Thursday Themes

My favorite!  A NY Times diagnosis puzzle.  Some day, it's going to be one of the rare diseases we've learned about from doing insurance appeals and I'm gonna win!  Maybe today is your day!

You couldn't undergo a bone marrow transplant without confronting insurance issues.  And so, the NY Times blogger describes what the financial aspects of being sick felt like to her.  "If you have a chronic illness in America, there’s a good chance you also hold a degree in Health Insurance 101, whether you want to or not," she says.  Absolutely.  You should read this -- it will ring true with many of you.

Paid sick leave may reduce workplace injuries, a new study says. There's not much explanation why, but they do make the point that fewer injuries means lower worker's comp premiums, so paid sick leave may not be as expensive as some think.

Promising results from a clinical trial of a prenatal test that will be better are predicting genetic abnormalities like autism and mental retardation.  Sounds like a good thing until you read that the test won't tell you if a small abnormality will actually be harmful, so this leaves the parents with great uncertainty and anxiety. 

Cholesterol levels in kids are down significantly -- good news in the midst of all the chatter about increased obesity and diabetes rates.  But blue collar workers are the least healthy due to higher rates of obesity and smoking.

Surprisingly, in the very old, high blood pressure may be a good thing.  Apparently, several studies have shown that high blood pressure may signify longer life.  Hmmm.  And here's another head-scratcher -- type 2 diabetes patients who were normal weight succumbed to the disease more often than those who were obese.  The theory on that one is that doctors probably treat obese patients more aggressively. 

And that's the health news today.  It's a hot and muggy one -- stay cool and have a great day!  Jennifer