Saturday, 24 October 2026

TREE HOUSE NEWS 🏡

NEWS AGGREGATOR & COMMENTS

Great Spirit bless 🙏

Good morning 🌄 all 🚶‍♂️👫👭👬 May everyone be safe and blessed 🌈 on this beautiful, bright, sunny ☀️ Saturday morning. If it's not sunny where you are, I pray the sun shines within you. Happy Saturday 🌳🏖️🌞🍻 "EH!"

_*Not much is shakin' here at the Tree House Newsroom 🚪📰 this morning except that it was nice to sit out in my green space

𓊐🌱🌿 🍃𓊐 watch the sun rise above the tree line, and let my mind drift for a while. Although it was cool enough 🧊 that I had to wear a jacket 🧥 I checked the weather: 40°F, with an expected high of 65°F, and pretty much a carbon copy of the 65 to 70°F range, partly to mostly sunny ⛅️☀️ for the Niagara Peninsula region for the next week and maybe beyond into November. I have a lot of 💩'n doctor's appointments coming up this winter, and I dread them during bug season 🦠🔫 🪱🫟🧬 Well, at least now I feel safer; I got all my bug shots 🐛💉 for the season.

Now let us go on with today's discussion, and thank you for visiting and reading the Tree House News 🏡

TODAY'S DISCUSSION:

ESSENTIALS NOT COVERED BY OHIP

What my partner, Edditor, has compiled from our personal experience with OHIP and what it DOESN'T COVER!

Question: What goods or services are not covered by OHIP?

🔹AI

OHIP only covers medically necessary healthcare services provided by a doctor or inside a hospital. Any service deemed cosmetic, administrative, or routine care outside a hospital setting is generally not covered.

Read More - Google Search -

I don't expect that OHIP, Ontario's Health Insurance Plan, should cover everything. When my partner needed a 4-way artery bypass that included a ride in an advanced life support ambulance and 11 days in the hospital, all expenses were covered except for the rental of a walker for her at home. That was excellent!

When she went to the ER with abdominal pain and was diagnosed with a ruptured appendix, five hours in surgery and 12 days in the hospital getting all of the tests and medicine she needed to begin her protracted convalescence and outpatient wound care, everything was covered.

I went to the ER with pain in one eye. I was lucky that there was an eye surgeon there. He diagnosed me with open-angle glaucoma. I had laser surgery a week later, with prescription eye drops to follow. OHIP covered all of it.

An optometrist referred me to an eye surgeon for cataract surgery. OHIP covered everything except the lenses I elected to have implanted and the Heidelberg Test. That was the first time I learned about a test OHIP doesn't cover. The Heidelberg Test is a laser mapping of the retina used for the early detection of glaucoma.

Why would OHIP not cover it?

My partner was referred to an internist to find out why she has no appetite and why she cannot gain weight. The last two years she has gone through multiple systemic traumas, so the internist ordered a battery of basic tests to establish what could or could not be her problems. He ordered three tests to see if cancer might be present. OHIP doesn't pay for these cancer tests. That does not make any sense to me!

🔹AI Overview

OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan) covers most routine, medically necessary laboratory and diagnostic tests ordered by an authorized health care provider (such as a physician or nurse practitioner). However, OHIP does not cover specialized, non-routine tests, elective procedures, or tests that do not meet specific clinical criteria.

Examples of Medical Tests Not Covered by OHIP

Specialized / Non-Routine Lab Tests:

Acetylcholine Receptor Antibody / ARAB ($56 – $100)

Acylcarnitine ($55 – $163)

ADH Vasopressin ($175)

Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VAIP) ($135 – $683)

Vitamin K ($180)

Genecept (Gene testing) ($495)

Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT / Harmony / MaterniT 21) ($550 – $795, unless high-risk criteria are met) [1, 2]

Conditionally Covered Tests (Uncovered if criteria are not met):

Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test: Covered only if you have a prostate cancer diagnosis/follow-up or if a doctor suspects prostate cancer based on your history and exam; otherwise, it is out-of-pocket (around $30).

25-Hydroxy Vitamin D test: Covered only for specific conditions like osteoporosis, rickets, osteopenia, malabsorption syndromes, or renal disease; otherwise, it is out-of-pocket (around $38). [1, 2]

Other Non-Insured / Administrative Services:

Routine adult eye exams for ages 20 to 64 (unless a specific medical condition like diabetes or glaucoma is present), travel medicine tests/vaccines outside Canada, third-party exams, and cosmetic or elective procedures.

Why Are These Tests Not Covered?:

Not Deemed "Medically Necessary":
Lack of Evidence for Routine Use:
Specialized or Experimental Scope:

I don't object to paying for prescription medicines that aren't in the OHIP formulary. I buy what the doctor ordered. I paid for the Heidelberg Test because I am concerned about the health of my retina. There are TV ads for medicines to help with retinal diseases and disorders. I prefer to know before my vision is degraded. Why is OHIP willing to gamble?

"ME!" It's all about 💵💴💶💷💰including your gold fillings 🦷

And since when is checking a person for the presence of cancer - or not - a necessary diagnostic test? I think OHIP should cover this lab test.

After reading this, you might think that OHIP covers almost everything and you have nothing to worry about. You might get a bill from the province for uncovered items, and you call the number on the bill to discuss it. Get ready to pay up. Once it's on a bill, you can't discuss it.

Please call your Member of Provincial Parliament, the office of the provincial Minister of Health, and the chief of provincial pirates and crooks, Doug Ford. If you call, someone must take the time to note your call and your message. Keep everyone very busy!

Thank you, Paula, for your assistance in this research.

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BREAKING NEWS RECAP:

The 2026 campaign is getting ugly — especially on the right

Any campaign that involves Donald Trump is bound to get pretty ugly. The 2024 campaign was marred by the now-president and now-Vice President JD Vance falsely claiming Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets.

But the 2026 campaign is getting really ugly — especially on the Republican side. Morality aside, the question is whether that ugliness is a sign of sound GOP strategy or of desperation. It seems to be a large helping of the latter.

The big news this week has been Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s decision to run an ad featuring Democrat Amy Acton’s estranged mother calling her daughter a liar.

Left unsaid in the ad: Acton has said she hasn’t seen her mother since she was 12 years old, when her mother lost custody of her children and the man she married was indicted for allegedly sexually abusing Acton...

The road to the 2026 midterms starts now:

Husted’s and Hinson’s decisions to distance themselves from the ad certainly suggest they’re worried about its impact on their races. ...

Read More;

PUBLISHED Oct 24, 2026, 6:30 AM ET - 3 hr ago

- CNN -

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Hillary Clinton thinks we should have 13 Supreme Court justices. Here’s why that matters.

A once-fringe position in the Democratic Party has become mainstream – and the court only has itself to blame.

Hillary Clinton may no longer be the most influential voice in the Democratic Party, but she remains a member in good standing of the party establishment. So when she expresses support for expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court, it tells us that what was once a radical idea has gone mainstream.

“We should seriously look at expanding the court while the Democrats are in power,” Clinton said on a recent podcast. “You know, it used to be that you’d have one justice for each circuit. We now have 13 circuits, we should have 13 justices.”

Adding four justices to the court is just one of the potential reforms that have been suggested as a way of curbing the court’s abuses. Others include 18-year term limits for justices, ethics rules with actual teeth (no more billionaire-funded junkets for you, Justice Thomas...

More Articles:

Hillary Clinton joins growing chorus in support of Supreme Court expansion:

_Even Elena Kagan, the most conciliatory of the liberal justices, said in a recent speech that the court’s decisions rubber-stamping partisan gerrymandering showed “a lack of the appropriate concern or understanding of the consequences of their decisions.”_

Read More:

Oct. 24, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

- MS NOW -

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Black Sea sailors thought a rescue boat was racing toward them. Instead, it was a drone that sank their ship

Nearly 50 commercial vessels were struck in the Black Sea in October alone, according to maritime analysts

In the early hours of Oct. 13, the crew from the HS Dignity gathered on the deck of the cargo ship and put on life jackets as the vessel rocked in the churning waves of the Black Sea. The captain had given the order to abandon the vessel because it was sinking after a sea drone struck its hull.

As the 16-man crew, made up of Syrian and Egyptian nationals, peered into the darkness, they spotted the outline of a boat moving quickly toward them. They shone their flashlights, thinking rescuers might have already responded to their distress call.

But what they saw alarmed them. No one was driving the boat...

WATCH | How the dramatic rescue happened:

More than 30 killed or missing:
Adrift in the Black Sea:
18-year-old among the missing:
Shipping companies scale back operations:

Read More;

Posted: Oct 24, 2026 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 6 hours ago

- CBC -

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U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra offers Canada help following Wainwright tragedy

Twenty-seven soldiers remain in hospital, including 13 in critical condition

U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra says the United States has offered to help following the deadly fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright in Alberta.

Four soldiers were killed and 39 injured on Oct. 17 when a fire that began during a training exercise on an anti-grenade launching range was picked up by fierce winds.

The military has said the fire took less than a minute to race about a kilometre, where a different training exercise was taking place on the base about 200 kilometres southeast of Edmonton.