As the population ages and people live longer in bad shape, the number of older Americans who fall and suffer serious, even fatal, injuries is soaring. So the retirement communities, assisted living facilities and nursing homes where millions of Americans live are trying to balance safety and their residents' desire to live as they choose. Those who study and manage retirement facilities and nursing homes say there is heightened attention to preventing falls. Trying to anticipate hazardous conditions, retirement facilities like The Sequoias hire architects and interior designers, some of whom wear special glasses that show the building as an old person would see it.
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson are among the witnesses who expected to testify on the government's response to Ebola at an upcoming Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. The committee announced the witnesses on Thursday and moved the hearing to Nov. 12, after the midterm elections. Other witnesses expected to testify include Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, as well as officials from the State Department, Defense Department, U.S. Agency for International Development and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The largest U.S. nurses union is planning a day of action in mid-November to protest the lack of federally enforced safety precautions against Ebola. National Nurses United (NNU) announced it will hold events in at least 13 states and the District of Columbia to call attention to the issue. The group has been one of the most vocal critics of the federal response to Ebola, arguing the best way to prepare for a pandemic would be to impose new training and protection requirements for healthcare workers.
A leading health insurance expert warned Thursday that if the Supreme Court rules against Obamacare subsidies for millions of HealthCare.gov customers the political backlash would be severe for Republican opponents of the law and efforts to fix it. "You're just going to have blood in the streets," said Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates on the eve of the high court's expected decision on whether or not to hear a challenge to the federally funded subsidies. "The politics of this, if this just goes through, are devastating."
U.S. insurers planning to sell 2015 Obamacare health plans expect at least 20 percent growth in customers and in some states anticipate more than doubling sign-ups. In interviews with Reuters, half a dozen privately held and non-profit health insurers around the country say they are expecting this growth based on interest from potential customers they are hearing about through their call centers, sales forces and brokers. With the start of enrollment barely two weeks away, their assessment is dramatically different from a year ago, when it was unclear how many Americans would apply for the brand new insurance and income-based subsidies offered under President Barack Obama?s healthcare law.
The first year of the Affordable Care Act in Mississippi was, by almost every measure, an unmitigated disaster. In a state stricken by diabetes, heart disease, obesity and the highest infant mortality rate in the nation, President Barack Obama's landmark health care law has barely registered, leaving the country's poorest and perhaps most segregated state trapped in a severe and intractable health care crisis. "There are wide swaths of Mississippi where the Affordable Care Act is not a reality," Conner Reeves, who led Obamacare enrollment for the University of Mississippi Medical Center, told me when we met in the state capital of Jackson.