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Chicago - Bill Dunphy thought his colonoscopy would be free.
His insurance company told him it would be covered 100 percent, with no copayment from him and no charge against his deductible. The nation's 1-year-old health law requires most insurance plans to cover all costs for preventive care including colon cancer screening. So Dunphy had the procedure in April.
Then the bill arrived: $1,100.
Dunphy, a 61-year-old Phoenix small business owner, angrily paid it out of his own pocket because of what some prevention advocates call a loophole. His doctor removed two noncancerous polyps during the colonoscopy. So while Dunphy was sedated, his preventive screening turned into a diagnostic procedure. That allowed his insurance company to bill him.
Like many Americans, Dunphy has a high-deductible insurance plan. He hadn't spent his deductible yet. So, on top of his $400 monthly premium, he had to pay the bill.
© Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo In this photo taken Dec. 2, 2011, Bill Dunphy poses for a photo in Phoenix. Dunphy, a 61-year-old small business owner, thought his colonoscopy would be free under the nation's year-old health care law.
His insurance company told him it would be covered 100 percent, with no copayment from him and no charge against his deductible. The nation's 1-year-old health law requires most insurance plans to cover all costs for preventive care including colon cancer screening. So Dunphy had the procedure in April.
Then the bill arrived: $1,100.
Dunphy, a 61-year-old Phoenix small business owner, angrily paid it out of his own pocket because of what some prevention advocates call a loophole. His doctor removed two noncancerous polyps during the colonoscopy. So while Dunphy was sedated, his preventive screening turned into a diagnostic procedure. That allowed his insurance company to bill him.
Like many Americans, Dunphy has a high-deductible insurance plan. He hadn't spent his deductible yet. So, on top of his $400 monthly premium, he had to pay the bill.
© n/a
Published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the exhaustive analysis found that medical radiation, particularly the large radiation dose delivered by CT scans, is the foremost identifiable cause of breast cancer.[1]
Almost 230,480 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed this year in the United States, and about 40,000 women will die of the disease, roughly one out of every 3,875 women.
The new Institute of Medicine report probably doesn't sit well with the industry, hospitals and clinics that make so many millions of dollars selling and over-using CT machines. The authors suggest that women avoid "unnecessary" or "inappropriate" medical radiation, a thinly veiled criticism of the industry that will give you a CT scan for a tooth ache if you don't object to it.
© Unknown
Canadians are encouraged to limit cellphone call length and to text message or use a hands-free device whenever possible (to increase the distance between the cellphone and the user's head). Those under 18 should be especially careful to limit all cellphone use. Children are still growing and are therefore much more sensitive to external agents such as radiation.
In May, mobile phone owners were urged to limit their use after the World Health Organisation admitted they may cause cancer. The UN's health agency were the first international governing agency to advise 'pragmatic' measures to reduce exposure, such as using hands-free kits and texting instead of calling.
Despite decades of evidence, the disturbing report from the WHO marked the first time a link was admitted between mobiles and cancer, and follows earlier research linking just half an hour's use a day with up to 40 per cent higher odds of brain cancer.
© GreenMedInfo
Whether you are aware of it or not, your food, air and water are the battle ground upon which a titanic struggle between the multinational biotech corporations Monsanto and Dow AgroScience is now playing out. As a result, your health and environment (and that of all future generations) are at risk of being irreparably harmed.
Dow AgroSciences (a subsidiary of Dow Chemicals) recently announced their development of genetically-engineered corn, soybean, and cotton plants metabolically resistant to the herbicide 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), a major ingredient in Agent Orange. What this means for our future is that, if approved for use, vast regions of our country will soon be sprayed with a chemical that has been linked to over 400,000 birth defects in Vietnam.
How did we end up here?
History is repeating itself before our eyes. Dow Chemicals and Monsanto, joined at the karmic hip, both manufactured Agent Orange for use in Vietnam, and both are notorious for minimizing the adverse health effects associated with exposure to the agent. Neither corporation learned from its mistakes, largely because the US government underwrote the risk of using the chemical, and therefore shielded them from the bulk of the legal and financial fallout. But this lack of culpability has now set up the conditions for a reliving of the horrors of systemic herbicide exposure, only this time on American soil, with Monsanto choosing glyphosate (also a birth-defect causing chemical), and Dow sticking with its old time favorite.
© AFP
For the first time in nearly a century, automobile accidents are no longer the nation's leading cause of accidental deaths, according to a major report released Tuesday by the National Center for Health Statistics. The new number one killer is drugs - not smack, crystal meth or any other stepped-on menace sold in urban alleyways or trailer parks, but bright, shiny pills prescribed by doctors, approved by the government, manufactured by pharmaceutical companies and sold to the consumer as "medicine." Yet of the billions of legit pills Americans pop every year for medical conditions serious and otherwise, the vast majority of lives are claimed by only a select few classes - painkillers, sedatives and stimulants - that all share a common characteristic: they promote abuse, dependence and addiction.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg of the prescription drug abuse problem," says Dr. Margaret Warner, the federal report's lead author. "The take-home here is, this should be a wake-up call." Some 41,000 Americans died from what the report refers to as "poisonings" in 2008, compared with 38,000 traffic deaths. That tally marks a 90 percent increase in poisonings and a 15 percent decrease in car accidents since 1999.
© mydochub.com
Per the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, on Dec. 20, Tyson Meats, Inc. recalled 41,000 pounds of its ground beef from 16 states, suspecting an E. coli O157:H7 contamination. Last week, Hannaford Stores, a Scarborough, Maine-based grocery chain, recalled an unspecified amount of fresh ground beef products that may be contaminated with a multidrug resistant strain of Salmonella Typhimurium.
The Tyson products may be packaged under different brand names, per FSIS. Full list here [PDF]. Tyson's products subject to recall have a "BEST BEFORE OR FREEZE BY" date of "11/13/11″ and "EST. 245C" on the box label. The products were shipped to institutions and distributors in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Hannaford's various ground beef packages bear sell-by or freeze-by dates of Dec. 17, 2011 or earlier and were sold at Hannaford stores throughout Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont.
© Natural Society
Does vitamin E naturally help protect against the effects of aging, or does it lead to liver damage and complications associated with lung cancer? Well, it depends on what the study authors want to tell you. The synthetic version of vitamin E is a petrochemically derived analogue of natural vitamin E that is capable of disrupting the endocrine system, whereas the natural form of vitamin E is effective against aging, oxidative stress, and hundreds of other conditions. The truth of the matter is that many - if not most - of vitamin studies are completely worthless, as they use isolated synthetic vitamins or low quality multivitamin supplements loaded with toxic fillers and synthetic ingredients.
Study authors could use high quality food-based multivitamins without any fillers or harmful ingredients, but they generally do not. Whether this is due to nutritional ignorance regarding the true nature of the pharmaceutical company-dominated supplement industry (think highly-popular Centrum, which we will soon discuss) or the fact that these researchers truly think that essential nutrients are damaging to your health, the fact of the matter is that very few studies utilize the right form of vitamins.
Dr. Terry Wahls learned how to properly fuel her body. Using the lessons she learned at the subcellular level, she used diet to cure her MS and get out of her wheelchair.
Comment: Dr. Terry Wahls explains how after intense research her structured hunter/gatherer/Paleo diet cured her of debilitating MS. A powerful example of the breathtaking healing power of choosing the right food.
Washington, D.C. - An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.
Authors Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The rise in reported deaths after Fukushima was largest among U.S. infants under age one. The 2010-2011 increase for infant deaths in the spring was 1.8 percent, compared to a decrease of 8.37 percent in the preceding 14 weeks.
The IJHS article will be published Tuesday and will be available online as of 11 a.m. EST here.
Comment: To learn more about the benefits of a diet high in saturated fats and why Saturated Fat is Good for You read the following articles:
Get Saturated: Four Reasons Saturated Fat is Healthy
Enjoy Saturated Fats, They're Good for You!
Wrongly Convicted? The Case for Saturated Fat
The Big Lie: "Saturated Fats Are Bad For You"
You've Been Living A Lie: The Story Of Saturated Fat And Cholesterol
The Forbidden Food You Should Never Stop Eating