Rochdale Village Health

original article can be found at nytimes.com

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday left standing the basic provisions of the health care overhaul, ruling that the government may use its taxation powers to push people to buy health insurance.

The narrowly delineated decision was a victory for President Obama and Congressional Democrats, with a 5-to-4 majority, including the conservative chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., affirming the central legislative pillar of Mr. Obama’s presidency.

Chief Justice Roberts, the author of the majority opinion, surprised observers by joining the court’s four more liberal members in the key finding and becoming the swing vote. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, frequently the swing vote, joined three more conservative members in a dissent and read a statement in court that the minority viewed the law as “invalid in its entirety.”

The decision did significantly restrict one major portion of the law: the expansion of Medicaid, the government health-insurance program for low-income and sick people, giving states more flexibility.

The case is seen as the most significant before the court since the Bush v. Gore ruling, which decided the 2000 presidential election.

In addition to its political reverberations, the decision allows sweeping policy changes affecting one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the economy, touching nearly everyone from the cradle to the grave.

The political fight over health care remains far from over as Republicans reaffirmed their campaign to repeal the law.

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original article can be found on nydailynews.com

While the stunning jump in numbers is likely attibutable to wider testing in DC’s most needy neighborhoods, HIV rates in heterosexual black women, a high-risk group, are on the rise.

There’s a female health crisis brewing in our nation’s capital.

The HIV infection rate among poor African-American women in Washington DC has doubled, from 6.3% in 2008 to 12.1%, according the city’s Department of Health data.

While the stunning jump in numbers is likely attibutable to wider testing in DC’s most needy neighborhoods, HIV rates in heterosexual black women, a high-risk group, are on the rise, reports the Washington Post.

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You have countless choices in energy supplements. But what works?
WebMD Feature
By R. Morgan Griffin
Reviewed By David Kiefer, MD

Take a walk through your local supermarket, and you might come to the conclusion that Americans are in the grip of an energy crisis. There are the countless bottles of energy supplements, the coolers of energy drinks, and the racks of energy bars at the check-out counter.

“Energy [supplements have] become one of the fastest-growing categories of supplement,” says Andrew Shao, PhD, from the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade organization in Washington D.C. “And that’s because everybody — whether you’re a man or a woman, young or old — wants more energy.”

Whether it’s true or not, it sure seems like life is more hectic than it once was. For people always on the go, the idea of an energy pill is compelling.

But do they work? Experts are generally cautious. Some energy supplements may help some people to a degree. Still, you have to know what you’re looking for. Otherwise, a trip to the supplement store could just leave you hundreds of dollars poorer and no less sluggish.

To help guide you toward the energy you need, WebMD talked to the experts. Here’s a rundown of some of the most popular energy supplements — what’s likely to help and what isn’t.

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Original article can be found at nytimes.com

A federal health official’s ruling has cleared the way for 50 different types of cancer to be added to the list of sicknesses covered by a $4.3 billion fund set up to compensate and treat people exposed to the toxic smoke, dust and fumes in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The decision, released on Friday, came as a vindication for hundreds and perhaps thousands of people who have claimed — often in the face of resistance from public health officials — that their cancers were caused by their exposure to the dust cloud and debris thrown up by the attacks.

It will allow not only rescue workers but also volunteers, residents, schoolchildren and passers-by to apply for compensation and treatment for cancers developed in the aftermath of the attacks. The cancers will not be officially added to the list of covered illnesses until after a period of public comment and review that could last several months.

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original article can be found at nytimes.com

He steered into the high school parking lot, clicked off the ignition and scanned the scraps of his recent weeks. Crinkled chip bags on the dashboard. Soda cups at his feet. And on the passenger seat, a rumpled SAT practice book whose owner had been told since fourth grade he was headed to the Ivy League. Pencils up in 20 minutes.

The boy exhaled. Before opening the car door, he recalled recently, he twisted open a capsule of orange powder and arranged it in a neat line on the armrest. He leaned over, closed one nostril and snorted it.

Throughout the parking lot, he said, eight of his friends did the same thing.

The drug was not cocaine or heroin, but Adderall, anamphetamine prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder that the boy said he and his friends routinely shared to study late into the night, focus during tests and ultimately get the grades worthy of their prestigious high school in an affluent suburb of New York City. The drug did more than just jolt them awake for the 8 a.m. SAT; it gave them a tunnel focus tailor-made for the marathon of tests long known to make or break college applications.

“Everyone in school either has a prescription or has a friend who does,” the boy said.

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“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground”
-Frederick Douglass (American Abolitionist, Lecturer, Author and Slave, 1817-1895)

Most feel pessimistic about their generation’s future 

(original article can be found at nydailynews.com)

In post-recession America, it’s a coin toss whether college graduates will wind up fully employed.

Nearly 50% of grads over the last five years are unemployed or underemployed, according to a Rutgers University study released Thursday.

The research compared the job outlook for “post-recession” grads with that of graduates before the U.S. economic collapse in 2008.

Declining opportunity for even top students is squashing optimism in today’s youth, most of whom worry the American Dream is beyond their reach, researchers found.

Only one in five college graduates said they expected their generation would be more successessful than the generations before them.

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HAVANA — Yudelsy García O’Connor, the first baby known to have been born with H.I.V. in Cuba, is not merely still alive. She is vibrant, funny and, at age 25, recently divorced but hoping to remarry and have children.

Her father died of AIDS when she was 10, her mother when she was 23. She was near death herself in her youth.

“I’m not afraid of death,” she said. “I know it could knock on my door. It comes for everyone. But I take my medicine.”

Ms. García is alive thanks partly to lucky genes, and partly to the intensity with which Cuba has attacked its AIDS epidemic. Whatever debate may linger about the government’s harsh early tactics — until 1993, everyone who tested positive for H.I.V. was forced into quarantine — there is no question that they succeeded.

Cuba now has one of the world’s smallest epidemics, a mere 14,038 cases. Its infection rate is 0.1 percent, on par with Finland, Singapore and Kazakhstan. That is one-sixth the rate of the United States, one-twentieth of nearby Haiti.

The population of Cuba is only slightly larger than that of New York City. In the three decades of the global AIDS epidemic, 78,763 New Yorkers have died of AIDS. Only 2,364 Cubans have.

Other elements have contributed to Cuba’s success: It has free universal basic health care; it has stunningly high rates of H.I.V. testing; it saturates its population with free condoms, concentrating on high-risk groups like prostitutes; it gives its teenagers graphic safe-sex education; it rigorously traces the sexual contacts of each person who tests positive.

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Centers to open in areas with high abortion rates for residents

(original article can be found at NyDailyNews.com)

A group of clergy and anti-abortion activists from across the city are planning to open up pro-life centers in neighborhoods with high rates of abortions.

The Leadership Coalition is slated to open the New Beginnings Center of Hope in Jamaica, Queens, by the end of the year. It will offer counseling, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and adoption referrals.

The group plans to open a similar pregnancy support center in Harlem in 2013.

“What we want to say is, ‘Hey, when you’re faced with this decision, call us. We can give you a full range of options,’” said the Rev. Michel Faulkner, head of the New Horizon Church in Harlem. And “the option of abortion is still on the table.”

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Former Brookdale honcho David Rosen sentenced to three years in prison for bribery scheme
Feds had asked for 10 years

Tuesday, May 8, 2012, 6:00 AM  (original article can be found at nydailynews.com)
JESSE WARD FOR NEW YORK DAILY NE

Brookdale Medical Center

The disgraced former CEO of a beleaguered Brownsville hospital asked a judge to spare him from prison Monday — but was slammed with a three-year sentence.

“He made this a government not of the people, but of the debauched,” said Judge Jed Rakoff y in sentencing David Rosen, ex-head honcho of Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center.

“The glaring and rather tawdry truth is Mr. Rosen knowingly and intentionally bribed one legislator after another,” said the Manhattan Federal Court judge.

The U.S. Probation Office had recommended a 10-year sentence. Judge Rakoff said he set a lower sentence after taking into consideration

Rosen’s character: “There is no doubt Mr. Rosen is a good man in many respects; there is no doubt the people of New York have benefitted by his efforts to enhance healthcare in impoverished communities.”

Rosen was convicted in September of a scheme to bribe three Brooklyn and Queens pols to win favors for money-losing Brookdale and a pair of Queens hospitals he also headed as the CEO of MediSys Health Network.

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