Month: March 2013

By Tom Brown MIAMI (Reuters) – Millions of Americans will be priced out of health insurance under President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul because of a glitch in the law that adversely affects people with modest incomes who cannot afford family coverage offered by their employers, a leading healthcare advocacy group said on Tuesday. …

By Kathryn Doyle NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Despite concerns that antidepressant use during pregnancy could affect infants’ growth and development, a small new study finds no size differences in the first year of life between babies exposed and not exposed to the drugs. The medications, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, which include fluoxetine (marketed as Prozac) and citalopram (Celexa), have been tied to premature births and lower birth weight. But their affect on growth during infancy had not been studied. …

By Dawson Bell LANSING, Mich (Reuters) – Michigan's attorney general on Tuesday asked state courts to authorize a grand jury to investigate whether a company linked to a deadly outbreak of fungal meningitis and other infections broke any state laws. The outbreak, linked to tainted steroids shipped in 2012 by the Massachusetts-based New England Compounding Center, has killed 51 people and sickened 730, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A representative of NECC declined to comment on the Michigan attorney general's announcement. …

Loneliness and social isolation may not go hand in hand as quality of life or longevity predictors, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , PNAS.

By Genevra Pittman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Removing metals from the body through a controversial treatment has little effect on the long-term health of people who’ve previously suffered a heart attack, according to the results of a government-funded trial released Tuesday. Researchers found no difference in how many of 1,708 participants died in the four and a half years after they received either so-called chelation therapy or drug-free placebo infusions, and only a small decline in the proportion that needed stents or other heart procedures following chelation. …

BERLIN (AP) — A man from the United Arab Emirates who was infected with a new SARS-related virus has died in Munich, German authorities said Tuesday.

By Dave Thompson BISMARCK, North Dakota (Reuters) – North Dakota on Tuesday adopted the most restrictive abortion law in the United States, as the governor signed a bill that bans the procedure in most cases once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as six weeks. Supporters of abortion rights said they would challenge the measure in court. Governor Jack Dalrymple on Tuesday also signed a bill that bans abortions based solely on genetic abnormalities, the first state ban of its kind, or based on the gender of the fetus. …

Medical claims costs are the main driver of health insurance premiums. A study by the Society of Actuaries estimates the new federal health care law will raise claims costs nationally by an average of 32 percent per person in the individual health insurance market by 2017. That’s partly due to sicker people joining the pool. The study finds wide disparities among states. The estimates assume every state will expand its Medicaid program.