By Scott LaFee
The Affordable Care Act, originally passed in 2010 and sometimes called Obamacare, created access to health care for millions of Americans. In less than two months, states that had expanded Medicaid under new ACA provisions will be able to return to regular Medicaid renewal processes, as a part of the unwinding of COVID-19-related coverage requirements.
A survey by the Urban Institute says 64% of adults in Medicaid-enrolled families are unaware of the pending renewals, suggesting many may not have completed the necessary steps to maintain coverage or, if no longer eligible, find health coverage elsewhere.
The blame, said surveyors, appears to largely lie with states and agencies that have not engaged in widespread education outreach efforts.
"The end of the public health emergency's continuous coverage requirement means millions of people are at risk of losing continuous coverage in Medicaid, which they have relied upon for nearly three years," said Gina R. Hijjawi, senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "States and the federal government must quickly raise awareness that many families will soon need to take steps to maintain or find new health coverage."
Get Me That, Stat!
This winter's "tripledemic" of respiratory viruses impacted an estimated 40% of U.S. households, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, with someone in these households getting sick with the flu, COVID-19 and/or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
Breaking that percentage down: the flu affected 27% of households, COVID-19 approximately 15% and RSV 10% of homes.
Mark Your Calendar
March is awareness month for multiple sclerosis, colorectal cancer, endometriosis, traumatic brain injuries, myeloma, and bleeding disorders. Also trisomy, a condition in which a person has three copies of chromosomes instead of two, resulting in different genetic disorders.
Stories for the Waiting Room
In movies and novels, the scene is inherently dramatic: a doctor telling a sick patient that they have just months, maybe a year, to live. In reality, such prognoses almost never happen, or more precisely, they are rarely accurate. By some estimates, even terminal prognoses reluctantly made in intensive care units housing the sickest patients are only accurate around 20% of the time.
A physician might refer to an estimated survival rate, usually referencing the percentage of people with a condition who are alive five years after diagnosis. But that's a very general number based on a large sample size. Some people in the sample will have died before five years, some will have lived much longer.
Life expectancy is the domain of insurance actuaries. How long an individual lives is really a matter of individual genetics, lifestyle and circumstance, such as where one lives and access to health care.
But for the record, current average life expectancy for Americans is now 76.4 years, with some variation among genders and ethnic groups. That's not good news. The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted U.S. life expectancy, reducing it almost two years. After decades of improvement, Americans now live, on average, their shortest lives in nearly 20 years.
Phobia of the Week
Alektorophobia: fear of chickens (chicken of chickens?)
Observation
"It ain't over till it's over, (but) when it comes to emerging infectious diseases, it's never over." -- Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci
Medical History
This week in 1930, General Foods put the first individually packaged frozen foods, called "Birds Eye Frosted Foods," on sale in Springfield, Massachusetts. To test the market, the product was sold in 18 retail stores to see how consumers would react to frozen foods. Inventor Clarence Birdseye got the idea after watching Canadians thawing and eating naturally frozen fish.
For seven years, he worked on freezing processes, first fish and then other foods. The initial Birds Eye line featured 26 items, including 18 cuts of frozen meat, spinach and peas, a variety of fruits and berries, blue point oysters and fish fillets. His work is considered the birth of retail frozen food.
Medical Myths
The notion that "fresh is best" is popular and enduring, but it's not true. Research has shown that frozen, canned and dried fruits and vegetables can be just as nutritious as their fresh counterparts. And they have the added benefit that they might be cheaper and more often available.
But there's a caveat: Some canned, frozen and dried fruits and vegetables may also contain ingredients used to preserve them and make them more palatable, such as added sugars, salt and saturated fats. It's important to check nutrition labels.
Med School
Q: How often should you clean your ears?
A: Generally speaking, the best advice is to leave your ears alone. They're pretty much self-cleaning, producing antimicrobial cerumen or earwax to catch dirt and bugs before they reach the sensitive inner ear.
Using cotton swabs, even gingerly and with great caution, risks actually shoving cerumen toward the eardrum, where it can get stuck and cause hearing problems. Cerumen cycles out of the ear on a regular basis. Every time you chew, your jaw is pushing the wax toward the ear opening, where it dries and eventually falls out.
In cases of excessive earwax buildup, try a few drops of olive oil, hydrogen peroxide or an over-the-counter solution. Or see your doctor.
Curtain Calls
In 1902, 20-year-old Stanton Walker was attending an amateur baseball game with two friends in Morristown, Ohio. He watched the game with one friend seated on his other side. One friend borrowed a knife from the other to sharpen a pencil being used to keep score. The friend handed the knife to Walker to pass to the other friend. Walker was holding the knife when a foul ball struck his hand, driving the knife into his chest. He died minutes later.
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