Enlarge Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty Images

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, (left) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, present their plan for changing Medicare at the U.S. Capitol Thursday.

Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty Images

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, (left) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, present their plan for changing Medicare at the U.S. Capitol Thursday.

There's not much that's new in the Medicare proposal just unveiled by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.)

So why is it getting so much attention? One word. No, not plastics. Politics!

Sure, the proposal is quite a bit different from the controversial plan authored by Ryan and passed by the House in April that would essentially turn Medicare into a voucher program. The latest one, like Ryan's original, would include a cap on total Medicare spending and feature more private competition than under the current program, though.

But Wyden, at a briefing at held by the Bipartisan Policy Center, said he was careful in negotiating with Ryan to ensure that the current proposal, which would not be introduced in legislative form until after the 2012 election, preserves the things progressive Democrats value most in Medicare.

 

"The first of course, was to make sure traditional Medicare, with its marketplace clout, popularity among seniors, low administrative costs, was preserved for all time," he said. At the same time, he said, the compromise with Ryan represents a "more reasonable approach" to limiting growth, and making sure that if costs did grow they wouldn't "automatically hammer the seniors."

Wyden's fellow Democrats aren't sure he's doing them such a big favor. They think he's more likely letting Ryan and his fellow Republicans off the hook just as Dems are using Medicare as a club on the campaign trail.

"We are concerned that Wyden-Ryan, like Congressman Ryan's earlier proposal, would undermine, rather than strengthen, Medicare," said a statement from White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. "The Wyden-Ryan scheme could, over time, cause the traditional Medicare program to 'wither on the vine' because it would raise premiums, forcing many seniors to leave traditional Medicare and joint private plans."

Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), the longtime chairman and now ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means health subcommittee said the measure still does "end Medicare as we know it, plain and simple." Said Stark, "if these two get their way, senior citizens' health coverage will depend on what big insurance offers and what seniors â€" most of them on modest, fixed incomes â€" can afford."

Ethan Rome, head of the advocacy group Health Care for America Now, said the proposal is "just another version of the Ryan Republican plan to do away with Medicare and bankrupt seniors, but this time it's got one Democrat on board."

Just because Wyden's on board "doesn't make it bipartisan," Rome said, and the latest plan would ultimately replace "guaranteed benefits with vouchers."

Wyden, for his part, said he doesn't think Republicans will be able to use the new proposal to walk away from their support for Ryan's earlier, more radical rewrite of Medicare. "Nobody ducks their past votes and their previous statements. That's just a given," he said.

But it appears some Republicans are already trying.

Speaking on Iowa Public Television, GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich called it "a very important breakthrough" and "a bipartisan effort to really come to grips with one of the major entitlement challenges we face."

And, according to a tweet from Talking Points Memo's Brian Beutler, House Speaker John Boehner called the plan "a bipartisan idea that's worthy of our consideration" and "a step in the right direction."

Once you decide to enter into sexual relationships, your whole life changes.  You open the door to a form of deep intimacy that gives you the opportunity to know another person on a different level than you’ve experienced before.  But such a relationship is equal parts risk and reward.  Although you can experience the true love that writers, artists, and musicians have spent centuries trying to adequately express, you will almost certainly have to deal with a loss of that love at some point, complete with a broken heart.  But aside from the emotional issues at play, there are also physical drawbacks to consider.

For one thing, you need to take precautions to stop unwanted pregnancy and/or the spread of sexually transmitted diseases like genital herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV (just to name a few).  Some of them are merely annoying, but others can be life-threatening.  For example, nearly one in six adults has genital herpes (which never goes away) and they can pass along the disease even when they have no visible signs of an outbreak.  And although there are now many medical treatments available to manage HIV, it is still considered a deadly disease, especially once it develops into AIDS.  And these are just a few of the many STDs you could catch from having unprotected sex.

Of course, even with protection you might suffer mishaps.  There’s a reason why the effectiveness for most forms of birth control is listed at 99% instead of 100% (and that’s only when used according to directions).  For one thing, there is the small problem of human error.  Raise your hand if you didn’t know that antibiotics can mess with the effectiveness of oral contraceptives (the birth control pill).  It’s surprising how many women find this out the hard way simply because their doctors assume they already know and fail to mention it.  And then there are times when a woman misses a pill and poof!  Suddenly she’s pregnant.  Oops.  Abstinence is, in truth, the only form of birth control that is 100% guaranteed to work (apparently they decided not to factor in Immaculate Conception, although plenty of girls have tried that excuse).

Keep in mind though that most forms of birth control, while fairly effective at stopping pregnancy, are no deterrent to the spread of disease.  And unless you trust that your partners are 1) disease-free, and 2) not having sexual relations with others, you don’t really know what they might be passing along.  In fact, without testing, you don’t know what you might be passing on before symptoms show up.  And while you can certainly ask your partners to provide medical documentation before you get busy, you have no way of knowing if it is currently accurate.

So your best bet is to use condoms all the time, at least until you enter into a long-term, monogamous relationship.  And since even that may not be enough, start going in for annual exams with a gynecologist or urologist and getting regular STD tests (pap, Western Blot Reagents exams, and so on) to ensure that you are in optimal health, or begin treatment if you aren’t.

Carol Montrose is a contributing writer for Western Blot Reagents which offers STD and other related health testing.

Image: healingdream / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Medicaid sure is popular. And that's a big problem for state budgets.

These days the health program for the poor is claiming a bigger slice of states' spending than even K-12 education, says a report from the National Association of State Budget Officers.

All told, Medicaid is expected to grab 23.6 percent of states' spending in fiscal 2011, up from 22.3 percent the year before.

For comparison, spending on elementary and secondary education shool is expected to claim 20.1 percent of spending in fiscal 2011, down from 20.5 percent in 2010.

 

What's going on? The bad economy has more people enrolling â€" more than 50 million in Medicaid as of June last year.

Enlarge Kaiser Family Foundation

Medicaid enrollment climbs.

Kaiser Family Foundation

Medicaid enrollment climbs.

Overall Medicaid spending for fiscal 2011 looks to be about $399 billion, up 10.1 percent over the previous year.

Medicaid is funded by money from the states and the federal government. And some critics say analyses like NASBO's overstate the burden by reporting on the total spending, without showing how much of the revenue for the program comes from the feds and other sources.

Looked at that way, Medicaid ranks second or third behind basic education in most state budgets.

Still, states' share of the 2011 bill is increasing by an estimated 16 percent while the federal chunk is risking by 6.9 percent over fiscal 2010, according to NASBO.

Almost every state is working to contain the rising cost of Medicaid.

A nurse called NPR's Talk of the Nation Tuesday to ask Dr. Donald Berwick, who ran Medicare and Medicaid until early this month, why Medicaid doesn't require even small copayments for emergency room care. That might help encourage people not to overuse emergency rooms and seek less costly primary care, she suggested.

Berwick answered that it's a tricky proposition. "A lot of Medicaid patients are very much on the edge, and that copayment may be the thing that dissuades them from coming in to have a symptom treated in early stages," he said. "So, yes, of course there can be abuses. But I'm not sure I'd use copayment as the mainstay. We need to build a stronger primary care system for Medicaid patients, better coordinated care. And we'll see costs fall and quality go up."

Once you decide to enter into sexual relationships, your whole life changes.  You open the door to a form of deep intimacy that gives you the opportunity to know another person on a different level than you’ve experienced before.  But such a relationship is equal parts risk and reward.  Although you can experience the true love that writers, artists, and musicians have spent centuries trying to adequately express, you will almost certainly have to deal with a loss of that love at some point, complete with a broken heart.  But aside from the emotional issues at play, there are also physical drawbacks to consider.

For one thing, you need to take precautions to stop unwanted pregnancy and/or the spread of sexually transmitted diseases like genital herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV (just to name a few).  Some of them are merely annoying, but others can be life-threatening.  For example, nearly one in six adults has genital herpes (which never goes away) and they can pass along the disease even when they have no visible signs of an outbreak.  And although there are now many medical treatments available to manage HIV, it is still considered a deadly disease, especially once it develops into AIDS.  And these are just a few of the many STDs you could catch from having unprotected sex.

Of course, even with protection you might suffer mishaps.  There’s a reason why the effectiveness for most forms of birth control is listed at 99% instead of 100% (and that’s only when used according to directions).  For one thing, there is the small problem of human error.  Raise your hand if you didn’t know that antibiotics can mess with the effectiveness of oral contraceptives (the birth control pill).  It’s surprising how many women find this out the hard way simply because their doctors assume they already know and fail to mention it.  And then there are times when a woman misses a pill and poof!  Suddenly she’s pregnant.  Oops.  Abstinence is, in truth, the only form of birth control that is 100% guaranteed to work (apparently they decided not to factor in Immaculate Conception, although plenty of girls have tried that excuse).

Keep in mind though that most forms of birth control, while fairly effective at stopping pregnancy, are no deterrent to the spread of disease.  And unless you trust that your partners are 1) disease-free, and 2) not having sexual relations with others, you don’t really know what they might be passing along.  In fact, without testing, you don’t know what you might be passing on before symptoms show up.  And while you can certainly ask your partners to provide medical documentation before you get busy, you have no way of knowing if it is currently accurate.

So your best bet is to use condoms all the time, at least until you enter into a long-term, monogamous relationship.  And since even that may not be enough, start going in for annual exams with a gynecologist or urologist and getting regular STD tests (pap, Western Blot Reagents exams, and so on) to ensure that you are in optimal health, or begin treatment if you aren’t.

Carol Montrose is a contributing writer for Western Blot Reagents which offers STD and other related health testing.

Image: healingdream / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Importance of Travel Insurance

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Los Angeles is no stranger to traffic jams and road rage.

It's not unusual for awful traffic conditions or incompetent driving to make some people really angry behind the wheel. But when enraged drivers actually lash out at others on the road, that's road rage â€" and experts say it can be a sign of deeper emotional problems.

The term road rage was coined in Los Angeles â€" a city long known for its epic freeway jams. Mike Shen got a taste of how bad it can get shortly after moving to L,A., when a woman viciously tailgated him on the freeway.

"She got so angry that she started pacing me to my right," Shen says. "She wasn't looking at the road, she was literally yelling â€" out the window â€" racial epithets at the top of her lungs."

 

So Shen decided to take his road rage digital, starting the blog LA Can't Drive, where he and others vent about the disastrous driving they've seen. Often, it's distracted driving that's to blame â€" people eating, applying makeup or even shaving behind the wheel. Shen recalls seeing one driver reading the newspaper while merging onto the freeway. "Literally in my rearview mirror, I didn't see the person's face," he says â€" only the spread out newspaper.

In fact, surveys show that the more drivers are distracted, the more other drivers get angry and start honking, cursing, making obscene gestures and waving their fists in the air.

In its annual survey, the road club AutoVantage asks members about bad driving: Did they curse at another driver? Make an obscene gesture? Wave their fist in anger? Purposely slammed your vehicle into another car?

"Oddly," says AutoVantage official Michael Bush says, "in Washington, D.C., you're four times more likely to have somebody drive into you on purpose than anywhere else on the planet."

Clearly, ramming into someone else on purpose is an extreme version of road rage. But this type of outburst is exactly what might signal a deeper underlying problem, says psychiatrist Emil Coccaro at the University of Chicago.

Oddly, in Washington, D.C., you're four times more likely to have somebody drive into you on purpose than anywhere else on the planet.

- Michael Bush, spokesman, AutoVantage

It's called Intermittent Explosive Disorder, and it can affect as much as 6 percent of the population, says Coccaro. It doesn't just happen on the road but at home, on the job, even when out with friends.

"Those outbursts can be temper tantrums, throwing things around, breaking things, pushing, shoving, hitting people," he says. They can be caused by any number of underlying problems, Coccaro says â€" for example, paranoia.

"If somebody gets in their face, they're going to respond aggressively to that," he says. Like: "So who're you looking at? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Other people are emotionally unstable and explode when they're rejected. Still others are compulsively rigid and explode when their sense of "order" is upset.

"Their fuse for exploding is very, very short," says Coccaro, "so if something happens that they're not happy with, there's not much time for them to think of other ways to handle their reaction to it."

Their fuse is short for a number of biological reasons. For starters, he says, people don't produce enough of the "happy" hormone, serotonin, which is thought to be a behavior inhibitor. "It's basically the brakes," he says, "and if your brakes are bad, you're going to get into trouble."

At the same time, people produce too many of other brain chemicals that promote aggression â€" a "dangerous combination," says Coccaro, but one that can be treated.

Medications like antidepressants and mood stabilizers can help to restore the brain's chemical balance. Cognitive behavior therapy helps patients not take things personally, and coping techniques like a time out â€" just leaving the scene â€" can make a difference, says Coccaro.

Of course, if you're driving in your car, you can't just leave the scene. But you can stop engaging in the aggressive behavior.

These techniques won't completely "cure" the disorder, but they can certainly help contain the explosions.

Vitamins are the group of organic compounds that can not be synthesized by our body but are essential for our body and must be supplied in the diet (exceptions are vitamin D is synthesized in our skin when exposed to sunlight and small and insufficient quantity of vitamin K is synthesized in the intestine by intestinal flora). Vitamins can not be synthesized but are essential nutrients for us. Vitamins are required by us in very small quantity and fall in the category of micronutrients.

Vitamins do not give us any calorie or energy but helps the body for utilizing other nutrients. Since our body is unable to synthesize vitamins (even if synthesized they are not sufficient), they must be supplied in our diet. A well balanced diet can provide us all the vitamins and other nutrients both major (proteins, fats and carbohydrates) and minor (vitamins, minerals and trace elements or trace minerals).

Vitamins are broadly divided into two groups:

Fat soluble vitamins:

This include vitamin A, D, E and K

Water soluble vitamins:

This include B complex group of vitamins and vitamin C. Vitamin B complex group include vitamin B1 or thiamin (thiamin is the first B complex vitamin to be discovered and named as B1), B2 or riboflavin, B3 or niacin, B6 or pyridoxine, B5 or pantothenic acid, folic acid and vitamin B12, the group also includes choline and flavoniods.

Each of the vitamins has one or more specific functions to perform and deficiency of any of the vitamins can lead to specific deficiency disease (except vitamin E, any deficiency disease is yet to be identified if it is there, but it helps in making the skin glow), e.g. deficiency of vitamin C leads to scurvy (very well known).

The minimum intake of vitamins per day has been determined but the daily optimum intake is still not clear and is still speculative. So the recommended daily allowance of vitamins is in speculative stage.

Image: piyaphantawong / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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A survey identifies traits, like generosity, that help couples buck the trend toward marital discord once baby arrives.

iStockphoto

A survey identifies traits, like generosity, that help couples buck the trend toward marital discord once baby arrives.

As many couples can attest â€" and lots of research backs this up â€" marital happiness plummets with the arrival of a baby. Sleepless nights, seemingly endless diaper changes and the avalanche of new chores that come with a newborn leave little time for the intimacies of marriage. It's a situation ripe for mental stress and marital discord.

In fact, the strain is so well documented that, as the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year, a growing number of mental-health professionals now advise pre-emptive relationship counseling for expectant parents.

But in a survey of 2,870 married couples, the National Marriage Project of the University of Virginia found that more than a third of them buck the trend, managing to stay happy through the emotional, physical and financial strains of new parenthood. So, how do they do it?

 

Not surprisingly, the report finds sexual satisfaction and a sense of commitment top the list of traits that lead husbands and wives to say they are "very happy" in marriage. No. 3 is "generosity," defined as:

"the virtue of giving good things to [one's spouse] freely and abundantly," and encompasses small acts of service (e.g., making coffee for one's spouse in the morning), the expression of affection, displays of respect, and a willingness to "forgive him/her for mistakes and failings."

Further down the list: shared housework. That's right, both mothers and fathers are more likely to report they are "very happy" when housework is "shared equally." So presumably, asking your husband to do the laundry (or your wife to change the light bulb) can be good for your marriage. Though harking back to generosity, perhaps it's better if each volunteers to take on the task.

The survey is a joint project of the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values, conservative groups that promote marriage. Their report also finds â€" as many surveys have shown â€" that more devoutly religious people often rank themselves happier. Another recent study attributes this effect to the social networks that religion can foster.

Strikingly, the National Marriage Project finds a big jump in marital happiness among couples with four or more children (which, as the researchers note, is likely a pretty self-selecting group.)

Or, there's a simpler strategy: patience. Contrary to popular perception, evidence suggests marital bliss rebounds with the empty nest.