Illness
Send Dick your well wishes:
From: deklund123@comcast.net
Subject: In case you were wondering
Dear family and friends:
I want to update you on the ongoing saga of my battle
with Hepatitus-C (HCV) I apologize for the lack of correspondence but I'm going
to blame it on the virus.(Sure, blame it on the virus)
First and foremost: I am thankful to be alive since I
actually had a small malignant tumor in my liver that hadn't shown up on my
MRI's prior to my transplant on 5/5/08.
While the transplant eliminated my liver cancer HCV
remained in my bloodstream. So the HCV is slowly damaging my new liver.
The primary symptoms with HCV are fatigue and flu like
symptoms which vary in intensity. Most days I run out of energy after 5 or 6
hours and hit the rack.
As with most drugs there are side effects. There are two
primary anti-rejection/immunosupressive drugs for treating HCV:Prograf and
Rapamune. Prograf is to blame for two skin cancers which had to be removed.
Rapamune is causing inflammation in my right lung. So I am now taking a lower
dose of Rapamune to hopefully decrease the amount of inflammation.
The bottom line is this: If I can't cure my HCV the virus
will ultimately cause my liver to fail. Fortunately there is no indication that
will happen in the near future.
The good news is that in the next 10-12 months the FDA
will likely approve a new drug that is producing great results in trials. Even
better news is that it is curing HCV without all the miserable side effects
that I experienced with three prior attempts to kill the virus.
So, life is good and will get better.
As President G.W. Bush would say: Stay the course, a
thousand points of light, yada, yada, yada.
Thank you for your concern and support.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Received some reaction to Rob Moser’s letter to the AJC. Here are two:
Mark,
I just want to make note of the outstanding letter written by Robert Moser to the AJC. Regardless of what may or may not come from his untiring effort he has earned the utmost respect from guys like myself. Thanks again Rob. Ed Morey
Date: 3/18/2013 12:01:32 AM
Subject: Moser letter
|
Mark,
Fyi today I
sent Robert Moser the below found at the PBGC website. It’s in reference to his
comment about PBGC taxpayer funding in PCN 162.
Money PBGC Takes In and Pays Out
PBGC receives
no funds from general tax revenues. Operations are financed by insurance
premiums set by Congress and paid by sponsors of defined benefit plans,
investment income, assets from pension plans trusteed by PBGC, and recoveries
from the companies formerly responsible for the plans.
Are there
other than “general tax revenues”?
Thanks for what you do!
Best regards,
John Hensler
Ret 767 CVG
Editor: Thanks John for the post and for your gratitude. I will let Rob answer for himself on this one
but I believe he was referring to the “inevitability” of taxpayer burden. As you point out and as we all know HOW it is
supposed to work and how it will work are sometimes at odds. The PBGC has run up a $34 billion + deficit
with no way to make that up. So as the
ADAP and SSI revenues should be in a lock box and not fund the general
treasury, yet they do, strange things happen and will happen in Washington. The PBGC is operating way over their head and
may soon have a huge number of state pension obligations added that will make
their situation worse and of course ultimately place their deficit on the
taxpayer. See the below article:
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. running $34 billion
deficit
Nov
17, 2012 01:19 AM EST
The
Washington PostPublished: November 16
The federal agency that insures
pensions for 43 million Americans saw its deficit swell to $34 billion in the
past year, the largest in its 38-year history.
In its annual report released
Friday, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. blamed the growing shortfall on its
inability to charge private employers adequate premiums for insuring pensions.
Citing the increasing deficit, PBGC
Director Joshua Gotbaum called on Congress to give the agency power to set its
own premiums. “We continue to hope that PBGC can have the tools to set its own
financial house in order, the way other government and private insurers do,” he
said in a statement.
The Obama administration has called
on Congress to give PBGC’s board the power to set premiums. But those efforts
have been unsuccessful, in large part because some members of Congress say that
a new premium structure could significantly raise costs for companies whose retirement funds
already are at risk of running out of money. Although Congress has raised PBGC
premiums repeatedly in the past, they have not gone up in recent years.
PBGC is funded by a combination of
insurance premiums from private pension plans,
investment returns on its $85 billion in assets and recoveries from bankrupt
companies. It receives no taxpayer money, and its leaders say it has has
sufficient reserves to cover its obligations.
Overall, the agency saw its
long-term liabilities increase $12 billion to $119 billion, while its assets
grew by $4 billion over the past year.
If the shortfalls continue, Gotbaum
warned, “PBGC may face for the first time the need for taxpayer funds. That is
a situation no one wants.”
The agency has proposed setting
premiums that reflect the perceived riskiness of the pension plans it
insures, with financially shaky firms paying more to have their pension
promises guaranteed by the agency.
But business lobbyists have branded
the proposal a non-starter. They say any increases would work against the
agency’s larger goal of enhancing the troubling retirement security landscape confronting many Americans by making it more expensive for
the dwindling number of firms that have pension plans to insure them.
Currently, fewer than one in six
private-sector workers are covered by defined-benefit pensions, a percentage
that has been shrinking for three decades. More than half of private-sector
workers have no retirement coverage through their employers.
Meanwhile, 53 percent of Americans
are in danger of being unable to maintain their standard of living in
retirement, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
The agency’s deficit also has been
fanned by low interest rates, which under accounting rules makes many troubled
pension funds look even weaker.
In addition to its growing deficit,
the PBGC said that at the end of 2010 it faced $332 billion in potential
liabilities from fiscally unsound plans that could end up in its hands in the
future.
In the fiscal year ended in
September, the agency paid nearly $5.5 billion in benefits to 887,000 retirees
whose plans have failed, and 614,000 people are expected to collect benefits
from the agency once they retire. In that year, the agency also assumed
responsibility for the pensions of 47,000 people in newly failed plans.
The agency also is charged with
discouraging financially trouble firms from jettisoning their pension
obligations. Last year, the agency helped protect the pensions of 130,000
employees of American Airlines, which is in bankruptcy, according to the report.
It also helped preserve the pensions
of 37,000 people whose companies have emerged from bankruptcy, including
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, the food retailer A&P, and the
publishing company Lee Enterprises.
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