Health Insurance News, & What Are Your Children Listening To?

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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released proposed regulations

that will require health insurers to justify their high premium increases and

help keep insurance affordable for policyholders. The following is the statement

of Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA, on the new regulations:

" Today, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies will no longer be

able to seek skyrocketing health insurance premiums without public scrutiny. No

longer will the insurance industry be able to operate in a Wild, Wild West

through imposing unreasonable The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

released proposed regulations that will require health insurers to justify their

high premium increases and help keep insurance affordable for policyholders. The

following is the statement of Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA,

on the new regulations:

" Before deciding whether a high premium increase will be approved, states and

consumers will now have the information they need to challenge the increase and

hold insurance companies accountable for unreasonable consumer premium price

gouging. With the new regulations, states will now examine the size of a premium

increase and whether the insurer is using reasonable assumptions about their

underlying costs. This review means insurance companies can't use an

unreasonable premium increase, paid out of the pockets of consumers and

employers, to accumulate profits.

" High premium increases will no longer be a 'done deal' before consumers know

what is coming. Under the new regulations, the public must be given timely and

detailed information about proposed high rate increases. Families and businesses

will benefit from a new and transparent review process, just as they will

benefit from rules announced one month ago that require insurance companies to

spend 80 to 85 cents of every premium dollar they collect on medical care and

quality care improvements.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/212412.php

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It's common for school-aged children to pop on a pair of headphones to listen to

their favorite music. Could prolonged use of headphones eventually cause hearing

damage? To learn the answer, the authors of a study in the January print issue

of Pediatrics examined the results of hearing tests of 4,310 adolescents ages 12

to 19 taken as part of National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys.

The study, " Prevalence of Noise-Induced Hearing-Threshold Shifts and Hearing

Loss Among U.S. Youths, " published online Dec. 27, found that exposure to loud

noise or music through headphones increased from 19.8 percent in 1988-1994 to

34.8 percent in 2005-2006. Overall rates of hearing loss did not change

significantly between the two time periods, except for one type of hearing loss

among adolescent females. In 1988-1994, 11.6 percent of teen girls had

noise-induced threshold shift, a type of hearing loss caused by exposure to loud

noise. In 2005-2006, the rate had increased to 16.7 percent.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/212603.php

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