Year: 2014

By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Thursday upheld a Texas law that places restrictions on abortions, saying a provision requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital was a reasonable regulation. A federal judge erred last year in blocking the law, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found. The U.S. Supreme Court later allowed it to go into effect. The law requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges, the ability to admit a patient for treatment at a hospital usually by being recognized as a doctor who can use hospital facilities, at an adequately equipped hospital within 30 miles of their practice.

By Susan Cornwell and Susan Heavey WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation on Thursday to avert looming pay cuts for doctors under the government’s Medicare health insurance program for older Americans and the disabled. The measure to postpone the cuts was approved in a voice vote after an earlier delay signaled potential trouble mustering support for the bill, which halts the pay cuts for one year. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said the bill would be brought up for a vote in that chamber on Monday, with no opportunity to amend it, meaning that if it passes it will go straight to President Barack Obama to sign into law. The Senate has 100 members.

An Oklahoma City doctor suspected of molesting two female patients during examinations has been charged with sexual assault, the Oklahoma District Attorney’s office said on Thursday. Dr. John Fuller, a 60-year-old pain specialist, has been charged with one count of sexual battery and one count of rape by instrumentation, it said. Fuller’s attorney, Scott Adams, was not immediately available to comment on Thursday.

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – As many as one in 68 U.S. children have autism, a 30 percent increase in just two years, U.S. health officials said on Thursday, but experts think the rise may simply reflect that parents and doctors are getting better at recognizing and diagnosing the disorder. “It’s not that surprising because as people get more aware, the prevalence has always increased in a psychiatric disorder,” Dr Thomas Frazier, director of Cleveland Clinic Children’s Center for Autism, said in a telephone interview. The latest report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which looks at data from 2010, estimates that 14.7 per 1,000 8-year-olds in 11 U.S. communities have autism. That compares with the prior estimate of 1 in 88 children, or 11.3 of 1,000 8-year-olds, in 2008, and 1 in 150 children in 2000.

By Dana Feldman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Incompetent teachers in California are holding back poor and minority children, an attorney for several students said on Thursday in closing arguments for a closely watched trial that could change the way public school teachers are hired and fired in the most populous U.S. state. The two-month trial has focused on whether five laws meant to protect teachers’ jobs are unfair to poor and minority students by putting them at a disproportionately greater risk of being taught by less effective teachers. But the group’s approach also brings in the novel argument that the five laws they are challenging violate the civil rights of students. “We’re asking the court to declare that these five education codes are unconstitutional and that they violate the equal protection clause,” Marcellus A. McRae, one of several attorneys arguing on behalf of plaintiffs, told Reuters.