By Katherine Hobson
Medicaid Maneuvers: The health-care overhaul law will expand Medicaid by 16 million people in 2014, and insurers are jockeying now to best position themselves to snap up state contracts, the WSJ reports. At stake is about $38 billion in new Medicaid revenue, according to Citigroup. Texas, Georgia and California are among the states that will soon offer bidding opportunities to companies, the paper says. (Read why one study predicts new Medicaid enrollees will be healthier than current ones.)
Radiosurgery Equipment Probe: The NYT continues its medical-radiation series today, reporting on problems resulting from the use of retrofitted linear accelerators originally designed for standard radiation to perform more focused and intense stereotactic radiosurgery. Patient injuries can result due to complex components and systems and user error, the paper says.
A Better Snack?: Like other food makers, PepsiCo is trying to develop more nutritious products. As the WSJ reports today, one of them is Tropolis, an 80-calorie snack fruit puree that the company will soon test in the Midwest. Nutrition professor Marion Nestle tells the WSJ that the fruit concentrate included in the product is pure sugar, and that real fruit is still a better option. (Read why one Pepsi exec thinks public-private partnerships are the way to achieve public-health goals such as lower levels of sodium in food.)
Salmonella Alert: There are now two separate salmonella-related food recalls, involving cilantro, parsley and alfalfa sprouts, CNN reports, though only the sprouts appear to have made anyone sick at this point. As a precaution, a Texas distributor has recalled other vegetables in addition to the parsley and cilantro that originally tested positive for the bacteria. No illnesses have been reported. Meantime, the CDC says about 94 people in 16 states and D.C. have become sick from contaminated sprouts. (The CDC recently estimated that about 1 in 6 Americans fall ill each year due to something they ate.)
Image: iStockphoto
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wsj/health/feed/~3/VULPWtaBtTE/
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