in the April 28 issue of JAMA. Imaging costs for these patients also increased, outpacing the rate of increase in total costs among Medicare beneficiaries with cancer.
Cancer-related expenditures are expected to increase faster than any other area of health care. "Emerging technologies, changing diagnostic and treatment patterns, and changes in Medicare reimbursement are contributing to increasing use of imaging in cancer," the authors write. "The types and costs of imaging, including costly new imaging modalities, among Medicare beneficiaries with cancer have not been examined previously."
Michaela A. Dinan, B.S., of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, N.C., and colleagues examined changes in the use and costs of imaging and how these changes have influenced the cost of cancer care. The study included an analysis of a nationally representative 5 percent sample of claims from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. From 1999 through 2006, there were 100,954 new cases of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, leu¬kemia, lung cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and prostate cancer.
The researchers found that in each subset of cancer type, the number of positron emission tomography (PET) scans per beneficiary increased at an average annual rate of 35.9 percent to 53.6 percent. "Patients with lung cancer or lymphoma had the largest increase in PET use, accompanied by an overall reduction of conventional nuclear medicine imaging tests in both cancer types and stabilized computed tomography [CT] in the lymphoma group. Increases also occurred in the use of bone density scans (6.3 percent - 20.0 percent), echocardiograms (5.0 percent - 7.8 percent), magnetic resonance imaging (4.4 percent - 11.5 percent), and ultrasound (0.7 percent - 7.4 percent). Use of CT increased in all cancer subgroups (4.5 percent - 7.6 percent) except lymphoma," the authors write.
Use of conventional radiographs decreased or stayed the same in each cancer subgroup but remained the most heavily used imaging modality for all diagnoses, at an average of 4.3 to 12.2 procedures per patient.
The authors also found that for all cancer types, average 2-year imaging costs per beneficiary increased between 5.1 percent and 10.3 percent per year, at least double the rate of increase in overall costs (the cost of cancer care increased 1.8 percent to 4.6 percent per year). Imaging costs for all cancers studied also accounted for a larger percentage of total costs in the 2006 group than in all previous years.
"It is unclear whether the rapid increase in use of advanced imaging is a result of the novelty of the technologies, better outcomes, or a shift to new revenue sources after the enactment of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act," the authors write.
###
(JAMA. 2010;303[16]:1625-1631. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Psychopathy and Reward
Bridget M. Kuehn
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/303/16/1587-b
JAMA. 2010;303(16):1587.
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.
Individuals who have impulsive or antisocial traits have an exaggerated response to anticipated reward, according to a study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Scientists from Vanderbilt University in Nashville used positron emission tomography (PET) to assess the relationship between traits associated with psychopathy and dopamine release following amphetamine administration in 30 normal volunteers (Buckholtz JW et al. Nat Neurosci. 10.1038/nn.2510 [published online March 14, 2010]). They found a strong correlation between higher scores related to impulsive or antisocial characteristics on the psychopathic personality inventory and dopamine release. Additionally, functional magnetic resonance imaging of 24 individuals (18 of whom also underwent PET testing) indicated that those with such traits had a greater neurological response to the anticipation of a monetary reward.
Individuals with substance abuse problems also have demonstrated a similar pattern of excessive reward response, according to the authors. They conclude that a . . . [Full Text of this Article]
CANCER VIDEO: Cost of Imaging Increasing For Cancer Patients, Obese Children Metabolize Medication Differently, High Dose B Vitamin Linked With Kidney Function Decline
http://www.insidermedicine.ca/archives/CANCER_VIDEO_Cost_of_Imaging_Increasing_For_Cancer_Patients_Difference_in_How_Obese_Children_Metabolize_Medication_High_Dose_B_Vitamin_Therapy_Linked_With_Kidney_Function_Decline_4277.aspx
(April 27, 2010 - Insidermedicine)
From North Carolina – According to a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the cost of imaging patients with cancer has increased in the last seven years. From 1999 to 2006, researchers found that use of imaging tests such as echocardiogram, MRI, ultrasound and CT scans all increased, with positron emission tomography (PET) increasing the most. As a result, the average 2 year imaging cost per beneficiary doubled.
From California – Children who are obese metabolize medications differently than those of healthy weight, according to a report presented at the annual meeting for the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. Researchers examined both obese and healthy weight children, finding a noticeable difference in how the two groups metabolized the drug dextromethorphan.
And finally, from London – According to another report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, diabetic nephropathy patients who undergo B vitamin therapy may be at increased risk of kidney function decline. Researchers randomized over 200 diabetic patients to either high dose B vitamin therapy or placebo. Results showed that the B vitamin group had poorer kidney function and a greater amount of cardiovascular outcomes, including heart attack and stroke.
20% slash today& yesterday. 36% total for week.
I wonder how the MMs will play this one out tomorrow.
I do not always like what they can do. I have seen stock pushed down 50% and in the same day it comes back and goes green by 25%.
I have watched stock news shows on CNBC that had guest on and they even admnitted that while they were working at XYZ that they could easily push a stock around if you had enough money. This one is one I feel that can be pushed around. But in the end to me, it comes down to the company and what value they add to the world. This one I feel very strongly about and the news that keeps coming out requiring that some of these products are not mandated to being used, opens it up to more of them having to be purchased.
With the government now in the medical business, and they already use the PET in their miliary clinics, I can see where they may even be behind some of the 100 orders being placed, as has been touted around in an order of 100 being placed. They are the only new thing I can think of that has changed to maybe require a large order. Though these new requirements may push that up more.
They won't. Last night alot more good news came out that I posted on this board and I only see this company advancing further, where the rumor comes true or not in an announced buyout or partnership with the news they are to announce on the 5th.
I expected this in posting the news, as I am sure the MMs were aware of it as well.
I have seen this happen before with MMs pushing shares down as the time of the news gets closer. Does not surprise me at all, though I do not like what they do, that is their job also to make money. I am still holding strong for next week and further.
When I look at the Accumulation/Distribution chart, this stock is still being Accumulated.
after r/s, I am in at 5.97...eom
This does not surprise me at all. I expected this, but was hoping it would not, when they annouced the large reverse split.
I still expect this to fall much more. Would not be surprised if we get into the $2 range soon. In the long run if nothing happens soon with the company, I see it being in the $1 range.
I still have alot of shares from before, though it does not seem as much any more. I have taken a very heavy loss due to the RS.
I am not trying to bash this company, but just expressing my feelings that I am not surprised by this happening.
True. Also with all the news (especially that came out last night and this morning) on the needs of the PET and such, I am not even concerned about a partnership or buyout as it looks like they will have their order queue filling up fast.
And as expected the new news is causing the MMs to push this stock down for more accumulation as the chart shows.
With all the new news from last night and this morning, I would expect the MMs to push this down some on the opening.