Medicare has expanded its list of preventive care services that you can get for free, without having to pay a coinsurance or deductible. These preventive care services are recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to keep you healthy or prevent illness. They include annual wellness visits, flu shots, and tests like prostate cancer [...]

glucose levels by 39 mg/dL. How Do Statins Cause Diabetes? Statins appear to provoke diabetes through a few different mechanisms. The most important reason is that they increase your insulin levels, which can be extremely harmful to your health. While you need some insulin to maintain your blood glucose levels, elevated insulin levels causes chronic [...]

Vitamin D There’s overwhelming evidence pointing to the fact that vitamin D deficiency plays a crucial role in cancer development. Researchers within this field have estimated that about 30 percent of cancer deaths — which amounts to 2 million worldwide and 200,000 in the United States — could be prevented each year simply by optimizing [...]

Older Americans who live in areas with a higher number of primary care doctors are hospitalized less, a new study shows. Researchers at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice looked at the hospital claims for more than five million people with Medicare in 2007. Results show that people with Medicare living in [...]

Bone mass measurements (sometimes called “bone density tests”) are given to evaluate your bone’s health by assessing your bone quality, calculating your bone mass and detecting any bone loss. Bone mass measurements can help determine if you need medical treatment for osteoporosis, a condition that causes “brittle bones” in many older adults. Starting January 1, [...]

As regular visitors to this space are aware, I have long held that the main failing of “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (PPACA) is that it ignores actuarial reality and undermines the statistical foundation of private health insurance. As a result, the PPACA inevitably will lead to the destruction of private health care [...]

In my previous posting, I discussed the ruling of U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson that struck down The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law by President Obama one year ago this month. Judge Vincent held that the health insurance reform turned the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution upside down, defining the [...]

Lawyers for the federal government contended that the decision not to purchase health insurance constituted an economic activity of the type that Congress could regulate. Judge Vinson ruled that this argument turned the whole notion of “ activity” on its head.

If Congress continues to put off cutting doctor payments, the cost of Medicare will continue to rise, offsetting $300 billion of the Medicare cuts used to “pay” for Healthcare Reform and adding billions more to the deficit.

Ironically, the very benefits the president touted—unlimited annual and lifetime medical benefits and unlimited access to medical care despite serious pre-existing conditions—are unsustainable. As I have written before, one cannot increase benefits without increasing premiums, and one cannot pay unlimited benefits without unlimited premiums. The Republicans seem to grasp this essential aspect of actuarial science, and they have vowed to educate the public about it.