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But according to a report published Wednesday on the website Modern Farmer, the production of Greek yogurt, now a $2 billion-per-year industry, involves straining a byproduct called acid whey—described as watery, cloudy slop—from the yogurt. There’s nothing intrinsically toxic about acid whey. However, in large quantities it can be harmful to the environment and no one quite knows what to do with it.

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“Greek yogurt companies strain whey for two reasons,” Christopher P. Schlottmann, Ph.D., associate director of environmental studies at New York University. “When it’s removed, it leaves yogurt with a very creamy texture and it also allows the yogurt to have more protein because there’s less whey to dilute it.” The problem is, straining the yogurt to such a degree requires adding more milk (to get a large quantity of yogurt in the end), which means more whey to strain. For every four ounces of milk used in the production of Greek yogurt, only one ounce makes its way into a supermarket container; the other three ounces are concentrated acid whey, which for now, serves no purpose.

It’s illegal to simply pour it into the ground because it would pollute the waterways and its high acidic content would harm the soil. “Not knowing what to do with excess acid whey is not a new problem,” says Schlottmann. “We’ve never really known what to do with it; however it’s being produced in higher volumes because Greek yogurt is so trendy right now.”

As a temporary solution, yogurt-makers are paying farmers to take it off their hands and feed it to cows, which can harm their digestive systems if consumed in large quantities or selling it to body builders in large tubs. According to Modern Farmer, cheese companies face a similar issue with an abundance of their own whey byproduct but theirs is sweeter, less acidic, and can be easily used as a baby formula ingredient. That would be an ideal solution for acidic whey. However, according to Dave Barbano, a food scientist at Cornell University who specializes in filtration methods for separation and recovery of protein, the first step would be extracting acid whey’s small traces of protein in a cost-efficient way, and his research is just getting underway.

For now, the Greek yogurt industry is running out of options. “These companies could always maintain their creamy product by adding shorteners or thickness but the yogurt would lose some of it’s protein content,” says Schlottmann. “There may be a way to process it more to see if any nutrients could be extracted from the stuff but that’s unlikely because minerals are cheap enough.”

On Wednesday, Chobani, a popular Greek yogurt company, sent a statement to PS magazine that read:

“At Chobani, we are committed to being a good community partner. That includes finding responsible uses for whey, a natural byproduct of the process to create authentic strained Greek yogurt. We are constantly exploring the best ideas and options for beneficial whey use. Right now, we choose to return whey to farmers, most of whom use it as a supplement to their livestock feed. Some is used as a land-applied fertilizer but only at farms that have nutrient management plans in place with the state environmental conservation agency. A small percentage is also sent to community digesters, where the whey is used to produce energy.”

The good news? You don’t have to quit your Greek yogurt habit just yet. “The dairy industry’s huge carbon footprint has less to do with an abundance of acid whey—they use lots of resources for land, greenhouse gases and animal feed,” says Schlottmann. “The issue of excess acid whey is a problem but it’s minor in comparison.”

More on Yahoo! Shine:
Cool Ways to Use Greek Yogurt
Lemony Greek Yogurt Cheesecake
10 Surprising Health Benefits of Yogurt
 

Article source: http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/the-dark-side-of-greek-yogurt-193515519.html

courtesy Alex Hrebin

“If my feet weren’t sore, I’d totally bowl,” tweeted Alex Hrebin, 29, a few days ago, when he was about 250 miles and three weeks into a year-long trek across the country. Hrebin set out on April 21 from Sea Bright, New Jersey, to walk more than 3,000 miles coast to coast in memory of his best friend, Dustin Merunka, who died in a car crash eight years ago.

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The two men attended high school together and then went to a local community college. “During our first year in college, around Thanksgiving, we spent 24 hours in a diner in northwest New Jersey,” Hrebin told Yahoo! Shine by phone from Altoona, Pennsylvania where he was resting in a Motel 6. The two friends talked all night, hatching crazy plans. “Dustin suggested we walk across the country. I joked that maybe we should trying walking across New Jersey first.” A year later, Merunka was gone.

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Hrebin enlisted in the Army and was sent to Iraq and later Afghanistan. In between deployments, he returned to the United States and received a bachelor’s degree in writing from Rowan University. He never forgot about Merunka’s dream of traversing the nation on foot. “At the risk of sounding campy, he was like Peter Pan,” described Hrebin. “He had the purest nature of any person I’ve ever met in my life.”

Although he only returned back from Afghanistan in October, Hrebin was determined to begin his trip. He embarked on his journey with light camping supplies, one pair of sneakers, and one pair of hiking boots. He is also carrying a pair of Merunka’s shoes in his backpack.

Hrebin doesn’t have a set route, which is how his friend would have liked it. “If I see a sign for the world’s largest ball of string, I’m not going to miss that,” he laughed. “We believed any adventure was a good adventure and a good story to tell,” Hrebin said in an interview with Altoona’s local WTAJ News.

He says one of the hardest things about the trek was leaving his girlfriend behind. “It’s hell on the relationship because we love each other,” he said. “But at least we can be in touch, unlike in Afghanistan.”

Hrebin hopes to get to the Colorado Rockies before the weather turns cold, and if not, he’ll head south. He’s scattering his friend’s ashes along the route at places he thinks Merunka would have loved to visit. “I passed by DelGrosso’s Amusement Park last week,” he says. “Dustin would have been upset that I didn’t stop and ride the go-carts.”

Hrebin hopes to eventually write a book about his travels. You can follow his journey on Twitter @McHrebin.

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Article source: http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/veterans-cross-country-journey-fulfills-promise-lost-friend-181700689.html

A new study shows that some types of green tea are better for you than others. (Photo: Getty Images)Green tea has been touted for its fat-blocking abilities, its antioxidant properties, and its role in reducing the risk of stroke. But a new report published this week by ConsumerLab.com shows that not all green tea is the same.

Also on Shine: Can Drinking Green Tea Help Fight Breast Cancer?

Researchers tested 26 types of green tea beverages and supplements and found that some ready-to-drink teas were mostly sugar water. Some of the supplements (which claimed to speed weight loss or help combat cancer) had high levels of caffeine which weren’t listed on the labels, and some bagged teas, especially those containing tea grown in China, were contaminated with lead.

Also on Shine: 20 Unusual Uses for Green Tea

“Lead can occur in many botanical products because it is taken up from the ground,” Dr. Tod Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab.com, told the New York Times. “The green tea plant is known to absorb lead at a higher rate than other plants from the environment, and lead also can build up on the surface of the leaves.”

The researchers found 1.25 micrograms to 2.5 micrograms of lead in tea bags from Lipton and Bigelow, both of which contain tea grown in China. (Luckily for consumers, the lead did not leach into the water when the tea was brewed.) Loose tea leaves from Teavana, which uses tea grown in Japan for their Gyokuro tea, did not contain measurable amounts of lead.

“The majority of the lead is staying with the leaf,” Cooperman explained. “If you’re brewing it with a tea bag, the tea bag is very effectively filtering out most of the lead by keeping those tea leaves inside the bag. So it’s fine as long as you’re not eating the leaves.”

The secret ingredient that makes green tea so powerful is epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), a potent antioxidant. Researchers measured the levels of EGCG in different types of green tea — leaf tea, ready-made bottled tea, and green tea supplements — and found that the amounts of the beneficial antioxidant varied wildly.

While supplements provided 22 milligrams to 300 milligrams of EGCG per serving (depending on the brand), bottled green-tea beverages contained as little as 4 milligrams of the compound per cup. Honest Tea’s Green Tea with Honey promised 190 milligrams of EGCG per serving but only delivered about 114 milligrams, the researchers found, and had as much sugar as half a can of soda. Diet Snapple Green Tea contained almost no EGCG at all.

Also on Shine:

13 Health Benefits of Green Tea
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Article source: http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/what-s-in-your-green-tea---192412541.html

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a new report yesterday, which found that Americans are continuing to make poor lifestyle decisions that will lead them to developing heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses, according to HealthDay News.

After examining survey answers from nearly 77,000 random interviews conducted between 2008 and 2010, the CDC found that of the six out of 10 adults who drink, there’s been an increase in episodic heavy drinking of five or more drinks in one day. They found that 20 percent of adults smoke, and less than half of them have attempted to quit in the past year, and also that only one in five adults meet the federal guidelines for aerobic activity and muscle-strengthening exercise. One in three are completely inactive when it comes to aerobic exercise during leisure time.

Meanwhile, 70 percent of adults are getting the amount of sleep recommended by the government.

“Changes have not been enormous,” Charlotte Schoenborn, a health stastician at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, told HealthDay. “It’s been a very, very slow process of changing awareness of personal choices for healthier ways of life. All of the health-related federal agencies, and a lot of non-federal groups, are putting a lot of resources to make people aware of the effect they can have on their own health. This report is just designed to say where we are.”

Although the report is in line with previous trends, young adults had promising results for what lifestyles trends in the future could look like. Those aged 18 to 24 years old were the only age group to show a reduction in smoking, from 23.5 percent to about 21 percent.

“I think we’re in a situation now where we’re at a crossroads,” Rich Hamburg, deputy director of Trust for America’s Health, said. “We have two paths to go. We’re hopeful that if we continue to invest in community-based prevention, if we promote healthy eating and active living, these rates will begin to decrease.”

Ultimately the goal is to lower health risks.

“If we can lower obesity trends by a small amount, say five percent in each state, we could save millions of Americans from health problems and save billions of dollars in health spending,” Hamburg said.

But how exactly does someone change their lifestyle into a healthier one? PopSugar says it’s about changing habits, not about falling into the dieting trap. Here are four tips:

1. Be creative in the kitchen.

Instead of eating the same healthy meals over and over again, PopSugar suggests looking up new recipes for healthy foods. They’re all over the internet.

2. Don’t use ultimatums.

Rather than crash dieting — it’s very difficult to give up on all your favorite foods cold turkey — think of your new diet as something sustainable. Eat healthy, then give yourself a cheat day.

3. Eat enough calories.

Eat foods that are high in fiber. They will fill you up for longer while also being healthier for you. Foods with empty calories will only keep you hungry.

4. Use tricks to calm your cravings.

Don’t eat out as often, replace foods with less sugary or salty options, and if all else fails, speak to your doctor. It’s hard to fight the urge to eat fatty, serotonin-inducing foods. But with a little will power, it’s definitely possible.

Sources: 

Schoenborn C, Adams P, Peregoy J. Health Behaviors of Adults:United States, 2008-2010. National Center for Health Statistics. Vital and Health Statistics. May 2013. Accessed May 22, 2013.   

Article source: http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/15822/20130522/americans-still-falling-short-healthy-lifestyle-tips.htm

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Thursday, May 23, 2013

GoLocalProv Health Team

Staying fit while pregnant is a great way to help your baby… with the following guidelines.

Years ago, women enjoyed eating whatever they wanted and resting through their pregnancies – like a nine-month sabbatical from their otherwise healthy lifestyles. No more. Exercise is recognized as healthy at any stage of your life and pregnancy should not interfere with this in most cases.

“As busy as you may be, it is important for you to make the time to exercise,” said Katharine Wenstrom, MD, director of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Women Infants Hospital. “Research has shown that women who exercise while pregnant not only tend to have smoother pregnancies, but they may also experience easier labors, and feel better about themselves during pregnancy and after delivery.”

In addition, she says women with gestational diabetes might find that exercise provides additional health benefits related to that condition.

Get a move on

With any exercise, you should check with your health care provider to be sure there is no reason you should not continue your program. Otherwise, Dr. Wenstrom suggests the following exercise guidelines for pregnant women:

Continue mild to moderate exercise routines while pregnant, exercising at least three times per week.

Non weight-bearing exercise such as swimming might be the easiest to continue throughout pregnancy and may reduce risk of injury. However, weight-bearing exercise, such as walking, may also be continued at close to your normal intensity level. You should be able to maintain a conversation while exercising to be at the right intensity, Dr. Wenstrom says.

Avoid bicycle riding after about 20 weeks of pregnancy because you will lose your sense of balance as your abdomen grows.

Avoid any exercise on your back after 20 weeks of pregnancy as this may decrease blood flow to the uterus.

Avoid moderate exercise in hot, humid weather, or when you are sick with a fever.

Wear comfortable clothing that will help you remain cool.

Wear a bra that fits you well and gives you plenty of support to help protect your breasts.

Drink plenty of water to help keep you from overheating or dehydrating.

Watch out

While exercising during pregnancy, listen to your body and signs it may be giving you, Dr. Wenstrom suggests. Stop exercising and call your health care provider if you experience any of these symptoms while exercising (note: call even if you experience these symptoms when not exercising):

Pain, including headache

Vaginal bleeding

Increased shortness of breath

Rapid heartbeat

Difficulty walking

Uterine contractions and/or chest pains

Fluid leaking from your vagina

Dizziness

Calf pain or swelling

Talk to the experts

Speak to your health care provider about your plans to continue or begin an exercise program during pregnancy. For any concerns that arise during pregnancy, Dr. Wenstrom and other maternal-fetal medicine specialists at Women Infants are available for referrals by calling (401) 274-1122, ext. 1937, or going to the website at http://www.womenandinfants.org/mfm/

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Article source: http://www.golocalprov.com/health/women-infants-8-tips-for-healthy-exercise-when-pregnant/

Going to college is an exciting time in life and to get the most out of it, you’ll want to be sure to look after your health. You are going to have a lot of demands on your time, including studying, writing essays and research papers, and maintaining an active social life.

Looking after your health should be a priority, and following these health tips will help you stay well and lower your risk of becoming ill during this time.

1. Eat breakfast. Choose a meal that includes whole grains, some protein, fruits or vegetables and low-fat dairy products for a balanced meal.

2. Drink water. Many people don’t drink enough fluids through the day and misinterpret signs of dehydration as hunger. Carry a water bottle with you and refill it as needed.

3. Include fruits and vegetables in your diet regularly. These healthy foods are packed with vitamins and are a good source of fiber, so be sure to include a few servings in your diet every day.

4. Don’t skip meals. It can be tempting to forget to eat when you are busy, but your body needs fuel if it is going to have enough energy to help you get through the day.

5. Go to sleep at the same time each night. It can be challenging to try to get to bed at the same time each night, but if you can stick to a regular routine you will have a better chance of getting a good night’s sleep.

6. Avoid all-night study sessions. While you may think cramming for an exam or working to finish a paper at the last-minute is the right thing to do, not getting enough sleep will have a major impact on your performance in the morning.

7. Stop drinking coffee and caffeinated beverages well before bedtime if it tends to keep you awake at night. Switch to decaffeinated tea or have a glass of milk before bed to help you relax and get the rest you need.

8. Take a nap. If you find yourself feeling listless during the day and you have some time in your schedule, take a short nap. It will help you to reset your internal energy clock and give you the boost you need.

9. Wash your hands. Making a point of washing your hands after using the washroom, before eating and after you have been around someone who has been ill can prevent illness.

10. Wear flip flops in the shower. Even though shared facilities are cleaned regularly, it’s still possible to pick up bacteria and viruses that can cause athlete’s foot and warts.

11. Go to the gym. Take advantage of on-campus recreational facilities. Getting regular exercise is a great way to stay fit, make friends and deal with stress.

12. Sign up for a fitness class. Many schools offer on-campus fitness classes. The cost is already covered as part of your tuition, so you may as well take time out of your schedule to enjoy some regular physical activity.

13. Create a schedule for yourself. Set aside time each day for sleep, study, writing papers, working out, meals, and breaks. It will be easier to manage college life if you have a plan for your day set out in advance.

14. Plan to spend time with friends. It’s important to have some “down” time in you schedule so that you can have a meal together or just hang out. Make plans to go for a walk, see a movie, or watch television together. Everyone needs to do something other than focus on school for a time.

15. Ask for help. If you feel overwhelmed while at college and a good night’s sleep and discussing the situation with a friend doesn’t help you to feel better, don’t hesitate to reach out for assistance. There are services available on campus to help. Make an appointment to see a doctor, nurse, counselor, or tell a trusted instructor about how you are feeling.

While you are enjoying college life, don’t make the mistake of neglecting your health. By following these everyday health tips, you will be better able to manage the demands of school, working out and a busy social life on campus without getting run down or becoming ill.

Article source: http://www.hivehealthmedia.com/15-everyday-health-tips-for-college-students/

FORTUNE — Health insurance companies are hectic places these days – they’re preparing for key pieces of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to go into effect next year. Given the frenzy, certain parts of the act could have unintended consequences. Specifically, a new report suggests, Americans without bank accounts could get left behind, unable to pay their insurance premiums.

Here’s why: Healthcare companies face many pressures before the ACA kicks in, but perhaps one of the most universal is to cut costs. The ACA will force many insurers to change their operations. After the act is fully in effect, insurers will need to allocate a set portion of insurance premiums towards the cost of care instead of overhead costs such as marketing and profits. Part of that overhead cost, for many insurance companies, pays for credit and debit card transaction fees.

To reduce overhead costs, some companies are looking to cut those credit and debit card transaction fees by forbidding patients to pay their premiums with their cards. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, for example, no longer accepts premium payments via credit or debit card. Health insurance company Health Net implemented similar measures last year. At press time, Health Net did not offer comment.

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More and more insurance companies are scrapping debit and credit card payment options, says Ryan McCostlin, team member at Nashville-based healthcare consulting firm Bernard Health: “Since I’ve been thinking about how to help individuals and families figure out what to do about health insurance, more than half the carriers, while they may allow you to pay the first month’s premium with a debit or credit card, quite often, the only options after that are to get direct-billed with a paper statement or to set up an electronic funds transfer (EFT).”

The change doesn’t affect his clients much, he says, because the majority of Bernard Health customers have bank accounts and can switch to alternative premium payment methods.

But the real problem, argues a new report out of tax services firm Jackson Hewitt, is that a significant number of Americans don’t have bank accounts and will be left without a method to pay for insurance. One out of every 12 households in America are unbanked, according to a 2011 study by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, meaning that they don’t participate in the banking system at all. The Jackson Hewitt report focuses those numbers further: “Among the uninsured, non-elderly population with household incomes in the tax credit eligible range, 27 percent are effectively ‘unbanked,’” it says.

Those “unbanked” Americans could use pre-paid debit cards to pay for premiums if companies let them, the report says, but as of now, there’s no language that would require health insurance companies to accept those types of payments. To be clear, “Jackson Hewitt does have a limited commercial interest with prepaid debit cards,” the report disclosed, because the firm allows certain customers to receive tax refunds on pre-paid debit cards.

As of now, the issue of unbanked Americans paying premiums is not on the government’s radar. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners told Fortune that, so far, “this issue hasn’t been raised. Also, [there] is not anything in the federal register or in the state implementation efforts that would address insured’s being required to use EFTs for payments.”

MORE: Watch out. The mortgage securities market is at it again.

This issue should be raised, the report argues along with suggesting that government officials press insurance companies to accept debit and credit card payments from patients without bank accounts before the Health Insurance Marketplace opens in October 2013.

“Since we’re still working through the regulations, it is too early to know what payment methods will be required for products purchased on the new Health Insurance Marketplace,” says Mary Danielson, a spokesperson for Blue Cross Blue Shield in Tennessee.

Coincidentally, the population that could benefit most from universal healthcare tends to overlap with the population that doesn’t have a formal bank account. It’s a group that could get stuck, thanks to a glitch in the system, unable to pay premiums for the health care that the White House, via the Affordable Care Act, so desperately wants to make available to all.

Article source: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/24/health-care-reform/

Texas Gov. Rick Perry addresses the opening session of the Texas Legislature in Austin earlier this year.

Eric Gay/AP

Texas Gov. Rick Perry addresses the opening session of the Texas Legislature in Austin earlier this year.

Eric Gay/AP

The state of Texas is turning down billions of federal dollars that would have paid for health care coverage for 1.5 million poor Texans.

By refusing to participate in Medicaid expansion, which is part of the Affordable Care Act, the state will leave on the table an estimated $100 billion over the next decade.

Texas’ share of the cost would have been just 7 percent of the total, but for Gov. Rick Perry and the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature, even $1 in the name of “Obamacare” was a dollar too much.

“Texas will not be held hostage by the Obama administration’s attempt to force us into this fool’s errand of adding more than a million Texans to a broken system,” Perry said.

Texas Republicans have moved steadily to the right — to where the very concept of public health insurance of any kind is looked at through narrowed eyes. Still, it’s not easy to walk away from $100 billion from the federal government to help your state’s poor, elderly and disabled, especially when you have powerful stakeholders like hospitals, doctors and cities clamoring for the state to take the money for their sakes.

Texas hospitals stand to lose about $7 billion.

“I don’t think we will be OK, actually, especially when you consider the state cut us about $700 million a year in Medicaid payments because of the budget shortfall,” says John Hawkins, a senior vice president at the Texas Hospital Association. “Now we’re dealing with sequestration, which is another 2 percent.

“If you look at the president’s budget, there’s some additional cuts to hospitals, so I don’t think it is a sustainable business model going forward if we don’t do the expansion.”

If your country has no national health insurance but your citizens don’t have the stomach to watch the uninsured die on the hospital sidewalk, something’s got to give. So there’s a national expectation that doctors and hospitals will provide these uninsured populations mostly uncompensated care — and so they do. But few in the industry think this is the way to operate.

Tom Banning, chief executive officer of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians, lobbied hard but unsuccessfully for Medicaid expansion. He’s beside himself with frustration.

“These people don’t choose to get sick. When they do, they’re going to access our health care system at the most inefficient and expensive point, which is the emergency room,” Banning says. “And it’s going to cost the taxpayers, and it’s going to cost employers a lot of money to care for them. And we’re going to be forgoing billions of dollars that the feds have set aside for the state to pay for and provide this care.”

This is not about money — if it were, Texas would be taking it. This is about Obamacare. It’s widely believed in Austin that Perry is seriously considering another run for president — this time without the “oops.” His base is Tea Party Republicans across the country. While it might cost $100 billion for the privilege, Perry is going to be able to stand in front of them and say, “I said no to Obama when he tried to bribe my state with health care coverage for the poor.”

And since it’s widely believed that these would-be Medicaid recipients probably don’t vote or, if they do vote, they vote for Democrats, there’s no political price to pay for snubbing them.

Still, there are some Republican legislators who feel bad about not taking the money.

Rep. John Zerwas tried to craft some sort of compromise that never mentioned Medicaid expansion, but he couldn’t get it out of committee — because for Texas Republicans, the very words “health care” now carry the stink of Obamacare.

Zerwas points to “the political realities of having to run for office again in two years, and how much explaining would I have to do as a candidate around a vote that could very easily be framed as a supporter of promoting Obamacare.”

Texas Republicans aren’t worried about the reaction from the left for voting down Medicaid expansion; they’re worried they might get a primary challenge from a Tea Party candidate if the words “health care” pass their lips on the floor of the Legislature. That is, if they’re not already a Tea Party candidate, which many are.

For at least the next two years and probably longer, Medicaid expansion in Texas is dead. What this all means is that more than a million Texans who might have received health care coverage will remain one serious illness or one bad accident away from bankruptcy. And an estimated $100 billion that would have been spent buying health care in Texas will now go somewhere else.

Article source: http://www.npr.org/2013/05/23/186303141/health-officials-decry-texas-snubbing-of-medicaid-billions

The new rates for individuals will be about the same — or lower — than the current rates for small businesses, according to officials from Covered California, the group operating the exchange.

“The changes in the market are really making individuals much more like employer groups,” Paul Markovich, the chief executive of Blue Shield, said. Like people who now receive health insurance through their employers, individuals buying policies on their own will be able to enroll next year even if they have a potentially expensive medical condition, and the policies’ benefits and premiums will be more standardized.

“We held insurers’ feet to the fire,” said Peter V. Lee, the executive director of Covered California, who said that the exchange had received interest from 33 insurers and actively negotiated with them over their proposed rates and the kind of network of doctors and hospitals they would offer. Covered California estimates that the plans offered will allow consumers access to about 80 percent of the state’s practicing physicians and hospitals.

While Washington, Vermont and several other states have also announced the details of their respective exchanges, California’s size and previous support for the health care law made it an important test of the law, said Paul B. Ginsburg, the president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. “A lot of people will be watching California to see how well it succeeds,” he added.

California chose to behave more like Massachusetts in aggressively negotiating with insurers on behalf of its residents. But other states are, at least initially, taking a more passive approach, in which they do not try to bargain over rates.

The 13 plans selected represent a range of insurers, from WellPoint, one of the nation’s largest commercial players, to plans like Alameda Alliance for Health and Molina Healthcare that in the past have specialized in providing coverage to low-income patients through the state’s version of Medicaid. Other entrants include health systems like Sharp HealthCare, a San Diego group of hospitals and doctors that also operates a health plan.

The four largest companies providing coverage to people who are not covered through an employer but buy a policy on their own will all be selling plans in the marketplace. They are Blue Shield; Anthem Blue Cross of California, owned by WellPoint; Kaiser Permanente, the health maintenance organization giant; and Health Net, a commercial insurer based in Los Angeles.

Several other large companies will be absent from the exchange, including the UnitedHealth Group, Aetna and Cigna. Unlike WellPoint, which operates a number of commercial Blue Cross plans that tend to have a sizable business offering individual coverage, the other companies have concentrated on employer coverage and have signaled that they will be cautious about which markets they will enter through the newly created exchanges.

“Aetna is taking a prudent and balanced approach to exchange participation in the first year,” the company said in a statement. “Our decisions about which exchanges to participate on are based on a careful review of key attributes, such as our current market presence, our ability to offer strong networks and competitively priced products and the regulatory environment in each state.”

Under the law, however, some insurers who sit out the first year could decide to enter the marketplace the second or third year. “As the economics, sustainability and dynamics of the exchange continue to become clearer over time, the exchange has the potential to be a growth market with much to offer UnitedHealthcare, other insurers and consumers,” a spokesman for UnitedHealthcare said.

The rates, which still require approval by state regulators, are not final, and officials on Thursday provided a small sampling of rates in areas around the country. In southern Los Angeles, for example, a 40-year-old individual would pay anywhere from $242 a month for a plan from HealthNet to $259 for plans from Molina or Anthem. The comparable plan for a small employer costs $362.

California took the step for 2014 to make sure the plans being offered had standard benefits so the pricing for plans does not vary widely, although there are differences. And some plans, like Anthem, boasted of their affiliation with well-known providers like the University of California hospitals and doctors.

While low-income individuals may still find paying $300 or more a month for a plan to be prohibitively expensive, consumer advocates praised the exchange’s ability to keep premiums in line with what employers pay and say it is a promising first step in the effort to force plans and providers to work harder to offer more affordable insurance.

“Health insurance isn’t cheap but this seems to provide individuals and families the group rate that large employers get,” said Anthony Wright, the executive director of Health Access California, a state consumer advocacy coalition.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/business/california-puts-tentative-price-on-health-policies-under-new-law.html

By
Liz Hull

PUBLISHED:

11:04 EST, 22 May 2013

|

UPDATED:

04:40 EST, 23 May 2013

Convention has it that women worry most about their bodies.

Men, however, are just as concerned, suffering the same lack of confidence about their shape – be it a tomato, brick, snowman or nacho.

Hundreds were asked to give details of their figures, allowing researchers to identify seven types among British males.

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Article source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2329084/Are-nacho-tomato-string-bean-New-research-reveals-7-different-shapes-modern-man.html?ico=health%5Emostread