This Week’s Question: I had an aging aunt who fell and broke her hip. She was never the same after that. Now that I’m old, myself, I’m worried about falling. What should I do about this?
Well, first of all, you can’t go around worrying about falling or you won’t be relaxed; that can lead to a fall. So, you should concentrate on employing techniques to avoid falls and then don’t let the fear take over you mind.
But a respect for the dangers of falling is justified by the statistics.
Among older adults, falls are the leading cause of injury deaths and the most common cause of nonfatal injuries and hospital admissions for trauma. Of all fall-related fractures, hip breaks cause the greatest number of deaths and lead to the most severe health problems and reduced quality of life.
As we age, the power of our senses, reflexes and coordination diminishes. Maladies and the medicines we take for them can contribute to balance problems. Then there's osteoporosis—a disease that makes bones more likely to snap.
There are many steps you can take to prevent a fall and the possibility of breaking a bone. I’m dedicating the remainder of this column to the best tips I collected from a variety of experts:
* Get your bones tested. Your doctor can prescribe medications that will make your bones harder to break.
* Regular exercise makes you stronger and keeps your joints, tendons, and ligaments flexible. Weight-bearing exercise such as walking may slow bone loss from osteoporosis.
* Alcohol impacts your reflexes and balance. Elaboration is unnecessary.
* Get up slowly from lying and sitting to avoid feeling light-headed.
* Avoid temperature extremes in your home; they can make you dizzy.
* Wear rubber-soled, low-heeled shoes.
* Always hold the handrails on stairways.
* Don't stand on a chair to get to something. Buy a “reach stick,” a grabbing tool you can find at many hardware stores.
* Clear floors where you walk.
* Never carry any package that will obstruct your view of the next step.
* Mount grab bars near toilets, tubs and showers.
* Place non-skid mats, strips, or carpet on all surfaces that may get wet, especially bathtubs and shower stalls.
* Let the soap suds go down the drain before you move around in the shower. If you are prone to falling, use a shower chair and a handheld shower attachment.
* Put night lights and light switches close to your bed.
* Use bright bulbs in your home.
* Keep your telephone near your bed. During the day, keep a portable phone with you so you won’t have to walk to answer it.
* Tack down all carpets and area rugs.
* Close cabinet doors and drawers so you won't run into them.
* When it rains or snows, consider using a cane.
* Use a shoulder bag, fanny pack, or backpack to leave hands free.
* Check curb heights before stepping down.
* When entering rooms, look for differences in floor levels.
* Insure that every room in your home has a light switch near the entrance.
* Practice balancing. Hold onto something such as a countertop and stand on one leg at a time for a minute. Gradually increase the time. Try balancing with your eyes closed. Stand on your toes, then rock back to balance on your heels. Hold each position for a count of 10.
* Be especially careful around pets.
By Fred Cicetti, The Healthy Geezer,
The Healthy Geezer column publishes each Monday on LiveScience.
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Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Insurance Need to improve fraud detection standards
By DALJIT DHESI
daljit@thestar.com.my
Insurers must adopt international best practices and share data, informationKUALA LUMPUR: Insurance fraud will continue to be a threat unless fraud-detection standards are improved and the public are made more aware of this menace.
Deputy Home Minister Datuk Lee Chee Leong said insurers must continue to improve their standards in fraud detection by adopting international best practices and share data and information relating to fraud activities among insurers.
“The regulators and law enforcers have to continuously assess the effectiveness of the law as to whether they are adequate and can at least discourage people from committing insurance fraud.
“Strong cooperation has to be extended to other jurisdictions, too, especially Asean, as organised crime operates in multiple countries and locations. With concerted effort by all parties, I am confident that this activity can be successfully minimised,” he said in his speech at the International Insurance Fraud Conference 2010 yesterday.
Datuk Lee Chee Leong ... ‘Insurance fraud pushes up the cost of everything one buys.’
He said the relevant associations and the Malaysian Insurance Institute (MII) could take the lead by educating society on the consequences of promoting insurance fraud and how they could help to combat it.
Lee said some authorities estimated the cost of insurance fraud ran as high as 10% of the total claims cost. An estimate done in the Unites States by the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud showed that the cost of insurance fraud was about US$80bil a year and this trend would keep escalating.
Insurance fraud, he said, pushed up the cost of everything one bought and used as every company that produced goods or services paid for insurance as a cost of doing business.
Phillip K.F. Fong, who is Crawford Group director for global markets-Asia Pacific and managing director for Malaysia, said based on global figures, it was estimated that about 3% to 5% of total gross premiums worldwide had an element of fraud.
He said during difficult times, as in the case of an economic downturn, the tendency for insurance fraud would be on the rise, for example, in property, household and motor-related claims.
Fong said insurers needed to upgrade their skills and improve their fraud-detection capabilities.
Phillip K.F. Fong ... ‘The insurance industry needs to be vigilant at all times.’Fong categorised fraudsters into three different types – opportunistic, repeat and organised ones. He said to have an effective fraud strategy, three golden rules should be upheld – detection (identification of high risk/suspicious claims), investigation (management and customer-focused investigation of claims once labelled “high risk”) and articulation (production of accurate management information).
Apart from making people more conscious of fradulent claims, insurers must not be publicity-shy as those who fear adverse publicity are invariably the subject of a greater proportion of dishonest claims. MII CEO Khadijah Abdullah said a more structured way of capturing information on insurance fraud was needed via cooperation from Bank Negara, insurers and other relevant parties.
Related Stories:
Insurance fraud in M'sia estimated at RM1.74bil last year
KUALA LUMPUR: Insurance fraud, estimated at RM1.74 billion in Malaysia last year, is clearly a "big business" and more alarming is, the public apathy surrounding it."This apathy at times, unfortunately, even finds its way into our criminal justice system," Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, Datuk Lee Chee Leong said on Monday.
Research on the public perception of insurance fraud concluded that on average, 30 per cent of the public respondents believed, it is acceptable to pad an insurance claim, he added.
"(Hence), there seems to be a great willingness among normally law abiding people to tolerate low levels of insurance fraud.
"However, the burden of combating such crime should not merely rest with the public sector alone, but also the private sector, particularly, the insurers themselves," Lee said in his opening remarks at the International Insurance Fraud Conference 2010, here, on Monday.
He also said that the Association of Malaysian Loss Adjusters (AMLA) and the Malaysian Insurance Institute (MII) should perhaps take the lead to educate society on the consequences of promoting insurance fraud and how they can help combat the issue.
According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau of the Unites States, fraud inflates the cost of each consumer's insurance premiums by US$200 to US$300 annually.
"Insurance fraud pushes up the cost of everything you buy and use because every company that produces goods or services, pays for insurance as a cost of doing business.
"Going forward, the insurers must also continue to improve their standards of fraud detection by adopting the international best practices and share data and information relating to fraud activities among themselves," Lee said.
Meanwhile, the MII's Chief Executive Officer, Khadijah Abdullah suggested that there should be a unified statutory body to oversee fraud in the industry and compile appropriate data.
"Currently, associations and Bank Negara Malaysia, have their own supervision over the issue but there is no single body that can help compile the information," she said. - BERNAMA
Monday, July 5, 2010
U.S.’s Startup Myth; China’s ‘Ford Moment’: Commentary Review
Job-Creation Faith Is Misplaced
Recently an acquaintance at the next table in a Palo Alto, California, restaurant introduced me to his companions: three young venture capitalists from China. They explained, with visible excitement, that they were touring promising companies in Silicon Valley. I’ve lived in the Valley a long time, and usually when I see how the region has become such a draw for global investments, I feel a little proud.
Not this time. I left the restaurant unsettled. Something didn’t add up. Bay Area unemployment is even higher than the 9.7 percent national average. Clearly, the great Silicon Valley innovation machine hasn’t been creating many jobs of late -- unless you are counting Asia, where American technology companies have been adding jobs like mad for years.
The underlying problem isn’t simply lower Asian costs. It’s our own misplaced faith in the power of startups to create U.S. jobs. Americans love the idea of the guys in the garage inventing something that changes the world. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently encapsulated this view in a piece called “Start-Ups, Not Bailouts.” His argument: Let tired old companies that do commodity manufacturing die if they have to. If Washington really wants to create jobs, he wrote, it should back startups. (July 2)
Andy Grove
{NSN L4W13G1A1I4H <GO>}
So Far, Capitalism Rules
If these factory strikes continue, China may have to go Communist.
It’s tempting to wonder which way China will go. Will it side with demands for higher pay and let strikes broaden? Might it clamp down on this budding Solidarity-style movement to protect the all-important export machine? Or will workers demand a true Communism -- not just one that abhors Google?
So far, China has taken the first path, going more the way of capitalism than Communism. It raises the specter of a “Henry Ford moment” in the most populous nation, with both good and bad implications for the global economy.
First, the good news. China’s leaders are taking a page from the industrialist who built Ford Motor Co. In 1914, Ford doubled the average automaker’s wage to $5 a day. It made his Model T more affordable to them and provided a model for a stable workforce that formed the core of the U.S. middle class.
It’s a dynamic China needs more of, and signs are that it’s spreading before our eyes. The positive domino effect it unleashes would create a growing domestic market for products factory workers produce. It would accelerate China’s shift from exports to a consumer-led economy. (June 28)
William Pesek
{NSN L4NN5307SXKX <GO>}
Banking Bill Invites Meltdown
The financial overhaul bill set for passage sometime next week is supposed to “bring accountability to Wall Street.” In announcing an agreement between the House and Senate last week, Senator Christopher Dodd noted that “the American people have called on us to set clear rules of the road for the financial industry to prevent a repeat of the financial collapse that cost so many so dearly.”
The final bill, though, does little to prevent a systemically important bank from failing, and makes it far more difficult for regulators to assist one seeking to avoid failure. This all but insures that the system-wide calamity the bill should be trying to prevent will, in fact, occur again.
Most of the systemic risk in the U.S. is now carried in the six largest bank-holding companies (Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley). The bill lets them off easy: none is to be broken up and the effort to lower the risk they take on was diluted. (June 28)
Roy C. Smith
{NSN L4MNEP0UQVI9 <GO>}
EU Mulls Sovereign Default
The notion that default might be the only sensible exit strategy for an indebted euro nation is finally gaining traction with the authorities. With global financial markets still in a state of disrepair, investors would be wise to tread softly amid the potential nightmares.
A draft European Union document, dated June 25 and scheduled for discussion July 12-13, was obtained this week by Bloomberg reporter Meera Louis. The draft suggests the forthcoming stress tests planned for the region’s banks should assess the dangers posed by “exposures to sovereign risk.”
That’s a euphemism for asking whether banks would blow up if a government couldn’t pay its debts. Including that scenario in the analysis is an admission that the prospect of restructuring has, in the minds of the euro’s apparatchiks, moved up the scale to “possible” from “out of the question.”
On June 28, the Bank for International Settlements weighed in with its annual report. Cheery reading it is not. (July 1)
Mark Gilbert
{NSN L4U63E07SXKX <GO>}
--Editors: John LearNewscribe : get free news in real time
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