This week - As Congress readies to repeal the Affordable Care Act, federal funding for Planned Parenthood is next on the list of Republican targets. ... How sick is too sick to keep your child home from school? ... Some states are seeing a rise in the number of vaccine exemptions even as exemptions are down across the entire U.S. ... Read on ...
That Vow To Defund Planned Parenthood: Easy To Say, Hard To Do
Repealing the Affordable Care Act is difficult; repealing funding for Planned Parenthood might be just as difficult. The health organization gets almost half of all its funding from federal, state and local governments including about $390 million annually from Medicaid. Untangling all the funding sources could prove a daunting task, reports Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News.
Keep Your Sick Child Home? Rules Often Conflict
Your child is sick with a cold or a stomach ache or something. Just keep them home, that's the best decision, right? Not so fast. Day care centers often more defined rules for keeping children home than elementary schools. A good starting point: if you don't think your kid is going to have a successful day at school. But experts say that pink eye or a single episode of vomiting might not, on their own, be enough to keep a child away from others, reports Katherine Hobson of NPR.
What Happens To Addiction Treatment If Obamacare Is Repealed?
Side Effects' Jake Harper reports: "Scrapping the Affordable Care Act puts health coverage in question for roughly 11 million Americans who gained Medicaid coverage under the law, including 250,000 Hoosiers on the Healthy Indiana Plan, now known as HIP 2.0." And part of that coverage for people in Indiana includes addiction treatment. The uncertainty of that has some advocates worried that helping people leave drugs or alcohol behind will be more difficult.
Also from Indiana: Bill Introduced To Raise Cigarette Tax, Increase Prevention Spending In Indiana
Quick Hits
"Soda? No. Potato Chips? No." That's not an internal dialogue, that's your doctor literally walking the grocery aisles with you to help you make good food choices.
Fewer U.S. families are opting out of vaccines for their kids, but in some states, vaccine exemptions are rising.
Some advocates want the government to pay for only four kinds of foods in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps: grains, vegetables, legumes and fruits.
The city of Everett, Wash., is suing the maker of OxyContinalleging that the maker turned a blind eye to criminal trafficking of its pills and reaped "obscene" profits.
N.J. Gov. Chris Christie wants to limit how many opioid pills doctors can initially prescribe in an effort to stem the opioid addiction epidemic.
Some people say FDA advice on seafood consumption for pregnant women has scared women away from eating seafood altogether.
