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Fighting a health insurance denial? Here are 7 tips to help

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

When Sally Nix found out that her health insurance company wouldn’t pay for an expensive, doctor-recommended treatment to ease her neurological pain, she prepared for battle.

It took years, a chain of conflicting decisions, and a health insurer switch before she finally won approval. She started treatment in January and now channels time and ...Read more

Sarah A. Miller/Idaho Statesman/TNS

Idaho's last Planned Parenthood wants you to know what services it really provides

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

BOISE, Idaho -- Sean, a 56-year-old Boise man, sat in one of Planned Parenthood’s exam rooms in Meridian as he waited for his prescription.

When he came out as bisexual last year, he and his wife decided to pursue a type of open relationship. As Sean began having sexual relationships with different partners, he knew the health center would be...Read more

Are you young at heart? The heart age calculator can let you know

Almost 50% of U.S. adults have high blood pressure, putting them at risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD), stroke, heart attack and dementia. Unfortunately, even though their hearts are physically older than their chronological age, until disaster strikes, it's easy to overlook -- or never check for -- signs of high blood pressure and CVD.

Now,...Read more

How Doctors Make Recs Based On Government Guidelines

Health Advice / Keith Roach /

DEAR DR. ROACH: I wonder if we can trust the health guidelines coming from government agencies. How will doctors make recommendations if the guidelines may not be scientifically rigorous? -- T.D.

ANSWER: For many decades, the recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, the United States Food and ...Read more

Alex Wong/Getty Images North America/TNS

Commentary: Trump is old and ailing, but Democrats shouldn't count on time to solve their problem

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

My kids are still reeling from the cosmic injustice that Chick-fil-A closes on Sundays, and so it’s no surprise that, after a few Trump-free days, dopamine-deprived Americans were twitching for their next ALL CAPS fix from the attention economy’s reigning purveyor of entertaining outrage.

In case you missed it, President Trump recently ...Read more

DREAMSTIME/TNS

US health care hiring slowdown is warning for broader job market

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Hiring in the U.S. health care sector is looking increasingly shaky, raising a warning flag for the economy given its importance as a key driver of job growth over the last three years.

Health care and social assistance companies added about 47,000 employees to payrolls in August, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report published ...Read more

Alex Wong/Getty Images North America/TNS

Editorial: With RFK Jr. in charge, West Coast Health Alliance is the right move

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Washington state leaders made the right decision joining Oregon, California and now Hawaii to form a West Coast Health Alliance. Under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., federal health agencies are abandoning science. States must protect residents from dangerous misinformation masquerading as policy as best they can.

The...Read more

Tiffany Tompkins/Bradenton Herald/TNS

A Florida area may crack down on kratom. What to know about the designer drug

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

MIAMI — Manatee could become the second county in Florida to ban kratom and other designer drugs.

Sarasota County approved a ban in 2014. While kratom was already restricted to adults over 21, an emergency statewide order last month banned one of the chemical compounds found in kratom.

Last Tuesday, Manatee Commissioner Amanda Ballard ...Read more

Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times

How long will California's COVID surge continue? 5 things to know

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

LOS ANGELES – The coronavirus has muscled its way back into headlines in recent weeks amid a summer wave of the illness and growing difficulties in getting the vaccine, as well as efforts by the Trump administration that could make getting inoculated harder for some people.

The summer increase is decidedly smaller than what California and ...Read more

Amy Frank/KFF Health News/TNS

When hospitals and insurers fight, patients get caught in the middle

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Amy Frank said it took 17 hours on the phone over nearly three weeks, bouncing between her insurer and her local hospital system, to make sure her plan would cover her husband’s post-surgery care.

Many of her calls never got past the hold music. When they did, the hospital told her to call her insurer. The insurer told her to have the ...Read more

Commentary: Is multicancer testing valuable? Here are questions to ask before getting screened

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

For doctors and patients, the Holy Grail of medicine would be a simple blood or saliva test to detect all types of cancer before symptoms or sickness appears. Doctors could screen and treat patients earlier in the course of disease. As Dr. Lisa Stempel, director of the high-risk cancer screening program at Rush University Medical Center, told ...Read more

(Lori Wensley)/KFF HEALTH/TNS

As insurers struggle with GLP-1 drug costs, some seek to wean patients off

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

After losing 50 pounds on the injectable weight loss medication Zepbound, Kyra Wensley received a surprising letter from her pharmacy benefit manager in April.

Her request for coverage had been denied, the letter said, because she’d had a body mass index of less than 35 when she started Zepbound. The 25-year-old who lives in New York had been...Read more

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images North America/TNS

He built Michigan's Medicaid work requirement system. Now he's warning other states

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

It was March 2020, and Robert Gordon was about to kick some 80,000 people off health insurance.

As the Michigan state health director, he had spent the past year, and some $30 million in state tax dollars, trying to avoid that very thing.

Gordon was a Democrat, a veteran of the Obama administration, and he did not want people to lose the ...Read more

Tero Vesalainen/Dreamstime/TNS

Ask the Pediatrician: The effects of caffeine on kids: A parent's guide

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

A cup of coffee or tea in the morning or an afternoon caffeine pick-me-up is usually fine for most adults. But parents might want to take a closer look at caffeine and other ingredients in the drinks their kids love.

Many popular beverages that kids go to for quick energy have a surprising amount of caffeine. Some drinks have other stimulants, ...Read more

Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS

New research reveals a link between excessive alcohol and fatty liver disease

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Mayo Clinic researchers have pinpointed how excessive alcohol consumption contributes to fatty liver disease, a condition that affects more than one in three people in the U.S.

Also known as Metabolic Dysfunction Associated Steatotic Liver Disease, it is a long-lasting disease that can lead to type 2 diabetes and even liver cancer. Excessive ...Read more

What men can do about their (greater) risks from dementia

Almost 4% of men and just over 4% of women age 65 and older have been diagnosed with dementia. But how dementia plays out isn't evenly experienced between men and women. Men have substantially higher rates of hospitalization, hospice stay, and death after a dementia diagnosis than women do.

A new study published in JAMA Neurology looked at ...Read more

Weight Loss Isn't The Cause Behind An Odd Globus Sensation

Health Advice / Keith Roach /

DEAR DR. ROACH: I was recently diagnosed with diabetes and immediately changed my diet and exercise regimen. I was able to lose 17 pounds in about two months but have started to experience a feeling of something being stuck in my throat. Could the sudden weight loss have brought this on? I was sent to get an ultrasound on my thyroid, and it ...Read more

Ian Allenden/Dreamstime.com/TNS

Common artificial sweetener linked to worse cancer treatment outcomes in Pitt study

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Sucralose, a common artificial sweetener, may be preventing the body from responding to cancer immunotherapy, a new study out of the University of Pittsburgh finds.

The results come as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services turns its attention toward ultraprocessed foods, with efforts to ban artificial food dyes and sweeteners. The ...Read more

Barry Williams/New York Daily News/TNS

Blue states hold on to public health dollars while red states lose out

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

After the Trump administration slashed billions in state and local public health funding from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year, the eventual impact on states split sharply along political lines.

Democratic-led states that sued to block the cuts kept much of their funding, while Republican-led states lost ...Read more

Kevin P. Coughlin/Office of the Governor/TNS

Hochul fends of RFK Jr. COVID vaccine limits for New Yorkers with executive order

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

NEW YORK — Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday signed an executive order ensuring continued access to COVID-19 vaccines in New York after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took steps to limit availability of the shots.

The governor’s measure declares a health emergency and authorizes pharmacists to continue providing the vaccines to anyone who...Read more

 

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