The Health News USA January 10 2018

• A federal judge wasn’t influenced Monday by dozens of letters supporting a Wyoming psychologist who admitted to stealing money from Medicaid and ordered him to serve a three-year prison sentence and pay nearly $2.3 million in restitution. U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson on Monday also imposed three years of supervised release after Gibson Condie, of Powell, serves his prison time for one count of healthcare fraud. Johnson ordered Condie, 57, to report to federal prison authorities on February 12.
• According to an analysis recently released, The United States has the worst child mortality rate among a group of twenty wealthy democracies.  And despite overall improvement in the child mortality rate in the U.S. and those nineteen other countries, the U.S. has persistently outpaced those nations in that grim metric for decades, the Health Affairs report said. The other countries examined in the study were Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
• A US study suggests that the proportion of poor kids receiving government food assistance who are severely obese has declined following benefits changes designed to encourage healthier purchases. The study focused on twenty two point six million young children enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which gives money to low-income families to purchase healthy foods.
  Researchers followed kids from two thousand to two thousand fourteen, a period spanning a benefits change in two thousand nine to promote fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 10th of January 2018. Read by Tabetha Moreto.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/article193566964.html

A federal judge wasn’t influenced Monday by dozens of letters supporting a Wyoming psychologist who admitted to stealing money from Medicaid and ordered him to serve a three-year prison sentence and pay nearly two point three million dollars in restitution.
U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson on Monday also imposed three years of supervised release after Gibson Condie, of Powell, serves his prison time for one count of healthcare fraud.

Johnson ordered Condie, fifty seven, to report to federal prison authorities on February twelve. Condie remains free until then. Condie was originally accused of submitting about six point eight million dollars in fraudulent bills to Wyoming Medicaid between June two thousand twelve and February two thousand sixteen.

The prison sentence and restitution adhere to a plea agreement reached last October despite more than thirty letters of support attesting to Condie’s character and his personal efforts to help neighbors, patients and the community. Some letters noted Condie’s financial help to others, including paying another man’s rent for months and paying to rebuild an elderly neighbor woman’s broken lawn sprinkler system.
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Under terms of the plea agreement, Wyoming and the federal government will equally split the nearly two point three million dollars in restitution Condie will have to pay. Condie was indicted last May by a federal grand jury.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/08/us-has-worst-rate-of-child-mortality-among-20-rich-nations.html

According to one analysis recently released, The United States has the worst child mortality rate among a group of twenty wealthy democracies.  And despite overall improvement in the child mortality rate in the U.S. and those nineteen other countries, the U.S. has persistently outpaced those nations in that grim metric for decades, the Health Affairs report said. The report stated: “From two thousand one to two thousand ten, the risk of death in the US was seventy six percent greater for infants and fifty seven percent greater for children age one to nineteen.”
And during the same decade, children between the ages of fifteen and nineteen were eighty two times more likely to die from gun-related homicide in the U.S. than in the comparison countries.

The authors of the Health Affairs report said that in the full fifty-year period their study looked at, the U.S. had more than ” six hundred thousand excess deaths” among kids because of the country’s lagging performance in curbing child mortality. Those excess deaths have occurred even as the U.S. spends more money on health care for kids than the other countries.

The report comes several months after Congress chose not to reauthorize spending for the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
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The other countries examined in the study were Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In the first decade examined, from nineteen sixty one through nineteen seventy, the death rate among kids under age one in the U.S. was two hundred forty point seven per ten thousand, a slightly better rate than two hundred fifty point three deaths per ten thousand in the other countries.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-kids-poverty-obesity/severe-obesity-declining-among-low-income-u-s-kids-idUSKBN1EX26A

A US study suggests that the proportion of poor kids receiving government food assistance who are severely obese has declined following benefits changes designed to encourage healthier purchases. The study focused on twenty two point six million young children enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which gives money to low-income families to purchase healthy foods.

Researchers followed kids from two thousand to two thousand fourteen, a period spanning a benefits change in two thousand nine to promote fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Severe obesity rates increased from one point eight percent of kids in two thousand to two point twelve percent in two thousand ten. But by two thousand fourteen, the proportion of severely obese children dipped to one point ninety six percent, with a decrease seen for both boys and girls across all racial and ethnic groups.
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Nationwide, approximately one point seven percent of children two to five years old had severe obesity during the period from two thousand eleven to two thousand fourteen. Children who are severely obese, meaning they are heavier than more than ninety nine percent of their peers, face an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and other health complications as well as higher odds that they will suffer from obesity as adults. Poverty makes both obesity and the negative health effects of this condition more likely.

From two thousand to two thousand four, the largest increases in severe obesity occurred among the oldest children in the study and among white children and Native American kids.