Month: February 2014

By Laila Kearney BERKELEY, California (Reuters) – A California city is to consult its citizens on whether to impose a soda tax on sugary drinks, following failed bids by other local governments to pass similar measures. The Berkeley City Council will gauge local voter support for a penny-per-ounce tax – opposed by most of the soft drinks industry but which its backers say could help to curb obesity and diabetes – in an opinion poll next week. Depending on the outcome, it might include a referendum on introducing the tax in a city-wide ballot in November. Other U.S. cities have tried without success to enact such a tax amid a growing national movement to curb the consumption of high-calorie beverages.

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana and two smaller insurers will delay implementing policies to stop poor HIV patients from paying for Obamacare plans with funds from the federal Ryan White HIV/AIDS assistance program. The decision, which the insurers revealed at a federal court hearing on Tuesday, prompted the judge to lift a temporary restraining order that forced them to delay the change in policy for 14 days. On Monday, Brian Jackson, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana, issued the order that would have compelled the companies to accept Ryan White funds to pay insurance premiums on behalf of HIV patients.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that some 4 million people had signed up for health insurance through exchanges provided by his signature healthcare law known as Obamacare. Obama made the comments to cheers from supporters during an appearance at a "national organizing summit" put together by the political organization Organizing for Action that was formed out of his 2012 campaign apparatus. He urged supporters to keep reaching out to people to get them signed up for health insurance coverage. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Peter Cooney)

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – Increased attention given to patients in primary care practices organized into so-called medical homes may not improve quality of care or reduce health costs as reformers of the U.S. healthcare system had hoped, researchers said on Tuesday. Thousands of primary care doctors in the United States are revamping their practices based on this new medical home model. In medical home practices, primary care doctors adopt a team-based care approach using patient registries, electronic health records and other tools to help identify high-risk patients and deliver more personalized care. But new evidence from a large, three-year pilot study among 32 physician practices in Pennsylvania found modest improvements in quality of care and no reductions in hospitalizations, emergency department visits or total costs of care.

By Victoria Cavaliere WHITE PLAINS, New York (Reuters) – Kerry Kennedy, daughter of assassinated U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was so disoriented after side-swiping a truck in 2012 that it appeared she may have suffered a seizure, a New York state trooper testified on Tuesday at her impaired driving trial. Trooper Bradley Molloy was called to the witness stand by prosecutors on the second day of what local media has called a "drugged driving" trial. She appeared disoriented and confused after the accident, possible signs of a seizure or stroke, Molloy told jurors in Westchester County Court.

By David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration’s top Medicare official on Tuesday defended proposed changes to the popular Part D drug benefits program for the elderly and disabled that are fiercely opposed by a broad network of drugmakers, insurers, healthcare providers and patient advocates. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a new rule in January that would fundamentally alter the program’s private insurance coverage for certain drugs, change the pharmacy networks that some plans cover and limit the number of policies available to beneficiaries in any given region. That has stirred concern about the potential for turmoil that critics fear could leave some beneficiaries without coverage for the drugs they need and with fewer choices overall. But Medicare chief Jonathan Blum said in written testimony to a congressional panel that the 2015 policy changes are needed to head off higher costs to the program from expensive new biologic therapies and rising subsidies for insurers and lower-income consumers.

During two days of public hearings starting on Tuesday, scientists were scheduled to present their research to outside advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The agency will decide whether safety concerns raised by three-parent IVF are minimal enough to allow clinical trials to begin.

Only preschool-age children show signs of a turnaround, with their obesity rates nearly halved in the same period, according to a new federal study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “The rapid increase in obesity we saw in the ’80s and ’90s has definitely slowed,” epidemiologist Cynthia Ogden told Reuters Health. “There’s some glimmer of hope in the new data in relation to the 2 to 5 year olds.” Ogden, a branch chief at the National Center for Health Statistics in Rockville, Maryland, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is lead author of the new study. Obesity rates among 2 to 5 year old Americans dropped from 13.9 percent to 8.4 percent between 2003 and 2012, her team reports.