The medical cost of obesity in the United States may be as high as $147 billion annually, based on a recent study from CDC and the Research Triangle Institute. The proportion of all annual medical costs that are due to obesity increased from 6.5 percent in 1998 to 9.1 percent in 2006. To address this problem of obesity, CDC has recommended 24 community policy and environmental strategies to prevent obesity.
This is the CDC’s first comprehensive set of recommended strategies and measures to help communities tackle the problem of obesity through environmental change and policies that promote healthy eating and physical activity.
The cost of health insurance makes health coverage unaffordable for many lower and moderate income families, especially if they are not offered health benefits through their jobs. This issue brief explains how government subsidies —an integral part of most major health reform plans under consideration in Congress—work in making coverage more affordable, protecting lower income people from high out-of-pocket costs and encouraging broad participation in health insurance.
The brief examines the different ways that premium and cost-sharing subsidies can be structured and focuses on new subsidies being considered for people buying coverage on their own (perhaps through an insurance exchange). Premium subsidies, in particular, are important because they are a prime determinant of how many people will gain coverage through various reform plans and because they account for a large portion of the cost of any health reform proposal that significantly increases health coverage.
Men with coronary artery disease-induced congestive heart failure or heart attack who receive hormone therapy before or along with radiation therapy for treatment of prostate cancer have an associated increased risk of death, according to a study in the August 26 issue of JAMA.
Global Health Facts (developed by the KFF) provides a slue of global health data. The website allows users to access accurate health data by country and create custom data sheets based on multiple health indicators.
Have you noticed how none of the big health care business special interests is running any negative health care reform ads? Why should they when each is poised to gain billions of dollars from it? As President Barack Obama has said many times, any health care bill that costs about $1 trillion would be paid for, roughly half and half, with savings in the health care system and new revenues (taxes).
I hope to clarify some of the information out there concerning the vaccine for the H1N1 Influenza Virus (a.k.a swine flu). The link above was a press briefing held at the Centers for Disease Control on August 21, 2009 with attendees from the CDC, Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institute of Health.
Speakers’ Profile/Summary
(source: CDC)
Mr. Jay Butler, Director of CDC’s H1N1 Vaccine Task Force, will begin by providing the brief overview of the current situation, as well as talk a little bit about what we know about H1N1 vaccine distribution and some of the planning taking place there. Dr. Butler will be followed by Dr. Jesse Goodman. Jesse is the Acting Chief Scientist and Deputy Commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration, and then after Dr. Goodman’s opening remarks, we will turn to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes for Health and give an update on the vaccine clinical trials with respect to the 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine.
Ali Al-Rajhi writes with the purpose of informing individuals in the Public Health field about pressing issues in environmental health, public health policy, epidemiology, and behavioral health. Learn more here.
from CDC and the Research Triangle Institute. The proportion of all annual medical costs that are due to obesity increased from 6.5 percent in 1998 to 9.1 percent in 2006. To address this problem of obesity, CDC has recommended 24 community policy and environmental strategies to prevent obesity.