The Health News USA August 3 2017

Overview

• Florida’s Department of Health has licensed two more medical marijuana treatment centers. The Florida Legislature granted the approval of ten new licenses by the end of the year as part of a bill implementing rules for the state’s medical marijuana constitutional amendment.
• Bernie Sanders is ready to introduce his own solution to this seemingly never-ending US health care debate:  government-run universal healthcare for all Americans. On Wednesday, he launched a six-figure digital advertising campaign on Facebook and Google that encourages supporters to become “citizen co-sponsors” of his plan, which he calls “Medicare for All”, according to Sanders spokesman Josh Miller-Lewis, a reference to the public healthcare program for older Americans.
• According to a new government study, the US needs to curb excessive opioid prescribing and improve access to pain management techniques. Researchers found that more than one third of U.S. adults were prescribed the medications in 2015 and many also misused the drugs.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 3rd of August 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health New

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/florida/articles/2017-08-01/health-department-issues-2-more-medical-marijuana-licenses

Florida’s Department of Health has licensed two more medical marijuana treatment centers.

Spokeswoman Mara Gambinieri said on Tuesday that Plants of Ruskin and Three Boys Farm have received their letters of approval. Both of the Ruskin-based nurseries won an administrative challenge in May when a judge ruled that the winning nursery in the region should have been ineligible due to ownership changes.

The Florida Legislature granted the approval of ten new licenses by the end of the year as part of a bill implementing rules for the state’s medical marijuana constitutional amendment. Three more are due by the end of the week, and the remaining five by October three. That would give the state seventeen medical marijuana dispensers.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/02/bernie-sanders-universal-healthcare-medicare-single-payer

Bernie Sanders has spent the first months of the new Congress defending Barack Obama’s health reforms as Republicans vowed to repeal them. But after the Grand Old Party’s seven-year drive to eliminate the Affordable Care Act collapsed on the Senate floor last week, Sanders is ready to introduce his own solution – government-run universal healthcare for all Americans.

The Vermont senator will spend the next several weeks leading a campaign to build support for his plan before unveiling the bill next month. On Wednesday, he launched a six-figure digital advertising campaign on Facebook and Google that encourages supporters to become “citizen co-sponsors” of his plan, which he calls “Medicare for All”, according to Sanders spokesman Josh Miller-Lewis, a reference to the public healthcare program for older Americans.

“Bottom line is: if other countries around the world are providing quality care to all their people, we can do the same,” Sanders told NPR in an interview on Tuesday.

“This is not complicated,” the Vermont senator, who lost to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary last year, said. “The American people are familiar with Medicare. By and large it’s quite a popular program. But it starts now when you are sixty five years of age. God didn’t create sixty five years of age for being the eligibility rate. It should be available for every single person in this country.” Sanders has been a longtime advocate of the “single payer” system – government-run universal healthcare – and the plan was at the heart of the leftwing, populist agenda that fueled his unexpected rise during the two thousand and sixteen Democratic primaries. And progressives, emboldened by his success, are eager to seize the moment to push forward their dream of transforming US healthcare.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-than-a-third-of-u-s-adults-prescribed-opioids/

The United States needs to curb excessive opioid prescribing and improve access to pain management techniques, suggests a new government study. Researchers found that more than one third of U.S. adults were prescribed the medications in two thousand and fifteen and many also misused the drugs. Study author Doctor Wilson Compton, deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Maryland said that a very large proportion and large number of adults use these medications in a given year and that he was still a bit surprised that thirty eight percent or about ninety two million people used prescription opioids in two thousand fifteen.

People who were between ages eighteen and forty nine years, men or college graduates were less likely to have been prescribed opioids than those who were older, female or not college graduates. About five percent of U.S. adults were misusing opioids by not following a doctor’s orders. Misuse could range from not using the drugs as directed or using the them without a prescription. Researchers also estimate that about one percent of adults, or about one point nine million Americans, had an opioid use disorder. Opioid misuse disorders were more common among people with lower family incomes, without health insurance or without jobs.

About sixty four percent of the survey participants who had misused opioids said they did so most recently to relieve pain. About forty one percent said they got the drugs from family or friends.

Doctor Karen Lasser, who wrote an editorial accompanying the new study, said people should know the risks associated with opioids.

“Part of the problem has to do with the broken state of primary care,” said Lasser, of Boston Medical Center and the Boston University School of Medicine. “People are having trouble accessing primary care due to the shortage of primary care providers.”