New York becomes the fourth state to provide virtual physician visits By Lucas Mearian Two BlueCross BlueShield insurance organizations in upstate New York announced today that they will offer their members and employers virtual physician visits beginning this summer, making New York the fourth state to provide these types of services. BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York, BlueShield of Northeastern New York and technology services provider American Well Inc. said the Online Care service will allow members to talk with physicians in real time through a private online chat network or through...

By Carl Cameron The health care reform bill passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve appears to be dead on arrival in the House, as six anti-abortion Democrats intend to join the ranks of lawmakers who plan to vote against the legislation, Fox News has confirmed. The health care reform bill passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve appears to be dead on arrival in the House, as six anti-abortion Democrats intend to join the ranks of lawmakers who plan to vote against the legislation, Fox News has confirmed. Six new no votes would be enough to kill the Senate bill, and several more fence-sitting lawmakers...

Risk of infection among natives is 31 times greater than non-natives; for Inuit, risk is 186 times greater Bill Curry Ottawa — From Thursday’s Globe and Mail It’s been more than 100 years since Peter Bryce, former chief medical officer at Indian Affairs, sounded the alarm over shockingly high rates of deadly tuberculosis in government-funded Indian residential schools. Now, a century later, TB continues to be a major concern in aboriginal communities. A new federal report reveals the TB rate among status Indians to be 31 times higher than that of non-aboriginal Canadians. Among...

A team of researchers, including scientists from Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet, has found that a thyroid-hormone-like substance that works specifically on the liver reduces blood cholesterol with no serious side effects. High cholesterol levels in the blood are primarily treated with a group of drugs called statins, but they are not always sufficiently effective and higher doses commonly cause adverse reactions. The new finding is based on a clinical trial, which showed that a novel drug substance called eprotirome can reduce blood cholesterol effectively in patients who have...

1 in 6 Americans Has Genital Herpes The sexually transmitted strain of herpes simplex virus infects 1 out of every 6 Americans, HealthDay reports. Luckily, the rate of infection is not increasing, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the agency did find that certain groups are more at risk. The infection rate in women, for example, was almost double the rate in men, while three times as many blacks as whites were infected, the report showed. Read More…

By Elizabeth Cohen, CNN (CNN) — When Eugenie Smith’s hands started tingling, she figured her biking gloves needed more padding. When she felt out of breath after a short walk on a treadmill, she assumed it was pneumonia. When her chest hurt, Smith chalked it up to indigestion. She was wrong, wrong, wrong. Smith was actually having a heart attack, and needed three stents. She was 46 at the time, and in otherwise perfect health. While it may sound odd to miss the signs of something as monumental as a heart attack, cardiologists say they see it quite often. Read More…

By Ashley Fantz, CNN (CNN) — Healthier men, no matter their age, are going to have better sex more frequently and desire it more often than healthier women. And a healthier sex life could mean a longer life. That’s according to a paper written by University of Chicago researchers that was published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal. While the supposition that men think about sex more than women isn’t new, the paper’s findings have wider implication for attitudes toward public health and how patients respond to doctors’ advice, said Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau, an...

Men have shorter life spans than women on average, but when it comes to sexual life expectancy, the guys have the advantage. At age 55, men have an average of 15 years of sexual activity ahead of them, while women average just 10, according to a new survey of middle-age and older Americans. “Overall, men were more likely than women to be sexually active, to report a good quality sex life, and to be interested and thinking about sex on a regular basis,” lead researcher Stacy Tessler Lindau, director of the Program in Integrative Sexual Medicine at the University of Chicago, told LiveScience....

Lisa Rinna isn’t done talking about her face. The 46-year-old star, who has admitted to Botox, Juvederm fillers, lip-plumping and breast implants, argued on Tuesday that she hasn’t overdone it in the Botox department. See Lisa and other stars flaunt their bikini bods In a self-portrait posted on Twitter, Rinna, sans makeup, raises her eyebrows to show the naturally-occurring wrinkles on her forehead. “Ok for all of you who say I’ve had too much BT [Botox] this is for you!” the photo caption reads. Read More…

Matthew Herper Americans spend billions on foods and supplements containing omega-3 fatty acids. Not all of it is money well spent. Fifty years ago, two Danish epidemiologists pondered why Greenland’s native Inuit could have a very low rate of heart attacks despite eating a high-fat diet full of whale and seal meat. They cobbled together $6,000, flew to Greenland and collected blood samples from 130 Inuit. The Greenlanders’ cholesterol numbers were good but not enough to explain the healthy hearts. Read More…