The Health News USA October 6 2017

• A wave of baby boomers retiring in excess, to the tune of 10,000 men and women a day. According to industry data, retiring baby boomers will more than double Medicare and Medicaid costs by 2020. And since emerging retirees will both live longer and experience higher rates of hypertension, higher cholesterol, obesity and diabetes, their strain on health and finances will be prolonged.
• The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to challenge U.S. Food and Drug Administration restrictions that limit the ability of women to access the so-called abortion pill called Mifeprex. The ACLU said that as a result, the FDA’s restrictions delay and in some cases block a woman’s access to abortion by requiring her to be handed Mifeprex by healthcare providers who have arranged to stock it in their facilities.
• One of the 520 victims injured in Sunday’s Las Vegas massacre has lost her right eye and is in a coma in a hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU). Tina Frost, who was attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival with her boyfriend when a gunman opened fire on the crowd from his 32nd floor hotel room at Mandalay Bay, is listed as critically stable, and is currently on a ventilator.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 6th of  October 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health News

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/03/health-care-dilemma-10000-boomers-retiring-each-day.html

A wave of baby boomers retiring in excess, to the tune of ten thousand men and women a day.
That may seem like a big number, but it’s accurate, according to Pew Research and the Social Security Administration. According to industry data, retiring baby boomers will more than double Medicare and Medicaid costs by two thousand twenty. As healthcare continues to take up a larger part of the overall economy, structural changes — such as the push toward paying for value, greater emphasis on care management and increased cost sharing with consumers — are taking a stronger hold, pulling back against rapid health-care spending growth.

As health-care costs increase faster than economic growth, Medicare taxes and the Trust Fund will cover less and less. By two thousand thirty three, the Trust Fund will be bankrupt, and taxes will pay only for forty eight percent of the costs. Americans are unique in that a vast majority feel personally responsible for retirement preparation — a survey by Transamerica found that ninety one percent felt very or somewhat personally responsible for post-retirement income sufficiency, versus seventy three percent of workers globally. But high health-care costs in the United States make it difficult to actually be prepared. According to some industry calculations, a person with a forty thousand dollar annual income needs one point five million dollars to comfortably retire (the higher your income, the more millions you need in order to maintain your lifestyle). If that weren’t steep enough, this figure doesn’t include health costs.
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There’s Social Security, sure, but the reserve is expected to be depleted by two thousand thirty three. The limits of Medicare and Medicaid are being tested as well. According to the Congressional Budget Office, by two thousand thirty five spending for Medicare alone will reach eight percent of gross domestic product; as of two thousand eighty, that figure may be fifteen percent. And since emerging retirees will both live longer and experience higher rates of hypertension, higher cholesterol, obesity and diabetes, their strain on health and finances will be prolonged.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-abortion/aclu-sues-over-fda-restrictions-on-abortion-pill-access-idUSKCN1C82MD

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to challenge U.S. Food and Drug Administration restrictions that limit the ability of women to access the so-called abortion pill. The ACLU filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Hawaii to challenge FDA restrictions that limit the dispensing of the pill, Mifeprex, to clinics, medical offices or hospitals rather than retail pharmacies.

The ACLU said that as a result, the FDA’s restrictions delay and in some cases block a woman’s access to abortion by requiring her to be handed Mifeprex by healthcare providers who have arranged to stock it in their facilities.

That is despite the fact that Mifeprex, which can be used for abortions up to ten weeks into a pregnancy, is considered safe and has been recognized by the FDA itself as providing “meaningful therapeutic benefit,” the lawsuit said. “The unique and harmful restrictions the FDA imposes on where and how a patient may receive Mifeprex deny women meaningful access to this safe and effective treatment with no medical justification,” the complaint said.

The FDA declined to comment. Mifeprex, manufactured by Danco Laboratories, was approved in two thousand  to terminate early pregnancy when given in combination with misoprostol, an anti-inflammatory drug that was originally approved to prevent gastric ulcers.The lawsuit came after the FDA in March two thousand sixteen announced a decision to relax restrictions on the use of Mifeprex that were in place for over a decade. The FDA eased access to it by updating the prescribing information on the drug’s label, thus expanding use to seventy days of gestation from forty nine days, cutting the recommended dose of the drug and reducing the number of required visits to a doctor.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2017/10/03/las-vegas-shooting-victim-loses-eye-faces-potential-brain-damage.html

One of the five hundred twenty victims injured in Sunday’s Las Vegas massacre has lost her right eye and is in a coma in a hospital’s intensive care unit. Tina Frost, who was attending the Route ninety one Harvest Festival with her boyfriend when a gunman opened fire on the crowd from his thirty second floor hotel room at Mandalay Bay, is listed as critically stable, and is currently on a ventilator.

“Tina is out of surgery and her vitals are stable,” Mary Watson Moreland, the twenty seven-year-old woman’s mother, said, according to a GoFundMe page. She added: “They removed her right eye, where the bullet was lodged, and there is an implant there now to keep the space open. She has sight in her left eye but will never see from the right again.”
Moreland said doctors were forced to remove a bone from her daughter’s forehead to relieve brain swelling, and that they plan to see how she responds to simulation over the next few days to assess brain damage.  The GoFundMe page, which was set up on Monday, raised more than one hundred thousand dollars in just nineteen hours, quickly surpassing the fifty thousand goal.
The Maryland native had moved to San Diego and drove to the concert with boyfriend Austin Hughes, who was uninjured. According to The Baltimore Sun, the couple was separated after Frost was taken to a nearby hospital. Once he learned that she was in surgery, Hughes kept the family updated on her status until they were able to fly to Las Vegas.
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In addition to five hundred twenty wounded, fifty nine were killed in the most deadly shooting in modern U.S. history.