Weekly Dose of Health News April 14 – 18, 2014
Here’s a brief Dose of Health News for your holiday week-end. New York’s $8 billion Medicaid waiver was finally approved this week. Here is Governor Cuomo’s announcement. And here is a statewide webinar presentation released this week. The Washington Post writes on how insurers are targeting diabetics, in a good way, to ensure they are taking their medications, getting to their doctor appointments and sending nurses out to visit patients when necessary. Lower than expected premiums under Obamacare will reduce the overall cost of the program by seven percent, or $104 billion over the next decade. Over eight million people have signed up for Obamacare, including significant numbers of young, healthy people. And over 960,000 have enrolled in New York’s exchange. Police officers on Staten Island will not be equipped with Naloxone nasal spray, an effective antidote to opioid overdose. Although the numbers of Americans with diabetes has tripled over the last two decades, the rates of heart attack, kidney failure, stroke and amputation have fallen sharply according to a new study by the New England Journal of Medicine. |