Month: March 2014

By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – Texas is set to put to death convicted murderer Anthony Doyle on Thursday as it keeps its pace of executions steady while other states have had to postpone capital punishments because they cannot obtain drugs used in lethal injections. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the state’s death chamber in Huntsville at 6 p.m. CDT (2300 GMT). Texas, which has executed more people than any other state since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, has obtained a fresh batch of its execution drug pentobarbital, the Department of Criminal Justice said this month, without revealing the source. On Thursday, a state judge ordered Texas to release the name of its new drug supplier.

A congressional candidate in Alabama is taking aim – literally – at the federal statute known as Obamacare in a new campaign advertisement in which he fires rounds from several weapons into a paper copy of the healthcare reform law. Will Brooke, a Birmingham businessman, is one of seven Republican candidates seeking to replace U.S. Representative Spencer Bachus, who is retiring. None of the bullets manage to destroy the copy of the Affordable Care Act, Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law. Brooke hopes to get some attention by having fun with a serious subject, he said in a statement, vowing to fight the law that he said has caused insurance premiums in Alabama to rise and resulted in thousands of residents losing their health coverage.

(Reuters) – Mercedes-Benz has the lowest recall rate for its vehicles and BMW was the quickest to commence a recall campaign, a long-term study of safety recalls in the United States showed. General Motors Co , which is undergoing a recall crisis related to a dozen deaths, had the third-lowest recall rate in the 30-year study, done by industry research firm iSeeCars.com.

Q: Does the Affordable Care Act require Medicare beneficiaries over age 75 to be admitted to the hospital by their primary care physician? A. No. There is no such requirement […]

The bridge in San Francisco has been the site of at least 1,600 suicides since its 1937 opening

In late May, the directors of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District are expected to vote to use toll money, as well as state and federal funds to create a $66 million stainless-steel net system — a “suicide system deterrent project” — that will hang 20 feet below the sidewalk.

By Andrew M. Seaman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People who live the farthest from liver transplant centers may be less likely to get on a waiting list, and ultimately to get a liver, than those who live closer, according to a new U.S. study. “When designing these systems, it’s important to keep this geography issue (as) an important feature,” Dr. David Goldberg told Reuters Health. To see whether distance to centralized care is connected to outcomes for patients, the researchers analyzed data on liver patients within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The VA has five liver transplant centers nationwide, but veterans with additional insurance, such as Medicare, can use other transplant centers.