Month: January 2014

By Genevra Pittman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Most children and teenagers in the U.S. go to schools that have partnerships with food and drink companies, according to a new study. "The companies that do the most of this kind of marketing manufacture products that children should not be consuming at all or in large quantities, like sugary drinks," said Jennifer Harris. "Parents really don't understand the extent of food marketing that's going on in the schools.

By Shereen Jegtvig NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Black and less-educated people tend to cut back on their fast food purchases when prices rise more than other consumers, according to a new study. Low fast food prices were linked to worse health – including higher weights – among those participants in particular, researchers found. "We were very interested in understanding whether fast food prices might influence fast food behavior, so if prices were high, did that reduce the number of visits to fast food restaurants," senior author Penny Gordon-Larsen told Reuters Health in an email. Gordon-Larsen is a nutrition researcher with the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

By David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The new private health plans available under Obamacare drew in fewer young and healthy Americans than needed for the administration to make healthcare reform a market success in the first wave of enrollment, an official report showed on Monday. Twenty-four percent of the 2.2 million people who signed up for private coverage between October 1 and December 28 belonged to a target audience of 18- to 34-year-olds, according to an administration report, the first to provide a demographic breakdown on enrollment in the new plans offered under President Barack Obama's healthcare law. That compares with a target closer to 38 percent set before the program's botched October 1 rollout, when administration officials believed that about 2.7 million of a forecast 7 million potential enrollees for 2014 would be between 18 and 35 to help offset the cost of covering sicker consumers. Health policy experts say the administration may still get closer to that ratio by the time 2014 enrollment closes at the end of March, when more young Americans sign up to avoid the law's penalty for not being insured.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks fell on Monday on caution ahead of an onslaught of corporate results as negative pre-announcements pile up, leaving a lackluster profit growth outlook. Based on the latest available data, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 177.57 points or 1.08 percent, to 16,259.48; the S&P 500 lost 23.25 points, or 1.26 percent, to 1,819.12; and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 61.36 points, or 1.47 percent, to 4,113.304. (Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Leslie Adler)

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s an older, costlier crowd that’s signing up for health insurance under President Barack Obama’s law.

West Virginia officials on Monday lifted a ban on drinking or bathing with tap water in some areas of the state hit by a chemical spill that affected hundreds of thousands of people for five days, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin said. Officials had ordered some 300,000 people not to drink their tap water after as much as 7,500 gallons (28,000 liters) of the 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or crude MCHM, leaked into the river. Jeff McIntyre, president of West Virginia American Water Co, said the first area cleared for use was in downtown Charleston, the state capital.

MIAMI (AP) — After his father was diagnosed with cancer, a 15-year-old Champaign, Ill., teen started skipping school, erupting in angry outbursts, yelling at teachers and punching holes in walls or retreating to his room paralyzed by an overwhelming sadness.