Health insurer warns diabetes will cost $3.4 trillion over the next decade. Costs related to diabetes will run up a tab of almost $3.4 trillion through 2020 in the United States, with more than 60 percent paid for by the U.S. government — unless people lose weight, a study released today by health insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc. revealed, according to Bloomberg.
Vegetables are good for you, according to research. It turns out the the substances that human beings have survived on since the beginning of their existence are still good enough for us to eat. A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that people with high blood levels of the antioxidant alpha-carotene — found in a variety of vegetables — were less likely to die during a 14-year longitudinal study, compared with people with low levels of the nutrutient, which is in the same extended family as such as beta-carotene, alpha-carotene and lycopene, according to Time‘s Heathland blog.
HIV prevention breakthrough. Gilead Sciences Inc.’s Truvada, sold to subdue the AIDS- causing virus in those already infected, cut the risk gay and bisexual men had of contracting HIV by 44 percent when taken in a daily dose, according to findings published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.
Medical loss ratio rules announced. The Obama administration issued rules on Monday defining a promise to consumers in the new federal healthcare law that insurers will spend at least $4 out of $5 they collect in premiums on medical services and other efforts to improve patients’ health, reports The Washington Post.
Insurers complain about the rules… The so-called medical loss ratio rules are much more insidious than just limiting the amounts health insurance companies can spend on overhead. They are a jobs killer, opines InsureBlog.
But they find a loophole. U.S. health insurers can include the cost of federal taxes in determining whether they spend enough on patient care, increasing the amount that can be kept for administration or profit under the new rules, according to Bloomberg News.
Another day, another J&J recall. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) has yanked about 4 million packages of children’s Benadryl allergy tablets and about 800,000 bottles of children’s Motrin caplets from pharmacies and distributors due to “insufficiencies” in manufacturing, wrotes Pharmalot blog.
Making the grade. Professional listing service Avvo.com has begun listing (and rating) doctors, according to American Medical News.
Material from MedCity News was used in this report.
