Obama’s Push for Healthcare Reform and Other Health News

Obama Expected to Call for Healthcare Reform in Tonight’s Speech

President Obama is expected to issue a call for overhaul of the healthcare system in a speech tonight before a joint session of Congress, the Associated Press reports. His speech comes just as a report is out from the Department of Health and Human Services that says healthcare costs in the United States will average more than $8,000 per person this year. Medicare’s hospital trust fund is running out of money and may become insolvent by 2016, which is three years earlier than previously predicted. And the government’s portion of the nation’s healthcare tab is only expected to expand in the near future. For one thing, as many people lose their jobs (and their private health coverage) in this recession, government programs like Medicaid are expanding. Also, baby boomers will soon begin reaching age 65, when they can sign up for Medicare coverage. Such trends suggest that the government will be footing the bill for more than half of the country’s healthcare by 2016, according to the AP.

Related: The recession may be hurting women’s health, but there are steps you can take to ward off, for instance, recession-related wrinkles and frown lines. Also, consider these 5 ways to get a good workoutduring the recession.

Robert Tauxe: Progress in the Fight for Food Safety

The salmonella outbreak in peanut butter that has killed nine people and sickened more than 600 has earned the dubious distinction of being the biggest foodborne outbreak in American history, and it’s still ongoing, Nancy Shute reports. She talked with Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the Division of Foodborne, Bacterial, and Mycotic Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about why this outbreak is raising such concern. Among the reasons: It’s “driven by an ingredient, one that got into an extraordinary number of products,” Tauxe says. “That ingredient happened to have a name and flavor that people are familiar with. But were it a less obvious ingredient, it would have been quite hard to pick up at all.”

This salmonella outbreak may be the scariest one yet because it involves peanut butter and peanut paste that manufacturers bought by the tanker-load and mixed into hundreds of products that went on supermarket shelves. Here’s how to reduce your risk of becoming ill. If you’re into online social networking, consider tracking the effects of the salmonella outbreak on Twitter and Facebook. The Peanut Corp. of America plant in Georgia that shipped the tainted ingredients was contaminated with potentially deadly salmonella as far back as 2007, according to tests the company did then. Some stores have begun calling customers about potentially dangerous peanut products.

Ways to Boost Black Women’s Health

Two new publications, The Black Woman’s Guide to Healthy Living and the American Cancer Society’s report “Cancer Facts and Figures for African Americans,” shine a spotlight squarely on black women’s health. And for good reason: They’re more likely than white women to succumb to top killers. African-American women are 35 percent more likely to die from heart disease, for example, according to the National Women’s Health Information Center. African-Americans overall don’t get the same level of heart disease care as whites because they don’t undergo the same tests and treatments.

A lack of standard care can lead to late diagnoses of cancer, resulting in lower survival rates for African-Americans than for whites. The Black Woman’s Guide to Healthy Living, which was compiled by editors at Essence, lists the top cancer threats for black women as those of the lung, breast, and colon. African-Americans are less likely than whites to survive five years after being diagnosed with most types of cancer, according to the ACS report. And while the racial disparity in death rates from cancer is declining, the death rate for all cancers combined in 2005 was 16 percent higher for African-American women and 33 percent higher for African-American men than for white women and men, respectively.

If you’re a black woman, consider these 4 ways to boost your health. Also, learn about the epidemic of HIV among black women, and read about one woman’s battle with HIV.

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