VitaNutrition Health

Michigan’s Republican governor said on Wednesday he will ask doctors to report the body fat levels of children under the age of 18 to a government registry in a bid to fight rampant obesity. News of the proposed registry, which would be similar to existing state clearinghouses used to track cancer, HIV and other diseases, was welcomed by obesity researchers, who said the mandatory nature of the reporting by doctors would make it unique in the fight against obesity.

Governor Rick Snyder said physicians will now be asked to include information on the so-called body mass index of patients under 18 years of age to the Michigan Care Improvement Registry, a database set up in 1998 to track the immunization records of state residents. BMI is basically a height-to-weight ratio that doctors use to measure obesity, a condition that raises the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, various cancers and hypertension, among other things.
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South Carolina does not want any more federal money to set up an insurance exchange, the state’s health regulator said on Thursday, citing fears about the strings attached to the funds. South Carolina joins a handful of other Republican states rejecting millions of dollars in federal grants tied to insurance exchanges that are a key aspect of the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration’s healthcare overhaul.

The exchanges are envisioned as open marketplaces for competing insurance plans where uninsured people and small businesses can band together to negotiate cheaper rates. “State agencies have a very bad habit of chasing any money that comes to them … pursuing the money instead of pursuing their visions and their goals,” said Tony Keck, who heads South Carolina’s Health and Human Services Department.
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