On health-reform anniversary, Dems celebrate while GOP pledges repeal

 

March 23, 2011

By Deirdre Shesgreen and Arielle Levin Becker

 

While Connecticut lawmakers attended a birthday party with cake and testimonials, Congressional Republicans used Wednesday’s one-year anniversary of the health care reform law to tout their continued attacks on the measure–from full repeal to targeted defunding efforts.

“In the coming weeks, you’ll see more votes and more hearings in the House to take this law apart, step by step,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a video statement today. “That includes repealing the law’s mandatory spending slush funds.”

Murphy, Courtney, Larson and Blumenthal listen to Mandy McCullough describe worrying about insurance coverage limits for her son Kyle, 8, who has hemophilia

But one thing Boehner and other GOP lawmakers didn’t mention: Since taking power in January, Republican leaders have passed two stop-gap spending bills that include funding for the law’s continued implementation.

The disconnect between rhetoric and reality highlights a GOP conundrum on health reform. Even as the party continues to attack the law, their options for unraveling it are limited. And pushing the issue too far is fraught with risk, despite the political resonance such a move would carry among conservative voters.

“It raises some interesting questions about who precisely is being held hostage here,” said Joseph Antos, a health care expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning Washington think tank.

Take, for example, Boehner’s pledge on Wednesday to go after health reform’s “mandatory slush fund.” That’s a reference to legislation proposed by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, to target $105.5 billion in automatic federal funding included in health reform to carry out the overhaul.

King’s bill is the next battleground for defunding health reform, and Boehner has promised a House vote on it soon.

Members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation warned about the effort to fight the law during Wednesday’s celebration at the state Capitol.

“Make no mistake, that opposition continues,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told the crowd. “It will be out there. It is already against us, and it is in the form of trying to nickel and dime health care reform today.”

Because repealing the law is a nonstarter in the Senate, Rep. John Larson, D-1st District, said Republicans will focus on “death by a thousand slashes”–defunding it.

The celebration was sponsored by Health Care for America Now, and was meant to promote both the federal law and SustiNet, a proposal to create a state-run insurance plan that would serve as a public option for Connecticut. In addition to Blumenthal and Larson, the event drew Reps. Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy, Democrats from the 2nd and 5th districts respectively, as well as Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, state Comptroller Kevin Lembo, U.S. Health and Human Services Regional Director Christie Hager, state House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, and a crowd of supporters.

Malloy, who has been chided by SustiNet supporters for not embracing the proposal, emphasized his support for federal reform and contrasted his position with those of other governors who are seeking to have the law overturned in the courts.

“The ferocity in which they would like to dismantle that which has been accomplished is really quite disturbing,” he said. “Quite impressive but quite disturbing at the same time.”

“Be assured that Connecticut will be at the forefront of moving forward the implementation of this legislation,” Malloy added.

Donovan, Murphy and Blumenthal cut and distribute birthday cake for the health reform law's first anniversary

Several state residents spoke of how they benefited from the reform law. Mandy McCullough of Simsbury, whose sons have hemophilia and rely on medication that costs thousands of dollars a month, described the relief of no longer having to worry about her children reaching lifetime limits on the health benefits they can receive. The law banned lifetime benefit limits in insurance policies.

Thomas Boccaccio of Newington spoke of fighting with his insurance company while his wife fought adrenal cancer. “They will do whatever they can to steal whatever they can from us,” he said. “Thank god for this act. And if it’s not worth fighting for, than nothing is worth fighting for.”

Murphy pointed to some of the first provisions of the law to take effect, including a policy allowing young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance to age 26, a cut in the amount seniors must pay for prescription drugs under the Medicare “donut hole,” and tax credits for small businesses that provide coverage to their workers. That will keep people from supporting the Republican plan to repeal the law, he said.

“The most important result of this bill is that people’s lives are changed,” he said.

In Washington, House Republicans have so far only targeted new discretionary spending that is needed to implement health reform. The GOP’s spending bill for fiscal year 2011 included nine defunding provisions. Among other things, for example, that bill called for prohibiting the use of federal funds to pay the salaries of the government officials writing health reform regulations or otherwise implementing the law. Another provision would bar the Internal Revenue Service from enforcing the law’s individual mandate.

King’s bill would go further by targeting not just future implementation money, but “reaching back,” as he put it, into a pot of automatic funds already at the disposal of the Department of Health and Human Services. But King is not satisfied with just a straight up-or-down vote on his bill.

He and others want it to be included in any final 2011 spending bill–a move that GOP leaders have, so far, blocked. That 2011 funding legislation died upon arrival in the Senate earlier this year, in part because Senate Democrats objected to the nine defunding provisions.

Now, Republicans are divided over how to move forward. Conservatives like King want to use all their leverage to attack health reform. That means insisting that King’s bill and other defunding provisions are included in any “must-pass” spending bill that will keep the federal government running for the rest of this fiscal year.

Last week, King and 53 other House Republicans voted against a three-week stop-gap funding measure, in part because it failed to include any defunding mechanisms. They want to force a fight, first with Senate Democrats, and then, if possible, with President Barack Obama.

“If we attached my amendment blocking ObamaCare’s $105.5 billion in automatic funding to the continuing resolution, President Obama would face a choice: side with the American people and agree to defund ObamaCare, or unilaterally shut down the government as leverage to protect his namesake law,” King wrote in an op-ed in his home-state paper today.

Boehner’s spokesman did not respond to a question about how hard he would push on defunding as House and Senate leaders try to reach a deal on overall 2011 spending.

But Antos said so far, indications are that GOP leaders will exclude those provisions from the broader spending deal. Instead, they’ll likely opt for “a stand-alone resolution that defunds [health reform] and that will simply be tossed on to Harry Reid’s trash pile,” he said, referring to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

There’s little question that a stand-alone bill would go nowhere in the Senate. And even a must-pass spending bill would face fierce opposition among Senate Democrats if included provisions to block funding for health reform.

The prospect of a government shut-down over protecting federal money for health reform could, at the very least, put Senate Democrats and Obama in a politically uncomfortable spot, King argues.

Blumenthal said Obama will serve as a “backstop on preserving health care rights and preventing a retreat to a time when insurance companies really made the rules.”

Antos said that both sides have much to fear in a government shutdown over health reform funding. But Republicans like Boehner remember how the shut-down unfolded last time, with a political backlash aimed at the GOP.

“With the new crop of House members, many of them don’t see anything wrong with shutting down the government,” he said. “They haven’t had the personal experience to know what that means… But the ones who lived through the shut-down 10 years ago realized that didn’t play well at all.”

“The real question for Republicans is, what strategy do they want to try and what risks are they willing to take?” Antos said. His prediction: despite all the GOP rhetoric Wednesday about ramping up their attacks on health reform, Republicans won’t push it to the brink.

“After the presidential election, they’ll try again,” he said.

 

Sleep-deprived people eat 300 more calories a day

 

 

Cached:  http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/story/2011/03/Sleep-deprived-people-eat-300-more-calories-a-day/45227686/1

By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY

When people are sleep-deprived, they eat almost 300 calories a day more than when they are well-rested. And ice cream is one of their favorite foods to eat when they’re tired, a new study shows.

Scientists have known for years that too little shut-eye can lead to weight gain and obesity.

So researchers at Columbia University decided to find out whether people actually consume more when they are sleep-deprived vs. well-rested.

They recruited 26 normal-weight men and women who routinely slept between seven and nine hours a night. The participants came into an inpatient hospital-like setting for six days on two different occasions. Half slept four hours a night for six nights. The other half slept for nine hours a night for six nights.

For the first days, they received a portion-controlled diet, but the last two days they could eat as much as they wanted from food they chose themselves. The entire procedure was repeated a second time with people getting a different amount of sleep.

Findings, reported Wednesday at an American Heart Association meeting in Atlanta:

•Participants consumed an average of 296 calories more when they were sleep-deprived compared with when they were well-rested.

•When women were sleep-deprived they ate an average 329 more calories a day vs. when they were well-rested; men ate 263 more calories.

•Overall, most of the extra calories came from high-fat foods such as ice cream and fast foods.

•When women were sleep-deprived, they ate an average of about 31 more fat grams a day. Men’s fat intake didn’t climb that much.

“Ice cream stood out as the preferred food during the sleep-deprived state,” says lead author Marie-Pierre St-Onge, an assistant professor of clinical nutrition medicine at Columbia. “Sleep deprivation makes you more susceptible to overeating, so that can be something to consider when you’re trying to lose weight.”

This confirms other research that short sleep duration is associated with eating more and could lead to obesity and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, St-Onge says.

• WHY: Sleep Matters (blog)

She says one other study also found that sleep-deprived adults ate almost 300 calories more a day than those who were well-rested.

St-Onge is still analyzing the data on how the sleep deprivation may affect appetite hormones.

However, other studies show that sleep-deprived people have higher levels of ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates hunger, and lower levels of leptin, a fullness hormone, than people who are well-rested.

University of Chicago sleep researcher Eve Van Cauter, a leading expert in this field, says that an additional 300 calories day “is a substantial increase in energy intake that, if maintained chronically, would lead to rapid and robust weight gain.”

The reduction in sleep in this study “is pretty drastic but nonetheless occurs in real life under a number of situations, including among medical interns and residents who are known to pack on the pounds,” she says.

Gina Lundberg, a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association and a preventive cardiologist in private practice in Atlanta, says she thinks it’s possible that sleep deprivation provides a “double whammy” for weight gain — that is, people not only eat more when they’re tired but also may be less likely to exercise. “When you’re tired, you’re less motivated to exercise. You just want to go home and go to bed,” she says.

Both the higher calorie and fat intake and possibly being less active could be detrimental to your heart over the long term, she adds.

 

What’s Your Biggest Regret?

Cached:  http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/whats-your-biggest-regret/?partner=rss&emc=rss

By TARA PARKER-POPE

We all have regrets, but new research suggests the most common regret among American adults involves a lost romantic opportunity.

Researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign collected data from 370 adults in the United States during a telephone survey. They asked respondents to describe one memorable regret, explaining what it was, how it happened and whether their regret stemmed from something they did or didn’t do.

The most common regret involved romance, with nearly one in five respondents telling a story of a missed love connection. The second most common regret involved family issues, with 16 percent of respondents expressing regret about a family squabble or having been unkind to a sibling as a child.

Other top regrets involved education (13 percent), career (12 percent), money issues (10 percent), parenting mistakes (9 percent) and health regrets (6 percent), according to the study, to be published in the journal Social Psychological & Personality Science.

“People did mention high school romances, the things that got away from them,’’ said Neal J. Roese, a psychologist and professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. “Some people said they should have studied something different in college, taken a different career path or followed their passions. Other people said they wished they’d worked less to spend time with children, a parenting regret we heard with some frequency.’’

The study is notable because past studies of regret have collected data primarily from college students and didn’t offer a look at regret among adults of varying backgrounds, education and experiences. Among college students, the biggest regrets tend to center around education, such as wishing that one had studied more or chosen a different major or career.

Participants in the newest study ranged in age from 19 to 103 and came from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. The findings showed that gender, age and education level all influence the types of regrets people feel.

Women were far more likely to have romantic regrets, with 44 percent fretting about a lost love, while just 19 percent of men still had relationship regrets. People who were not in a relationship were the most likely to cite a romantic regret.

No pattern emerged on the reasons for regret. Just as many respondents expressed regret for something they had done as those who felt regret for something they had not done. However, people whose regrets involved something they didn’t do or a missed opportunity were more likely to hold on to the regret over time.

“The longer-ago regrets tend to focus on lost opportunities, things you could have done or should have done different,” said Dr. Roese. “More recent regrets tend to focus on things you did do that you wish you could take back.”

Regrets tended to follow traditional gender roles, with women expressing more regrets about relationships and family issues, whereas men tended to focus on issues involving education, career and money. One in three men had regrets about work and career, compared with one in four women with similar regrets.

Regrets also varied by level of education. Those with less education felt regretful for their lack of education, whereas those with more education were more likely to cite a career-related regret.

Dr. Roese notes that regret can be damaging to mental health when a person fixates or ruminates on the missed opportunity. However, regret, although painful, has the potential to refocus attention and improve decision making.

“There are ways regret feels bad, but on average, regret is a helpful emotion,” said Dr. Roese. “The most helpful way to experience regret is to feel it deeply, get over it quickly and move on and use it to push you to new behaviors that are going to be helpful.’’

Related From Well:

• What’s Your Six-Word Love Story?
• What Are Your Relationship Deal Breakers?
• Love and Pain Relief
• Seeking to Pre-empt Marital Strife
• An Elderly Man’s Last Love Story

Related From Another:

• Study: More women have romantic regrets ABC7Chicago.com
• Study: Regrets? Women have a few, particularly in romance Chicago Sun-Times

Dealers raise some car prices after Japan crisis

The Kansas City Star

Cached:  http://www.kansascity.com/2011/03/17/2732439/dealers-raise-some-car-prices.html

The Associated Press

The disaster in Japan could slow shipments of popular cars like Toyota’s Prius to auto lots. And many dealers are already taking advantage of expected shortages to raise prices.

Buyers will now typically have to pay sticker prices, instead of enjoying discounts that had been the norm for small cars and hybrids imported from Japan. Besides the Prius, models that suddenly cost more include Honda’s Insight, Fit and CR-V; Toyota’s Yaris; and several Acuras and Infinitis.

Small cars such as the Yaris, with a $12,955 sticker price for a base model, and the Honda Insight, priced at $18,200, are losing their typical discounts of 5 percent to 10 percent.

The price increases “will last weeks, if not months,” says Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends and insights for TrueCar.com, a website that tracks what cars sell for at dealerships.

Dealers are acting on the possibility that disruptions in car deliveries from Japan will cause a shortage of higher-demand vehicles. Demand will exceed supply.

So they won’t cut deals on those cars, Toprak says.

Car buyers rarely pay sticker price, also known as the MSRP or Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price. Companies typically offer discounts of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars off the MSRP. Many also provide low-rate financing.

On top of all that, there’s typically room for further negotiation. Toyota, for example, had been offering a $500 rebate on the Prius, plus zero-percent financing. And it offered a $1,000 rebate on the Yaris.

Many smaller cars and hybrids are built in Japan, where car manufacturing has mostly stopped in the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis.

Toyota says it’s shut down production until Tuesday. Honda remains closed and hasn’t said when its plants will restart. A shipment of more than 1,000 Nissan and Infiniti cars that was headed to the United States was destroyed in the tsunami. At least one hybrid battery maker is shut down, threatening supplies of hybrid cars.

“Prices have firmed up, and the tsunami is only going to help that,” says John Hawkins, a Los Angeles-area dealer who runs three Honda dealerships.

Even before the disaster, dealers were reporting a shortage of hybrids such as the Prius, which had been in demand because of higher gas prices. The Prius uses a combination of electric and gasoline power and gets 51 mpg.

A month ago, Dave Conant said his Toyota dealership in San Diego had 57 Prius hybrids for sale. Today, he has three or four. Priuses carry a sticker price of $23,050 for a base model.

“We’re going to run out of cars,” he says.

So he’s no longer willing to make a deal.

The disaster in Japan changed everything. Before last week, Toyota had been stepping up production of Priuses. Dealers wanted to sell as many as they could. But now, Conant says he and other dealers are no longer willing to sell their fuel-efficient cars for less than sticker price.

“We had five on the ground yesterday, and I don’t know when I’ll get another,” he says. “The market has shifted pretty quickly and dramatically.”

Some critics argue that dealers are using the Japan disaster, and the threat of car shortages, as an excuse to raise prices. Eric Ibara, director of residual price consulting for Kelley Blue Book, says any price increases in the market now are “pure speculation” that some models will face shortages.

Toyota declined to comment.

Honda spokesman Jeffrey Smith says the automaker is still assessing the impact of the Japan crisis on its supply of cars. But for now, dealers have enough Japanese imports on hand, and more are on the way, he said.

Infiniti announced price increases Monday for about half its models. Buyers will pay between $400 and $950 more per model. But Infiniti spokeswoman Paula Angelo says the price increases are unrelated to the Japan disaster.

“It’s our normal practice to make mid model-year price adjustments,” Angelo says.

Used cars may be affected, too. Higher prices on new cars will mean higher prices on used ones, says Tim Jackson, president of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association. Once supplies of small cars and hybrids tighten and dealers stop negotiating on price, many customers lower their sights. Cheaper used cars become more appealing.

That higher demand drives prices up.

“Dealers will pay more at auction or for trade-ins, and it will result in a higher price for consumers,” Jackson says.

Passengers avoiding transit flights through Tokyo

Cached:  http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?ID=201103230016&Type=aSOC

2011/03/23 15:27:58

Taipei, March 23 (CNA) Local air travelers are willing to pay more to avoid transit stops in Tokyo, citing concerns about the nuclear crisis in Japan after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, airlines and travel agencies said Wednesday.

Many passengers have canceled flights to the United States via Tokyo and have opted for direct U.S.-bound flights instead, despite the higher cost, according to the Taipei-based Juih Ding travel agency.

The agency cited one extreme case in which a passenger chose to avoid taking a Minneapolis-bound flight via Tokyo, and opted instead for a direct flight to Los Angeles and an onward flight to Minneapolis, which cost the traveler an extra NT$13,500 (US$457).

Taiwan’s two major carriers — China Airlines and Eva Air — also said that as most travel agencies have canceled package tours to Japan, bookings to and from Tokyo have dropped.

Bookings for Tokyo-bound flights have been reduced to about 60 percent of normal volume, while bookings for incoming flights from the Japanese capital have also dropped to less than 50 percent. (By Wang Shu-fen and Ann Chen) ENDITEM/J