Year: 2014

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.

ATLANTA (AP) — Toddler obesity shrank sharply in the past decade, a new study suggests. While promising, it's not proof that the nation has turned a corner in the battle against childhood obesity, some experts say.

By Caroline Valetkevitch NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks edged lower on Tuesday, easing back from record territory a day earlier as weak economic data offset gains in Home Depot and other retail shares. Selling picked up slightly late in the session as traders unwound positions after the S&P 500 failed to break above Monday's intraday record high of 1,858.71, analysts said. "We tried to break out again and retest the highs, and since we failed, people are lightening up their positions they took earlier," said Michael O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading in Greenwich, Connecticut. Home Depot shares jumped 4 percent to close at $80.98, giving the biggest boost to both the Dow and the S&P 500.