Month: January 2013
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Coalition of health groups launches two-week ad campaign to drum up support for a statewide smoking ban
A geographically targeted newspaper and online advertising campaign calling for “a comprehensive, statewide smoke-free law” is hitting Kentucky media outlets this week, as the legislature convenes, and next week. The campaign...
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Republicans moving to gain a say over Beshear’s decisions about insurance exchange, Medicaid expansion; Democrat dismissive
Kentucky Senate Health and Welfare Committee Chair Julie Denton, R-Louisville, left, said yesterday that she would file legislation that would block Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear from setting up a health-insurance...
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3 in 5 Kentucky adults favor a statewide smoking ban, according to an independent poll that may have oversampled smokers
By Al Cross Kentucky Health News Kentuckians now favor a statewide smoking ban by a margin of 3 to 2, according to the latest Kentucky Health Issues Poll conducted last...
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Legislature likely to tweak, clarify and limit last year’s ‘pill mill bill’
State lawmakers could narrow the focus of last year’s “pill mill bill” during the legislative session that begins tomorrow, to concentrate on adults with long-term prescriptions for frequently abused painkillers,...
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Health agencies in Rockcastle, Jackson, Clay, Harlan to lose 14 employees, some environmental and food-safety inspections
In the latest example of Medicaid changes’ impact on local health departments, environmental and food-safety inspections will be reduced by layoffs in four counties served by the Cumberland Valley District...
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Danville newspaper examines problems hospitals and doctors have with state’s managed-care Medicaid program
All the talk about “Obamacare” may have obscured Kentucky’s biggest health-care story, Kendra Peek of The Advocate-Messenger in Danville suggests, in a look at Kentucky’s troublesome shift to managed-care Medicaid....
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Fiscal-cliff deal revives program that helps rural hospitals dependent on Medicare; 200 in nation, 10 in Kentucky
Even though most of the hospital industry wasn’t happy with the fiscal-cliff deal that will only pay half the $30 billion needed to avoid a 27 percent Medicare fee cut...
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Painkiller epidemic was driven in part by drug makers’ financial relationships with researchers who discounted the risks
For almost a decade, medical officials and experts claimed OxyContin rarely posed problems of addiction for patients. The drug’s label, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration, said addiction...
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Health reform drives hospital mergers and affiliations, and makes clinical collaborations more important
Is your community’s hospital one of the many rural hospitals considering sale, merger or affiliation with a larger hospital or group of hospitals, all options that are becoming more common,...
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Chart shows how to get coverage under federal health reform
The core of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is helping people get health insurance, beginning next year. That will be relatively simple for some people, but complicated for...