PUBLIC MARKS from jasontromm with tag health

On Tuesday, January 23, President Bush delivered his 2007 State of the Union Address. While there were some things in the speech that were, on the whole, good, on most matters the President continued to show no appreciation for the concept of limited (particularly federal) government, and he continues to conflate the ideas of national defense and security with his stubborn continuation of his Administration’s tragic war of choice in Iraq. On the positive side, the President's health care proposal to allow replace an unlimited employer health care expense deduction with standard deductions for individuals, while not perfect, is a large step in the badly needed direction of breaking the link between employment and health insurance in this nation. It would stop federal tax discrimination against people who are not covered by employer-provided insurance. It would, as the President said, make health care more affordable for more Americans.

Proposals include income tax cuts, land conservation, more police Gov. Mark Sanford today will unveil his $6.5 billion state spending plan, which if adopted by the Legislature, would cut income taxes, put more officers on the street and set aside money for paying health care costs and preserving land. Sanford has already proposed boosting tourism -- the state’s largest industry -- by increasing money for local tourism and commerce groups to advertise their cities. Sanford has also proposed conserving more land and bringing broadband Internet to rural areas.

There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular.

An abortion business in Huntsville, Ala., should be closed down after the state Health Department cited the location for violating 10 state laws, according to the front-line pro-life Operation Rescue. According to officials, the Alabama Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives was found to have been forwarding after-hours medical emergencies to non-medical personnel, routinely failing to document the gestational age of the unborn baby, and releasing abortion patients without following the mandatory 20-minute recovery period, according to a statement from Operation Rescue.

Recent investigations at abortion clinics in several states have shown that such businesses are not just a danger to unborn children, but also to the immediate health and welfare of the mothers that enter their doors. In the past two months, Alabama's health department has shut down two of the state's 10 abortion clinics for health code violations and Florida's health department has shut down five.

Half a dozen abortion clinics in Florida and Alabama have had their doors locked after state health boards became concerned by alleged rule and drug violations, including claims of an illegal late-term procedure in Florida.

An Ohio school board is expanding sex education following the revelation that 13 percent of one high school's female students were pregnant last year. There were 490 female students at Timken High School in 2005, and 65 were pregnant, WEWS-TV in Cleveland reported. The new Canton school board program promotes abstinence but also will teach students who decide to have sex how to do so responsibly, bringing the city school district's health curriculum in line with national standards. ()() Sounds like they're closing the barn door after the horses have gotten out.

More than 50,000 South Carolina Medicaid recipients are eligible for colorectal cancer screenings through a program administered by the Health and Human Services Department. ()() This is a waste of taxpayer money. The state medicaid program will only pay $300 -- $400 dollars for this procedure. The procedure typically costs at least 4 times that much. Who's going to pay the rest of the cost? People with private insurance will get charged even more for the same procedure.

In an age when we continue to debate "a woman's right to choose" when it comes to a girl aborting her baby and we are told that it is the girl's body and no one else should make decisions affecting it, a boy has no such rights. A girl can be given birth control by the school nurse and even abortion information without her parents knowledge or consent, but a boy can be prohibited from making decisions that affect his life and body. At least the courts are consistent. They forbid parental involvement in either case. In some states, though, parents are held responsible for their kids' illegal and anti-social behavior. Why is it that parents supposedly have power to keep their kids from committing crimes, but can be denied power when it comes to their child's health and welfare?

Record numbers of patients are overwhelming local medical clinics for the poor, Carolinas HealthCare System officials say, and the hospital wants more public money to help cover rising costs. For the past decade, Mecklenburg County has paid CHS and Presbyterian Healthcare $17.8 million per year to subsidize the costs of treating those who cannot pay for health care. ()()Wonder how many of the people overwhelming these clinics are illegal aliens?

What's worse than legalized abortions? How about legalized abortions performed by a dangerously - and maybe criminally - inept staff that violates state rules, leading to the death of an almost full-term baby? What follows, with information provided by a State Board of Health suspension order, is a scene as gruesome as a slasher film - except it's real life. Or, more accurately, death.

Leave it to the Dutch to help demonstrate the health benefits of chocolate. A study of older men in The Netherlands, known for its luscious chocolate, indicated those who ate the equivalent of one-third of a chocolate bar every day had lower blood pressure and a reduced risk of death.

A state House committee voted to ban most abortions in Mississippi, which already has some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation. The bill approved by the House Public Health Committee on Tuesday would allow abortion only to save the pregnant woman's life. It would make no exception in cases of rape or incest.

Parents want to trust their doctors, but we also need doctors to become more involved in the vaccination process -- a process that, unfortunately, is dominated by the government.

With Social Security on a back burner, U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint is devoting his energy to health care and expanding savings accounts that he says will make people better consumers and drive down costs.

Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, but not because the Supreme Court presumed to legalize abortion rather than ban it. Roe was wrongly decided because abortion simply is not a constitutional issue. There is not a word in the text of that document, nor in any of its amendments, that conceivably addresses abortion. There is no serious argument based on the text of the Constitution itself that a federal "right to abortion" exists. The federalization of abortion law is based not on constitutional principles, but rather on a social and political construct created out of thin air by the Roe court.

West Virginia, which has one of the nation's worst obesity problems, is expanding a project that uses a video game to boost students' physical activity.

The White House has been dropping hints that the president will make health-care reform the centerpiece of his State of the Union address. The Bush administration's health care record is, to put it delicately, inconsistent. It has supported efforts to remove government influence over the health care sector, such as health savings accounts (HSAs). On the other hand, the president signed into law the largest expansion of federal power over health care in generations the ill-fated Medicare drug program.

The Democrats are trying to "reframe" their message to make people think they believe abortion is wrong. I think this is going to be a hard sell if they plan to continue ferociously defending abortion-on-demand right up until the moment the baby's head is through the birth canal.

Researcher believes results could undermine basis of laws A new study finds women who have an abortion in their youth raise the risk of developing depression, anxiety and other mental health problems.

Policy choices by U.S. officials have made the nation more vulnerable to an avian flu pandemic and other infectious diseases, say health experts.

Government should not be in the health insurance business We advocate a complete separation of medicine from the state. We oppose any government restriction or funding of medical or scientific research, including cloning. We support an end to government-provided health insurance and health care. Government’s role in any kind of insurance should only be to enforce contracts when necessary, not to dictate to insurance companies and consumers which kinds of insurance contracts they may voluntarily agree upon.

Just who is responsible for the problems with America's health care delivery system?

The politicians are pushing to raise the cost of your health insurance again. Of course, that's not how they describe what they're doing. They claim to be exercising compassion when they propose to force insurance companies to include mental illness in every health-insurance policy.

Fatter derrieres are causing many drug injections to miss their mark, requiring longer needles to reach buttock muscle, researchers said on Monday.