Hidalgo is a county in southern Texas just across the Rio Grande from Mexico. It?s also home to the highest prevalence of U.S. adults ? about 40 percent of the population? delaying necessary medical care because of cost, according to data in the March 28 New England Journal of Medicine.
The research letter in the March 28 issue of the journal found this number to vary significantly across the country and to be lower in places with less restrictive eligibility criteria for Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for low-income citizens.
Authors found that people with incomes between 67 percent and 127 percent of the federal poverty line, which is $23,550 for a family of four, had up to a 16 percent chance of delaying care. The odds went up to 42 percent for those with lower incomes.
Illustration Courtesy of The New England Journal of Medicine ?2013
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The findings come at a time when states are deciding whether to pursue the Affordable Care Act?s Medicaid expansion, which would extend eligibility to adults with incomes at or below 133 percent of the poverty level.
Norfolk, Mass., with a 6.5 percent prevalence of adults delaying care, was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Hidalgo, researchers said. Massachusetts? adoption of state health reforms since 1990, including Medicaid expansions, and the state?s history of investing in health care were likely reasons, said one of the authors, Dr. Cheryl Clarke from Brigham and Women?s Hospital in Boston.
?We were surprised by the depth of variation between states,? she said. ?It?s important these trends continue to be monitored.?
The study?s authors looked at county-level data of about 289,000 adults to determine the relationship between Medicaid eligibility and adults delaying care. They also took into account the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics at hand.
Researchers found that the counties with residents most vulnerable to delaying care were also likely to have more Hispanic residents and high rates of chronic diseases commonly associated with low-income communities. Texas and Florida were among the states with the highest prevalence.
But Clarke said the study shows that it is possible to develop health infrastructure ? through Medicaid, community clinics and more primary care doctors ? to combat an issue that might be taking a toll on the country?s health. And she said federal investments are moving in that direction.
?This seems to be a strategy that is feasible,? she said. ?We?ll see how that plays out over time.?
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Also of Interest
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See the AARP home page for deals, savings tips, trivia and more
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Source: http://blog.aarp.org/2013/03/28/why-so-many-americans-put-off-medical-care-medicaid-expansion-aca/
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In a statement on its blog?today,?Bitly has announced that CEO Peter Stern has stepped down as CEO. The reason is that Stern is to “pursue other interests”; further details aren’t known at this time. The NYC-based company has raised $28.5 close to $23 million to date, with the last round being a monster $15 million one by O’Reilly, RRE and Khosla last July. Stern was the CEO for a little over a year, after founding Zenbe, a mobile collaboration company with mail, shareflow and list services. Bitly was in the driver’s seat for link-tracking analytics with its popular short-URL service, and the definition of a hot startup. Once the social web took off, marketers and advertisers everywhere clamored for ways to see how their campaigns were doing in real-time. Bitly has since cooled off since services like Twitter have started handling their own short URLs. In January, the company announced a new set of social-tracking APIs for developers in the hopes that its service would be included in other hot metric products. Regardless, this definitely seems like an odd time for a CEO to get bored and move on, so we’re digging for more details: Bitly is announcing today that Peter Stern has resigned to pursue other interests. ?Peter has been a key leader and contributor to the Company,? said Bitly Board member Sam Mandel. ?In particular he has been instrumental in transforming Bitly into a successful business while growing its unparalleled data set. We are very happy that he will remain a shareholder and supporter.? We’ve reached out to Bitly for more information and will update as soon as we hear back. Sources tell us that the overall health and direction of the company is in question, which might explain why the short blog post announcement had a quote from a board member via betaworks. If you’ve heard anything, do reach out to us on the tip line. Something smells fish.ly. UPDATE: While we haven’t been able to dig up too many specific details on the exit of its CEO, we’re told that the company is transitioning away from being an Ad Tech company, which is one potential reason for the change. Currently, Chief Scientist Hilary Mason and VP of Engineering Peter Miron are steering the ship until a replacement is found, along with guidance from betaworks’ Sam Mandel.
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Public release date: 8-Mar-2013
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You can keep brown sugar soft in advance with the help of bread or marshmallows, but if you forget or just have some hard brown sugar lying around that you need to soften right now, redditor whitehandsinkstains notes you can solve the problem with a little water and a microwave.