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Study outlines “sobering reality” of the U.S. health care system

Over the last decade, the biggest driver of the high health care costs in the United States has been neither the aging of the population nor the large numbers of tests and treatments being prescribed.

13 Nov 2013

Lawmakers face their own health law reality: Navigating the online exchanges

Lawmakers and some of their aides are preparing to navigate the health law's online insurance exchanges to buy coverage. An Alaskan senator is declining the employer contribution to buy coverage, and some senators will ask for a full investigation of the troubled startup of Healthcare.gov.

13 Nov 2013

System-wide improvements could yield dramatic gains in physician capacity, reduce burnout

Producing more healthcare providers is often touted as the principle solution to the looming shortage in the primary care workforce. A quicker and less costly approach to offset primary care physician shortages can occur with the workforce already in place, through efforts to reduce the widespread waste and inefficiency in the typical physician workday.

13 Nov 2013

Three press briefings about issues affecting aging population scheduled for GSA's upcoming meeting

Three press briefings designed to better inform reporters about issues affecting America's aging population have been scheduled for The Gerontological Society of America's upcoming 66th Annual Scientific Meeting.

13 Nov 2013

Challenge of signing up young adults; subsidies key to insurance decisions

NewsHour looks at the efforts in Wisconsin to interest the "young invincibles" in health care coverage. Meanwhile, news organizations in Connecticut and Minnesota look at the complicated calculations for premium subsidies.

13 Nov 2013

Aerobic exercise helps healthy aging adults improve memory, brain health and physical fitness

A new study conducted by researchers at the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas published online in the open-access journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience found that engaging in a physical exercise regimen helps healthy aging adults improve their memory, brain health and physical fitness.

13 Nov 2013

Parental supervision at ages 11-14 lowers risk for problem gambling by age 22

Keeping an eye on your child can lower their odds for gambling by young adulthood, according to research conducted at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Adolescents who had poor parental supervision at age 11, and which continued to decline through age 14, were significantly more likely than their peers to be problem gamblers between ages 16-22.

12 Nov 2013

Insurers push for workaround that would allow them to directly enroll people

The New York Times reports on this push, which is one of several ways some are discussing to get around the current technology problems plaguing the Obama administration's enrollment effort. Also in the news, The Wall Street Journal reports that some of these difficulties are trickling down from the federal online insurance marketplace to certain state exchanges.

12 Nov 2013

Extensive musical training affects structure, function of different brain regions

New findings show that extensive musical training affects the structure and function of different brain regions, how those regions communicate during the creation of music, and how the brain interprets and integrates sensory information.

12 Nov 2013

Early enrollment numbers far below administration targets

The projections, which put the total number of enrollees so far at fewer than 50,000 people, is just a fraction of the tally the Obama administration initially was hoping for.

12 Nov 2013

Kaiser Permanente's Medicare health plan website launches new seminar search tool

Kaiser Permanente's highly rated Medicare health plan website, kp.org/medicare, has launched a new feature that is designed to help seniors find information more easily and conveniently.

12 Nov 2013

ED visits associated with OTC pediatric cough cold medicines in children decline

A new study, "Cough and Cold Medication Adverse Events After Market Withdrawal and Labeling Revision," shows that emergency department visits associated with over-the-counter pediatric cough cold medicines in children age 3 and younger have declined following voluntary industry labeling initiatives specifically designed to improve safe use in this age.

12 Nov 2013

Zients warned years ago about problems with federal IT; Obama administration turning to insurers' expertise for website difficulties

Jeffrey D. Zients, a multimillionaire entrepreneur and management consultant, joined the Obama White House in 2009 with a mandate to streamline the federal bureaucracy. A year later, he issued a prescient warning. The government "largely has missed out" on the information technology revolution, Mr. Zients said in a 2010 internal memo. "I.T. projects too often cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than they should, take years longer than necessary to deploy and deliver technologies that are obsolete by the time they are completed," he wrote. These days, Mr. Zients is witnessing that ineptitude up close as the emergency fix-it man charged with righting HealthCare.gov (Stolberg, 11/10).

12 Nov 2013

Peripheral prism glasses provide simple mobility rehabilitation intervention for hemianopia

More than a million Americans suffer from hemianopia, or blindness in one half of the visual field in both eyes as the result of strokes, tumors or trauma. People with hemianopia frequently bump into walls, trip over objects, or walk into people on the side where the visual field is missing.

12 Nov 2013

State highlights: New Hampshire lawmakers contemplate Medicaid expansion; wide variation in indigent care among California counties

A selection of health policy stories from Massachusetts, Oregon and Iowa.

12 Nov 2013

Viewpoints: Shinseki's efforts haven't yet solved VA's problems; treating children with mental illness is complicated; abuse of painkillers

Just in time for Veterans Day, the embattled secretary of Veterans Affairs, Eric K. Shinseki, announced last week that his department had reduced its backlog of overdue disability claims from more than 600,000 in March to about 400,000. "The trend line is in the right direction," Shinseki told reporters, noting that the VA had cut the number of claims older than a year by 93%. With hundreds of thousands of cases still unresolved, Shinseki hasn't gotten much credit so far - but to the surprise of his critics, he's on track to achieve his goal of eliminating the backlog by 2015. Still, that won't solve all the VA's problems; far from it (Doyle McManus, 11/10).

12 Nov 2013

IEEE-SA, Continua partner to broaden adoption of standards-based technologies for healthcare arena

IEEE Standards Association and Continua Health Alliance today announced they have signed a strategic agreement to help accelerate and broaden the adoption of globally relevant standards-based technologies for the healthcare arena.

12 Nov 2013

Choosing right health insurance could be more difficult for uninsured: Study

The new federal health-care law gives millions of Americans access to medical insurance. However, choosing the right coverage - a daunting task for most people - could be even more difficult for those who have never had health insurance, according to a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

12 Nov 2013

GOP sees potential in health law's problems, as website issues and overhaul complications take toll on Obama's ratings

Even as Republican lawmakers took a hard line during the weekend talk shows, Democrats still maintain the measure will, in the end, be a political advantage.

12 Nov 2013

Issa issues another subpoena about health law website -- his target: Top White House tech officer

So far, the White House has resisted congressional Republican efforts to speak with chief technology officer Todd Park about the roll-out of healthcare.gov.

12 Nov 2013

Healthcare News

Study outlines “sobering reality” of the U.S. health care system

Lawmakers face their own health law reality: Navigating the online exchanges

System-wide improvements could yield dramatic gains in physician capacity, reduce burnout

Three press briefings about issues affecting aging population scheduled for GSA's upcoming meeting

Challenge of signing up young adults; subsidies key to insurance decisions

Aerobic exercise helps healthy aging adults improve memory, brain health and physical fitness

Parental supervision at ages 11-14 lowers risk for problem gambling by age 22

Insurers push for workaround that would allow them to directly enroll people

Extensive musical training affects structure, function of different brain regions

Early enrollment numbers far below administration targets

Kaiser Permanente's Medicare health plan website launches new seminar search tool

ED visits associated with OTC pediatric cough cold medicines in children decline

Zients warned years ago about problems with federal IT; Obama administration turning to insurers' expertise for website difficulties

Peripheral prism glasses provide simple mobility rehabilitation intervention for hemianopia

State highlights: New Hampshire lawmakers contemplate Medicaid expansion; wide variation in indigent care among California counties

Viewpoints: Shinseki's efforts haven't yet solved VA's problems; treating children with mental illness is complicated; abuse of painkillers

IEEE-SA, Continua partner to broaden adoption of standards-based technologies for healthcare arena

Choosing right health insurance could be more difficult for uninsured: Study

GOP sees potential in health law's problems, as website issues and overhaul complications take toll on Obama's ratings

Issa issues another subpoena about health law website -- his target: Top White House tech officer

Membrane proteins in focus: Turning high-risk targets into routine workflows

How metabolic phenotyping can detect viral infections in minutes

Directed enzyme evolution and the Nobel Prize: Making enzymes evolve in the lab

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