Month: January 2020

U.S. insurers and providers spent more than $800 billion in 2017 on administration, or nearly $2,500 per person — more than four times the per-capita administrative costs in Canada's single-payer system, a new study finds.Over one third of all healthcare costs in the U.S. were due to insurance company overhead and provider time spent on billing, versus about 17% spent on administration in Canada, researchers reported in Annals of Internal Medicine.Cutting U.S. administrative costs to the $550 per capita (in 2017 U.S. dollars) level in Canada could save more than $600 billion, the researchers say."The average American is paying more than $2,000 a year for useless bureaucracy," said lead author Dr. David Himmelstein, a distinguished professor of public health at the City University of New York at Hunter College in…

Asthma is often controlled with an inhaler, or, sometimes, with medication. When neither works, it might be that the patient doesn't have asthma at all. VOA's Carol Pearson reports that researchers have found another disease with the same symptoms as asthma that actually starts in the stomach.  ...

In a move that could put the Obama-era health law squarely in the middle of the 2020 election, Democratic-led states Friday asked the Supreme Court for a fast-track review of a recent court ruling that declared part of the statute unconstitutional and cast a cloud over the rest.A coalition of 20 states led by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed a petition seeking expedited review. They hope to get a Supreme Court hearing and decision by this summer, before the November elections. For the court to agree to such a timetable would be unusual, but not unprecedented.Defenders of the Affordable Care Act are arguing that the issues raised by the case are too important to let the litigation drag on for months or years in lower courts, and that the…

Illinois, the largest Midwestern state in the U.S.,  is beginning 2020 with the implementation of a new law that allows people to legally buy marijuana for recreational use. The Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act also also allows the governor to pardon thousands for past low-level cannabis convictions. VOA's Mariama Diallo reports ...

Australia's unprecedented wildfires are supercharged thanks to climate change, the type of trees catching fire and weather, experts say.And these fires are so extreme that they are triggering their own thunderstorms.Here are a few questions and answers about the science behind the Australian wildfires that so far have burned about 5 million hectares (12.35 million acres), killing at least 17 people and destroying more than 1,400 homes."They are basically just in a horrific convergence of events," said Stanford University environmental studies director Chris Field, who chaired an international scientific report on climate change and extreme events. He said this is one of the worst, if not the worst, climate change extreme events he's seen."There is something just intrinsically terrifying about these big wildfires. They go on for so long, the…

More companies could begin making an easy-to-use version of an opioid overdose antidote under a deal announced Thursday by New York's attorney general.Under the agreement, Emergent BioSolutions will no longer enforce a contract that had allowed it to be the only company to sell naloxone in a spray called Narcan, a popular form for police, firefighters and others to use to try to revive people who are overdosing.The attorney general's office said the new agreement came after it found that Adapt Pharma, which has since been bought by Rockville, Maryland-based Emergent, had the exclusive rights to sell naloxone using Aptar Pharma's nasal spray technology."Given the tragic, devastating effects of the opioid crisis, and the urgent need for additional drugs for the emergency treatment of opioid overdoses, my office will do…

For three decades, paleontologists the world over have been split over a provocative finding: Did a dwarf species of Tyrannosaurus rex really once exist?In 1988, paleontologist Robert Bakker and his colleagues at the Cleveland (Ohio) Museum of Natural History reclassified a specimen first discovered in 1942 and displayed at the museum.It was, they said, the first known member of a small new species they baptized as the Nanotyrannus.Then, in 2001, another team discovered the nearly complete skeleton of a small Tyrannosaurus near the town of Ekalaka in Montana, in the rich and intensively studied fossil formation known as Hell Creek.They named the creature — barely bigger than a draft horse — Jane and soon classified it as a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex.But a minority of specialists continued to insist that it…

U.S. health officials will ban most flavored e-cigarettes popular with underage teenagers, but with major exceptions that benefit vaping manufacturers, retailers and adults who use the nicotine-emitting devices.The Trump administration announced Thursday that it will prohibit fruit, candy, mint and dessert flavors from small, cartridge-based e-cigarettes that are popular with high school students. But menthol and tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes will be allowed to remain on the market.The flavor ban will also entirely exempt large, tank-based vaping devices, which are primarily sold in vape shops that cater to adult smokers.Together, the two exemptions represent a significant retreat from President Donald Trump's original plan announced four months ago, which would have banned all vaping flavors, including menthol, from all types of e-cigarettes. The new policy will preserve a significant portion of the multibillion-dollar…

The number of deaths in major air crashes around the globe fell by more than half in 2019, according to a report by an aviation consulting firm.The To70 consultancy said Wednesday that 257 people died in eight fatal accidents in 2019. That compares to 534 deaths in 13 fatal accidents in 2018.The 2019 death toll rose in late December after a Bek Air Fokker 100 crashed Friday on takeoff in Kazakhstan, killing 12 people. The worst crash of 2019 involved an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX plane that crashed March 10, killing 157 people.The report said fatal accidents in 2018 and 2019 that led to the grounding of Boeing's 737 MAX raised questions about how aviation authorities approve aviation designs derived from older ones, and about how much pilot training…

A Google artificial intelligence system proved as good as expert radiologists at detecting which women had breast cancer based on screening mammograms and showed promise at reducing errors, researchers in the United States and Britain reported.The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is the latest to show that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve the accuracy of screening for breast cancer, which affects one in eight women globally.Radiologists miss about 20% of breast cancers in mammograms, the American Cancer Society says, and half of all women who get the screenings over a 10-year period have a false positive result.The findings of the study, developed with Alphabet Inc's DeepMind AI unit, which merged with Google Health in September, represent a major advance in the potential for the early…

Thanks to a very special gift, one family is exceptionally grateful to be celebrating the New Year together this year. Bronwyn Benito tells us about a new surgical technique that makes it easier to give the gift of life. ...

Illinois started the new year on a high note Wednesday, becoming the latest U.S. state to legalize recreational marijuana as the governor pardoned thousands for past low-level cannabis convictions.The Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act will allow residents 21 and older to legally purchase marijuana and will expunge thousands of individuals' criminal convictions throughout the state."We are restoring rights to many tens of thousands of Illinoisans. We are bringing regulation and safety to a previously unsafe and illegal market. And we are creating a new industry that puts equity at its very core," Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said in a statement.On Tuesday night, Pritzker granted 11,017 pardons for people with low-level cannabis convictions, the first round of a planned total of more than 700,000.A long line of people brave the cold…

The world has a plastic pollution problem.  That is the big picture.  It has countries looking for creative solutions.  Environmentalists say there's no more time for talk.  As VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, they say it's time for action  ...

Haunted by the ongoing war in their country, more and more youth in Yemen are facing mental health problems. The International Committee of the Red Cross says that widespread conflict, severe economic decline, food insecurity and the collapse of essential public services continue to take an enormous toll on the population's mental and physical health. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports ...

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the federal government will soon announce a new strategy to tackle underage vaping, promising, “We’re going to protect our families, we’re going to protect our children, and we’re going to protect the industry.”Trump was vague about what the plan would entail, but suggested “certain flavors” in cartridge-based e-cigarettes would be taken off the market “for a period of time.”The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration would ban the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes, such as those sold by Juul and NJOY. E-cigarette pods formulated to taste like tobacco or menthol would still be allowed.The Journal also reported that tank-based vaping systems, which are less popular among teenagers, would still allow users to custom-mix flavors. The Journal report cited anonymous…

East Africa has the highest rates of cervical cancer in the world, according to the World Health Organization. In October, Kenya launched a mass vaccination of girls against the human papillomavirus (HPV),which can lead to cervical cancer. For those who acquired HPV, the vaccine is being welcomed in hopes of protecting their children against cervical cancer. Rael Ombuor reports from Nairobi.   ...