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MicroStockHub/Getty Images En español The biggest change Medicare's nearly 64 million beneficiaries will see in the new year is higher premiums and deductibles for the medical care they'll receive under the federal government's health care insurance program for individuals age 65 and older and people with disabilities. ...

A Covington County woman was arrested and charged with aggravated child abuse after someone took the child to Andalusia Health for treatment. According to the Covington County Sheriff's Office, the Criminal Investigations Unit responded to Andalusia Health on Monday, Jan. 3, concerning the alleged abuse and torture of a 6-year-old female child. Investigators indicated that the child was malnourished, bruised and displayed evidence of "significant burns to her body." The child was taken to the hospital by a third party and investigators identified Melinda Chance Lee, 56, of Red Level as a suspect in the investigation. Melinda Chance Lee Within hours, investigators executed a search warrant at Lee's residence on Boykin Road. "Investigators seized several items of evidence relevant to the child abuse investigation and an amount of methamphetamine that Lee attempted to conceal from investigators," said a CCSO press release. "Through witness interv...

As I sat down to watch the new film of The Tragedy of Macbeth from director Joel Coen, out in theaters and now streaming on Apple TV+,I realized that I have seen Macbeth more than any other Shakespeare play. While the popularity of some of Shakespeare's work comes and goes with shifts in cultural taste, over the past 30 years Macbeth has remained reliably in the No. 3 slot, content to allow King Lear and Hamlet to duke it out for the top prize. Its steady popularity and cultural relevance make a certain kind of sense. Macbeth is among Shakespeare's most tightly plotted and efficient plays. It can be directed into any number of recognizable genres from supernatural horror to feudal political thriller to revenge tragedy. It comes chockablock with famous lines. And its tale of ambition, violence, madness, and the limitation of individual free will speaks to us no matter what our current crisis is. But the play's lasting popularity is...

By Ed Miseta, Chief Editor, Clinical Leader Follow Me On Twitter @EdClinical A preferred provider and/or a strategic provider is a vendor company, often a CRO or other specialty service provider, that has achieved priority status in the awarding of contracts by pharmaceutical and biotech companies. With the growing complexity of clinical research, the preferred provider is gaining popularity with many companies that have chosen to outsource their trials. Although the model was once used to simplify the complexity of outsourcing, it has now become an important tool for companies to better control the spiraling cost of clinical trials and outsourcing. For UCB, a global biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of innovative medicines and solutions to transform the lives of people living with severe diseases, strategic providers add a lot more than cost containment, but also allows UCB to tap ...

Mun-Keat Looi , international features editor The BMJ mlooi@bmj.com Rachel Levine, the US assistant secretary for health and the first transgender person confirmed into post by the US Senate, tells Mun-Keat Looi what this responsibility means to her, and what it's like working in this extraordinary time for American health Rachel Levine's appointment to the senior ranks of US healthcare was global news in 2021 when the paediatrician became the first transgender person in the country's history to be confirmed into office by the US Senate and to be made a four star admiral in the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. For Levine it was the culmination of a career that began at Harvard and was most recently based in Pennsylvania, the location of one of the country's worst opioid crises. She issued a state-wide standing order for the overdose reversal drug naloxone, allowing police officers to carry the drug and citizens to purchase it without a prescription. "A...

In late May of 2020, the U.S. hit one of what has become so many grim pandemic milestones: our first 100,000 dead from COVID-19. I remember how heartbroken I was then—and how frustrated. The novel coronavirus, a stealthy pathogen, was bound to take a toll no matter how perfect Americans' response was to the crisis. But Americans' response was far from perfect. I was frustrated by people who refused to wear a mask. It made me feel like the lives of my patients—and my own life, as a health-care worker—were disposable. I was frustrated that patients weren't getting the treatments they needed—like care for heart attacks and strokes—because hospitals across the country were overrun. And I was frustrated by the basic needs going unmet: food, housing, and paid leave so people with COVID could isolate, as well as a safety net for those who'd lost their livelihoods to the pandemic. What made all this frustration even more painful was the clear picture forming of who would suffer...

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- From 2019 to 2020, there was a 16.8 percent increase in the age-adjusted death rate in the United States, according to a December data brief published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics. Sherry L. Murphy, from the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Maryland, and colleagues used data from the National Vital Statistics System to examine 2020 U.S. mortality data on deaths and death rates by demographic and medical characteristics. The researchers found that for the U.S. population in 2020, life expectancy was 77.0 years, which marked a decrease of 1.8 years from 2019. From 2019 to 2020, there was a 16.8 percent increase in the age-adjusted death rate, from 715.2 to 835.4 deaths per 100,000 population. From 2019 to 2020, age-specific death rates increased for each age group aged 15 years and older. In 2020, nine of the 10 leading causes of death remained the same as in...