Al's Morning Meeting reader Elizabeth Adams sent me this
story from
The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle. The story is about the big increase in the amount of prescription
medications that are now arriving by mail. Often these medications are "just in
time" deliveries -- meaning if they are delayed, people are without the drugs they need.
The story says:
The Department of Veterans Affairs moved to mail-order prescriptions for many
of its patients, and many public and private insurance plans that use pharmacy
benefit managers have followed suit.
About 20 percent of all prescriptions now are handled by mail,
according to a study last year by the Lewin Group for the
Pharmaceutical Care Management Association.
The amount of prescriptions coming through the mail has increased
"hundreds of times in the last few years," said Augusta Postmaster
James Sizemore. And, unlike some post offices, Augusta does not have the equipment
to sort them automatically, so they are parsed out by hand, he said.
Housing Forecast for 100
Markets
Money magazine says:
Major real estate forecasters are looking for prices to bounce
along the bottom this year and next and fully recover by 2009.
"Once the correction from the boom works through, we'll see
slow, steady growth," says Celia Chen, Economy.com's director of housing
economics, who expects annual price gains of between 2 percent and 4 percent by
2009.
And on Wednesday, the National Association of
Realtors said it expects its measure of home prices to fall this year for
the first time since the group began tracking sales nearly 40 years ago.
Click
here to see forecasted growth in the housing market for the top 100 metro
markets in the U.S.
(The chart is at the bottom of the page.)
Al's Morning Multimedia
The power of
multimedia interactivity comes to life on a new site by the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum. It requires a download, and it's worth it.
The site explains:
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has joined with Google in an
unprecedented online mapping initiative. Crisis in Darfur enables more than 200
million Google Earth users worldwide to visualize and better understand the
genocide currently unfolding in Darfur, Sudan. The Museum has assembled
content -- photographs, data, and eyewitness testimony -- from a number of sources
that are brought together for the first time in Google Earth.
Crisis in Darfur is the first project of the Museum's Genocide Prevention Mapping
Initiative that will over time include information on potential genocides
allowing citizens, governments and institutions to access information on
atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.
Homemade or Organic Pet Food
With all of the concern over pet-food safety, who can blame
people who
are turning to homemade
or organic pet food for a while.
AdAge.com
reports:
A natural-and-organic segment made up largely of small-time
entrepreneurs appears to be getting traction -- and sophistication -- fast. Blue Buffalo Co., one of the
natural-product marketers doing search ads in the wake of the crisis, is headed
by CEO Bill Bishop, one of the founders of the SoBe beverage brand.
"We don't want to benefit from anyone's misfortune when dogs
and cats are dying," Mr. Bishop said. "The fact is that Blue Buffalo, and I would imagine most of
the natural pet foods that are gluten-free, have benefited significantly."
Tainted wheat gluten from China is believed responsible for
the deaths of possibly thousands of U.S. pets, triggering a recall
that started March 16.
Blue Buffalo
sales are "through the roof," and traffic to the brand's Web sites is
up "50- or 60-fold" since the crisis began, Mr. Bishop said. He
already had planned the brand's first national ad campaign this year but moved
up the timetable when the crisis hit.
Here
is an essay from an assistant metro editor at the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times who also makes homemade dog food for her retrievers.
27 States Restrict Teen Tanning
Stateline.org
points out:
Spurred by worries about skin cancer, Utah
and Virginia this year joined 25
other states in placing limits on teens seeking a bronze glow from the
ultraviolet lights of a tanning bed. North Dakota's
Legislature is putting the final touches on a measure to also clamp
restrictions on tanning salon patrons under age 18.
Most of the laws require underage teens to get mom's or dad's
permission to lie under the tanning-bed heat lamps that emit intense UV light.
A handful of states completely ban access to artificial UV light in salons for
those younger than 13, 14 or 16. Others require teens to bring along a parent
or a doctor's prescription.
Critics say the tan bans are an example of government
overreaching, while advocates compare the use of tanning beds to cigarette
smoking and the drinking of alcohol -- unhealthy practices states already put
off limits to minors. [...]
According to an
Academy of Dermatology press release, more than 1 million people use
tanning salons on an average day. Of these, 70 percent are Caucasian females
ages 16 to 49. More than 25 percent of teenage girls have used tanning salons
three or more times in their lives. The Academy has identified the risks of
indoor tanning as premature aging, such
as age spots and wrinkles, and skin cancer.
The
story says at least eight more states are considering teen-tanning
legislation.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's
Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story
excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as
original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly
from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided
whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the
accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and
inaccuracies found will be corrected.
