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By now we know that every purchase a consumer makes is added to a list detailing one’s spending and life-style habit, which is used to target people for marketing campaigns and other services. But how would you feel if that information was used by your doctors to keep tabs on your health? A new report from Bloomberg details how hospitals are using our habits such as buying cigarettes or skipping the gym to create patient profiles in order to identify those who are most likely to get sick.

According to Yale University scientists, this new novel treatment option was crafted as a way to treat alopecia universalis - a disease that leaves its victims almost entirely bare of hair. The university reports that the results of experimental testing on a 25-year-old male patient mark the first successful targeted treatment of this disease in medical history. King is the senior author of a study published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology that details this success. According to the study, the male study participant was placed on a daily regimen of 10 mg of tofacitinib citrate - a preexisting FDA-approved...

COLUMBIA - Electronic medical records, or EMRs, have given some physicians joy and others nightmares. The federal government mandated all health care providers in the U.S. switch to EMRs by January 1, 2014. EMRs replaced the previous medical records systems done by hand on paper. The days of the 4-inch thick patient chart are over. "We knew it was coming, we knew we had to do it." said Tom Selva, chief medical officer at University Hospital. But University Hospital was always ahead of the game. It switched to an EMR provider 15 years ago when it started using Cerner, based...

U.S. medical device maker Medtronic Inc said on Sunday it had agreed to buy Covidien Plc for $42.9 billion in cash and stock and move its executive base to Ireland in the latest transaction aiming for lower corporate tax rates abroad. While the deal will allow Medtronic to reduce its overall global tax burden, the Minneapolis-based company said it was driven by a complementary strategy with Covidien on medical technology rather than tax considerations

Flu experts have made a mutant version of the 1918 “Spanish flu” virus that killed tens of millions of people, sparking a new debate over whether such work is too dangerous. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin says the experiments are important for helping scientists understand how new pandemics start, and for designing better flu vaccines.

Even when he was campaigning for Congress in 2000, President Obama unveiled a sweeping health-care plan that modeled aspects of the Veterans Administration’s medical system. As WND reported, eight years later, during his transition into the White House, he proposed in his “Obama-Biden” plan to “make the VA a leader of national health care reform so that veterans get the best care possible.” In his 2000 congressional campaign, Obama proposed health-care legislation on the federal and state level to lower the costs of prescription drugs for seniors. His plan called for the government to buy the medication in bulk and...

A half-century ago, a governor named Brown persuaded the California Legislature to embark on what those involved thought would be a modest new program of health care for poor Californians. Medi-Cal, as it was dubbed, was California's version of the national Medicaid program that had been attached to the new Medicare system of health care for the elderly. At the time, California's poor obtained medical care, if they did, from either charity or county-owned hospitals, and Medi-Cal was seen as a way of easing the burden on the counties' taxpayers. But as one of the participants in the Medi-Cal legislation,...

Nearly one-third of California’s total population -- roughly 11.5 million people -- will be enrolled in Medi-Cal next year.. Enrollment is expected to exceed previous estimates by 1.4 million, and administration officials said it would cost the state $1.2 billion more than originally thought.

In a group of studies published Sunday in the journals Science and Nature Medicine, researchers say old mice who were infused with the blood of spry younger mice showed clear improvements in memory, sensory function, strength and endurance. Researchers say a specific protein, found in the blood of mice and humans, appears to be at the root of this rejuvenation. They say they hope to test the protein's effect on humans in clinical trials in the next few years.

Type 2 diabetes could cause the brain to age by up to two years every decade a person has the disease, researchers have claimed. It is the first time diabetes has been linked to a change in the size of the brain. The study also found that, contrary to common clinical belief, diabetes may not be directly associated with small vessel ischemic disease, where the brain does not receive enough oxygenated blood. 'We found that patients having more severe diabetes had less brain tissue, suggesting brain atrophy,' said lead author R. Nick Bryan, M.D., Ph.D., professor of radiology at the...

DENVER - Federal agents and local officers are raiding four marijuana businesses tied to an alleged international money-laundering scheme. U.S. marshals arrested a suspect, Gerardo Uribe, a 33-year-old Colombian. Uribe was the last of four suspects arrested under a federal indictment unsealed Monday. The indictment charged Gerardo Uribe and his younger brother, Luis Uribe, along with another Colombian, Hector Diaz, and Denver attorney David Furtado with money-laundering crimes related to the illegal cultivation and distribution of marijuana.

Please continue prayers for my cleaning lady's daughter.

Janis Finer, 57, a popular primary care physician in Tulsa, Okla., gave up her busy practice two years ago to care full time for hospitalized patients. The lure? Regular shifts, every other week off and a 10 percent increase in pay. Just as millions of Americans are obtaining insurance coverage through the federal health law, doctors like Finer are voting with their feet. Tired of working longer and harder because of discounted insurance payments and frustrated by stagnating pay and increasing oversight, many are going to work for large groups or hospitals, curtailing their practices and in some cases, abandoning...

It's almost become a cliché: If the new health care law makes it here, it can make it anywhere. As thousands of California procrastinators try to beat Monday's midnight deadline to apply for a health care plan, they'll be joining more than 1 million others in the Bellwether State who already have enrolled through California's health insurance exchange. And another 2 million have been determined eligible for Medi-Cal, the state's program for the poor.

Please send prayers for a young woman with a burst aneurysm!

Scientists have created powerful painkillers from the venom of snails, it has been revealed. The substances, based on a tiny protein found in cone snails’ venom, could be more effective than morphine. They may one day lead to the development of a drug to treat severe and chronic nerve pain. …

Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects behind Obamacare, is now claiming that “insurance companies as we know them are about to die.” Critics of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law have long alleged that one of the real goals of law was to put private insurance companies out of business.

BOSTON (CBS) – A Connecticut couple sobbed outside a Boston courtroom after a legal setback in their yearlong battle to regain custody of their daughter. The state of Massachusetts took charge of Justina Pelletier as her parents and doctors at Children’s Hospital continue to clash over her diagnosis and treatment. The teen’s mom broke down in court. Paramedics wheeled Linda Pelletier from the courthouse Monday afternoon minutes after she collapsed upon hearing a judge order her embattled teenaged daughter into foster care. “This child has been ripped away from this family,” Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition said....

Rep. Joe Wilson was right. The South Carolina Congressman screamed, “You lie!” when Barack Obama told Americans the Affordable Care Act would not cover abortions or illegal immigrants. [video] Now we know – Obamacare covers illegal immigrants. 125,000 illegal immigrants will be eligible for free healthcare under Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid expansion. The LA Times reported: A new report shows that as many as 125,000 young California immigrants may qualify for an expansion of Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. The Affordable Care Act bars insurance subsidies and enrollment in the Medicaid expansion for undocumented immigrants, but a wrinkle in California rules...

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is an often-debilitating condition of unknown origin. There is a general consensus among CFS researchers that the symptoms seem to reflect an ongoing immune response, perhaps due to viral infection. Thus, most CFS research has focused upon trying to uncover that putative immune system dysfunction or specific pathogenic agent. However, no single causative agent has been found. In this speculative article, I describe a new hypothesis for the etiology of CFS: infection of the vagus nerve. When immune cells of otherwise healthy individuals detect any peripheral infection, they release proinflammatory cytokines. Chemoreceptors of the sensory vagus...