Medicare’s monthly premium won’t rise in 2009

Good news for millions of American seniors: Medicare’s standard Part B monthly premium in 2009 will remain the same as in 2008, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said Friday.

The $96.40 rate means 2009 will be the first year since 2000 that there hasn’t been an increase in the standard premium over the previous year, the agency said. In addition, the 2009 Part B deductible will be the same in 2009 as it is this year — $135.

Medicare’s Part B program covers the health care of seniors and disabled people. The monthly premium paid by beneficiaries covers a portion of the cost of physicians’ services, outpatient hospital services, certain home health services, durable medical equipment and other items.

While increased use of Part B services is expected in 2009, the higher anticipated costs are “offset by a substantial reduction in the premium ‘margin’ needed to maintain an adequate contingency reserve in the Part B trust fund account,” the CMS explained in a news release.

The Part B premium is based on a beneficiary’s annual income. If gross income is greater than certain amounts ($85,000 in 2009 for a beneficiary filing an individual income tax return or married and filing a separate return, and $170,000 for a beneficiary filing a joint tax return), the beneficiary has to pay a larger portion of the estimated total cost of Part B benefit coverage.

One advocate for Medicare recipients said the decision to keep Plan B premiums the same is “welcome news.”

“News that health care premiums are not going up is rare these days. The stability in the Part B premium is good news for people with Medicare struggling to cope with rising prescription drug costs and medical bills,” Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, said in a news release.

However, the CMS also announced Friday that the Part A deductible will rise $44, to $1,068 in 2009. The Part A program covers hospital and hospice care as well as short stays in nursing homes. About 99 percent of Medicare beneficiaries covered by this program do not pay a monthly premium. The deductible is their only cost for up to 60 days of Medicare-covered inpatient hospital care in a benefit period.

Beneficiaries must pay an additional $267 per day for days 61 through 90 in 2009, and $534 per day for lifetime reserve days that can be used for hospital stays beyond the 90th day in a benefit period. In 2008, those amounts are $256 and $512, respectively. Daily coinsurance for the 21st through 100th day in a skilled nursing facility will be $133.50 in 2009, up from $128 in 2008, the CMS said.

For beneficiaries who have to pay for Part A coverage, the monthly premium will increase from $423 in 2008 to $443 in 2009.

In mid-August, the CMS said the average monthly premium for Medicare’s prescription drug plan will increase from $25 this year to $28 in 2009. The premium for next year is 37 percent lower than originally projected when the Part D drug coverage was introduced in 2003.

National Library of Medicine

Survival rates improve for Kids with Blood Cancers

In the United States, 5- and 10-year survival rates continue to improve for children younger than age 15 diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), acute non-lymphoblastic leukemia, or non Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), says a new study.

Advances in treatment for these diseases have led to increased long-term survival for patients. But most population-based studies include survival data from patients diagnosed in the mid 1990s or before and, therefore, may not reflect current outcomes, according to background information in the study.

In order to assess current trends, researchers compared 5- and 10-year survival estimates for patients diagnosed in 1990-94, 1995-99, and 2000-04, and also developed methods to predict survival in patients diagnosed in 2005-09.

The researchers found that from 1990-94 and 2000-04, 5- and 10-year survival increased from: 80.2 percent to 87.5 percent and from 73.4 percent to 83.8 percent, respectively, for patients with ALL; from 41.9 percent to 59.9 percent and from 38.7 percent to 59.1 percent, respectively, for patients with acute non-lymphoblastic leukemia; and from 76.6 percent to 87.7 percent and from 73.0 percent to 86.9 percent, respectively, for patients with NHL.

For children diagnosed in 2005, the estimated 10-year survival rate was 88.0 percent for ALL patients, 63.9 percent for patients with acute non-lymphoblastic leukemia, and 90.6 percent for NHL patients.

“Our period analysis revealed that survival after diagnosis with childhood hematologic malignancies has improved greatly over the past decade,” the study authors concluded. “Improvements in survival in childhood hematologic malignancies are most likely attributable to changes in how these diseases are treated.”

The study was published in the Sept. 9 online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Source: NLM

Stand up to Cancer raises $100M

In an unusual merging of the usually competitive three major television networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – the Friday night “Stand Up To Cancer” (SU2C) telethon raised more than $100 million for cancer research.  The figure included money raised from viewers since the campaign officially began, on May 28, 2008.

According to ABC’s website the telethon reached an estimated 170 countries and territories and was the most-watched show on broadcast television according to Nielsen Media Research.

A spectacular line up of talent including Jennifer Aniston, James Taylor, Scarlett Johansson, Meryl Streep, David Cook, Christina Applegate, Lance Armstrong, Jack Black, Kirsten Dunst, Charles Barkley, America Ferrera, Halle Berry, Hilary Swank, Forrest Whitaker, Jimmy Fallon, Keanu Reeves made personal appearances on the show.

SU2C funds will support research projects conducted by interdisciplinary, multi-institutional translational and clinical research “Dream Teams” and high-risk Innovative Research Grants from which ideas for new Dream Teams may arise. The funds will be administered through the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the largest scientific organization in the world focusing on every aspect of high-quality, innovative cancer research.

The Entertainment Industry Foundation is a charitable organization whose head, Lisa Paulsen, vowed that 100 percent of the money would go directly to fund research.

Cancer, the uncontrolled growth of diseased cells, spreads through the body invading healthy organs. The newly discovered map of genetic mutations behind some of the most aggressive cancers – glioblastoma and pancreatic cancer – are offering hope for new diagnostic tests and better treatments.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the country after heart disease, and The American Cancer Society predicts that 1,437,180 new cancer cases will be diagnosed this year alone.   More than 500,000 in the U.S. die from cancer which takes more than six million worldwide each year.

Active Video Games Help Kids Exercise

Video games and kids is a subject that spawns multiple debates in a household.  A question as simple as ‘Do I let my kids play video games?’ is followed with concerns as to whether certain video games lead to problems for kids such as increased violence, school performance, attention spans, and obesity.

A recent study from the University of Hong Kong provides some evidence that active video games can help address some exercise and health concerns.  According to this new study children playing active video games have higher heart rates and burn four times as many calories a minute than children playing passive video games.

“Technological change in our homes, schools and workplaces has meant the amount of walking we do has declined significantly, and in its place, disproportionately greater amounts of time are spent seated,” said lead researcher Alison M. McManus, from the university’s Institute of Human Performance. “With childhood obesity posing the largest international health riddle, converting seated activities into active ones is an important goal.”

Parents need to be creative in their endeavors to get children active, McManus said. Children play video games, because it is fun, exciting and challenging, but it is largely conducted seated, she added.

“The children in this study had a lot of fun playing media games and burnt up calories, showing that making video game media active can certainly help in our efforts to get children active,” McManus said. “The challenge is for industry to continue developing new and exciting games that integrate physical activity into the virtual game environment.”

The report was published in the September issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Susan Finn, chairwoman of the American Council for Fitness & Nutrition, noted there needs to be a balance between how much children eat and the amount of exercise they get.

“When it comes to obesity, the other part of the equation is the consumption of calories,” Finn said. “This half of the solution is often more difficult. The American Council for Fitness and Nutrition has partnered with PE4life and The American Dietetic Association Foundation to teach energy balance — what you do and what you eat has to be in balance. This report deals with half of the equation and demonstrates that there are many ways to get kids active,” she said.

Common Sense Media is a great resource for parents in understanding media content and media’s impact on children.  They list the top titles for getting your kids moving as part of a series of top media picks.

Best Games to Get Your Kids Moving

V-Motion Active Learning System Wii-type gaming for wee ones can get them moving.
Wii Fit Exercise is a blast on the Wii Balance Board.
We Ski Ideal for the Wii Balance Board and skiing fans.
Wii Sports Inclusive sports played a new way. Fun for all!
Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix Good entry level DDR game for kids.
Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party Adds arm movements; some lyrics are a bit iffy.
Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA Perfect way to get kids moving!
Karaoke Revolution Party Now with dancing! Great for kids — and parents, too.
Smart Cycle A video gaming system that works by bike-riding.
ION Educational Gaming System Eye Toy-type games get preschoolers moving!
Dance Factory No-frills dancing game adds new step: Your music.
DDR Max 2 This creative — and aerobic — game gets the whole family moving and grooving.

Source: National Library of Medicine, Common Sense Media

First Pediatric HIV/AIDS Clinic in Tanzania

The Abbott Fund joined representatives from the U.S. government, Baylor College of Medicine, the government of Tanzania and other partners today at a U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in the construction of the first pediatric HIV/AIDS clinic in the country.  The clinic will be in the Mbeya region of Tanzania.

To date, the Abbott Fund has provided a total of more than $28 million in grants and donated products to support the treatment of children with HIV in the developing world.

“Building this clinic represents an important expansion in Abbott’s commitment to improving access to care for children in the developing world during the last decade,” said Catherine V. Babington, president, the Abbott Fund. “It fulfills a critical need in Tanzania, where we have been improving health systems not only for people with HIV, but also for those with other chronic health issues as well.” The new clinic will bring the first pediatricians trained in the special needs of children with HIV to Mbeya.

It is estimated that there are currently more than 150,000 (UNAIDS 2008) children in Tanzania living with HIV/AIDS and in need of treatment and care. Mbeya has the second highest rate of HIV in the country, with a prevalence rate of more than 13 percent among a population of more than two million. According to the National AIDS Control Project (NACP), last year only 2,280 children were registered to receive care with half receiving antiretroviral (ARV) therapy. In contrast, almost 16,000 adults in Mbeya are on ARV therapy.

“While we are making progress in enrolling adults into HIV care and treatment, our services for children have severely lagged behind due to lack of trained physicians and other necessary resources,” said Eleuter Samky, M.D., medical superintendent, Mbeya Referral Hospital. “We expect the new center of excellence to accelerate our ability to make progress against our national treatment goals for children with HIV.” The NACP goal is to have children comprise 20 percent of all people on treatment in Tanzania, 88,000 children, by 2010.

The Mbeya center of excellence represents a unique partnership between the government of Tanzania, Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI) and the U.S. government, supported by the Abbott Fund. The Abbott Fund is committing more than $2 million to the project, which will be run by BIPAI. The clinic will be staffed by physicians from BIPAI and the Pediatric AIDS Corps, while physicians and other health workers from the region will be trained in the special needs of caring for children with HIV. The U.S. government will provide funds for the ongoing operations of the clinic through the PEPFAR program.

“The Mbeya center of excellence will provide the foundation for pediatric HIV treatment for the foreseeable future, helping not only to save children’s lives but increase health care worker capacity in the country,” said Mark W. Kline, M.D., president, Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. “We are confident that we will see the profound improvements in children’s health in Mbeya that we have seen across Africa when integrating pediatric HIV clinics into national AIDS programs.” Today, the BIPAI network clinics treat more than 26,000 children, representing the largest population of treated children with HIV in the developing world.

The Tanzania center is modeled after the pioneering work conducted by BIPAI and supported by the Abbott Fund at the Romanian-American Children’s Center, which opened in April of 2001 in Constanta, Romania. In this approach, children are not only provided antiretroviral medicine and other medical treatment, but are supported by a comprehensive program to address both the children’s and their family’s other daily needs. This program has reduced pediatric AIDS mortality by more than 90 percent in Constanta –– the epicenter of pediatric HIV in Europe.

In 2007, BIPAI opened the first pediatric HIV care clinic in Malawi, also supported by the Abbott Fund. This original clinic has now expanded to include satellite clinics in rural areas, treating nearly 2,300 children with HIV.

Epilepsy drug may help alcoholics

University of Michigan researchers have found that an epilepsy drug might reduce insomnia, and help alcoholics become sober again.

Alcoholics are highly likely to suffer from chronic insomnia that keeps them from getting enough night sleep, and the condition reduces of recovering from alcohol dependence.  However, doctors don’t normally prescribe insomnia medications, because most sleeping pills can be habit-forming or have adverse
effects due to an alcohol-damaged liver.

The University of Michigan alcoholism and sleep researchers recent study may offer some sign of a possible way out of this conundrum.

The study, published in the August issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, suggests that the drug gabapentin might be able to reduce insomnia in recovering alcoholics, and help
them stay away from alcohol more successfully. The drug, often used to treat epilepsy and chronic pain, is not habit-forming and is not processed by the liver.

Although the study involved only 21 insomniacs in recovery from alcohol dependence, and did not provide long-term gabapentin treatment or long-term follow-up on their sleep or their alcohol recovery, it was
randomized, placebo-controlled, and double-blinded. In all, 30 percent of the patients who received gabapentin during alcohol recovery relapsed to drinking, compared with 80 percent of those who received a
placebo.

Based on the results, the researchers have already launched additional studies of the potential role of gabapentin in alcohol recovery and sleep.

“We showed that the patients who got the real drug, rather than placebo, were less likely to relapse to drinking — or if they relapsed it was later,” says lead author Kirk Brower, M.D., FASAM, the executive
director of U-M Addiction Treatment Services and a professor of psychiatry at the U-M Medical School. “In other words, gabapentin prevented and delayed relapse. Meanwhile, patients reported sleeping
better in both the treatment and placebo groups, which may be due to the gabapentin in the first group and the resumption of drinking in the other.”

“We showed that the patients who got the real drug, rather than placebo, were less likely to relapse to drinking — or if they relapsed it was later,” said lead author Dr Kirk Brower, FASAM, the executive director of U-M Addiction Treatment Services and a professor of psychiatry at the U-M Medical School.

“In other words, gabapentin prevented and delayed relapse. Meanwhile, patients reported sleeping better in both the treatment and placebo groups, which may be due to the gabapentin in the first group and the resumption of drinking in the other,” he added.

Co-author Dr. Flavia Consens, an associate professor of neurology and member of the U-M Sleep Disorders Centre said that as many as 70 percent of people with alcohol problems suffer insomnia, while others cope with other sleep disturbances including breathing problems known as sleep apnea.

Americans drinking less alcohol

Americans are drinking less alcohol, with middle-aged people consuming about one-third less than 50 years ago, researchers report.

Overall, Americans are drinking less beer, but more wine, while consumption of hard liquor has remained fairly constant. Also, more people say they don’t drink, and those born later in the 20th century are more moderate drinkers than their parents.

“It looks like moderate drinking has been increasing, heavy drinking is down a little bit, and total alcohol consumption is down a little bit,” said lead researcher Dr. R. Curtis Ellison, a professor of medicine and public health at Boston University School of Medicine.

“It is encouraging news that more people are drinking moderately, and the average intake is coming down rather than shooting up,” he said.

For the study, Ellison’s team collected data on 8,000 people who took part in the Framingham Heart Study. People in the initial arm of the study were born before 1900 up until 1959. Those from the initial enrollment group as well as their children were interviewed every four years from 1948 to 2003 about their alcohol consumption.

Ellison explained that the Framingham study consists primarily of white, middle-class individuals from the Massachusetts town of the same name. “It generally tends to reflect trends within the country among middle-class, white Americans,” he said.

The researchers found that, overall, people are drinking less. “People drank about a third more back in the ’50s and ’60s than they did in the ’70s up to 2004,” Ellison said.

There’s been a gradual decrease in the average amount of alcohol people drink. For instance, alcohol consumption among men has gone from about two-and-a-half drinks a day to one-and-a-half drinks a day, Ellison said.

“At the same time, there’s been a decrease in beer and an increase in wine consumption among people. But the average intake has decreased,” he said.

As for liquor, the average intake has remained pretty much the same, he added.

Despite the decline in alcohol consumption, the risk of alcohol dependence did not show a corresponding decrease, the study also found.

“We don’t know why alcohol consumption has gone down,” Ellison said. “The data are very clear that light to moderate drinking, without binge drinking, is generally good for health, whereas a larger amount of binge drinking is bad. It looks like, in this population, it’s going in the right direction.”

The study findings were published in the August issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

David L. Katz, director of the Yale University School of Medicine Prevention Research Center, noted that during “recent decades, the messages about alcohol have increasingly emphasized the potential to derive both pleasure and health benefits from wine, provided the dose is prudent. The trends in this study suggest those messages are having an impact, at least in Framingham, Massachusetts. Among those not vulnerable to alcohol abuse, intake patterns appear to be shifting in accord with expert recommendations.”

New Book Helps Stroke Survivors and Families

Someone in the United States has a stroke every 40 seconds on average and stroke is the third leading cause of death according to the American Heart Association. Ron Gardner, survivor of a severe stroke, understands what it feels like to have his life changed forever. He has made it his personal mission to better the lives of the other more than five million survivors and their loved ones with his new book, Take Brave Steps for Stroke Survivors and Families – A Message of Motivation and Hope.

The book teaches how motivation meets inspiration following a life altering event. Unlike other books, Gardner leads readers from “bitter to better.” He shares his heart-felt personal tragedies and triumphs over stroke and he guides survivors through the Take Brave Steps™ process, including Tips, Self-Reflections, and Exercises.

Ron explains how the book came to be.  “On the morning of November 5, 1997, I woke up and my life had changed forever. I had suffered a severe stroke in my sleep and when I woke up, I was paralyzed on my right side and barely able to speak.”

The issue was Ron did not immediately seek medical attention, and the focus of the book is to help people better understand what to do, and how to deal with all the challenges that come with a stroke.

“I did something terribly stupid. I was in denial and I said to myself, “This isn’t happening to me. I’ll walk this off. My foot is asleep.” Well that was the wrong thing to do. After more than six hours, I called my wife at work and alerted her that something had gone wrong and we finally went to the emergency room.  Unfortunately, I had suffered six more hours of brain damage. I hope others will learn to call 9-1-1 immediately if they have any similar symptoms.

“It took me approximately one year to learn to walk and talk again.  My wife and I found there was very little information related to the mental, emotional and social and family challenges we faced available. I decided to close that information gap and help millions of others by writing the book.”

“What makes this book special is that I share very personal accounts of the suffering and how I prevailed over the illness and that is where the reader’s journey to empowerment and wellness begins. I invite them to get actively involved with their own recovery by participating in self-reflections, tips and other helpful Brave Step tools.”

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