Ultimately, health care seems to be the culprit in Americans' increasingly shorter lifespans. The authors investigated the impact of health insurance on mortality rates, and found that there is very little. They stated that insurance "coverage has large effects on use of health care but only small effects on mortality, which are concentrated in low-income groups."
They go on to note that only a very small difference in life expectancy can be found as a result of access to medical insurance. It should also be pointed out that these studies are looking for such a connection, so their inability to find one should be taken as highly significant.
Examination of all possible causes for America's worsening life expectancy eliminates everything but modern health care as the cause.
Insurers Test New Cancer Pay Systems
Several large health insurers, including UnitedHealthcare and Aetna, are focusing on one of the country’s most costly diseases: cancer. The insurers have begun tightening oversight of the care provided to patients with many different types of cancer, hoping to lower expenses by experimenting with new ways to pay specialists.
UnitedHealthcare plans to announce on Wednesday a one-year project with five oncology practices, offering doctors an additional fee. The new fee is meant to encourage doctors to follow standard treatments rather than opting too often for individualized and unproven courses of therapy, which can include the most expensive drug combinations.
Efforts to Prosecute Blackwater Collapse
Nearly four years after the federal government began a string of investigations and criminal prosecutions against Blackwater Worldwide personnel accused of murder and other violent crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cases are beginning to fall apart, burdened by a legal obstacle of the government’s own making.
In the most recent and closely watched case, the Justice Department on Monday said that it would not seek murder charges against Andrew J. Moonen, a Blackwater armorer accused of killing a guard assigned to the Iraqi vice president on Dec. 24, 2006.
Sen. Bond: Troops with combat stress discharged, not treated
The military has been discharging troops who are suffering from combat stress, instead of providing treatment, according to Missouri Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond and several veterans advocates.
That would mean that many who could be afflicted with mental health conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, have left the service without official medical diagnoses and no chance for medical benefits.
Taking the Public Out of Public TV
A multi-part FAIR exposé of PBS's most prominent news and public affairs programs demonstrates that public television is failing to live up to its mission to provide an alternative to commercial television, to give voice to those "who would otherwise go unheard" and help viewers to "see America whole, in all its diversity," in the words of public TV's founding document.
In a special November issue of studies and analyses of PBS's major public affairs shows, FAIR's magazine Extra! shows that "public television" features guestlists strongly dominated by white, male and elite sources, who are far more likely to represent corporations and war makers than environmentalists or peace advocates.
US ranks 20th in 2010 Press Freedom Index
“Our latest world press freedom index contains welcome surprises, highlights sombre realities and confirms certain trends,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said as his organisation issued its ninth annual index today.
“More than ever before, we see that economic development, institutional reform and respect for fundamental rights do not necessarily go hand in hand. The defence of media freedom continues to be a battle, a battle of vigilance in the democracies of old Europe and a battle against oppression and injustice in the totalitarian regimes still scattered across the globe.
Palestinian school set on fire, vandalized with 'regards from the hills' graffiti
The warehouse of a Palestinian school near Nablus was set on fire and vandalized on Wednesday morning with Hebrew graffiti reading "regards from the hills."
Israeli security forces received a complaint from Palestinians early Wednesday that a girls' school near Nablus in the northern West Bank was vandalized and the IDF sent officers to investigate. The fire appeared to have caused minor damage.
The incident appears to be the latest action in a campaign that extremist settlers, who live on hilly outposts nearby, call the "price tag."
CERN scientists eye parallel universe breakthrough
Physicists probing the origins of the cosmos hope that next year they will turn up the first proofs of the existence of concepts long dear to science-fiction writers such as hidden worlds and extra dimensions. And as their Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva moves into high gear, they are talking increasingly of the "New Physics" on the horizon that could totally change current views of the universe and how it works.
"Parallel universes, unknown forms of matter, extra dimensions... These are not the stuff of cheap science fiction but very concrete physics theories that scientists are trying to confirm with the LHC and other experiments."
NAACP backs report that ties racist groups to tea party
A new report, backed by the NAACP, has found what it says are efforts by white nationalist groups and militias to link themselves to the tea party movement, even as some tea party leaders have expelled members who have expressed racist sentiment.
The report , called Tea Party Nationalism, uses news articles, visits to white nationalist Web sites and observance of tea party functions to claim that tea party events have become a forum for extremists "hoping to push these (white) protesters toward a more self-conscious and ideological white supremacy."
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