Month: November 2013

Even the smallest thing, like the incredible scent of roasting coffee or the wonder of the intricate shape of a flower petal — can be overlooked when distractions threaten to drown out the here and now.

By Natalie San Luis If coffee is part of your morning routine, youmay be reducing your risk of type 2 Diabetes every day — at leastthat's according to a recent review of previous trials. The reviewshowed that people who drank coffee and caffeine, especially women,were less likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Additionally, theresearchers found that heavier coffee drinkers were more protectedagainst diabetes than those who drank less. More from dailyRx:Chewing More Could Mean Eating Less Milk Didn't Do a Hip GoodWeight Loss Surgery to Reduce Diabetes Complications Xiubo Jiang,Dongfeng

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will meet with representatives from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners on Wednesday to discuss issues with the implementation of his signature healthcare insurance program, the White House said. Many state commissioners have been hesitant to embrace Obama's fix to keep Americans from losing health plans that do not comply with the Affordable Care Act, saying they need to figure out how to resurrect canceled policies and whether to allow insurers to raise prices. …

That split-second of recognition that we were fellow humans, equally important, hit home. This was one of those moments where all of my ambition, grandiosity, ego and pride just fell away.

By Andrew M. Seaman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Black people with advanced colon cancer are less likely to get consultations with specialists and treatment with complex medicines than white people, according to a new study. “This disparity in treatment does result in survival differences that are quite substantial,” Dr. James Murphy told Reuters Health. Murphy is the study’s senior author and an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Medicine and Applied Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the U.S., Murphy and his colleagues write in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

By Roberta Rampton and David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama, who has portrayed himself as surprised by technical problems with the government's new health care website, was briefed last spring on a detailed consultant's report that warned of system failure, White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday. Carney said the president's familiarity with the report and recommendations by McKinsey & Co did not contradict previous statements from the White House that described Obama as surprised by the scope of flaws in HealthCare.gov since it opened for people to enroll for insurance coverage on October 1. Obama was told the problems identified by McKinsey were being addressed, Carney said. After reeling from technical problems at its website for more than six weeks, the Obama administration on Tuesday also said that it is still months away from completing the back end of the system, including functions needed to finalize federal subsidies for consumers who buy health plans.

By Barbara Liston ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) – U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday encouraged people looking to sign up for medical insurance under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law to return to the government’s HealthCare.gov website, promising them a better experience. “It is far faster than it was when we first opened,” Sebelius said of the website. “The error rate is down to less than one percent and the volume capacity is continuing to be added to.” HealthCare.gov, a web portal offering subsidized private health coverage to uninsured Americans, has been at the center of a political firestorm over the technical problems that overwhelmed its October 1 launch and have plagued it ever since. On a swing through Florida to encourage enrollment in the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, Sebelius said: “Come back now.

President Barack Obama blamed Republicans on Tuesday for contributing to the troubled rollout of his signature healthcare insurance plan and said it will be hard to "rebrand" Obamacare after his administration fixes a website used to sign up for the program. "We should have anticipated that that would create a rockier rollout," Obama told a Wall Street Journal conference. "One of the problems we've had is one side of Capitol Hill is invested in failure," Obama said. Obama said he thinks the website will be fixed on time for people to "catch up" and shop for insurance by key deadlines, which fall in December and March.