The Health News USA September 13 2017
Overview
- Enrollment in New York’s health exchange, which provides insurance to 3.6 million residents, will start Nov. 1 and run through Jan. 31, 2018, the state Health Department said. “Our goal is to ensure that consumers have adequate time to shop for and enroll in the health plan that is best for their family,” said Donna Frescatore, executive director of the NY State of Health, in a statement.
- In preparation for Hurricane Irma, a needle exchange program in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood handed out extra syringes to heroin users. Others trying to break from the drug’s grasp picked up advance medication from methadone clinics.
- Specialized surgery is a promising option for many people experiencing epilepsy who continue to have seizures despite medical treatment. Epilepsy surgery has significantly improved the lives of many thousands of adults and children worldwide.
News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 13th of September 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health News
Enrollment in New York’s health exchange, which provides insurance to three point six million residents, will start November one and run through January thirty one, two thousand eighteen, the state Health Department said. The ending date is longer than the federal government is allowing with its own health care exchange, which will end enrollment on December fifteen. New York, which runs its own exchange called New York State of Health, said it has the right to keep the enrollment period open until the end of January — which has been the state’s practice since the exchange first started in two thousand fourteen.
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The state’s exchange faces uncertainty amid a potential replacement to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Health insurance rates for individuals in New York, including on the exchange, will increase next year on average by about fifteen percent, the state announced last month. And New York’s largest hospital system is shutting down its health insurance program because of growing costs. But state officials have stressed that the New York program is healthy, while warning of the impact of potentially billion of dollars in cuts from Washington.
In Washington, the federal Department of Health and Human Services said in April that a shorter time to apply for insurance under Obamacare would “improve the open markets stability and promote continuous coverage and increase options for patients.” But New York disagreed, saying the longer enrollment period is a benefit for consumers. Most of the enrollees in New York are on Medicaid, the health-insurance program for the poor and disabled. About eighteen percent of New Yorkers get their health insurance through the state program, and consumers need to reapply yearly to get insurance from one of more than a dozen insurers who offer plans.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/hurricanes-drive-addiction-issues-public-square-49722960
In the whirr of preparations for Hurricane Irma, a needle exchange program in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood handed out extra syringes to heroin users. Others trying to break from the drug’s grasp picked up advance medication from methadone clinics. Disasters cause stress, and stress can cause relapse for people struggling with addiction, whether their problem is alcohol, tobacco, pills or heroin. Authorities planning for the devastating effects of hurricanes now factor in the heightened danger of relapse and overdose. The problems of alcoholism and addiction become more public in a storm, said researcher Andrew Golub of the National Development and Research Institutes in New York, who studied illicit drug users in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Drug users took chances during storms, researchers found, avoiding evacuation to stay near their dealers or sharing needles with strangers putting themselves in danger of HIV and hepatitis. Those in treatment missed doses of medications and went back to street drugs to avoid withdrawal sickness. During Sandy, clinics that lost power measured methadone by candlelight. Florida’s first needle exchange program — aimed at preventing overdoses and blood-borne infections — faces its biggest challenge yet with Irma. This past week, Dr. Hansel Tookes and his team gave away a week’s supply of clean needles and overdose reversal kits, or Narcan.
Specialized surgery is a promising option for many people experiencing epilepsy who continue to have seizures despite medical treatment. Epilepsy surgery has significantly improved the lives of many thousands of adults and children worldwide, and experts now routinely consider this option whenever medications have proven ineffective. Fortunately, the risks for epilepsy surgery are low, and in fact, research has shown that it’s actually safer to proceed with surgery than to continue for a lifetime with uncontrolled epilepsy. Less easily predicted, however, is the likelihood that the surgery will be beneficial. During the counseling process, doctors typically present patients with the “average” chance of success. Patients would naturally prefer to know the chance for success in their individual case, based on the results in patients similar to them. This information has not generally been readily available to doctors for surgery counseling discussions.
A five-year project was recently launched to fill this gap. In June two thousand seventeen, the National Institutes of Health awarded a three point four million dollar grant to Cleveland Clinic to develop a tool to predict individual outcomes in epilepsy surgery. The study, led by Doctor Lara Jehi, supports the creation of a comprehensive epilepsy surgery nomogram using diagnostic technology and predictive modeling.
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