Are you surprised? You shouldn’t be surprised. If it feels like every streaming service has been getting a price hike lately, you can trust those feelings. Price increases have impacted a ton of services lately. From music to video streaming, it feels like no one has been spared a price increase over the last year. You’d have to be subscribed to some incredibly niche streaming service to avoid a price hike.

It appears that Amazon has looked around and noticed that, while all of us complain every time it has happened with our other services, we’ve largely stuck around anyway. So, the company has decided to institute a price hike of its own. As reported by Variety, Amazon Music Unlimited is about to get more expensive for Amazon Prime members.

According to the report, the price of the Amazon Music Unlimited individual plan will increase from $8.99 per month to $9.99 per month (according to an update on Amazon’s website). Non-Prime members will still pay more at $10.99 per month (the company increased the price of that plan back in February). Amazon is also increasing the price of the Amazon Music Unlimited family plan from $15.99 per month to $16.99 per month.

• The Amazon Music Unlimited Individual Plan for Prime members is changing from $8.99 to $9.99 per month, $89 to $99 per year.
• The Amazon Music Unlimited Family Plan is changing from $15.99 to $16.99 per month, $159 to $169 per year.

Image source: BGR/Amazon

For those who thought they might be able to avoid the price increase by paying annually, you are unfortunately out of luck as well. The company is increasing the price of the annual plan for individuals from $89 per year to $99 per year. For families, the annual family plan is increasing from $159 per year to $169 per year.

So, when is this price increase going into effect? According to Amazon, for existing customers, the price increase will go into effect for all plans “on or after September 19, 2023, on the date of their next monthly renewal.” For new customers who sign up for Amazon Music Unlimited on or after August 15, 2023, they will start paying the increased prices immediately, so if you sign up today, you’re already paying the higher price.

From August 15, 2023, new customers will see the updated price when signing up to Amazon Music Unlimited. For existing customers, the updated price will go into effect on or after September 19, 2023, on the date of their next monthly renewal.

It’s not surprising to see Amazon make this move. Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music have all instituted price increases in their own music streaming services over the last year. Price increases have also occurred across most of the major video streaming services as well.

We’ll likely see this trend continue, so get ready to pay cable-level prices for streaming. For some people, that is already the reality.

Demand for nurse practitioners and primary care physicians is escalating along with their compensation as retailers from Amazon and CVS Health to Walmart and Walgreens build primary care clinics across the country.

A new report from AMN Healthcare shows nurse practitioners—not doctors—topped the staffing company’s list of “most requested search engagements for the third consecutive year,” according to an annual report released Monday from AMN Healthcare’s Physician Solutions division, formerly known as Merritt Hawkins.

“Demand for NPs is being driven by a growing number of ‘convenient care’ providers, including retail clinics, urgent care centers and telemedicine platforms, which employ large numbers of NPs,” the report said.

To be sure, the entrance of large retailers into the business of providing healthcare is causing bidding wars for primary care medical care providers.

Average salary offers made to nurse practitioners were up 9% this year, to $158,000, compared to $138,000 last year, “underscoring the strong demand for advanced practice nurses,” AMN Healthcare said in its 2023 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives.

CVS Health, which paid more than $10 billion for the Chicago-based senior primary care clinic developer Oak Street Health, is adding dozens of new clinics via that acquisition, which includes hiring more doctors and nurse practitioners. Meanwhile, Amazon this year entered the primary care space with its $3.9 billion acquisition of One Medical, which operates more than 220 primary care offices in more than 28 U.S. markets. This comes with Walmart doubling the size of its Walmart health center footprint across the U.S. and Walgreens’ effort with VillageMD to roll out hundreds of new doctor-staffed clinics across the country that are requiring these companies to hire new primary care physicians.

A compensation report released earlier this year from the Medical Group Management Association showed primary care compensation had its biggest increase in five years with the total compensation rising 4.4%, to $299,157, in 2022 from $286,525 in 2021. The 2023 MGMA Provider Compensation and Production report reflects data from nearly 190,000 providers across more than 6,800 hospitals, healthcare systems and other healthcare organizations.

The AMN Healthcare report, which looks at starting salaries, said primary care physician starting salaries this year were generally flat compared to a year ago but specialists pay was up 10% to 20% for the more specialized doctors.

“Healthcare is evolving as new market entrants seek to change how and where care is delivered,” said Leah Grant, president of AMN Healthcare Physician Solutions. “More types of organizations are recruiting physicians, causing salaries to trend up.”

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Amazon announced the launch of Amazon Web Services, HealthScribe. Healthcare software vendors can utilize it to develop generative AI tools that can create "preliminary clinical notes" through the transcription and analysis of patient-doctor conversations. What does AWS HealthScribe do? Currently available for preview in the United States only, the company stated that its new AI service for healthcare is “HIPPA-eligible,” meaning it adheres to the provisions for security of protected health information under the ‘Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’ of the US. There is no mention of its plans for other countries. AWS HealthScribe is meant to provide a collection of AI-powered features for designing tools that can enhance documentation processes in clinical practices. For example, clinicians spend a lot of time completing administrative tasks involving the maintenance of detailed documentation of every patient that visits the clinic, which may hinder a valuable in-person consultation interaction. According to a blog post published by the company on July 26, AWS HealthSrcibe can analyse patient-clinician conversation audio to provide transcripts of the consultation, identify the number of individuals in the examination room, and attribute dialogues accordingly in the transcript. It can also provide summary sections of clinically relevant portions in the transcript, such as “subjective, objective, assessment, and plan,” to record patient history and recap whenever required. Healthcare practitioners can validate the accuracy of AI-generated notes with added references to the original consultation transcript. The HealthScribe can also extract “structured medical terms” from the transcript, like terms describing medical conditions, medications, and…

“What happens in the Brazilian Amazon is of national and global interest,” Dino said

Brazil's Justice Minister Flávio Dino Tuesday announced that the government's Amazon Security Plan foresees 34 river and land bases and will involve the presence of different police forces, Agencia Brasil reported.

Dino said that the new security plan for the Amazon intends to create 34 new river and land bases with a constant presence of federal and state police forces. The idea is to use resources from the Amazon Fund to fund the construction of checkpoints.

“We are proposing 34 new bases, river or land, depending on the reality of each state. At each base, we will have the Federal Police, Federal Highway Police, National Force, and state police working. And, when appropriate, the Armed Forces, especially in the border area,” Dino explained in a broadcast show. The plan's guidelines were drawn up with the participation of the governments of all the Amazon states.

Last week, Dino met in Brasilia with ambassadors and other representatives from 23 European Union countries to present the program, called the Amazon Plan: Security and Sovereignty, as well as actions taken by the Federal Police in the first half of the year, especially those in cooperation with the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol).

“What happens in the Brazilian Amazon is of national and global interest,” Dino said. The expansion of the presence of security forces in the Amazon biome will also Improve public safety in the rest of the country, since the region has been used as a platform for organized crime in crimes such as international drug trafficking, illegal mining, illegal logging, predatory fishing, among others, he added.

Points of the security plan, which had already been announced by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva himself, include the expansion and modernization of the naval resources that patrol the rivers of the Amazon, the modernization of the network of captaincies, police stations, and agencies of the maritime authority, support for border platoons, increased operations in the Amazon, acquisition and modernization of aerospace systems and logistical equipment for the Armed Forces.

The plan also provides for the equipping and modernization of means and infrastructure of public security agencies operating in the Legal Amazon, the implementation of the Manaus-based International Police Cooperation Center for the protection of the Amazon, and integrated command and control centers, with an emphasis on integrated intelligence.

Meanwhile, Indigenous Peoples Minister Sônia Guajajara said Tuesday that there were still illegal miners in Yanomami Lands and blamed them for the exact death of a girl. Guajajara insisted these trespassers should be expelled by the end of the year.

According to her, more than 80% of them have been removed from Yanomami territory since the beginning of the current government (Jan. 1, 2023). But the challenge is to expel those who resist more violently, which she hopes will be done by the end of this year.

“We managed to remove 82% of the miners. There is a much more violent and dangerous situation because there are those people who resist leaving the territory, hide, and are causing conflicts. This final phase is much more difficult,” she said.

“According to information from the leaders themselves, it is people linked to drug trafficking and organized crime who want to stay there. And, really, they are there provoking conflicts between indigenous people and indigenous people, to pretend that they are internal problems, but, in fact, it is still a consequence of mining,” she added.

The body of the seven-year-old child was found by Roraima firefighters last Friday, after three days of searching in the Parima River region. The body was handed over to the family to perform the indigenous rituals. On July 3, five indigenous people were injured and the child was murdered, after conflicts with firearms inside the Yanomami land.

(Source: Agencia Brasil)

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