Chiropractic Breakthrough

William C. Weldon, the chief executive of Johnson & Johnson, is expected to acknowledge to lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Thursday that the company mishandled the removal of certain medicines from store shelves last year. He also planned to announce that after a recall of children’s liquid medicines, new batches would begin to reach stores as early as next week.

Economists at George Washington University have tabulated the cost of obesity and discovered a surprising gender gap: It’s more expensive for a woman to be obese than for a man. While a man racks up $2,646 annually in extra expenses if he is obese, a woman’s obesity costs her $4,879, almost twice as much. Much of the gender gap is due to lower wages for obese women, who earn less relative to similar working women who are not obese. The study also found that the more overweight you are, the more expensive life gets. The incremental costs faced by obese women are nine times higher than those for overweight women. For obese men, the costs are six times higher than those of overweight men.

This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a comprehensive nationwide behavioral study of fruit and vegetable consumption. Only 26% of the nation’s adults eat vegetables three or more times a day, it concluded. The number of dinners prepared at home that included a salad was 17%; in 1994, it was 22%.

Last Thursday marked six months since the health care bill became law. The law is not perfect, but the difference it is making in the lives of people who have been denied insurance due to a pre-existing condition and seniors struggling with prescription drug costs is significant. No one should lose their health care just because they get sick, or be forced to pay all their medical costs out of pocket because they have hit a “lifetime cap,” and this legislation ends these practices.

About 16.6 million workers are employed by small businesses that are eligible for health insurance tax credits under the new health care law. However, a report by the Commonwealth Fund estimated that only 3.4 million of those workers are at firms that would take advantage of the tax credit. For the most part, those are firms that already offer their employees health insurance. Those firms that do not offer coverage are unlikely to consider the tax breaks enough of a financial incentive to start doing so, according to the report’s authors.

For young Americans with no health insurance, Thursday was an important day: those younger than 26 were able to join their parents’ plans under the recently enacted health care overhaul. Previously, children were dropped from their parents’ policies what 19 or 23 if they were full time students. Young people make up the largest group of uninsured Americans, although they are healthier and cheaper to insure. And they are much less likely to vote.

For many families, health care relief begins today. Starting now, insurance companies will no longer be permitted to exclude children because of pre-existing health conditions, which the White House said could enable 72,000 uninsured to gain coverage. Insurers also will be prohibited from imposing lifetime limits on benefits. The law will now forbid insurers to drop sick and costly customers after discovering technical mistakes on applications. It requires that they offer coverage to children under 26 on their parents’ policies. It establishes a menu of preventive procedures that must be covered without co-payments. And it allows consumers who join a new plan to keep their own doctors and to appeal insurance company reimbursement decisions to a third party.

The Obama administration announced Tuesday that average premiums for private Medicare Advantage plans, which insure about 1/4 of all beneficiaries, will decline slightly next year, even as insurers provide additional benefits required by the new health care law. By contrast, commercial insurance premiums for many people under 65 and many small businesses are increasing 10%-25% or more.

Republicans, hopeful of picking up substantial numbers of seats in the Congressional elections, are developing plans to try to repeal or roll back the new health care law. Republicans say they will try to withhold money that federal officials need to administer and enforce the law and are expected to include specifics in an election agenda they intend to issue Thursday.

Starting this week you could see significant changes to your health insurance coverage. This is due to health care reform. It will impact thousands of people including companies and how they pay for benefits and what you ultimately pay for health insurance. Effective this week, insurance companies cannot put a dollar limit on benefits such as hospital or lab services and coverage for dependents is going up to 26 years of age. Also you’ll get preventative care without a deductable or co-pay.