Help The Middle ClassNews and Information For The Heart Of America
Autism Signs Appear in Babies’ First Year (Health Key)
The social disengagement that is the hallmark of autism-spectrum disorders begins to appear in the second half of a baby’s first year of life, according to a new study. But Californiaresearchers found that parents typically do not notice the decline in their child’s behavior until well into his or her second year.
The study, published in the Journal [...]
How Alzheimer’s Disease Alters Lives (USA Today)
How an Alzheimer’s caretaker’s life and challenges may evolve as their loved one’s disease progresses:
Early stage
•May notice patient is more anxious, forgets friends’ names and telephone numbers, places everyday items in the wrong storage locations, leaves projects (laundry, meals) unfinished, has trouble making change and balancing a checkbook.
* May need to take over some household [...]
HEALTH ALERT: Breast-Feeding Could Save Babies Live & Billions of Dollars (Yahoo! News)
The lives of nearly 900 babies would be saved each year, along with billions of dollars, if 90 percent of U.S. women breast-fed their babies for the first six months of life, a cost analysis says.
Those startling results, published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics, are only an estimate. But several experts who reviewed the [...]
Can Eating Junk Food Really Be an Addiction? (TIME)
In 1982, Scientific American published an article suggesting that snorting cocaine was no more addictive than eating potato chips. People continue to use when the stuff is around, and simply stop when it’s gone, the researchers argued. The paper was later widely denounced for minimizing the risks of what soon became known as the most [...]
BIG QUESTION: Will The Middle Class Really Pay Less For Health Care? (USA Today)
President Obama’s restructuring of the nation’s health care system will make it easier for poor and sick Americans to get and keep insurance. What’s less clear is whether it will reduce health care costs for most Americans, as the White House says it will.
Medical costs are rising fast — up 5.7% last year, while the [...]
Health Care Overhaul: Answering Some Frequently Asked Questions (NPR)
The health-insurance overhaul package signed into law by President Obama is the most far-reaching health legislation since the creation of the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
The following is a look at the impact of the law, which will extend insurance coverage to 32 million additional Americans by 2019, but which will also have an effect on [...]
Health Overhaul Likely To Strain Doctor Shortage (AP & Yahoo! News)
Better beat the crowd and find a doctor.
Primary care physicians already are in short supply in parts of the country, and the landmark health overhaul that will bring them millions more newly insured patients in the next few years promises extra strain.
The new law goes beyond offering coverage to the uninsured, with steps to improve [...]
Obamacare Borrows Key Points From GOP, But With A Twist (AP & Yahoo!)
Republicans were for President Barack Obama’s requirement that Americans get health insurance before they were against it.
The obligation in the new health care law is a Republican idea that’s been around at least two decades. It was once trumpeted as an alternative to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s failed health care overhaul in the 1990s. These [...]
OBAMACARE UPDATE: Some States Winners, Some States Losers (Yahoo! News/CSM)
Under the nation’s healthcare reform plan, the nation’s Medicaid system will grow as one of the main organizations to implement the goal of expanded medical coverage.
But it appears that, from a financial standpoint, some states will be winners and some will be losers in this new arrangement.
Here’s a look at why some states may stand [...]
Charles Krauthammer/OP-ED – Obamacare’s Next Trick: The Taxman Cometh (The Washington Post)
As the night follows the day, VAT follows health-care reform.
With the passage of Obamacare, creating a vast new middle-class entitlement, a national sales tax of the kind near-universal in Europe is inevitable.
We are now $8 trillion in debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that $12 trillion will be added over the next decade. Obamacare, when [...]
