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In the post-Great Recession world, Kennesaw, Ga.-based LendingPoint saw an opportunity in what is called the “near prime” market, borrowers whose credit rating is in the 600-700 range. LendingPoint loaned $15 million its first year, according to Tom Burnside, one of the founders and chief executive officer. LendingPoint has since reached $260 million in loans, employs more than 100. Now, LendingPoint ... making loans easier to obtain for covering out-of-pocket medical expenses. “We do a lot of medical as is,” Burnside said of the company’s standard lending. But a new deal with ezVerify, a healthcare information technology company based in...

On June 9, national attention focused on bringing awareness to ending all forms of violence with a digital media campaign. View #HAVhope shared tweets and photos here.

<p>Democrats hope to enlist military veterans in another type of fight — for majority control of the House.</p> <p>Looking ahead to next year's elections, Democrats are trying to recruit at least two dozen military veterans to challenge Republican incumbents, arguing that candidates with a military background on their resumes appeal to independent voters and can help the party break the GOP grip on Washington.</p>

More than half of food stamp recipients in 21 Georgia counties have been dropped from the program after the state instituted work requirements. State figures released this week revealed that 11,779 people considered able-bodied without children were required to find work by April 1 to continue receiving food stamps, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Sixty-two percent were dropped after the deadline, whittling the number of recipients to 4,528. State officials began enforcing the work mandate in 2016, and plan to expand work requirements to all 159 counties by 2019. About 1.6 million Georgia residents use food stamps, which are funded with...

Eventbrite ... has a hate group problem. Eventbrite is ... selling tickets to events ... featuring enablers of white supremacy like Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard Spencer. Just this past Saturday, white nationalists hosted a sold-out gala featuring some of the biggest names in the white nationalist movement. ... The event page hosted by Eventbrite even contained a cartoon image of Trump making a hand gesture that is increasingly being used as a white supremacist symbol. ... Eventbrite continues to fail to take action that ensures their platform is not used to spread and fund hate ... they create tangible dangers...

Nancy Godinez ... lost her job... her unemployment checks had run out and her job search had proved fruitless. One thing she still had was health insurance... But unless she finds a new job, Godinez, 55, could be at risk of losing her insurance, too. ... Republican governors hoping to impose a work requirement on Medicaid recipients... believe that extending Medicaid to millions of low-income adults without disabilities... gave them an incentive not to work. ...Medicaid has grown to ... 74 million people... work requirements and changes in how it is paid for, could make Medicaid much more limited, with...

Harold Weber is what’s known as a navigator. He has been helping people choose the right health insurance plan since 2013, when the Affordable Care Act went into effect. Working out of the Athens Neighborhood Health Center, he estimates that he has steered about 1,400 people through the complexities of the federal health insurance exchange for Georgia. Today, as congressional Republicans look to repeal the 2010 health care law and replace with it a different plan, Weber and other navigators wonder if they’ll have jobs a year from now. Weber advises all comers at a federally qualified health center (FQHC),...

We want to stop the spread of false news on Facebook. Learn more about the work we're doing. As we work to limit the spread, here are some timps on what to look out for: ...... Be skeptical of headlines. If you see a story in News Feed that you believe is false, you can report it to Facebook. 1 Tap v next to the post you'd like to mark as false. 2 Tap Report post. 3 Tap It's a false news story 4 Tap Mark this post as false news How news stories are marked as disputed: ....

President Trump’s appointment of former GOP congressman John Fleming, M.D., to newly created health technology post could portend ONC downsizing and MACRA changes. The new HHS healthcare technology top official's plans are still unknown, but signs point to possible changes to ONC that could weaken the agency's regulatory authority. The new HHS healthcare technology chief -- a longtime associate of HHS secretary, fellow physician and former GOP congressman Tom Price -- nonetheless also mentioned that ONC "may be reorganizing." Few in the capitol, other than his fans, want to comment publicly about what Fleming's ascension to the top HHS healthcare...

. . . In case you don’t remember, or are too young to remember, Zip disks and drives were developed by Iomega in 1994. They were a similar size to floppy disks – thicker – but held considerably more data; they started at 100 MB and eventually went up to 750 MB. (Which, in those days, was a lot.) Another interesting distinction about them is that they could be used for either PCs or Apple computers. Several of the major voting machines used back in the day, such as the ESS Model 650 Central Scanner, used Zip disks. And a...

Based on the results of this year's study, if all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as those treated in the award-winning facilities: Nearly than 89,000 additional lives could be saved; Over 61,000 additional patients could be complication free; Over $5.6 billion in inpatient costs could be saved; The average patient stay would decrease by half a day; Over 300,000 fewer discharged patients would be readmitted within 30 days; Patients would spend nine minutes less in hospital emergency departments per visit. If the same standards were applied to all inpatient care, the impact would be even greater.

The race to replace former U.S. Rep. Tom Price is more than an early test of President Donald Trump’s popularity. It’s also a bitter battle between powerful Republican factions and a proving ground for Democrats who hope Trump helps them win conservative areas. Eighteen candidates qualified to run this week for the April 18 special election to succeed Price. And the fight over the suburban Atlanta district, which spans from east Cobb County to north DeKalb County, could fast become a template for the 2018 election.

Just by indicating parking difficulty, cities can encourage people to take public transit rather than drive, perhaps mitigating traffic problems.According to the Telegraph, an average driver wastes a total of 2,549 hours looking for parking. That’s 106 days of wasted time. Now, those are statistics in the UK, but I bet that drivers in the US living in metro areas waste just as much — if not more — time looking for parking. Last week, Google quietly launched a new parking feature for Google Maps on Android across 25 major US cities. If you are in these metro areas, you will now see a...

Does the shift toward more data and algorithmic direction for our business decisions assure us that organizations and businesses are operating to everyone's advantage? There are a number of issues involved that some people feel need to be addressed going forward. Numbers don't lie, or do they? Perhaps the fact that they are perceived to be absolutely objective is what makes us accept the determinations of algorithms without questioning what factors could have shaped the outcome. That's the argument Cathy O'Neil makes in Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. While we tend to think...

The GovTech Social Unconference is heading to Atlanta, Georgia! On March 14-15th, join your fellow communicators to share stories and ideas from the trenches of government social media, gain insight from local leaders in the field, meet the hosts of the GovTech Social Podcast and participate in a live recording of the latest episode. Attendance is limited, so get your ticket now. What is an Unconference? We call this the GovTech Social “Unconference” because it is self-organizing and empowers YOU, as a participant, to help create the agenda. Eight sessions in this unconference will be dedicated to the topics, stories,...

Trump's executive order: remove at least two previously implemented regulations for every new one.The order could have major ramifications for healthcare, one of the most regulated industries in the U.S. Providers and vendors face a myriad of rules drafted by numerous agencies and departments, including CMS, Health Resources and Services Administration, Food and Drug Administration and Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Dozens of regulations leveled against the healthcare industry every year include licensing requirements; quality and safety inspections; and standards to adhere to payment policies. . . major ones last year: a rule that mandated the medical...

On December 31, the Washington Post published: "Federal agencies rush to fill job openings before Trump takes office Jan. 20". this violates an agreement reached between the incoming and outgoing administrations on November 20. It also quotes anonymous sources as confirming that the outgoing administration agreed especially to halt last-minute Senior Executive Service (SES) appointments, but did not necessarily agree to provide a list to the incomers that would make it easier to spot violations of the agreement. SES appointments are the top of the federal bureaucracy's hierarchical pyramid. They come in two types: political appointments for those at the...

The United States Digital Service is a startup at The White House, using design and technology to deliver better services to the American people. www.usds.gov For people who need timely access to critical benefits, interacting with the government can become as time consuming as a part-time job. As William has encountered time and again, enrolling in these programs can be cumbersome, duplicative and at odds with the demands of working and caring for one’s family. In recent years, non-profits, academia and state and federal government agencies alike began studying and experimenting with a shift toward a more family-centered — as opposed to...

We are the most religious democracy in the world, and our Judeo-Christian ethic demands that we take care of the downtrodden. But we are also the only advanced democracy without universal health coverage. Are we confused . . . or just hypocrites? My bet is that we are very confused. The public’s reaction to Obamacare (also known as the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) is a prime example of our confusion. Most Americans are preoccupied with making a living and raising a family, and rightly so. They have no time to fully examine health care policy issues. Surveys show that...

Mr. Trump offered two tweets that for the first time accepted the possibility of politically-motivated Russian hacking.