- Teen birth rates hit historic low in U.S., By Ryan Jaslow, February 11, 2013, CBS News: “Teen birth rates appear to have reached historic lows. A new study from researchers at the government’s National Center for Health Statistics shows the U.S. teen birth rate has continued its recent declines to hit a record low of 31.3 births per 1,000 women in 2011. That’s good news, considering teen pregnancy could increase health risks for both mom and baby. Teens who are pregnant are more likely to experience complications like pregnancy-induced hypertension, anemia, preeclampsia and premature birth…”
- U.S. birth rate hit historic low in 2011, CDC says, By Michael Smith, February 11, 2013, ABC News: “Americans had fewer babies in 2011 than in any year before, according to an annual summary of vital statistics. In 2011, 3,953,593 babies were born in the U.S. — 1 percent fewer than in 2010 and 4 percent fewer than in 2009, according to Brady Hamilton, PhD, of the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues at the agency and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. That number, combined with population data, yielded a crude birth rate of 12.7 per 1,000 people, the lowest rate ever reported for the nation, they reported online and in the March 2013 issue of Pediatrics…”
Author: townsend
Medicaid and Dental Care – Colorado
Dental treatment not reaching most Medicaid-eligible youth, By Jeffrey A. Roberts, February 10, 2013, The Coloradoan: “When she was 3, Torrie Smith tripped on an uneven sidewalk, fell face down onto some steps and broke four front teeth. An emergency room doctor stopped the bleeding and gave her something for the pain, but Torrie didn’t get to a dentist for six months — her first time ever to a dentist — because her parents didn’t have dental insurance and didn’t have cash to pay for an examination. Now 4, Torrie’s dental problems are so severe she has to go to an operating room, not a dentist’s chair, to have them fixed. While she is under anesthesia, an abscessed incisor will be pulled and nine other cavity-ravaged teeth will be pulled or treated. Torrie’s toothaches, along with the risk and high cost associated with curing them, probably could have been avoided. She is like many children in low-income families in Colorado who rarely, if ever, see a dentist even though they can go for free…”
States and Medicaid Expansion
- Some GOP politicians drop their resistance to Medicaid expansion, By Dave Helling, February 6, 2013, Kansas City Star: “Cracks continue to develop in the Republican Party’s concrete opposition to Obamacare’s state expansions of Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor. Whether those fissures will crumble Medicaid opposition in Kansas and Missouri, though, remains very much in doubt. On Wednesday, Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan became the sixth GOP governor out of 30 to recommend expanding Medicaid eligibility in their state…”
- Medicaid expansion divides GOP governors, By Paul West, February 7, 2013, Los Angeles Times: “Some of the nation’s most prominent Republican governors have moved to embrace a key feature of President Obama’s healthcare law, providing a significant boost to the administration and highlighting a fissure inside the GOP on an emerging campaign issue. At stake is the goal of expanding health insurance under the Medicaid program, one of two main ways the law is to provide coverage to those who lack it. Starting in 2014, the law broadens Medicaid to cover people who earn up to about $15,500 a year, but under last year’s Supreme Court decision upholding the law’s constitutionality, states have the option of rejecting the expansion and the federal money that comes with it…”