The Health News Australia August 11 2017

Overview

  • Hawaii, Iowa and Minnesota topped WalletHub’s new ranking of the best states for health care. The ranking took into account 35  metrics in the categories of cost, accessibility and health outcomes. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Americans typically spend approximately $10,000 each year on personal health care and that number is expected to rise.  
  • New results from an industry organization’s annual study shows that large employers expect the total average per-employee cost for health insurance benefits — which includes premiums and out-of-pocket costs for employees and dependents — to rise in 2018 to $14,156 from $13,482 this year.
  • According to a UCSF study released Tuesday,  pregnant women who suffer from common sleep disorders like insomnia and sleep apnea are at greater risk of delivering a baby before full term.  

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 11th of August 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health News

http://health.usnews.com/wellness/health-buzz/articles/2017-08-07/the-10-best-states-for-health

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If you want to get the best health care, you might be better off living in one of these states, according to a new ranking. Hawaii, Iowa and Minnesota topped WalletHub’s new ranking of the best states for health care. The ranking took into account thirty five metrics in the categories of cost, accessibility and health outcomes. Among access-to-care metrics, the highest percent of insured adults, ages eighteen to sixty four, live in Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, Vermont, Hawaii and Minnesota. The lowest live in Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, Florida and Texas.As for outcome metrics, like lowest cancer rate, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado and Utah ranked in the top five, while New York, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Delaware and Kentucky ranked in the bottom five. U.S. News ranks its own Best States for Health Care, in which Hawaii also stands at number one Health care concerns, though always present, have been thrust into the national conversation even more this year amid legislative attempts to reform former President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Americans typically spend approximately ten thousand dollars each year on personal health care, and that number is expected to rise, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Here is complete list of Top Ten best states for health care in order: Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, District of Columbia, Connecticut, South Dakota, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/09/employers-to-spend-about-10000-on-health-care-for-each-worker.html

Employees at big companies should be prepared to pay five percent more for their health care next year. New results from an industry organization’s annual study shows that large employers expect the total average per-employee cost for health insurance benefits — which includes premiums and out-of-pocket costs for employees and dependents — to rise in two thousand eighteen to fourteen thousand one hundred fifty six dollars from thirteen thousand four hundred eighty two dollars this year. With employers covering about seventy percent of that cost, the average worker will pay thirty percent of the tab, or about four thousand two hundred dollars.

Brian Marcotte, president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based National Business Group on Health said that “I think you’ll see the 5 percent rise in premium increases’’. Most people will probably see minimal changes to deductibles and co-pays unless they move to a higher-deductible plan. This marks the fifth consecutive year that health care costs are expected to rise by five percent, according to the study. That outpaces the rate of inflation, which was two point fifty four percent in two thousand sixteen and two percent for the first half of two thousand seventeen.

Workers’ salaries aren’t rising as quickly as health care costs. The most recent data from the Federal Reserve shows that wages are growing by three point two percent annually.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/UCSF-study-links-sleep-disorders-among-pregnant-11743046.php

Pregnant women who suffer from common sleep disorders like insomnia and sleep apnea are at greater risk of delivering a baby before full term, according to a University of California, San Francisco study released Tuesday that points to the need for better diagnosis and treatment of the conditions. About one in ten births are premature — or delivered at less than thirty seven weeks of gestation — but for women with diagnosed sleep disorders, the researchers found, the rate was closer to one in  seven.

The odds of delivering before thirty four weeks were found to be roughly double the rate of women without a sleep disorder. The study of California births offers hope as the medical community confronts the high rate of preterm deliveries in the U.S., which is worse than in most industrialized nations, said Jennifer Felder, a postdoctoral fellow in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and one of the study’s lead authors. Premature birth, which is more common among African American mothers, can lead to difficulties in breastfeeding, neurological disorders like cerebral palsy, developmental delays, and vision and hearing problems. It is the leading cause of death globally for children under age five.

“It’s really critical to identify risk factors,” Felder said. “It’s possible that by treating sleep disorders during pregnancy, we might be able to reduce the preterm birth rate.”

The study, funded by Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne Benioff, looked at two thousand two hundred sixty five pregnant women diagnosed with sleep disorders from two thousand seven to two thousand twelve and compared them with the general population. Researchers noted that many more pregnant women may suffer from sleep disorders, but without a diagnosis. Only one percent of the women in the data set had a diagnosed disorder.

 

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