By Joe Rojas-Burke, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.

May 16–Oregon and Washington are among six states receiving tens of millions of dollars in federal grants this year to help them launch health insurance exchanges, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Wednesday.

Oregon landed $6.68 million, on top of a previously awarded $58 million. Washington landed $128 million, bringing its total to $152 million.

Health insurance exchanges outlined in the federal Affordable Care Act are regulated online marketplaces for state residents to comparison shop for coverage. Congress called for their nationwide establishment by 2014.

While some states fight the federal health reform law or await acting until the Supreme Court rules on a constitutional challenge, Oregon, Washington and about 30 others have committed to getting state-run exchanges ready to start enrollment next year.

“The clock is ticking and there is a lot to do,” said Lisa Morawski, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Health Insurance Exchange.

Last year, Oregon secured $48.1 million from the Health and Human Services Department to develop the computer infrastructure to make insurance exchanges work as envisioned in President Barack Obama’s health reform plan. Oregon’s “early innovator” grant is the largest of the six awarded.

By 2015, Oregon officials are planning for at least 183,000 people to have coverage through the exchange, and as many as 398,000. It will be open to people who purchase their own insurance and to small businesses with up to 50 employees, guiding them through coverage options and qualification for tax credits and subsidies if eligible.

Oregon created a public corporation last year to run its exchange, overseen by a nine-member board of directors. Federal grants are covering the startup costs but the exchange is supposed to sustain itself on fees from participating insurance companies.

The Oregon exchange’s staff has grown to 26 employees. With the new grant, the exchange expects to hire another 24 for customer service, information technology and community outreach. The grant will also help pay for a design firm to develop an easy-to-use website.

By Prue Salasky, Daily Press, Newport News, Va.

May 18–More than 3,100 uninsured low-income patients took advantage of the diverse health services offered by the Lackey Free Clinic in Yorktown last year.

Started 17 years ago by Jim and Cooka Shaw, the clinic has grown from a one-night-a-week operation in borrowed space to five days a week in its own 4,100 square-foot building. It now offers care by 60 volunteer physicians and 10 dentists, who together provide more than $8.5 million worth of medical services, including prescriptions, each year.

But demand continues to grow. On Friday, the clinic will break ground on a $1.4 million expansion that will more than double its size to more than 10,000 square feet. The expansion will increase the number of examination rooms from four to 10, triple the space for dental care, and add education rooms and administrative offices. All but $200,000 has already been raised for the project.

“We’re going to fill that building the day it opens,” says Carol Sale, the clinic’s new executive director, speaking over the rumble of a bulldozer clearing the adjoining land. It took more than two years to get the necessary permits for the expansion, and work started immediately the plans were approved. The expansion is scheduled for completion in nine months without any interruption of service.

The clinic draws from five localities, where approximately 60,000 residents qualify for its free care. The numbers of those using the clinic have grown exponentially — 25 percent annually until physical limitations capped it at 10 percent in 2011, according to Jim Shaw. He cites one month when there were 860 callers and the clinic was only able to accommodate 100. Last year it added 700 new patients to its rolls. Most are working but unable to afford insurance, and fully 70 percent are living in extreme poverty, below 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

Increasingly, the clinic’s patients are those with chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and hypertension, whose health requires constant monitoring, rather than those with one-time illnesses, such as colds and flu. “They’re the sickest of the sick,” says Shaw.

By Mary Meaux, The Port Arthur News, Texas

May 17–With blonde hair pulled back away from her face and clad in a hospital gown-type shirt, Taffy Cook wiped tears from her eyes as tried to explain her emotions on Wednesday.

The Nederland woman met with Regina Rogers, founder and chair of the Julie Rogers “Gift of Life” Program and Philpott Motors General Manager Bob Thewman prior to receiving a free mammogram. As Cook spoke, she began to cry. Her last mammogram was two years ago and since then she has noticed changes in her body.

“This is a blessing,” Cook, of Nederland, said of the free mammogram. “That’s all I can say.”

Cook, 51, is one of 34 women who received free mammograms courtesy of the Julie Rogers “Gift of Life” Program and breast cancer program sponsor Philpott Motors. The clients filled out paperwork and took necessary preparations inside First Baptist Church in Groves before heading out to the pastel colored mammogram bus.

“Breast cancer is one of the biggest killers in America and a lot of people cannot afford a mammogram,” Thewman said. “If we can save just one life from this, it is worth it.”

Philpott and its 200 employees have raised more than $25,000 for the “Gift of Life” Breast Cancer Program during the past two years. Thewman explained that employees have had various fundraisers through the years such as blue jean Fridays where employees donate $5 to wear jeans on Fridays. The donations help the organization provide extensive educational outreach, free mammograms and access to follow-up cancer treatment for medically underserved southeast Texas women.

“We are always looking for ways to give back to the community,” he said. “To look around and see the women who receive mammograms smile as they know they did something to save their life.”

Nearly 2,000 woman have received free mammograms and there have been 18 diagnosed with cancer, Rogers said.

The Julie Rogers “Gift of Life” Breast Cancer Program has been saving lives for 17 years. Regina Rogers considers this as “17 years of spreading love.”

The “Gift of Life” provides free mammograms for medically underserved southeast Texas women.

You are eligible for a free “Gift of Life” mammogram if:

–You do not have private insurance, Medicaid or Medicare

–You live in southeast Texas, including Jefferson, Orange and Hardin counties

–Have limited income

–You are at least 40 years of age, with the following exceptions; a woman may be as young as 30 years of age if her mother, sister or grandmother had breast cancer at a young age, a woman may receive a first mammogram at age 35, but will not be eligible again until she is 40.

For more information on how to register for a free mammogram call 833-3663.

mmeaux@panews.com

___

(c)2012 The Port Arthur News (Port Arthur, Texas)

Visit The Port Arthur News (Port Arthur, Texas) at panews.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.

WASHINGTON — Eat your broccoli. After all, you might be helping to pay for it.

Challenging a broccoli market dominated by California, researchers boosted by federal funds are on a multi-year mission to encourage new East Coast production. They’ve had some success. They’ve also helped show how farm bills are changing.

“The project would absolutely not have happened” without the federal help, noted Cornell University associate professor Thomas Bjorkman, citing new academic and industry cooperation as well as the funding. “The audacious expectations of the (research) program also inspired us to think this big.”

Farm bill dollars — and disagreements — traditionally focus on subsidies for crops such as wheat, cotton, corn and rice. That’s still the case this year, as Congress approaches a Sept. 30 deadline for rewriting the 2008 farm bill. Tens of billions of dollars are on the line.

But for fruit and vegetable growers, and others lumped under the specialty-crop category, federal farm bills offer new significance and new seductions. The 2008 bill broke fresh ground; including, depending on how the money is counted, upward of $3 billion aiding specialty crops. Now the unsubsidized industry that once touted its independence is lobbying hard to hold on to what it has.

“We went into the 2007-2008 farm bill trying to get equity for specialty crops,” said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif. “We got out of that bill what we needed to; now we’re fighting from a different place than we were before.”

The 2008 farm bill, passed over President George W. Bush’s veto, recalibrated assumptions for specialty-crop growers and lawmakers alike. The lawmakers are starting from a different baseline this year: The question isn’t whether to include specialty crop programs, but at what funding level. Or, as Cardoza put it sardonically, “The Midwest folks would love to steal our money back.”

The growers, in turn, must entangle themselves in a political world that some once shunned. This week, for instance, the California Farm Bureau Federation and the Western Growers Association sent delegations to Capitol Hill. A Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance has rallied more than 140 like-minded organizations to press the case over many months.

By ALEX VEIGA

LOS ANGELES – Newlyweds and couples moving toward marriage, take note. Love, as it turns out, is not all you need.

Not if your goal is to avoid the No. 1 reason marriages end in divorce: Money problems.

Everyone knows, or should know, this. But love and a reluctance to take a hard look at our own financial habits, often keep us from seeing, much less confronting, potential financial troubles in a relationship.

Failing to do so, however, can lead to serious post-wedding day troubles.

“Mature, responsible conversations about money are a sign of a marriage that’s going to be healthy and wonderful and enduring,” says Brooke Salvini, a certified financial planner based in San Louis Obispo, Calif. “If you can’t talk about money when you are dating, that is a red flag right there.”

To get the conversation rolling, here are seven steps experts recommend to steer clear of potential marital money troubles:

1. DISCLOSE FINANCIAL RECORDS

Before corporations merge they go through a period when both sides get a close look at each other’s financial records. Take the same approach before you get hitched.

Swap statements for your bank accounts, credit cards, student loans, retirement accounts and so on. Also share credit reports and FICO scores.

“Not only can you start to put together a balance sheet of what the two of you own and what your debts are, you can start to discuss `do we want to combine our checking account?’” says Salvini.

2. DISCUSS FINANCIAL GOALS

A huge part of getting in sync with your spouse begins with discussing major life goals and the necessary financial commitments.

Discuss short-term goals, such as paying off credit card debt, and then craft a budget that sets you clearly on a path toward your goals.

3. BUDGET YOUR SPENDING

Failing to create and stick to a mutually agreed upon budget can lead to marital strife.

It doesn’t have to be complicated, though. Start off by listing monthly income. Be sure to add in interest earned on money-market accounts and dividends from any investments. Then add up expenses, everything from car payments, rent, to groceries, gym membership and utilities.

If you’re making more than you spend each month, you can begin planning how to set aside money for long-term financial goals. If not, time to consider ways to cut spending.

By MICHAEL CARLEY, The Porterville Recorder, Calif.

May 16–Next month, the Supreme Court will announce its decision regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. There is much to be said about the constitutionality of the law, but given the amount of misinformation about it throughout 2009 and 2010, I’d rather use this column to talk about what it actually covered.

One of the interesting things about the debate is how, by the time the law passed in March of 2010, it had become rather unpopular. This was despite the fact that almost all of its significant provisions polled rather well. Here are just a few:

Insurers are now prevented from imposing lifetime benefit caps on certain essential services. Medical expenses are the largest single cause of bankruptcy in the US, so this should help families immediately.

Children under most circumstances will be allowed to remain on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26. This will largely benefit college students and young people establishing themselves in the job market.

Effective as of September 2010, insurers are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of pre-existing conditions for most children under the age of 19. In 2014, this will apply to all of those insured. Under current law, insurance companies spend a great deal of their resources trying to search out the healthiest people to cover and finding ways to exclude people for flimsy reasons once they begin costing money. One of the most common is to find a pre-existing condition the individual failed to report, regardless of whether it actually ever affected their health or coverage.

There are now no copayments, co-insurance or deductibles for preventive care. This provision is likely to both improve health and reduce costs long-term.

Part of that preventive coverage will be coverage of contraception, though there is an exemption for religious employers.

Publicly funded research will be conducted on prevention that will improve the health of Americans and reduce costs.

The law provides for expanded enforcement of health care fraud.

Health insurance exchanges are being created that will help individuals and businesses to compare policies and premiums and purchase insurance directly.

By The Hawk Eye, Burlington, Iowa

May 15–FORT MADISON — The BirthPlace at Fort Madison Community Hospital is sponsoring a breastfeeding class from 6 to 8 p.m. May 21 in the FMCH conference rooms.

The class is open to expectant mothers in their last trimester. It will help prepare mothers for breastfeeding and offer support for when they begin to breastfeed.

To register, log on to www.fmchosp.com and click on the Community & Wellness Tab, Prenatal Education.

For more information, call the BirthPlace at (319) 376-2229.

Advertisement

Blood drive honors troops

Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center is hosting a month-long blood drive honoring veterans at the center’s new location, 3407 Agency St. in Burlington.

The Remembering Our Troops on Memorial Day drive is sponsored by Optimist Club of Burlington-West Burlington, IowaWorks, Des Moines County VFW and AmVet Post 29.

Donors 17 or older, weighing more than 110 pounds and having a donor card or photo ID can participate in the blood drive during regular hours in May.

To schedule an appointment, call (800) 591-8049.

Church hosts Life Line screening

Residents living in and around Burlington can be screened to reduce their risk of having a stroke or bone fracture. First Church of the Nazarene, 1015 S. Roosevelt Ave., will host Life Line screening June 22.

Packages start at $149. All five screenings take 60 to 90 minutes.

To learn more or to schedule an appointment, call (877) 237-1287 or visit www.lifelinescreening.com. Registration is required.

Diabetic foot screenings set

WEST BURLINGTON — Great River Center for Rehab and Clinics staff will provide free diabetic foot screenings from 1 to 4 p.m. today at the Center for Rehab and Clinics, 1401 W. Agency Road, West Burlington.

The screening is for people with diabetes or loss of sensation in their feet. Appointments are required. Those interested in scheduling an appointment should call the Center for Rehab and Clinics at (319) 768-4100.

HCHC diabetes team plans classes

MOUNT PLEASANT — Henry County Health Center’s Diabetes Team is offering a diabetes education series May 22 and May 29. The two-day program is open to anyone with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes.

By Andrea Torres, The Miami Herald

May 15–David Labrie radiated self-confidence in his bubble-gum pink bow tie and black tuxedo, flashing a great grin as he strode down the runway at the Models of Hope fashion show.

Seeing a male model surprised some in the audience of about 700 at the 11th annual Day of Caring for Breast Cancer Awareness on Saturday at the InterContinental hotel in downtown Miami. It had been about two years since the 55-year-old father of three was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma.

Labrie is grateful “that it was him that was diagnosed with cancer and not his wife or daughter,” master of ceremonies Mark Schumacher told the crowd.

Christine Zahralban looked like a professional bathing suit model in a two-piece that accentuated her voluptuous figure. Two years ago, soon after her 39th birthday, she was diagnosed with stage 1 colloid breast cancer. No one who saw her on Saturday would have guessed that the stunning Miami-Dade County prosecutor had undergone weekly chemotherapy treatments for six months.

“She enjoys spinning, boxing, dancing, weightlifting,” Schumacher said as she gracefully walked in six-inch platform heels. “She is grateful she chose to have both breasts removed as it was discovered that she also had cancer in her other breast.”

The models exuding joie de vivre on the catwalk also included an accountant, an actress, an art teacher, an advertising executive, a loan processor and a University of Miami law professor.

Rhonda McKnight-Smith, a grandmother, said having cancer had “really opened her eyes to what is important.” Debra Cabrera said she “discovered her inner strength and calmness through it all.”

There were many stories of survival. And no one appeared to be feeling any self-pity.

Losing my breasts has made me feel less feminine and attractive, but the women on that runway made me think that cancer patients should view themselves as ugly ducklings on their way to becoming swans. The promise is that as time passes, the image in the mirror will improve along with your health.

The fashion show was preceded by sessions on topics ranging from “Advances in Medical Oncology” and “Options in Reconstructive Surgery” to a tai chi workshop called “Learn Meditation in Motion.”

By Chattanooga Times Free Press, Tenn.

May 13–Tennessee’s former governor, Democrat Phil Bredesen, wrote in an October 2010 editorial for the Wall Street Journal assessing his party’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that “… our recent health reform has created a situation where there are strong economic incentives for employers to drop coverage altogether. The consequence will be to drive many more people than projected — and with them, much greater cost — into the reform’s federally subsidized system.”

What does that mean? Like your health care coverage you now have through your employer? You’d better hope the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare is repealed.

The sentiments of the opinion piece written a year and a half ago are echoed in a May 1 report prepared for the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee: “Broken Promise: Why ObamaCare Will Force Americans to Lose the Health Care Coverage They Have and Like.”

The mandate included in Obama’s signature legislation forces all businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to offer a government-approved health care plan or pay a $2,000 penalty per employee.

Seventy-one Fortune 100 companies responded to a survey demonstrating that, in 2011, they employed 5.9 million full- and part-time workers spending $30.8 billion on health insurance that covered 10.2 million lives. Of these 71 companies, 89 percent offered insurance to part-time employees.

These same 71 companies could enjoy a projected savings of $28.6 billion in 2014 alone by eliminating health insurance offered to their employees and dependents and simply paying the $2,000 fine per full-time employee as mandated by the law.

Other surveys support the likely move of businesses to end employee-sponsored health coverage.

In May of last year, Price Waterhouse published a report foreseeing an 8.5 percent increase in medical costs and stating “84 percent of firms surveyed are likely to re-evaluate their overall benefits strategy.”

Market Strategies International released a publication in January 2011 that estimated a 10 percent net decline in access to employer-sponsored health benefits as of January 2014, the year the health care legislation would be fully implemented.

By Joe Amarante, New Haven Register, Conn.

May 13–NEW HAVEN — Yes, it’s a classroom-style program at the YMCA, but it’s also a lifesaver and potential money-saver, results suggest. And last week, this growing program garnered national attention.

The Wall Street Journal featured the somewhat new Diabetes Prevention Program as an example of “a community-based organization (delivering) a nationwide health-care intervention.”

The program — guiding at-risk people to eat healthier and exercise regularly — is only for those who are pre-diabetic or at risk of type 2 diabetes, not those who already have the disease.

“I say ‘only’ but that’s a huge number,” said area coordinator Kelly Vaughan. “Seventy-nine million people in the country are pre-diabetic, and only about 7 percent know that they are. So that’s part of our mission, to let people know that there is such a condition as pre-diabetes, that type 2 diabetes is preventable, and that the Y has a program to help people prevent or delay the onset.”

Vaughan works in New Haven as program coordinator for the Y Diabetes Program at Central Connecticut Coast YMCA, one of many across the country that could see a huge bump in activity, partly because of the economics of avoiding costly diabetes and its serious effects.

The YMCA is reimbursed by insurance companies and employers when folks enroll in the course, according to the Journal. If goals are reached, such as weight loss, the Y gets more reimbursement. (Weight loss reportedly has averaged more than 5 percent nationally for those attending nine-plus sessions.)

“The complications of type 2 diabetes can be severe: limb amputation … renal failure and those sorts of things,” said Vaughan, who runs the area program under the supervision of Project Manager Barbara Moore. “The complications can be very expensive.”

The goals sound simple: Reduce body weight by 7 percent (for a 200-pound person, that’s a “manageable” 14 pounds, said Vaughan) and increase physical activity to 150 minutes per week. But that really means a lifestyle change, and a big payoff in terms of what doesn’t happen.

“If you meet those two program goals, you can reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes by 58 percent,” Vaughan said. Continued…