Hump Day Headlines!

Neither Crohn's disease nor corneal abrasion nor major tooth pain can stop your intrepid reporter (me) from bringing you the news!

Today, we welcome FAIR Health to Connecticut to give a presentation to those of us who do a lot of work with health insurance.  I'm so pleased that they are willing to come and show us all of their great tools.  First, though, we have to get down to business!

Community health centers -- perhaps the most important health care delivery system for the poor -- are struggling to keep quality up as they fall short on vaccinations, diabetes control.  

Health reform has funded the creation of hundreds of jobs.  What happens if the Supreme Court strikes down the entire law?  The health care sector has remained strong despite the recession, but if health reform goes away, so will a whole lot of money and a whole lot of jobs.

Guess what?  Drug testing welfare recipients doesn't save a state any money.  Now, can we stop treating welfare recipients like criminals please?

There are two new, counter-intuitive studies that say that obesity is no worse in poor neighborhoods where it can be hard to get fruits and veggies.  These studies show that there is no connection between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and childhood obesity rates.  Hmmm.

A new blood test may be able to diagnose depression.   A challenging diagnosis -- and we may be close to nailing it down.  Great news.

This comes as no surprise to me -- a positive outlook improves your health.  You have more control over what's going on with your body than you may realize. 

Working towards a new social contract in health care.  Getting the results of research out to treatment faster and better.  It's great that the research sector is thinking like this. 

Have you ever thought about going vegan?  It's a huge challenge -- unless, of course, you have a personal chef!

And that's it for this morning -- a light news day.  Then again, no news is good news, so I'm not complaining.  Have a great day!  Jennifer