Question: So here I am, quite frankly disgusted at my failed attempts at New Year’s Resolutions of losing weight. I desperately need to lose at least 30 pounds and every time I try, I end up quitting. What do I do this year to make it different than the last?
Answer: It can feel so defeating to have tried to lose weight and not accomplished your goal. But take heart — most people fail before succeeding. It takes trial and error to find a workout Read the rest of this entry »

The Northville Township Board of Trustees will ask residents to approve a millage so it can purchase most of the 414-acre former Northville Regional Psychiatric Hospital for $23.5 million and preserve much of it as parkland.
The property owned by REIS Northville was the focus of an annexation controversy last year when REIS sought to have the property annexed to Livonia in hopes of getting approval for an $800-million commercial and residential Read the rest of this entry »

ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Minnesota Department of Health will unveil a draft ethical framework on Friday for allocating critical health care resources during a severe influenza pandemic.
While public concern about “bird flu” may have waned over the past two years, the department says the threat of a possible influenza pandemic remains very real. It says a severe pandemic, like the one in 1918, could sicken up to a third of Minnesota’s population, Read the rest of this entry »

RALEIGH, N.C. —
State employees would have to stop smoking or lose weight if they want to receive more generous health benefits under a proposal presented to legislators Thursday.
The financial motivation for workers, retirees and their dependents to improve their health are contained in recommendations from North Carolina State Health Plan administrator Jack Walker to shore up the plan’s finances. The plan last year discontinued its wellness Read the rest of this entry »

CHICAGO, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Internal company documents
suggest Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N:
,
,
,
), maker of the antipsychotic
drug Risperdal, agreed to fund a child psychiatry research
center at Massachusetts General Hospital to generate data to
support use of the drug in children, the Wall Street Journal
reported on Monday.
The drug, known generically as risperidone, recently came
under fire from an advisory panel to the U.S. Food & Drug
Administration Read the rest of this entry »

What do you get when you combine the old sayings “You are what you eat” and “I feel like a million bucks” with public-policymaking?
The government-generated food pyramid and health advisories support the notion that we are what we eat. If you eat healthy food, you will be healthier, we are told. Eat too much, get fat. Eat poison, certainly get poisoned.
Now, after decades of warnings about heavy metals in some fish and Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON, Nov 12, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) –
The US Family Health Plan, a Department of Defense-sponsored healthcare
plan serving military family members in six areas across America, has
achieved 2008 national member satisfaction ratings 42 percent higher
than the national average for member satisfaction with health plans, as
documented by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) in its
Quality Compass Read the rest of this entry »

colleges,
including
, will be reimbursed for overpayments they made for health care, said state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. His yearlong investigation found the health care insurer,
Student Health, used outdated reimbursement tables and shortchanged the students.
“Here, students were particularly vulnerable to being cheated because they placed their trust in health care plans sponsored by their colleges,” said Cuomo. “Aetna Student Health Read the rest of this entry »

Economic Downturn Impacting Women’s Ability to Plan for Long-Term Care Costs, New Survey Finds
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The current economic downturn has affected women’s ability to plan and prepare for expensive long-term care costs, such as nursing home stays, according to a new survey released today by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). The survey, conducted by StrategyOne on behalf of AHIP, found that 60 percent of Read the rest of this entry »

President-elect Barack Obama’s “Blueprint for Change” calls for “affordable, accessible health care for all.” After a quote from a speech he gave in Iowa City explaining that we have an “obligation” to “turn the page on the failed politics of yesterday’s health care debates,” he outlines his plans “at a glance.”
According to the brief summary, 45.5 million people aren’t covered, costs have doubled over the last eight years, and not enough money Read the rest of this entry »