About 966,000 Medicare Advantage enrollees will need new coverage next year as insurers close plans that failed a 2008 requirement to build their own doctor and hospital networks. The mandate is projected to save $132 billion over a decade, money redirected to cover the uninsured.
Section archive
Page 54 of 63
Politics
Food law, regulation, government advisories and the legal fights over what reaches your plate.
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Politics
Pitchfork Wielder on Dairy Farm Receives Light Sentence
Billy Joe Gregg, filmed stomping on calves' heads and beating and stabbing cows at Conklin Dairy Farms, pleaded guilty to six of 12 cruelty counts and drew eight months and a $1,000 fine. Prosecutors filed no charges against the farm's owner.
Politics
Court Victory: Bovine Growth Hormone Labeling
An Ohio appeals court struck down state rules limiting dairy labels, so companies may keep claims such as rbGH-free on their cartons. Ohio may still require a disclaimer, but not on the same panel as the drug-free claim. Jeffrey Smith calls the September 30 decision a victory for shoppers.
Law & Regulations
Obama's Healthcare Law Deemed Constitutional by Federal Judge
Judge George Steeh ruled that the Commerce Clause lets Congress require Americans to buy coverage by 2014 and penalize those who do not, rejecting a Thomas More Law Center challenge. He dismissed two of the group's six claims; four remain pending.
Politics
Food Stamps Should Not Be Used For Sodas - NYC
New York City plans to ask the USDA for a two-year experiment barring its 1.7 million food stamp recipients from buying soda and other sugar-added drinks. Policy experts doubt approval, since federal law spells out eligible purchases in detail and only Congress can change it.
Politics
Has FDA Already Decided About Genetically Engineered Salmon?
The FDA says it has not decided on AquAdvantage salmon, but its invited speakers at the hearings promoted aquaculture and declared the fish poses no additional risk. The engineered salmon carries a chinook growth hormone gene and reaches full size in 18 months instead of three years.
Advisories
FDA Panel Rejects Diet Drug
An FDA advisory panel urged the agency to keep the weight-loss drug lorcaserin off the market, citing unanswered safety questions and trials that excluded patients with diabetes or heart disease. Those on the drug lost only 3 to 3.7 percent more body weight than those on placebo.
Advisories
Breastfeeding Report Card—United States, 2010
CDC's state-by-state report card shows three of every four new U.S. mothers now start out breastfeeding, meeting the Healthy People 2010 initiation goal. Rates at 6 and 12 months stay low, under 4% of births occur at Baby-Friendly facilities, and the average mPINC score is 65 of 100.
Advisories
Food Safety Tips in Aftermath of Tropical Storm Hermine From USDA
After flooding from Tropical Storm Hermine, USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service reissued its guidance for Texas and Oklahoma residents: keep appliance thermometers in the fridge and freezer, freeze water and gel packs, group frozen food together, and store food above floodwater.
Politics
The Food Safety Shell Game (PR)
The piece argues Congress's food safety debate skips the root of nationwide salmonella and E. coli outbreaks: the manure of factory farms holding thousands of cattle and millions of birds, and corn-and-soy feeding that makes cattle guts hospitable to pathogenic E. coli.
Politics
The Great Supplement Hoax: Is There Anyone Left We Can Trust?
Dr. Mercola interviews antioxidant expert Ginny Bank about ORAC, the USDA-developed Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity measure of antioxidant potency, and how supplement marketers using the values incorrectly can confuse buyers rather than inform them.
Politics
The Man Behind the Egg Scandal
Austin 'Jack' DeCoster, whose farms supplied eggs, hens and feed implicated in the salmonella outbreak, has a decades-long record: a 1980 Labor Department charge over employing children as young as nine, a 1992 state charge of indenturing migrant workers, and a $3.6 million fine in 1996.
Politics
Mighty Rise of Food Revolution and What it Means to You
Mercola points to Michael Pollan's AlterNet review of five books on the food movement, from Joel Salatin's Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal to Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, and to Pollan's claim that food is no longer politically invisible.
Politics
The War Over Raw Milk Heats Up
Raw milk drinkers and sellers sued the FDA in early 2010, calling its ban on interstate sales unconstitutional, and the case is pending as raids on small dairies and buying clubs continue. Mercola argues the enforcement is out of proportion to the illnesses raw milk causes.
Politics
The Ultimate Food Betrayal: How Big Biotech Rigged the Research on GM Foods
Jeffrey Smith writes that a 2004 British Food Journal study reporting shoppers preferred GM corn was biotech-funded and stacked: a sign over the non-GM bin read 'Would you eat wormy sweet corn?' The paper still won the journal's award for the year's outstanding paper.
Politics
FAN Bulletin 2028: Ending Fluoridation "One Town at a Time"
A Fluoride Action Network bulletin reporting on its July 2010 conference, the pending appointment of a campaign director, and plans for volunteer state point persons to help form local groups working to end fluoridation town by town in the US and Canada.
Politics
San Francisco Bans Sodas from Vending Machines
Mayor Gavin Newsom's executive order bars non-diet sodas, sports drinks and artificially sweetened water from vending machines on San Francisco city property, and caps diet sodas at 25 percent of items. Dr. Mercola calls the diet soda and soy milk alternatives no better.
Advisories
Panel Rejects Plan to Curb Drug Abuse
An FDA advisory panel rejected the agency's plan to curb abuse of narcotics such as OxyContin, fentanyl and methadone because it asks for voluntary rather than mandatory prescriber training. Mandatory training would take an act of Congress.
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