Man Recovers His Life with Help from an ECP

Depression feels like a fall into a rabbit hole of hopelessness. William Medonis fell into that hole, but the with the help with therapists from Brooklyn Community Services, he climbed back out. According to a New York Times article, "'They made me realize there is something else to me,' he said. 'I have other talents and traits, like being smart and well spoken and social. I never thought of myself that way.'"

Only an ECP could provide the next step.

"Mr. Medonis had his eyes checked and learned that he needed glasses. In August, he spent most of the $240 in public assistance he receives each month to buy his first pair. Able to read again, he considered returning to college. Then another resident of the homeless shelter picked a fight with him, shattering his glasses — and his precarious feeling that life was improving. Brooklyn Community Services drew $400 from the Neediest Cases Fund to buy Mr. Medonis a new pair of Ray-Ban glasses, and on Sept. 8, he wore them to his first day of classes as a student at Kingsborough Community College." Read more.

Insurance Execs and Administrators Pull in Health Care's Biggest Bucks

"The biggest bucks are currently earned not through the delivery of care, but from overseeing the business of medicine." That's the word from a post in the New York Times. "The base pay of insurance executives, hospital executives and even hospital administrators often far outstrips doctors’ salaries, according to an analysis performed for The New York Times by Compdata Surveys: $584,000 on average for an insurance chief executive officer, $386,000 for a hospital C.E.O. and $237,000 for a hospital administrator, compared with $306,000 for a surgeon and $185,000 for a general doctor....Mark T. Bertolini, the chief executive of Aetna, earned a salary of about $977,000 in 2012 but a total compensation package of over $36 million, the bulk of it from stocks vested and options he exercised that year." Read more.

Eyes Windows to One's Soul; Tears May Be Its Language

According to a NYTimes post, "research, published on Thursday in the journal Science, could begin to explain something that has baffled scientists for generations: Why do humans, unlike seemingly any other species, cry emotional tears? In several experiments, researchers found that men who sniffed drops of women’s emotional tears became less sexually aroused than when they sniffed a neutral saline solution that had been dribbled down women’s cheeks."

A Great 2011 for Opticians?

Will 2011 bring a retail rebound for opticians? If Christmas sales are a sign of things to come, then yes. "After a 6 percent free fall in 2008 and a 4 percent uptick last year, retail spending rose 5.5 percent in the 50 days before Christmas, exceeding even the more optimistic forecasts, according to MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, which tracks retail spending," according to a NYTimes post.

The Times also reported:

Analysts offered several theories for the rebound in spending while the unemployment rate remained stubbornly high.

Stocks have soared to their highest levels in more than two years...

Pent-up demand is also showing up among middle-income shoppers: in government surveys, consumers have been expressing rising confidence for the last five months.

The luxury segment started heating up in late summer, said Joel Bines, a director in the global retail practice at AlixPartners....

The sales figures were bolstered by improved inventory controls among many retailers.

Patients Avoid Eye Exams

Eye care professionals have something in common with dental professionals. Despite their fear of losing their vision, many people avoid eye exams, according to a posting in the NYTimes. "Joe Lovett was scared, really scared. Being able to see was critical to his work as a documentary filmmaker and, he thought, to his ability to live independently. But longstanding glaucoma threatened to rob him of this most important sense — the sense that more than 80 percent of Americans worry most about losing, according to a recent survey."