The Cash-Only Doctors Club

An anxious woman in her mid-40s showed up last winter at Atlas MD, a family doctor’s office in Wichita. She had lost her job as a restaurant cook, and along with it her health insurance and her home. She needed to see a doctor.

Atlas MD isn’t a free clinic. It’s a concierge medical practice, which means you can’t get an appointment unless you pay cash. Atlas MD’s two physicians, Josh Umbehr and Doug Nunamaker, don’t accept insurance. Instead, they charge most of their adult patients $ 50 a month for unlimited visits. They also offer free EKGs and biopsies and cut-rate prices on prescription drugs. Two-thirds of their patients have insurance but feel the fee is well worth it for personalized service, including house calls, the doctor’s cell-phone number, and quick responses to e-mails and Twitter messages. The rest of Umbehr and Nunamaker’s clientele are uninsured. For those patients, Atlas is the only way of seeing a family doctor regularly. Contrary to those who say concierge doctors like themselves are getting rich by focusing on personalized care at a high price, Nunamaker and Umbehr, who are in their early 30s, contend that they can grow their practice by appealing to a broader clientele.

“I want to be one of the 1 percent,” says Umbehr, who likes to talk business as much as he does medicine; Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged inspired the name of his two-year-old practice. “But the problem with the 1 percent is there’s only 1 percent of them. If you want to build a business model that’s really far-reaching and world-changing, then it’s got to fit everybody.”

It was midway through the month when the homeless woman arrived at Atlas MD, so Nunamaker asked her for $ 25 and examined her immediately. She told him she was always tired and couldn’t keep a job. She was living in a storage shed. Nunamaker gave her a blood test, which revealed an extreme case of hypothyroidism. That explained her exhaustion. “I get why you are so fatigued,” he said. “Your thyroid isn’t working as well as it should.” He put her on medication that would boost the hormone her thyroid gland wasn’t producing and restore her vitality.

The woman stayed with Atlas MD for three months until she was feeling better. Then she left. Nunamaker gave her three months of inexpensive prescription refills and wished her well. He would have preferred to see her stay on. But he and Umbehr are proud that they were able to restore her health for $ 147, including tests and prescriptions. (They made money on her monthly retainer, but not on the tests and labs. Atlas MD provides them at cost.) They estimate that she would have paid as much as $ 1,500 if she had gone to a regular doctor. It was undeniably a good deal for her; had she required hospitalization, however, the bill would have been enormous and not covered by Atlas.

The Atlas MD doctors are eager to tell this story. They’re convinced that concierge medicine, often thought of as a luxury for the rich, is affordable for everyone and might even be the salvation of the American health-care system. “We’ve fixed health care,” Umbehr proclaims, later admitting that he tends to be “grandiose.”

The doctors at Atlas MD are among a growing number of physicians opting out of the traditional insurance-driven model. They see their older peers at traditional practices struggling to keep afloat at a time when administrative costs are rising and insurance payments have basically stayed flat. Many of these rebel doctors charge high fees and target the wealthy—visiting them at their homes, accompanying them to specialist visits, and offering them what they market as physicals fit for a CEO.

There are 4,400 concierge doctors in the U.S., 30 percent more than there were last year, according to the American Academy of Private Physicians, their professional association. “This is all doctors want to talk about,” says Jeff Goldsmith, a health-care industry analyst and trend spotter. “ ‘I want to go off the grid. I’m done billing Blue Cross. I can’t deal with this anymore. It’s destroying my life and my relationship with my patients.’ ”

Some health policymakers are encouraged by this trend. They think an increase of direct-pay doctors—especially affordable ones—could lead to better health care in the U.S., which has the highest costs and some of the worst outcomes of any wealthy nation. “I think it’s great,” says Kevin Schulman, a professor of medicine and business administration at Duke University. “We’re rediscovering that if we just ask people to pay for services, we could provide them with better value. Primary care is affordable.”

Others worry that the growth of concierge medicine will mean the affluent receive high-quality care while the rest of the country struggles to be seen by fewer and fewer doctors. “It is a step towards a two-tiered health-care system: a system where the rich get first-choice care and the not-so-rich get second-choice care,” says Kathleen Stoll, deputy executive director of Families USA, a health-care consumer advocacy group.

This much is certain: There will be greater demand for primary-care physicians because of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. “Love it or hate it,” Atlas MD’s Umbehr says of Obamacare, “it’s going to make it harder for you to see your doctor.”
 
 
Primary-care physicians have long complained of being the poor men of their industry. Their median salary is $ 160,000 a year—roughly half of an anesthesiologist’s—but rising overhead, more paperwork, and packed waiting rooms are propelling ever-greater numbers to shed patients and charge a retainer. In 2011 the average American medical practice spent $ 82,975 per doctor dealing with insurers, according to the Commonwealth Fund. That same doctor has 3,281 active patients over a three-year period, says the American Academy of Family Physicians. She rarely has time to see them for more than a few minutes. The attraction of concierge medicine for her isn’t hard to fathom: She can winnow down her patient roster, spend more time with each, and do away with her insurance-related headaches.

Photograph by Ryan Lowry for Bloomberg BusinessweekPriority Physicians charges about $ 5,500 per patient per year for personalized service including house calls, prescription delivery, and unlimited face time

It will only become more enticing in 2014 when the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate requires everyone to be insured. The law will enable 30 million previously uninsured people to get coverage through an expansion of Medicaid. They’ll need primary care, but it’s not yet clear who will give it to them. By 2020, the Association of American Medical Colleges estimates, there will be 45,000 fewer primary-care doctors than the U.S. needs. “For the last 13 years, very few students have been going into it,” says Patrick Dowling, chairman of the department of family medicine at the University of California-Los Angeles’s David Geffen School of Medicine. “What motivates medical school students is income, just like everyone else.”

Proponents of concierge medicine insist that more time with each patient allows them to provide holistic care that can prevent diseases such as diabetes that are major drivers of health-care costs in America and keep people out of hospital emergency rooms. Garrison Bliss, co-founder of Qliance, a low-cost concierge medicine company based in Seattle, estimates that if everybody in the nation went to one of his doctors, the country would save $ 268 billion annually. In 2010, Qliance says, its clients visited emergency rooms 65 percent less than similar patients. Thirty-five percent fewer of them needed to be hospitalized. They required 66 percent fewer specialist visits.

But when doctors go the concierge route, they often reduce their patient roster as much as 80 percent, creating more scarcity. “There aren’t enough primary-care people around now,” says Arthur Caplan, director of medical ethics at the NYU Langone Medical Center. “When concierge practices spread, that means more and more people will be left without any access to primary care.”

It also affects other doctors. Russell Phillips is the director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care and a practicing physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “We have a handful of doctors affiliated with Beth Israel who have done this,” he says. “Every time it happens, it is an event. We have to figure who is going to take their patients.”

As consumer advocates and policymakers fret, concierge doctors are making money. Corporate interests are getting involved, too. In 2009, Procter & Gamble (PG) bought MDVIP, a national concierge medical franchise, for an undisclosed amount. Venture capitalists are investing in direct-pay practices, and private equity firms are interested. “When the private equity folks come to our conferences, they say the winds are in the sails of both supply and demand for private medicine,” says Tom Blue, executive director of the American Academy of Private Physicians. “That spells opportunity.”
 
 
It’s a Thursday morning in September, and Howard Maron, considered the father of concierge medicine by many, is sitting at a table in the Gallery restaurant at the Carlyle hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. With his bushy white hair and a white mustache, the 61-year-old doctor looks like Ted Turner. He has a similar bravado. He went to UCLA Medical School. In 1980 he started a traditional primary-care practice in Seattle with three doctors. Maron had 3,000 patients. He says that as long as 30 of them were sick on a given day, his office was full, and he made money.

In 1982, Maron became the team physician for the Seattle SuperSonics. It wasn’t a full-time job. But when the team had away games, he tagged along and looked after the basketball players. Maron arranged for sick SuperSonics to see the best specialists wherever they were on their road trips. He would get players into hospitals under assumed names to keep them out of the papers. “It was spare-no-expense,” he says wistfully. “It was ‘Get it done and get it done right.’ ”

In 1996, Maron founded MD2 International, hoping to offer the same level of care to a select group of patients. He thought he could do this if he and his partner, Scott Hall, saw only 50 families. MD2 would charge them $ 25,000 a year. Maron says other Seattle physicians thought he was crazy: “They said, ‘Nobody is going to pay you.’ ”

Maron says he quickly attracted enough patients. “When you open up an office and you know that you’re going to be limited to only 50 families, the shoe is on the other foot,” he boasts. “They think they’re interviewing you, but you’re interviewing them. You want very special people because this is it. This is your cadre.”He decorated his office with marble bathrooms and antique sculpture. He gave clients lengthy physicals. He got them appointments to see the best specialists in Seattle. And his patients never had to fill out a form, because MD2 didn’t accept insurance. Maron compares the experience to traveling by private jet. “I fly private, too,” he adds.

Maron opened offices in San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, and Portland, Ore. Much to his consternation, other concierge doctors emerged and charged less. “They dumbed the model down,” Maron grouses. “Really, the only person who has their finger on the pulse of this is me.”

Ryan Lowry for Bloomberg BusinessweekCraig Veatch

In 2002, Craig Veatch and Matthew Priddy of Priority Physicians started tending to patients in Indianapolis with substantial incomes. Each saw no more than 200 patients and charged most adults $ 5,500 a year. “We knew there were people out in Seattle charging $ 10,000 to $ 25,000 a year,” says Veatch. “We just felt that the cost of living is a little bit lower in the Midwest.”

The doctors at Priority Physicians also refuse insurance, but they do make house calls. They drive their patients to the hospital when they need surgery. (Patients use their insurance to pay for visits to specialists and hospitals.) They even make pharmacy runs for them.

They also insist their services are not exclusively for the well-heeled. “We have patients who say, “I’ll forgo an extra vacation so I can come and see you,” says Shelagh Fraser, a doctor who joined Priority in 2006. “I mean, we certainly have some very wealthy patients,” Priddy adds. “But we have many patients whom you would consider middle class who employ our services instead of lease a BMW for $ 800 a month. They just drive a cheaper car.”

Last year, Tim Herd, chief executive of a local property and casualty insurance company, came to Priority Physicians for a flu shot. He brought his two children, who are in college. They marveled at the plush carpets, heavy wooden doors, and black leather sofas in the exam rooms. “My kids said, ‘Dad, no wonder you like this place. It’s like the Four Seasons of doctors’ offices,’ ” Herd chuckles.

Practices offering cheaper models sprang up elsewhere. The largest is MDVIP, headquartered in Boca Raton, Fla., and founded in 2000. Each MDVIP doctor can have 600 patients. “Six hundred is really the maximum that you could have to provide that annual exam and follow up,” says MDVIP President Mark Murrison. MDVIP charges an average annual fee of $ 1,650. It also bills insurance companies for procedures. It has 580 doctors in 40 states and 200,000 patients. MDVIP also has an aggressive growth strategy: It says it recruits older doctors willing to shed many patients and tend to those who pay extra. Some people find this approach ethically dubious. “There has been a long-standing prohibition within the medical profession against abandonment,” says NYU’s Caplan. “Once you have a long-term relationship with a patient, you are supposed to stick with them or find them someone else.”

MDVIP says its physicians try hard to place former patients. Still, some of them feel burned. In a letter published in the Memphis Commercial Appeal after a local practitioner joined MDVIP, one ex-patient asked, “What happened to the Hippocratic Oath?”
 
 
Some doctors had a more egalitarian vision for concierge medicine. One of them was Bliss, who practiced with Maron before Maron departed to create MD2. “Howard went off and started his practice for $ 25,000 a year per patient,” Bliss says. “You know, by invitation only? I didn’t have any interest in that. Why would I want to take care of 50 rich families?”

A self-described liberal in medical school who didn’t care about business, Bliss sat down with his spreadsheets and came up with a different model for Seattle Medical Associates, which he founded in 1981 and reopened in 1997. The new practice didn’t take insurance. Instead, the highest price he and his partner, Mitchell Karton, charged was $ 65 a month. Each doctor could see 800 patients.

In 2007, Bliss was restless. One of his patients, a venture capitalist, urged him to create a company that could expand nationally. So he started Qliance, a concierge medicine provider with five offices in Washington State. Qliance, which has since raised $ 17 million in venture capital, still charges most patients $ 65 a month. Its 5,000 clients include truck drivers, grocery store clerks, and other blue-collar workers. They can contact their doctor at any hour. When they visit an office, they are guaranteed at least half an hour with their doctor. Like wealthy patients at a pricier concierge practice, Qliance’s patrons often have insurance, but are willing to pay extra for convenience.

“One time my old doctor was giving me a physical,” says Jed Aldridge, a retired 65-year-old firefighter and Qliance patient who lives in a Seattle suburb. “After 10 minutes he looked at his watch and said, ‘Our 15 minutes are almost up.’ Are you kidding? I’m getting older. I have more than 15 minutes of medical issues to talk about.” Aldridge says he never feels rushed now.

Meanwhile, in Wichita, Atlas MD began collecting $ 50 a month for most patients in 2010. Umbehr and Nunamaker say they can charge a fraction of what other concierge doctors ask because they run a lean operation. They need no office manager to handle insurance, and the only other employee is Jeannie O’Callaghan, a registered nurse. The doctors often answer the phone themselves. They make coffee and wipe off the counters.

Both occasionally work in the emergency room at a local hospital to cover their startup costs. Still, each expects to make $ 200,000 this year. “The math does work out,” Umbehr says. “Some of the people we went to medical school with are coming out and signing $ 140,000-a-year contracts with hospitals.”

On a Monday morning in October, Umbehr and Nunamaker are sitting in their expansive, high-ceilinged waiting room. It’s almost 9 a.m., a time when most physicians’ offices are bustling with patients. Atlas MD is strangely peaceful. The first patient visit isn’t scheduled for another half-hour.

Nunamaker and Umbehr spend much of their time interacting with their patients online, and on this day, Nunamaker is trading e-mails with a woman whose son has strep throat. He holds up a fairly gruesome image on his iPhone of the child’s throat. “Enlarged tonsils, pus pockets, sore throat, a fever,” he says. There’s no reason for the mother to bring her sick child into the office to hear that he needs a stronger antibiotic. He can handle that digitally. Umbehr shares an even more unsettling phone image, a boy with an eye infection. He has been corresponding with the boy’s mother and decides the infection isn’t serious. He says the mother manages a call center and can’t afford to leave work. He e-mails a prescription to a Walgreens (WAG) near her job. That way, she can pick up the medication on her lunch hour. “She’s making $ 24,000 a year and has a concierge doctor,” Umbehr boasts.

The question is whether such inexpensive concierge care can be a model for everybody. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former White House health-care policy adviser and one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, doesn’t think so. “The problem is, it excludes specialty care, complex diagnostics, hospitalization,” he says. “People need insurance. They need the whole product.”

Conceding the point, some of the more forward thinkers in the concierge movement are trying to figure out how to build a new model for primary care by combining their services along with insurance. In 2012 the average premium for an employer-provided insurance policy for a family of four climbed to a record high of $ 20,728, according to Milliman, a health-care consultancy. What if families could purchase cheap concierge care from a provider like Atlas MD and supplement it with lower-priced insurance? Wouldn’t there be a cost savings? “Health insurance should work more like car insurance,” says Umbehr. “We have car insurance for all the big stuff, but we pay for gas, tires, and oil changes ourselves.”

Qliance just launched a pilot program with Cigna (CI) that does something like that. Meanwhile, Bliss has pitched a plan to help Medicare save money. “We’d love to do that,” he says. “We think we could do it for $ 100 per patient and save them 20 to 30 percent of their health-care costs. But Medicare won’t recognize us.”

Traditional high-priced concierge doctors would be well advised to pay attention. If they turn away too many patients in the middle of a doctor shortage, they may risk a political backlash and increased regulation. Nobody in the profession is more worried about this than its founder, Howard Maron. “Guess who is going to be the victim of the blame game?” he warns. “Doctors who have opted out, doctors who refuse to see patients. Who is that? Us.”

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Egypt’s anti-Morsi rebellion of judges is complete

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt‘s rebellion of the judges against President Mohammed Morsi became complete on Sunday with the country’s highest court declaring an open-ended strike on the day it was supposed to rule on the legitimacy of two key assemblies controlled by allies of the Islamist leader.

The strike by the Supreme Constitutional Court and opposition plans to march on the presidential palace on Tuesday take the country’s latest political crisis to a level not seen in the nearly two years of turmoil since Hosni Mubarak‘s ouster in a popular uprising.

Judges from the country’s highest appeals court and its sister lower court were already on an indefinite strike, joining colleagues from other tribunals who suspended work last week to protest what they saw as Morsi‘s assault on the judiciary.

The last time Egypt had an all-out strike by the judiciary was in 1919, when judges joined an uprising against British colonial rule.

The standoff began when Morsi issued decrees on Nov. 22 giving him near-absolute powers that granted himself and the Islamist-dominated assembly drafting the new constitution immunity from the courts.

The constitutional panel then raced in a marathon session last week to vote on the charter’s 236 clauses without the participation of liberal and Christian members. The fast-track hearing pre-empted a decision from the Supreme Constitutional Court that was widely expected to dissolve the constituent assembly.

The judges on Sunday postponed their ruling on that case just before they went on strike.

Without a functioning justice system, Egypt will be plunged even deeper into turmoil. It has already seen a dramatic surge in crime after the uprising, while state authority is being challenged in many aspects of life and the courts are burdened by a massive backlog of cases.

“The country cannot function for long like this, something has to give,” said Negad Borai, a private law firm director and a rights activist. ‘We are in a country without courts of law and a president with all the powers in his hands. This is a clear-cut dictatorial climate,” he said.

Mohamed Abdel-Aziz, a rights lawyer, said the strike by the judges will impact everything from divorce and theft to financial disputes that, in some cases, could involve foreign investors.

“Ordinary citizens affected by the strike will become curious about the details of the current political crisis and could possibly make a choice to join the protests,” he said.

The Judges Club, a union with 9,500 members, said late Sunday that judges would not, as customary, oversee the national referendum Morsi called for Dec. 15 on the draft constitution hammered out and hurriedly voted on last week.

The absence of their oversight would raise more questions about the validity of the vote. If the draft is passed in the referendum, parliamentary elections are to follow two months later and they too may not have judicial supervision.

The judges say they will remain on strike until Morsi rescinds his decrees, which the Egyptian leader said were temporary and needed to protect the nation’s path to democratic rule.

For now, however, Morsi has to contend with the fury of the judiciary.

The constitutional court called Sunday “the Egyptian judiciary’s blackest day on record.”

It described the scene outside the Nile-side court complex, where thousands of Islamist demonstrators gathered since the early morning hours carrying banners denouncing the tribunal and some of its judges.

A statement by the court, which swore Morsi into office on June 30, said its judges approached the complex but turned back when they saw the protesters blocking entrances and climbing over its fences. They feared for their safety, it added.

“The judges of the Supreme Constitutional Court were left with no choice but to announce to the glorious people of Egypt that they cannot carry out their sacred mission in this charged atmosphere,” said the statement, which was carried by state news agency MENA.

Supporters of Morsi, who hails from the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, claim that the court’s judges remain loyal to Mubarak, who appointed them, and accuse them of trying to derail Egypt’s transition to democratic rule.

In addition to the high court’s expected ruling Sunday on the legitimacy of the constitution-drafting panel, it was also expected to rule on another body dominated by Morsi supporters, parliament’s upper chamber.

Though Morsi’s Nov. 22 decrees provide immunity to both bodies against the courts, a ruling that declares the two illegitimate would have vast symbolic significance, casting doubt on the standing of both.

The Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice party, sought to justify the action of its supporters outside the court as a peaceful protest. It reiterated its charge that some members of the judiciary were part and parcel of Mubarak’s autocratic policies.

“The wrong practices by a minority of judges and their preoccupation with politics … will not take away the respect people have for the judiciary,” it said.

Its explanation, however, failed to calm the anger felt by many activists and politicians.

“President Morsi must take responsibility before the entire world for terrorizing the judiciary,” veteran rights campaigner and opposition leader Abdel-Halim Kandil wrote in his Twitter account about the events outside the constitutional court.

Liberal activist and former lawmaker Amr Hamzawy warned what is ahead may be worse.

“The president and his group (the Muslim Brotherhood) are leading Egypt into a period of darkness par excellence,” he said. “He made a dictatorial decision to hold a referendum on an illegal constitution that divides society, then a siege of the judiciary to terrorize it.”

Egypt has been rocked by several bouts of unrest, some violent, since Mubarak was forced to step down in the face of a popular uprising. But the current one is probably the worst.

Morsi’s decrees gave him powers that none of his four predecessors since the ouster of the monarchy 60 years ago ever had. Opposition leaders countered that he turned himself into a new “pharaoh” and a dictator even worse than his immediate predecessor Mubarak.

Then, following his order, the constituent assembly rushed a vote on the draft constitution in an all-night session.

The draft has a new article that seeks to define what the “principles” of Islamic law are by pointing to theological doctrines and their rules. Another new article states that Egypt’s most respected Islamic institution, Al-Azhar, must be consulted on any matters related to Shariah law, a measure critics fear could lead to oversight of legislation by clerics.

Rights groups have pointed out that virtually the only references to women relate to the home and family, that the new charter uses overly broad language with respect to the state protecting “ethics and morals” and fails to outlaw gender discrimination.

At times the process appeared slap-dash, with fixes to missing phrasing and even several entirely new articles proposed, written and voted on in the hours just before sunrise.

The decrees and the vote on the constitution draft galvanized the fractured, mostly secular opposition, with senior leaders setting aside differences and egos to form a united front in the face of Morsi, whose offer on Saturday for a national dialogue is yet to find takers.

The opposition brought out at least 200,000 protesters to Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Tuesday and a comparable number Friday to press demands that the decrees be rescinded. The Islamists responded Saturday with massive rallies in Cairo and across much of Egypt.

The opposition is raising the stakes with plans to march on Morsi’ palace on Tuesday, a move last seen on Feb. 11, 2011 when tens of thousands of protesters marched from Tahrir Square to Mubarak’s palace in the Heliopolis district to force him out. Mubarak stepped down that day, but Morsi is highly unlikely to follow suit on Tuesday.

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Euro zone crisis drags down European ad spending: report

LONDON (Reuters) – The euro zone crisis has left Western Europe the only world region to see a fall in advertising spending this year, market research group ZenithOptimedia said.

The forecasting group said advertising expenditure in Western Europe fell 2.2 percent to $ 106.8 billion this year compared with an average increase of 3.3 percent worldwide.

North American ad spending rose 4.1 percent to $ 171.9 billion and Asia’s expenditure was up 6.1 percent to $ 140.1 billion this year.

“Developing markets, social media and online video are all growing rapidly, supporting continued expansion in global ad expenditure despite stagnation in the eurozone,” said Steve King, global chief executive of ZenithOptimedia Group.

The company, part of advertising agency Publicis, also said European ad spending would be flat next year before growing by about 2 percent in 2014 and 2015.

This leaves Europe lagging faster-growing regions such North America, which will grow by 3.5 percent next year, as well as Asia (5.5 percent) and Latin America (10 percent).

“The euro zone crisis is dragging down economic growth at the moment,” ZenithOptimedia said on Monday.

“Because the eurozone is in recession, its imports from other countries are slowing down or shrinking, and the risk of eurozone collapse adds to global uncertainty, leading companies to hoard cash instead of investing in growth,” the firm said in an emailed statement.

Ad spending generally tracks economic growth, so recessions tend to hit the shares of advertising agencies, including market leaders WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic Group and Publicis.

ZenithOptimedia said global ad expenditure would rise 4.1 percent next year to reach $ 518 billion, driven largely by faster growth in the developing markets.

(Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)

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NBC sets premiere date for “Do No Harm” drama

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – NBC will premiere its new drama “Do No Harm” at 10 p.m. on January 31, NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt said Friday.

The premiere date takes advantage of the one-hour series finale of “30 Rock,” which will air at 8 p.m. on that same night.

“Do No Harm” stars “Rescue Me” alum Steven Pasquale as Dr. Jason Cole, a neurosurgeon whose life is going swimmingly until his dangerous alter-ego emerges, hell-bent on creating havoc on Cole and those around him.

“January 31 will be a special night as one classic series will mark its finale with a great hour-long send-off episode while a promising new drama will make its debut on Thursdays,” Greenblatt said. “‘30 Rock’ is acclaimed as a legendary comedy and we will see a truly memorable and fitting last episode. In ‘Do No Harm,’ viewers will have a unique new dramatic storyline with an exciting new star in Steven Pasquale that takes them into dark and uncharted territory.”

To accommodate “Do No Harm,” “Rock Center With Brian Williams” will move to Fridays at 10 p.m., following “Dateline,” beginning February 8.

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Bank of America shelves plan on new fees: WSJ

(Reuters) – Bank of America Corp , the second largest U.S. bank, is holding off on plans for new checking-account fees that could have affected some 10 million customers by year’s end, avoiding a possible repeat of last year’s protests over consumer banking fees, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

The move to back off on its plan at least until late 2013 comes amid a review of Bank of America‘s retail banking business, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the bank’s plans.

The bank is looking for ways to cut losses it takes on the 20 percent of customers who keep modest balances on deposits and do not use credit cards, mortgage loans and other products. They generally have under $ 50,000 in yearly household income, costing the bank on average a couple hundred dollars annually, the Journal reported.

A Bank of America spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Fees are unpopular with customers as well as regulators who see them as punishing lower-income customers.

Several other big banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co and Wells Fargo & Co , have introduce plans to raise fees or encourage customers to use more products amid slow economic growth, low interest rates and new U.S. financial regulations that hurt banks’ bottom lines.

(Reporting by Christine Stebbins; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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Egypt’s Mursi calls referendum as Islamists march

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt‘s President Mohamed Mursi called a December 15 referendum on a draft constitution on Saturday as at least 200,000 Islamists demonstrated in Cairo to back him after opposition fury over his newly expanded powers.

Speaking after receiving the final draft of the constitution from the Islamist-dominated assembly, Mursi urged a national dialogue as the country nears the end of the transition from Hosni Mubarak‘s rule.

“I renew my call for opening a serious national dialogue over the concerns of the nation, with all honesty and impartiality, to end the transitional period as soon as possible, in a way that guarantees the newly-born democracy,” Mursi said.

Mursi plunged Egypt into a new crisis last week when he gave himself extensive powers and put his decisions beyond judicial challenge, saying this was a temporary measure to speed Egypt’s democratic transition until the new constitution is in place.

His assertion of authority in a decree issued on November 22, a day after he won world praise for brokering a Gaza truce between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement, dismayed his opponents and widened divisions among Egypt’s 83 million people.

Two people have been killed and hundreds wounded in protests by disparate opposition forces drawn together and re-energized by a decree they see as a dictatorial power grab.

A demonstration in Cairo to back the president swelled through the afternoon, peaking in the early evening at least 200,000, said Reuters witnesses, basing their estimates on previous rallies in the capital. The authorities declined to give an estimate for the crowd size.

“The people want the implementation of God’s law,” chanted flag-waving demonstrators, many of them bussed in from the countryside, who choked streets leading to Cairo University, where Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood had called the protest.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians had protested against Mursi on Friday. “The people want to bring down the regime,” they chanted in Cairo‘s Tahrir Square, echoing the trademark slogan of the revolts against Hosni Mubarak and Arab leaders elsewhere.

Rival demonstrators threw stones after dark in the northern city of Alexandria and a town in the Nile Delta. Similar clashes erupted again briefly in Alexandria on Saturday, state TV said.

“COMPLETE DEFEAT”

Mohamed Noshi, 23, a pharmacist from Mansoura, north of Cairo, said he had joined the rally in Cairo to support Mursi and his decree. “Those in Tahrir don’t represent everyone. Most people support Mursi and aren’t against the decree,” he said.

Mohamed Ibrahim, a hardline Salafi Islamist scholar and a member of the constituent assembly, said secular-minded Egyptians had been in a losing battle from the start.

“They will be sure of complete popular defeat today in a mass Egyptian protest that says ‘no to the conspiratorial minority, no to destructive directions and yes for stability and sharia (Islamic law)’,” he told Reuters.

Mursi has alienated many of the judges who must supervise the referendum. His decree nullified the ability of the courts, many of them staffed by Mubarak-era appointees, to strike down his measures, although says he respects judicial independence.

A source at the presidency said Mursi might rely on the minority of judges who support him to supervise the vote.

“Oh Mursi, go ahead and cleanse the judiciary, we are behind you,” shouted Islamist demonstrators in Cairo.

Mursi, once a senior Muslim Brotherhood figure, has put his liberal, leftist, Christian and other opponents in a bind. If they boycott the referendum, the constitution would pass anyway.

If they secured a “no” vote to defeat the draft, the president could retain the powers he has unilaterally assumed.

And Egypt’s quest to replace the basic law that underpinned Mubarak’s 30 years of army-backed one-man rule would also return to square one, creating more uncertainty in a nation in dire economic straits and seeking a $ 4.8 billion loan from the IMF.

“NO PLACE FOR DICTATORSHIP”

Mursi’s well-organized Muslim Brotherhood and its ultra-orthodox Salafi allies, however, are convinced they can win the referendum by mobilizing their own supporters and the millions of Egyptians weary of political turmoil and disruption.

“There is no place for dictatorship,” the president said on Thursday while the constituent assembly was still voting on a draft constitution which Islamists say enshrines Egypt’s new freedoms.

Human rights groups have voiced misgivings, especially about articles related to women’s rights and freedom of speech.

The text limits the president to two four-year terms, requires him to secure parliamentary approval for his choice of prime minister, and introduces a degree of civilian oversight over the military – though not enough for critics.

The draft constitution also contains vague, Islamist-flavored language that its opponents say could be used to whittle away human rights and stifle criticism.

For example, it forbids blasphemy and “insults to any person”, does not explicitly uphold women’s rights and demands respect for “religion, traditions and family values”.

The draft injects new Islamic references into Egypt’s system of government but retains the previous constitution’s reference to “the principles of sharia” as the main source of legislation.

“We fundamentally reject the referendum and constituent assembly because the assembly does not represent all sections of society,” said Sayed el-Erian, 43, a protester in Tahrir and member of a party set up by opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei.

Several independent newspapers said they would not publish on Tuesday in protest. One of the papers also said three private satellite channels would halt broadcasts on Wednesday.

Egypt cannot hold a new parliamentary election until a new constitution is passed. The country has been without an elected legislature since the Supreme Constitutional Court ordered the dissolution of the Islamist-dominated lower house in June.

The court is due to meet on Sunday to discuss the legality of parliament’s upper house.

“We want stability. Every time, the constitutional court tears down institutions we elect,” said Yasser Taha, a 30-year-old demonstrator at the Islamist rally in Cairo.

(Additional reporting by Marwa Awad, Yasmine Saleh and Tom Perry; Editing by Myra MacDonald and Jason Webb)

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App of the Week: Hooked

App Name: Hooked

Price: Free

Available Platforms: Android

What does this app do? Words with Friends, Angry Birds, Mahjong Connect – these are just a few of the popular apps in the Google Play Store for Android devices. For game app lovers, wading through the possibilities can be daunting.

Hooked, a game recommendation app developed by Hooked Media Group, can help.

“There are hundreds of thousands of apps out there people may really enjoy,” says Pita Uppal, CEO of the San Francisco based company.

Uppal, who recognizes people like to play with variety game apps but may have no idea what to try, likens Hooked to Netflix and Pandora rolled into one.

Once you download the app, Hooked analyses more than 40 factors, such as device type, the kinds of games a user has on his or her device, and usage statistics. By looking at what a consumer already has and how he or she is using those games, Hooked aims to offer users intelligent suggestions.

From the homescreen, select the menu button at the top and then search categories such as “Top Picks for You,” which provides a customized, star-rated list of recommendations. Press the tools key in the upper right hand corner and customize your recommendations by category, such as puzzle and racing, or by price.

Select “My Games”, and the app displays a dashboard of icons to help you understand your game activity. A folder icon, for example, shows what and how many games you have installed, and a clock icon tells you the amount of time you’ve spent playing a particular game. I spent an entire minute playing “Stupid Zombies.”

Logging in through Facebook or Google+ allows you to see what your friends and connections are playing, too.

Is it easy to set up? Yes, the 2.1MB app installs quickly. Log in with your account and go.

Should I try it? Hooked is like a personal shopper for game-loving app users, and the more you use it the more it understands what you might like. For the moment, it is only available for Android, but Uppal says the company plans to launch Hooked for iOS in the coming months.

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“iCarly” and “Victorious” spinoff gets greenlight from Nickelodeon

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Tweens of the world, rejoice: “iCarly” may be relegated to the dustbin of TV-programming history, but a part of it will live on.

Nickelodeon has greenlit “Sam & Cat,” a hybrid spinoff of “iCarly” – which ended its run last week – and the Nickelodeon series “Victorious.”

The series – from “iCarly” and “Victorious” creator Dan Schneider – will star Jennette McCurdy (who played Sam Puckett on “iCarly”) and Ariana Grande (perhaps better known as Cat Valentine to “Victorious” viewers). Both will reprise theo become teen entrepreneurs by starting their own after-school babysitting business.”

The 20-episode first season of “Sam & Cat” will premiere next year; production will begin in January in Los Angeles.

“Jennette and Ariana are adored by our audience, and it’s great to unite these talented actresses in this hilarious new comedy from Dan Schneider,” Nickelodeon’s president of content development and production Russell Hicks said. “This show promises to deliver on what our audience loves most about these two favorite characters – laugh-out-loud humor and non-stop adventure, and is sure to be a compelling new chapter for our new comedic duo.”

The “iCarly” series finale last week drew 6.4 million viewers.

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Cliff fight may knock out December rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) – In normal times, next week’s slew of U.S. economic data could be a springboard for a December rally in the stock market.

December is historically a strong month for markets. The S&P 500 has risen 16 times in the past 20 years during the month.

But the market hasn’t been operating under normal circumstances since November 7 when a day after the U.S. election, investors’ focus shifted squarely to the looming “fiscal cliff.”

Investors are increasingly nervous about the ability of lawmakers to undo the $ 600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts that are set to begin in January; those changes, if they go into effect, could send the U.S. economy into a recession.

A string of economic indicators next week, which includes a key reading of the manufacturing sector on Monday, culminates with the November jobs report on Friday.

But the impact of those economic reports could be muted. Distortions in the data caused by Superstorm Sandy are discounted.

The spotlight will be more firmly on signs from Washington that politicians can settle their differences on how to avoid the fiscal cliff.

“We have a week with a lot of economic data, and obviously most of the economic data is going to reflect the effects of Sandy, and that might be a little bit negative for the market next week, but most of that is already expected – the main focus remains the fiscal cliff,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York.

Concerns about the cliff sent the S&P 500 <.SPX> into a two-week decline after the elections, dropping as much as 5.3 percent, only to rally back nearly 4 percent as the initial tone of talks offered hope that a compromise could be reached and investors snapped up stocks that were viewed as undervalued.

On Wednesday, the S&P 500 gained more than 20 points from its intraday low after House Speaker John Boehner said he was optimistic that a budget deal to avoid big spending cuts and tax hikes could be worked out. The next day, more pessimistic comments from Boehner, an Ohio Republican, briefly wiped out the day’s gains in stocks.

On Friday, the sharp divide between the Democrats and the Republicans on taxes and spending was evident in comments from President Barack Obama, who favors raising taxes on the wealthy, and Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, who said Obama’s plan was the wrong approach and declared that the talks had reached a stalemate.

“It’s unusual to end up with one variable in this industry, it’s unusual to have a single bullet that is the causal factor effect, and you are sitting here for the next maybe two weeks or more, on that kind of condition,” said Sandy Lincoln, chief market strategist at BMO Asset Management U.S. in Chicago.

“And that is what is grabbing the markets.”

BE CONTRARY AND MAKE MERRY

But investor attitudes and seasonality could also help spur a rally for the final month of the year.

The most recent survey by the American Association of Individual Investors reflected investor caution about the cliff. Although bullish sentiment rose above 40 percent for the first time since August 23, bearish sentiment remained above its historical average of 30.5 percent for the 14th straight week.

December is a critical month for retailers such as Target Corp and Macy’s Inc . They saw monthly retail sales results dented by Sandy, although the start of the holiday shopping season fared better.

With consumer spending making up roughly 70 percent of the U.S. economy, a solid showing for retailers during the holiday season could help fuel any gains.

Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer’s Investment Research in Cincinnati, believes the recent drop after the election could be a market bottom, with sentiment leaving stocks poised for a December rally.

“The concerns on the fiscal cliff – as valid as they might be – could be overblown. When you look at a lot of the overriding sentiment, that has gotten extremely negative,” said Detrick.

“From that contrarian point of view with the historically bullish time frame of December, we once again could be setting ourselves up for a pretty nice end-of-year rally, based on lowered expectations.”

SOME FEEL THE BIG CHILL

Others view the fiscal cliff as such an unusual event that any historical comparisons should be thrown out the window, with a rally unlikely because of a lack of confidence in Washington to reach an agreement and the economic hit caused by Sandy.

“History doesn’t matter. You’re dealing with an extraordinary set of circumstances that could very well end up in the U.S. economy going into a recession,” said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors in New York.

“And the likelihood of that is exclusively in the hands of our elected officials in Washington. They could absolutely drag us into a completely voluntary recession.”

(Wall St Week Ahead runs every Friday. Questions or comments on this column can be emailed to: charles.mikolajczak(at)thomsonreuters.com )

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Oliver Stone, Benicio del Toro visit Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Benicio Del Toro didn’t wait long to collect on a favor that Oliver Stone owed him for working extra hours on the set of his most recent movie, “Savages”, released this year.

The favor? A trip to Del Toro‘s native Puerto Rico, which Stone hadn’t visited since the early 1960s.

“I told him, you owe me one,” Del Toro said with a smile as he recalled the conversation during a press conference Friday in the U.S. territory, where he and Stone are helping raise money for one of the island’s largest art museums.

Del Toro, wearing jeans, a black jacket and a black T-shirt emblazoned with the name of local reggaeton singer Tego Calderon, waved to the press as he was introduced.

“Hello, greetings. Is this a press conference?” he quipped as he and Stone awaited questions.

Both men praised each other’s work, saying they would like to work with each other again.

“I deeply admire him as an actor, the way he thinks, the way he expresses himself,” Stone said. “Of all the actors I’ve worked with, he’s the most interesting.”

Stone said Del Toro always delivers surprises while acting, even when it’s as something as subtle as certain gestures between dialogue.

“I think Benicio is the master of keeping you watching,” he said.

Stone said he enjoys meeting up with Del Toro off-set because he’s one of the few actors in Hollywood who can talk about something other than movies.

“He is very interested in the world around him,” Stone said, adding that the conversations sometimes center around politics and other topics.

Del Toro declined to answer when asked what he thought about Puerto Rico’s referendum earlier this month, which aimed to determine the future of the island’s political status. He said the results did not seem to point to a clear-cut outcome.

Del Toro then said he would like the island’s movie business to grow, especially in a way that would encourage learning.

“I’m talking about movies in an educational sense, as a way to discover other parts of the world,” he said. “Create a film class. You’ll see, kids won’t skip it.”

Del Toro also shared his thoughts on being a father after having a daughter with Kimberly Stewart in August 2011.

He said the girl is learning how to swim and is discovering the world around her.

“She has her own personality,” Del Toro said. “She’s not her mother. She’s not me.”

Both Del Toro and Stone are expected to remain in Puerto Rico through the weekend to raise money for the Art Museum of Puerto Rico, which is hosting its annual movie festival and will honor Stone’s movies.

Museum curator Juan Carlos Lopez Quintero said the money raised will be used to enhance the museum’s permanent collection, especially with Puerto Rican paintings from the 19th century and early 20th century.

Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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