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| U.S. preterm births fall to 15-year low, still worst in developed world Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 09:10 PM PDT By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - The rate of preterm births in the United States dropped to a 15-year low of 11.5 percent in 2012, according to a report released on Friday, but the country still came in dead last among industrialized nations on this measure of infant health. The rate reflects six straight years of declines, possibly due to factors such as a drop in smoking among women of childbearing age, said the March of Dimes, the nonprofit group that produced the report. The improvement comes during an acrimonious, partisan debate in Congress about health insurance centered on President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law. The Affordable Care Act requires all insurance plans to cover maternity care, spreading the cost of healthy pregnancies across society. Full Story | Top |
| Japan lawmaker breaks taboo with nuclear fears letter for emperor Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 08:25 PM PDT  A Japanese lawmaker handed Emperor Akihito a letter on Thursday expressing fear about the health impact of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, breaking a taboo by trying to involve the emperor in politics. Taro Yamamoto, who is also an anti-nuclear activist, gave Akihito the letter during a garden party, setting off a storm of protest on the Internet from critics shocked at his action. "I wanted to directly tell the emperor of the current situation," Yamamoto told reporters, referring to the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant north of Tokyo, which has been leaking radioactivity since it was battered by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. Full Story | Top |
| Cigna says will increase '14 profit despite pressures Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 07:34 PM PDT  Insurer Cigna Corp said on Thursday it expects to increase its 2014 earnings from 2013, reflecting its smaller exposure to uncertainty around private Medicare and the rollout of individual insurance on new exchanges around the country. Cigna, which reported third-quarter profit that beat analysts' expectations on Thursday, has both a U.S. and overseas health insurance business and also sells disability and life insurance. Cigna said that diversification will help it next year, which it expects to be challenging because of broad changes in the healthcare industry. Larger competitors UnitedHealth Group Inc, WellPoint Inc and Aetna Inc have recently painted 2014 as uncertain because of private Medicare cuts and changes related to President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law. Full Story | Top |
| Enrollment in Obamacare very small in first days: documents Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 06:16 PM PDT  By Susan Cornwell and David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Enrollment in health insurance plans on the troubled Obamacare website was very small in the first couple of days of operation, with just 248 Americans signing up, according to documents released on Thursday by a U.S. House of Representatives committee. The Obama administration has said it cannot provide enrollment figures from HealthCare.gov because it doesn't have the numbers. The federal website, where residents of 36 states can buy new healthcare plans under President Barack Obama's law, was launched on October 1. "We do not have any reliable data around enrollment, which is why we haven't given it to date," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told lawmakers on Wednesday. Full Story | Top |
| Federal appeals court reinstates abortion restrictions in Texas Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 06:13 PM PDT  (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Thursday reinstated restrictions on abortion providers in Texas, siding with Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott who had asked for an emergency ruling while a lower court ruling was being appealed. The decision means that during the appeal doctors who perform abortions in Texas will have to get agreements with local hospitals to admit patients under a sweeping new anti-abortion law, according to court documents. Full Story | Top |
| Mayor in Hawaii vetoes measure curbing pesticides, GMO crops Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 06:00 PM PDT By Christopher D'Angelo LIHUE, Hawaii (Reuters) - The mayor of the tropical island of Kauai, Hawaii, vetoed a measure on Thursday that reins in pesticide use by agricultural companies and limits where they can plant genetically modified crops, saying the bill was "legally flawed." The Kauai County Council voted 6-1 on October 16 in favor of the bill that would require buffer zones around schools, hospitals and homes where no crops can be grown and limits pesticide use. Kauai County Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. said in a statement that while he agrees with the intent of the bill, he is not going to allow it to go into effect. This latest twist comes after months of protests by islanders and mainland U.S. groups who want to see a range of broad controls on the global agrichemical companies that have found Kauai's tropical climate ideal for year-round testing of new biotech crops. Among those testing biotech crops on Hawaii's "Garden Isle," as Kauai is known, are DuPont, Syngenta AG, BASF, and Dow AgroSciences, a division of Dow Chemical Co. Kauai Coffee, the largest coffee grower in Hawaii, also opposed the measure. Full Story | Top |
| Coke Femsa shares fall as Mexico passes food, drink taxes Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 04:30 PM PDT By Elinor Comlay MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Shares of Mexico's biggest bottling company fell on Thursday as Congress approved a 1 peso-per-liter tax on sugary drinks and an 8 percent tax on junk food as part of a wider tax overhaul. The plan, which was passed by lawmakers after markets closed, aims to curb rising obesity levels as well as lift Mexico's poor tax take. Shares of Mexico-based Coca-Cola Femsa, Coke's largest bottler in Latin America, closed down 1.28 percent at 159.02 pesos. Mexico, where obesity rates are now higher than in the United States, will be the first major soda market to tax high-calorie sodas, following a handful of other Latin American and European countries. Full Story | Top |
| Obamacare controversy hits close to home for Capitol Hill staff Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 04:19 PM PDT  By Caren Bohan and Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican lawmakers opposed to Obamacare have been grappling with a predicament of their own making as they decide whether to move their staff into the new insurance marketplaces tied to President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul. More than three years ago, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa proposed an amendment to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, requiring U.S. lawmakers and their aides to purchase insurance coverage on the new online marketplaces, known as exchanges. Obama's Democratic Party, which in 2009 controlled both chambers of Congress, saw it largely as a political stunt by Republicans who view the law as government overreach and have campaigned to scrap it. House lawmakers faced a deadline of 5 p.m. (2100 GMT) on Thursday to decide whether to fully follow the requirement, or exploit a loophole that allows them to keep certain staff on their existing health insurance plans. Full Story | Top |
| Obamacare website gets new tech experts; oversight pressure grows Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 02:50 PM PDT By Susan Cornwell and David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration said it has brought in experts from top technology companies including Google Inc and Oracle Corp to fix the HealthCare.gov website, as Republicans press for details about the botched October 1 launch that prevented millions of Americans from signing up for new insurance plans. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it had added dozens of technology experts and engineers to its round-the-clock effort to fix the technical glitches on the site that is key to the implementation of President Barack Obama's healthcare restructuring law. Giving some of the first details of who might be leading the tech fix, HHS officials identified two experts by name: Michael Dickerson, a website reliability engineer on leave from Google, and Greg Gershman, a Baltimore-based innovation director with the firm Mobomo and who previously worked for the White House and the General Services Administration. "We are doing everything we can to assist those contractors to make HealthCare.gov a highly performant, highly reliable, highly secure system." Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told shareholders at the company's annual meeting on Thursday in Redwood City, California. Full Story | Top |
| Phony plastic surgeon accused of using silicone for Botox Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 02:45 PM PDT By Jared Taylor MCALLEN, Texas (Reuters) - An unlicensed plastic surgeon working along the U.S.-Mexico border allegedly injected her victims with silicone instead of the typical Botox or saline treatments, and may have caused one client to nearly lose her leg, a Texas sheriff said Thursday. Nohemi Gabriela Gonzalez, 45, was charged Thursday with practicing medicine without a license, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines. Authorities in Hidalgo County, on the Texas-Mexico border about 60 miles west of the Gulf of Mexico, said Gonzalez solicited as many as 30 men and women seeking Botox injections and other treatments for their buttocks, legs and faces. Many of the victims were immigrants in the country illegally, including exotic dancers who have eluded investigators, Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said. Full Story | Top |
| ‘Intensive' exercise may benefit heart failure patients Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 02:20 PM PDT By Andrew M. Seaman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Some doctors caution people with heart failure against pushing themselves too hard physically. But a new analysis of past studies suggests heart patients may actually benefit more from relatively intensive exercise. Researchers found people with heart failure had a 23-percent improvement in heart function after taking part in relatively high-intensity exercise programs. About 5.8 million people in the United States have heart failure, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Full Story | Top |
| Police have video of Toronto mayor, won't detail contents Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 02:12 PM PDT  By Cameron French TORONTO (Reuters) - Police said Thursday they have obtained a video "consistent" with media accounts that it shows Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine, but they would not confirm the contents of the video. Ford, who has denied he smokes crack, said he could not comment on the matter because the video is evidence in a separate case before the courts. In the first official link between Ford and a high-profile Toronto drugs investigation, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair on Thursday identified the mayor as a subject in a video recovered during the probe. "I can tell you that the digital video file that we have recovered depicts images which are consistent with those that had previously been reported in the press," Blair said. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. workers can carry over $500 of health spending accounts: Treasury Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 01:20 PM PDT  Americans who use flexible spending accounts (FSAs) for healthcare costs may now be able to carry up to $500 of expiring money into the next year, the U.S. Treasury said on Thursday. An FSA allows individuals to set aside as much as $2,500 a year in pretax income for healthcare costs. In 2005, the Internal Revenue Service began allowing companies to offer their workers a 2.5 month grace period through mid-March during which they could use up any money that was left over. Now, an employer that sponsors an FSA can choose, as an alternative to that grace period, to allow its employees to carry over up to $500 to use during the entire following year. Full Story | Top |
| Horsemeat found in canned beef at two retailers -food agency Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 01:19 PM PDT  A batch of canned sliced beef containing horsemeat has been removed from the shelves of retailers Home Bargains and Quality Save, Britain's Food Standards Agency said on Thursday . Routine tests by local government trading standards officers in Lincolnshire, eastern England, found the product, which was manufactured in Romania in January this year, contained horse DNA at a level of between 1 and 5 percent. Neither Home Bargains, the trading name of family-owned business TJ Morris, nor Quality Save, a chain of discount stores operating in northern England, could immediately be reached for comment. The beef tested negative for the drug phenylbutazone, or 'bute', the anti-inflammatory painkiller for sporting horses which is banned for animals intended for eventual human consumption as it is potentially harmful, the agency said. Full Story | Top |
| Horsemeat found in canned beef at two UK retailers -food agency Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 01:11 PM PDT A batch of canned sliced beef containing horsemeat has been removed from the shelves of retailers Home Bargains and Quality Save, Britain's Food Standards Agency said on Thursday . Routine tests by local government trading standards officers in Lincolnshire, eastern England, found the product, which was manufactured in Romania in January this year, contained horse DNA at a level of between 1 and 5 percent. Neither Home Bargains, the trading name of family-owned business TJ Morris, nor Quality Save, a chain of discount stores operating in northern England, could immediately be reached for comment. The beef tested negative for the drug phenylbutazone, or 'bute', the anti-inflammatory painkiller for sporting horses which is banned for animals intended for eventual human consumption as it is potentially harmful, the agency said. Full Story | Top |
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