I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Despite U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s desire to see obesity prevention and treatment programs included in a health care reform bill, very few are in the drafts that have been released so far, notes Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic, who has been live blogging from the CDC’s “Weight of the Nation” conference.
“Here is what (probably) will be done: insurers have the ability to raise premiums on the basis of pre-existing conditions [such as] obesity,” he writes.
Here’s a snippet from the post :
Since there is a strong correlation between poverty and obesity, Medicaid and Medicare have born the brunt of the rise in obesity costs; even [though] they cover comparatively fewer Americans than private plans, they pay for half of all costs associated with obesity. It’s not fashionable to admit this these days, but if private insurance companies are going to be the mediator between most Americans and their employers, and the employer-employee interaction is where a new incentive structure can be created to help reduce costs.
He means: raising rates for the obese. But there’s more.
Whether Medicare and Medicaid are thusly empowered is a different question, although there are signs that all insurance platforms, be they public or private, will be required to beef up their coverage of comprehensive preventative primary care, which should, in theory, include better obesity monitoring and prevention. In terms of changing the obesogenic environment and the physical geography of health care, the early 2009 stimulus package included a variety of inducements. Sebelius announced today that part of $1 billion appropriated for disease prevention would be spent on obesity programs,kind of a drop in the bucket.
