Update: November 6, 2009

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Death of MSC Officer – COL (ret) Todd Reineck

This information was provided by COL (ret) Carol Reineck, Todd’s widow.  Please share with those who might be interested.

Thursday November 12, 2009

10:00-11:00 a.m. Celebration of Life. Concordia Lutheran Church, 1604 & Huebner Rd. 16801 Huebner Rd. San Antonio 78258.  All are invited. Concordia arranged for the service to be live video streamed at http://www.concordialutheranchurch.com

1100-1130 Greeting each other at Concordia. Then travel to Ft. Sam Houston Cemetery 1130-1230 for those who can attend committal with military honors.  Check in/register at cemetery at Ft. Sam near 1230. Please see committal guidance below.

1-1:30 p.m. Committal Service with full military honors. Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. 1520 Harry Wurzbach Rd.  When visitors come into the gate (don’t go through Ft. Sam; rather come into the Harry Wurzbach gate), visitors will be asked to park briefly and go into the office, receive a map to the location, and sign a register before proceeding. Those who can attend the committal should arrive at the cemetery office about 1230. Cemetery office 820-3891. All are invited.

2-3:30 Reception and fellowship at Concordia Lutheran Church, 1604 & Huebner Rd. 16801 Huebner Rd. San Antonio 78258. Above old worship center on second floor. 479-1477. All are invited.

Legislation (Other than HCR – see below)

Well, it seems that the “Cap and Trade” bills are moving to the forefront again.  There is, of course, the difference of opinion on the number of jobs that will be lost/created when/if these bills pass.  Here’s a perspective from FactCheck which I found interesting.  Also, I heard on one of the news programs (Fox, I believe) that there would be between 2-3,000 jobs created for a new wind farm in Texas that is being proposed.  However, the new jobs will be created in China!  Only a few jobs will be created in the U.S.  Here’s an article about this interesting program.

HCR: Health Care Reform (What Else?)

You’ve probably heard that the American Medical Association (AMA), over the objection of many of its members has endorsed the House Healthcare (Insurance) Reform Bill (HR 3962).  In addition, the American Association of Retired People (AARP) has also endorsed it.  I saw an item on the Consumers Union (publishers of Consumer Reports) website that they also endorse it.  Just letting you know.

Also in the House is HR3961, the Physician Payment Reform Act, the House’s version of S1776, the act to change the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) calculations that are currently set to reduce Medicare Physician payments by more than 21% in January 2010.  It will be interesting to see where this all goes as a similar bill failed to pass in the Senate.  At least the House is keeping this and “Healthcare Reform” separate.  This bill has a lot more words in it than the Senate version so maybe it will pass; the other one was probably too simple.  If you want to see the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports on both these bills go to HR3962 for the reform bill and to get the report on H.R. 3961 you will need to search for it by using the search box in the upper right hand corner of the CBO homepage.

TRICARE Contract Information

The second of three TRICARE Managed Care Support contract award protests has been upheld by the General Accounting Office (GAO).  This on is the award to Aetna for the TRICARE North region.  The protest was submitted by the current contractor, Health Net.  No specific details are available yet and the next steps are not yet known.

Express Scripts, the previous contractor, was awarded the new “TRICARE Pharmacy Program” contract that combined the formerly separate retail pharmacy and mail-order pharmacy contracts.  For more information see:  Express-Scripts/TRICARE.  Included in this award is an extension of the Over-the-Counter (OTC) medication demonstration program which allows eligible beneficiaries to get certain OTC medications for a significantly reduced rate thru the TRICARE Pharmacy Program with a doctor’s prescription.  For details see:  OTC Demonstration Project.

Tech Stuff

Updates you might want to consider; remember, most have been made available to correct security issues:

1.  Firefox updated to version 3.5.5.  Use the “Check for Updates” feature on the Firefox Help Menu.

2.  Sun has released an updated version of Java, the basis of lots of things done on the Internet.  This update applies to both Internet Explorer and Firefox (I cannot comment on other browsers).  The newest version is version 1.6.0.17.

3.  iTunes released version 9.0.2 this week.

4.  cCleaner (the utility to clean up the registry and remove old files) has been updated to version 2.25.1025.

5.  Adobe released a new version of it’s Shockwave Player.  The current version is 11.5.2.602.

I may have mentioned this before, but I use the Update Checker at FileHippo to keep most of my common software items up to date.  It runs whenever I start my XP desktop and laptop and I kick it off manually on the Vista laptop as the security tools in Vista won’t allow it to run on startup.  I’d recommend it to those who want to keep their systems up to date.

Don’t forget, Microsoft’s “patch Tuesday” is coming up next week. 

My Windows 7 Upgrade Experience

I’ve not done anything ‘active’ since my last update on this topic.  The boxes sit on the shelf collecting dust while I continue to research the options and proper ways to do the updates. 

The Last Word – Searching for Missing OF’s

COL (ret) Mike McGinley is trying to locate the following retired MSC officers.  My roster is about 4 years old and I don’t have 4 of these 5 listed anyway.  If you know where they are or how to contact them please let Mike know at:  mikemcginley7@aol.com.  They are:  Johnny Walker, Tom Pozniak, Matt Carp, Tom Nalepa, and John Ward.

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