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Section: Health

How Tax Plan Could Affect Health Care

Companies should brace for change. The 30-plus-year drought since the last tax code overhaul may be over as Congress sets out to vote on and place a now-finalized tax bill on President Donald Trump’s desk. The bill slashes the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, and also includes massive changes to how income earned […]

December 21, 2017

HHS Withholds Public Comments on Ruling

HHS is defending its decision to withhold more than 10,000 public comments on a proposal that could affect access to abortion and care for transgender patients. “There has been a voluminous response to the [request for information], and the center’s team is working through a review of the submissions,” Shannon Royce, who leads the agency’s […]

December 21, 2017

Judge Allows Abortions for 2 Detained Teens

WASHINGTON — Trump administration officials must allow two pregnant teenage immigrants being held in a detention facility to see a doctor about having abortions, a federal judge ruled Monday. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington issued a temporary restraining order that bars administration officials from preventing the two 17-year-olds from leaving the shelter where […]

December 21, 2017

Immigrant Detained Abortion

Test Trump’s Brain

When President Trump slurred his words during a news conference this week, some Trump watchers speculated that he was having a stroke. I watched the clip and, as a physician who specializes in brain function and disability, I don’t think a stroke was behind the slurred words. But having evaluated the chief executive’s remarkable behavior […]

December 18, 2017

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Screening Babies for Heart Disease Reduces Deaths

Infant deaths from critical congenital heart disease (CCHD) decreased more than 33 percent in eight states that mandated screening for CCHD using a test called pulse oximetry. In addition, deaths from other or unspecified cardiac causes decreased by 21 percent. Pulse oximetry is a simple bedside test to determine the amount of oxygen in a […]

December 18, 2017

Net Neutrality Repeal Could Have Health Impact

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 in favor of repealing net neutrality regulations, an expected outcome that prompted renewed concern from some about the impact on telehealth and remote monitoring. In a release (PDF) following Thursday’s vote, the FCC lauded the reversal of “heavy-handed utility-style regulations” that would promote network investment that is “key to […]

December 18, 2017

Judge Blocks Birth Control Rules

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A federal judge in Philadelphia on Friday ordered the Trump administration not to enforce new rules that could significantly reduce women’s access to free birth control. Judge Wendy Beetlestone issued the injunction, temporarily stopping the government from enforcing the policy change to former President Barack Obama’s health care law. Read More

December 18, 2017

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Is Your State the Healthiest?

Massachusetts is the healthiest state in which to live this year, according to a new report from the United Health Foundation. The report ranks states on 35 factors that impact health, from vaccination levels and infant mortality rates to environmental pollution and poverty levels. The analysis also pinpoints public health challenges nationwide. Read More

December 18, 2017

CDC Chief to Staff: “No Banned Words”

The new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reached out to alarmed agency staff over the weekend to tamp down fears incited by a report that the Trump administration has banned the CDC from using words like “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “diversity” in its budget submissions. Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, who has led the […]

December 18, 2017

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Kimmel Blasts Congress for Ending CHIP

Jimmy Kimmel returned to his late-night talk show Jmmy Kimmel Live! this week and brought along his infant son Billy, who had undergone heart surgery recently, causing the host to take time off. Kimmel teared up as he reassured his audience that Billy was fine, and took the opportunity to call out the Republican-led United […]

December 18, 2017

Burst of Obamacare Enrollments Show Need

WASHINGTON — A deadline burst of sign-ups after a tumultuous year for the Obama health law has revealed continued demand for the program’s subsidized individual health plans. But the Affordable Care Act’s troubles aren’t over. On the plus side for the overhaul, official numbers showed a sizable share of first-time customers, 36 percent, were among […]

December 18, 2017

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Ignore Race

Sickle cell anemia was first described in 1910 and was quickly labeled a “black” disease. At a time when many people were preoccupied with an imagined racial hierarchy, with whites on top, the disease was cited as evidence that people of African descent were inferior. But what of white people who presented with sickle cell […]

December 13, 2017

Compound Stops Progressive Kidney Disease

Progressive kidney diseases, whether caused by obesity, hypertension, diabetes, or rare genetic mutations, often have the same outcome: The cells responsible for filtering the blood are destroyed. Reporting in Science, a team led by researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School describes a new approach […]

December 13, 2017

PTSD Veterans Struggle to Get Service Dogs

For 10 years, Adam LeGrand was a medic in the Air Force. Then he was injured in rollover accidents and by a pallet of cinderblocks falling on him in Qatar. He developed post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury (TBI) and became suicidal. “The VA [Veterans Administration] put me on a dangerous cocktail of drugs,” […]

December 13, 2017

GOP Steps Up Push for More Funds for Obamacare Marketplaces

Senate Republicans are increasingly resolved to infuse more funding into the Obamacare marketplaces, even as they work on a parallel measure to undermine the health-care law by erasing its mandate to buy coverage. In an email sent to senators Tuesday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised imminent action on a pair of measures […]

December 13, 2017

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Why Are Pregnant Black Women Dying?

On a melancholy Saturday this past February, Shalon Irving’s “village” — the friends and family she had assembled to support her as a single mother — gathered at a funeral home in a prosperous black neighborhood in southwest Atlanta to say goodbye and send her home. The afternoon light was gray but bright, flooding through […]

December 13, 2017

Suits Target Diet Soda Industry’s Ads

Advertising campaigns behind diet drinks from Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper have long promoted the idea that consumers are taking the healthier, more weight-conscious option when it comes to choosing their favorite sodas. Diet Coke emphasized its drink has “no sugar, no calories.” Diet Pepsi tried launching its slender “skinny” can only a handful of […]

December 13, 2017

States Press Medical Marijuana Users to Give Up Guns

Twenty-nine states and Washington D.C. now allow patients to have access to medical marijuana, but some of these patients are bumping up against a federal law that prohibits the sale of guns to people who use marijuana. Authorities in Pennsylvania and Hawaii have spoken out last week, declaring that people who have medical marijuana licenses […]

December 13, 2017

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