“Health Care - baby steps - Star News Online” plus 4 more

Health Care - baby steps - Star News Online
Sulabh adopts 'miracle baby' with protruding heart - Zee News
Get In on the Health-Care Action - Wall Street Journal
Baby-sitting through the ages - Chicago Tribune
Mother of meth-positive baby faces at least 1-year term - Shelbyville Times-Gazette

Health Care - baby steps - Star News Online

Posted: 30 Aug 2009 04:52 PM PDT

In a difficult business environment employee buy outs are a popular way for corporations to cut cost. An obstacle to accepting a buy out is often the cost of private health insurance. For this I have a modest proposal. Simply offer Medicare as an option to those 59 years of age or older. The age group 59-65 has fewer medical problems than those 65 + so per person Medicare cost would drop. Insurance companies could continue to insure only the young and healthy and corporations solve employment problems and increase productivity as they return from recession.
Ronald D. Steele
Supply

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Sulabh adopts 'miracle baby' with protruding heart - Zee News

Posted: 05 Sep 2009 09:17 PM PDT

New Delhi: The 10-day-old baby who has undergone a rare surgery here after he was born with a protruding heart has found support from the NGO Sulabh International.

Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Thursday operated upon the infant and pushed the heart inside the body after creating space for it. The boy, whose parents are poor, is now recovering at the hospital.

Sulabh founder Bindeshwar Pathak Saturday said he will look after the post-operative care of the baby and give a job to his father Chander Majhi in his organisation.

The child was suffering from Ectopia Cordis, a rare heart ailment that doctors believe occurs in around five cases per million births.

"We pray and wish the miracle baby's speedy recovery. We will take care of the education and upbringing of the child," Pathak said.

On August 26, the baby was shifted to Delhi from Bihar for the surgery that lasted for nearly four hours.

IANS

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Get In on the Health-Care Action - Wall Street Journal

Posted: 05 Sep 2009 09:03 PM PDT

By DAVE KANSAS

An important investment theme the past few years has been the aging population. Retiring baby boomers would do all they could to remain "young" or at least do their best to live as long as feasible.

The combination of ideas argued for an overweight position in health-care stocks.

But that calculus requires some re-examination as politicians in Washington take a long, hard look at reforming and reshaping the health-care sector. It's difficult to determine just how the health-care system might change, but some sort of change seems likely.

Does that mean that betting on the baby boomers' "Stave the Grave" ambitions should be shelved?

Actually, no. In fact, even with so much noise surrounding health-care reform, the simple fact is that the sector will remain a key investment arena in the years ahead.

"In our view, health care should experience very solid long-run demand trends, given the aging of our population and the significant portion of total consumption of health-care services on behalf of those over 60," says Jeff Layman, chief investment officer of BKD Wealth Advisors, a Springfield, Mo., firm with $1.5 billion under management.

More Customers

While reform will affect profits for certain parts of the health-care economy, it also could expand certain health-care businesses.

A large number of the 45 million uninsured Americans, many of them young and healthy, could be required to sign up for some form of insurance. And the government may have to spend a lot of money -- more than $1 trillion by some estimates -- in order to make its reform plans a reality.

The debate in Washington has hardly taken the sheen off the health-care sector, despite what some critics contend. In the second-quarter earnings period, health-care companies reported solid profits, competing with the technology sector for top honors, according to Thomson Financial. In addition, health-care companies had an outsized share of positive earnings surprises.

The Dow Jones Health Care Index is up about 7% for the year, just ahead of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is up about 6%.

But reform, if passed, will have an impact on the giant health-care sector. And the stock market has started to indicate just where it believes that impact will occur.

The Dow Jones health-care insurance providers index is up about 19% and the Dow Jones medical-equipment index is up about 21% so far this year, while the Dow Jones pharmaceutical index is up just 1% and the Dow Jones biotechnology index is up only 3%.

The stock-market travails of the big drug stocks make sense for a couple of reasons. First, there's a lot of pressure on the prices these companies can charge for their drugs. People in other developed countries pay far less for the same drugs than U.S. consumers do.

Second, negative sentiment toward the big drug companies predates the current reform talk. The inability to find a lot of new cash-spinning drugs has led to consolidation and slowing profit growth. These stocks still pay good dividends, but they aren't the highfliers of yesteryear. And any political reform is likely to keep things that way.

The strong performance this year among health-care providers, medical-equipment makers and medical-supply companies, however, underscores a basic reality that political reform will have a hard time addressing: The U.S. population is getting older and it will require more health-care services as it ages.

Short-Term Gainers

In the near term, health-care stocks could get attention for another reason: concerns about the flu. While it has moved off the front pages, the swine flu continues to move around the globe. Concerns seem higher outside the U.S., but the Centers for Disease Control reports almost 9,000 cases in the U.S. with more than 500 deaths.

Vaccine makers that could benefit from renewed fears about swine flu include Glaxo SmithKline, Roche Holdings and Baxter International.

While swine flu may grab some headlines, long-term investors are better served focusing on health-care mutual funds that can provide diversification.

Among the top funds focused on the health-care sector is the BlackRock Health Sciences Opportunities Fund, which is up an average 9% a year over the past five years. Among its top holdings: Roche, biotech firm Amgen, and CVS Caremark, the pharmacy chain.

Another top fund is the T. Rowe Price Health Sciences Fund, which has gained about 7% a year over the past five years. Its top holdings include Baxter; Medco Health Solutions, a prescription company; and health-insurance provider Wellpoint.

Write to Dave Kansas at dave.kansas@wsj.com

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Baby-sitting through the ages - Chicago Tribune

Posted: 06 Sep 2009 12:02 AM PDT

Is there a parent who hasn't fretted about getting a baby sitter for the night? Is there a baby sitter who hasn't felt put upon, underpaid, distrusted?

For more than eight decades, baby-sitting has been part of our cultural history. Now, Miriam Forman-Brunell, history professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, has analyzed its origins, evolution and inner workings.

In her new book, "Babysitter: An American History," Forman-Brunell describes how baby-sitting got all tied up in 20th century struggles over gender, age and family. Somehow, even baby-sitting became a situation for workplace conflict. And whence the lore of the "bad baby sitter"?

Forman-Brunell teaches the history of childhood and youth and is the author of "Made to Play House" and editor of the book "Girlhood in America: An Encyclopedia."

Here are excerpts from a recent interview.

Q How are you defining baby-sitting and baby sitter?

A For this book, I defined baby-sitting as part-time work, for pay, by youth, typically away from the home. I didn't look at children taking care of siblings, or nannies or other adults.

In the 1920s, there was no term "baby sitter," but there was the phrase "minding the children" and then "child-minder." It was not until the late 1930s that the term "baby sitter" emerged.

Q What changed starting

in the 1920s?

A Baby-sitting began to emerge because of a variety of social trends, the expansion of the middle class, declines in the birthrate and a rising desire among mothers and fathers in the 1920s for leisure and recreation. More teenagers went to high school, including girls, and did not enter the job market. And adolescent girls were also stimulated by a consumer culture and a new teen culture.

Q So that sounds like a good economic match, teens who need spending money and parents who need baby sitters.

A One would think so, but there have been many undercurrents that make it not such a good match. For instance, adults typically look for somebody who's going to be fun with their children, responsible and reliable, and who's going to be inexpensive. The assumption has been that girls are going to be all of those things and that they naturally have an instinct to take care of children. And that's not necessarily true. When you interview girls about why they want to baby-sit, it's the money that generally motivates them.

Parents want to pay the least amount of money they can. The result is that, back to the earliest days of baby-sitting, girls have felt they were being gypped, especially when girls found out what boys were being paid to mow lawns -- or what boys were paid to baby-sit. Boys are often paid more.

Also, developmentally, adolescence tends to be a period marked by greater self-absorption. So when it comes down to it, I'm not sure it's the best match at all.

At some point, baby-sitting became a job for preteens.

In the 1980s, there was a downward movement in terms of age, and that was partly because of a baby boomlet. There weren't enough teenagers for the job. Plus, with the expansion of suburban malls, teenagers were taking jobs in retail and service. There were many benefits to taking those "real" jobs too. So the shift to preadolescent baby sitters, which has been the case since the 1980s, made sense in terms of the labor market. Also in the 1980s in the popular culture, teenage female baby sitters were being demonized.

Q How did that kind of "demonizing" happen?

A It was rooted in social changes going back decades. Girls sought more freedom and authority, and rebelled against restrictive gender ideals. They were misperceived as dangerous to families, to marital stability, even to children.

Ridiculous horror scenarios in the many made-for-TV movies about teenage baby sitters presented girls as having way too much power and control. They became knife-wielding murderesses. In parents' imaginations, there lurked this image of the bad baby sitter. So if you have the choice between a perky, can-do preadolescent next door and the teenage girl with dyed-green hair, you're probably going to pick the preteen.

Q What's the state of

baby-sitting today?

A Many of the same tensions are still there. I've spoken to baby sitters who feel unappreciated and who don't like the way they've been presented. They want to know what role they can play in changing that image of the bad baby sitter.

There is clearly a demand for baby sitters. But there are also a lot of parents of potential baby sitters who give their children an allowance rather than allow them to baby-sit. It could be because their own experiences as baby sitters weren't particularly good ones.

Q Is there anything

that can be done?

A Parents as employers of baby sitters need to become aware of their expectations. Just because a baby sitter is a girl doesn't mean she'll be a great caretaker. And just because she's a teenager doesn't mean she'll be unruly.

It's the same with boys who have been extolled in the popular culture that demonized girls. Parents often assume that if they hire a boy, he'll be good with their sons and play outside. But I spoke to one boy baby sitter who after he turned 17 said he started getting funny looks from parents, as if he were some kind of sexual threat to children. It's a social problem that requires a lot of discussion and thought. And it requires that we re-evaluate our assumptions, especially about teenage girls.

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Mother of meth-positive baby faces at least 1-year term - Shelbyville Times-Gazette

Posted: 05 Sep 2009 09:32 PM PDT

A Shelbyville woman who gave birth to a baby that tested positive for drugs will spend at least the next year in jail after pleading guilty Thursday.

Kristine T. Buie agreed to a sentence of three years on the charge of aggravated assault before Circuit Court Judge Lee Russell.

Buie gave birth to a boy on June 1 who had respiratory difficulty and was "very poorly responsive," Assistant District Attorney Mike Randles said.

The infant had to be placed on oxygen and IV therapy and was admitted to the intensive care step-down unit at Harton Regional Medical Center in Tullahoma, Randles explained.

Randles said the baby tested positive for methamphetamine and benzodiazepine (Xanax) as well as the mother, and a letter was written by the child's pediatrician concerning the mother's drug abuse.

"They concluded that the child was affected by maternal drug use," Randles said. "She (Buie) was interviewed and admitted that two days before giving birth, that she had used methamphetamine and Xanax at a party in Shelbyville."

According to researchers, methamphetamine use during pregnancy appears to cause abnormal brain development in children.

"Methamphetamine use is an increasing problem among women of childbearing age, leading to an increasing number of children with prenatal meth exposure," stated Dr. Linda Chang with the John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu.

Brain scans performed on 3- and 4-year-old children whose mothers used meth while pregnant suggest prenatal meth exposure accelerates brain development in an abnormal pattern, according to the online journal Neurology.

Studies have shown that prenatal meth exposure can lead to increased stress and lethargy and poorer quality of movement for infants.

Long-term studies are underway to determine if the brain differences found in children with prenatal exposure to meth will normalize with age, the study says.

Buie was originally charged with aggravated child abuse by Detective Carol Jean of the Shelbyville Police Department, but Randles explained there have been several cases before the Tennessee Court of Appeals that states that "the statute does not apply in these situations because the definition of the word 'child' in the TCA (Tennessee Code Annotated) does not include a fetus."

As a result, the charge had to be amended to aggravated assault, which is a lesser charge, Randles said.

Randles said Buie will become eligible to meet with the parole board after serving 30 percent of the three-year sentence.