Health Care
(Reuters) People who ate a low-fat vegan diet, cutting out all meat and dairy, lowered their blood sugar more and lost more weight than people on a standard American Diabetes Association diet, researchers said on Thursday.
Might be worth a shot...
Heads up, Americans. The Bush administration is now greasing the skids for employers to drop your health coverage. This is a biggie.
Radical change was not the headline when the president unfurled his latest proposals for health savings accounts. It was presented mainly as a sensible-sounding way for people without medical insurance to buy it with pre-tax dollars, the same way companies do.
Bush's new HSA is actually a rocket-powered tax shelter dressed up as a sweet little program to help the uninsured. It would also undermine the traditional health coverage now offered by employers. (More on that in a minute.) And in case anyone still cares about deficits, it would cost the Treasury $156 billion in lost tax revenues over 10 years — more than wiping out any savings Bush hopes to achieve with his cuts in projected Medicare spending.
Demonically, the Bush proposal gives employers new reasons not to offer traditional health coverage, or any medical benefits at all. Indeed, the new health savings accounts could do to the traditional health plan what the 401(k) plan did to the traditional pension: Kill it off.
In other words, on this bill, a bill that changed the fundamental structure of the federal government's largest health care program, the majority did everything it could to prevent the House from taking "clear positions" on "clear issues" related to Medicare reform.
We were very disappointed, but not surprised, to learn later that the bill would give the pharmaceutical companies billions of taxpayer dollars at the expense of America's seniors, and that Rep. Billy Tauzin, one of the authors of the Medicare bill, had negotiated a $2 million a year job for himself heading the drug industry lobby during the period the conference was producing its report.
How can I possibly hope to win without getting monetary donations?
