The Business of Service

If you are considering starting your medical billing career then you should begin with completing an accredited training program. These courses will not only teach you some techniques required, but will also assure you of a great career in the future.

There are some basics about the medical billing profession. A medical billing specialist is primarily responsible for maintaining all patient diagnosis and treatment records in a doctor’s office. In addition, his duties include scheduling and confirming appointments, data entry and bookkeeping, filling in application forms and checking patients’ signatures. Read the whole story…

The Middle East is in crisis. A government shutdown over the debt ceiling looms. Public sector unions are fighting in states across the country. But gratefully, and with impeccable timing, author and historian Lewis E. Lehrman emailed me three articles, stories that elegantly and graciously remind us how our leaders pulled our country through even darker days. This is the first of a three-part series.

This piece about President Abraham Lincoln’s patriotism by Mr. Lehrman first ran in the Stamford Advocate on February 12, 2011. Mr. Lehrman is co-founder of the Gilder-Lehrman
Institute of American History and author of “Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point” (Stackpole Books, 2008).

I cede the floor to Mr.

Read the whole story…

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 26 (UPI) — A federal judge in San Francisco called a fraud case against Canadian military supplier Newcon International weak and has acquitted the company.

U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel scolded the U.S. Justice Department for pursuing the case with “several years of criminal proceedings notwithstanding the paucity of evidence.” She also said prosecutors, who filed charges in December 2007, had switched tactics during the nine-day trial, depriving Newcon of the right to defend itself against the charges for which it was accused, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday.

Newcon was accused of lying to the Defense Department about an offer made to American Technologies Network to pay it to relinquish a contract for supplying night goggles to the Army.

The company was accused of using the scheme to increase prices.

Newcon had been the Army’s supplier for night goggles, but lost the contract to ATN in 2004.

But the judge said there was no evidence to show Newcon lied and the price could not have gone up as the principal contractor, a Jordanian company called ITE, had already signed a fixed-price contract for the goggles.

Newcon attorney Jonathan Howden said the case had “a devastating effect” on the company.

Read the whole story…

BEIJING -(Dow Jones)- Global miners have started direct negotiations with individual Chinese steelmakers for 2011 annual iron ore prices, and are pressing for monthly index-linked iron ore pricing, the special consultant to the quasi-official China Iron & Steel Association said Thursday.

The iron ore pricing system is “unfair and monopolistic,” Luo Bingsheng said during a regular association press briefing.

One of the major miners, BHP Billiton (BHP.AU), recently raised ore offer prices to $188 a metric ton from $155/ton and didn’t give customers any chance to argue, according to CISA.

Last year, global miners switched to a quarterly pricing system for iron ore in talks with Chinese steelmakers, abandoning a 40-year-old annual benchmark pricing on the back of rising demand for the raw material and volatile global commodity prices.

Read the whole story…

BEIJING, Feb. 21 (UPI) — China may cut import duty and consumption tax on items such as cosmetics and milk powder to check their imports through agents or other ways, officials said.

Officials are concerned such “unusual import methods” could result in loss of several billion yuan in tax revenue annually, Shanghai Daily reported quoting China National Radio.

The radio report said the State Administration of Taxation wants to cut consumption tax on cosmetic products and eliminate it for gold and jewelry to bring down the prices of imported products and promote domestic consumption.

Purchases through overseas agents totaled about $1.8 billion last year, the report said.

Read the whole story…

BEIJING, Feb. 15 (UPI) — Inflation rose 4.9 percent in January in China, largely due to higher food prices, the government said, as severe drought grips China’s wheat-growing areas.

The January rise in the consumer price index, the main gauge of gauge of inflation, came as food prices jumped 10.3 percent, the government said. Food prices account for about a third of the items used to calculate the consumer price index.

The January inflation numbers were higher than the government’s 4 percent target and December’s 4.6 percent, but below November’s 5.1 percent, which was the highest in 28 months year-on-year, the National Bureau of Statistics said.

The China Daily reported the January increase was also below market estimate of 5 percent.

China is battling inflation at a time when vast areas of its wheat-growing regions have been hit by a prolonged winter drought that is pushing food prices higher.

China’s central bank, in its money tightening policies, raised interest rates this month for the third time in recent months.

Read the whole story…