Longer looks: Research shows intriguing link between women abused in childhood and low-birthweight infants; tea party efforts to move health programs to states

Time: Mothers Abused in Childhood More Likely to Have At-Risk Babies
Increasingly, a whole body of research indicates what happens early in childhood — even in utero — affects the rest of your life. Now, a new study reinforces that perspective, finding that women who were abused as children stand a greater chance of delivering low-birthweight babies. Amelia Gavin, an assistant professor in the University of Washington's School of Social Work, was curious why rates of preterm delivery and low birthweight have largely increased since 1990, despite advances in obstetric care. … (Gavin) was able to observe a correlation between abuse — physical, sexual or emotional — before age 10 and lower birth weight when the women had babies of their own, according to research published online this month in in the Journal of Adolescent Health (Bonnie Rochman, 3/30).

Weekly Standard: Cash For Doctors Revisited
[Dr. Brian Forrest's] practice, Access Healthcare outside Raleigh, doesn't accept insurance. Instead, Forrest takes payment from patients on the spot, and he lists prices in his waiting room in an effort to be transparent, "like a Jiffy Lube." At the time, he said he figured his approach would become more popular as people opted to circumvent the hassles and cost of regulations from government and insurance companies. Now, nearly a year later, Forrest says he's more sure than ever that his business model makes sense. He's planning to franchise his practice, with six similar doctors' offices scheduled to open in North and South Carolina this summer, and plans to open others as far north as Baltimore and as far west as Indiana (Tony Mecia, 4/4).

Mother Jones: The Tea Party's Latest Scheme To Kill Health Reform
The tea party has a new plan to attack health care reform. While some conservative activists are still fighting to get the law defunded and eventually repealed, others are organizing behind a radical, states'-rights proposal that would go beyond merely derailing health reform. Egged on by tea partiers, at least a dozen states are now contemplating legislation that supporters believe would allow them to seize control of and administer virtually all federal health care programs operating in their states and exempt them from the requirements of the health care law (Stephanie Mencimer, 3/29).

American Medical News: Patients Social Media Use Raises Practical Issues For Doctors
Patients using social media to check in on what their friends and family are doing are starting to use the sites as sources of information for something else -- health care. National Research Corp., a health care research company based in Lincoln, Neb., recently surveyed more than 22,000 Americans and found that nearly 16% use social media sites as a source of health care information. Of those, 94% said Facebook was their preferred source, followed by YouTube with 32% and Twitter with 18%. … analysts say that because people are spending more time on social media sites, they have begun to include questions and research about health care as a part of that experience (Pamela Lewis Dolan, 3/28).

Kiplinger: 30 Ways To Cut Health Care Costs
If you're like most Americans, you're shouldering a larger portion of your health care costs. But as more insurers raise deductibles and switch from fixed-dollar co-payments to coinsurance -- which bases out-of-pocket expenses on a percentage of the total costs -- you have an incentive to take more control over how much you spend. Therein lies a problem, however: Most people have no idea how much medical care actually costs (Kimberly Lankford, April 2011).