1. Medicare publishes new information on quality of care at dialysis facilities.  The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced additions to its Dialysis Facility Comparison website that will give consumers better insight into the quality of care provided by patient facilities.

The improvements include two new quality measures that demonstrate how well dialysis patients are treated for anemia (low red blood cell count) as well as updated information that will help patients better understand survival rates by facility.

The website links consumers with detailed information about the 4,700 dialysis facilities certified by Medicare and allows users to compare facilities in a geographic region. 

It also links users to resources that support family members and specialized groups of kidney patients.  The website is at http://www.medicare.gov/dialysis

2.  Nearly half of primary care doctors to cut back on patient care or quit medicine.  Reuters reported that a survey of 12,000 doctors by the Physicians Foundation forecast an upcoming shortage of family doctors, although there will be an abundance of specialists.

More than 90% of those surveyed said their paperwork has increased significantly in the last three years.  "The whole thing has spun out of control.  The whole process has just become too burdensome," one doctor said. 

3.  Much of the national debt is owed to Social Security and to foreign countries.  On the website of the American Institute for Economic Research at http://www.aier.org/research/commentaries/784-the-national-debt-is-soaringand-so-are-foreign-holdings, R. D. Norton, wrote:

White House spokespeople contend that what really matters is not the total size of the debt, but the portion of it that is held by "the public." Currently, $4.3 billion of the $10.6 billion debt is owned by the Fed and by the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. The balance, more than $6 trillion, is held by the public.

But this argument has two drawbacks. First, the portion of the debt owned by the government is already "spent." 

When the Social Security trust fund runs a surplus, for example, it uses it to buy Treasury securities. The trust fund receives a piece of paper, and the Treasury uses the proceeds to pay for current programs. So that cupboard is bare.

The other issue with focusing on the portion of the debt held by the public is that "the public" increasingly consists of foreign governments and central banks.

4.  Social Security Trust Fund now has more than $2.366 trillion in IOUs.  The U.S. Department of the Treasury reported that, as of October 31, 2008, the Social Security Trust Fund (Old Age and Disability) held $2.366,638 Trillion in non-negotiable IOUs from the federal government.

This amount is included in the national debt, which was $10.574,094 trillion on October 31.