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Leadership Development Series 2011 in Review
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Family Health Care Costs Double Since 2002
The authors explain that even though the increase rate is losing some of its steam, it took less than nine years for the cost to double.
The Milliman Medical Index (MMI) includes the amounts paid in by both employee and employer, the burden of which has been tilting towards the employee over the last few years. Employees pay in today $8,808, over twice as much as they used to in 2002 ($3,634).
Below are some more of the highlighted findings from the report:
- The MMI rose by $1,319 from 2010 to 2011
- Employees' share of total costs rose from 36.8% in 2005 to 39.7% today
- The yearly MMI increase rate has slowed down by 0.5%, but still outpaces spending increases in other parts of the economy
- Facility spending increases (inpatient plus outpatient) make up 60% of this year's total increase in healthcare costs
Spending on health care benefits are progressively taking up a larger share of employee and employer budgets, the authors wrote.
With the arrival of federal healthcare reform, the focus is very much on getting the most out of every dollar spent on healthcare.
Deductions on payrolls to pay for insurance coverage increased 9.3% this year, this is more than the previous year. While employers' share of employee health care costs dropped 6% in 2010 and 8% in 2009.
The authors say that the healthcare reforms have not had much of an effect on bringing down these burdens. The new provisions included in the reform, such as doing away with lifetime benefit limits and eliminating copays on preventative care may have changed the rules somewhat, but as far as the total cost of care is concerned they have made no difference.
33% of a family's overall health cost goes on paying physicians, 31% on hospital inpatient costs, 17% on outpatient costs, and 15% on pharmacy costs.
Family health care costs vary considerably, depending where you live in the USA. In New York City, Chicago, Boston and Miami they are more than double the national average for a family of four. In Seattle, Atlanta and Phoenix they are below the national average.
Does Coffee Cut Breast Cancer Risk?
Women who drink more than five cups of coffee a day may be reducing their risk of one type of breast cancer, new research suggests.
Previous research has produced conflicting results about coffee and breast cancer risk, says researcher Jingmei Li, PhD, of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
In her new research, she found coffee drinking reduces overall breast cancer risk modestly -- by 20% -- when she considered age. "The 20% decrease in risk associated with drinking five or more cups of coffee a day was statistically significant only when adjusted for age," she tells WebMD.
When she took into account other factors, such as education level, drinking of alcohol, and hormone therapy use, she found a 57% reduction in risk for cancers known as estrogen-receptor negative cancers. This type of breast cancer is less likely to respond to hormone therapy than estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer.
However, a U.S. expert warns that the new finding about reduction in risk for ER-negative breast cancer could be due to chance. The only solid message from this study and previous ones, says Shumin Zhang, MD, ScD, a researcher at Harvard Medical School, is this: "Drinking coffee doesn’t seem to increase the overall risk of breast cancer."
The researchers from Karolinska Institutet evaluated coffee drinking and breast cancer risk in 2,818 patients with breast cancer and 3,111 study participants who did not have breast cancer.
The breast cancer patients were classified by estrogen-receptor tumor subtypes.
Breast cancer cells are termed ER-negative if they don't have receptors for estrogen. They are ER-positive if they do. Receptors are proteins on the outside surfaces of cells that can attach to hormones found in the blood. When estrogen attaches, it can fuel the growth of breast cancer cells.
Participants were ages 50 to 74, all Swedish born and residents there between October 1993 and March 31, 1995.
The researchers collected information on coffee drinking habits. They also asked about education, family history of breast cancer, menstrual history, reproductive history, and habits such as smoking, drinking alcohol, and exercising.
Coffee drinkers were grouped into four categories:
- One cup or less a day
- More than one cup and up to three cups a day
- More than three cups and up to five cups a day
- Five or more cups a day
Those who had one cup or less a day served as the reference group.
Conflicting Research
''The results are biologically plausible," Li says. Coffee has compounds that may affect breast cancer of different ER subtypes in different ways, she tells WebMD.
For instance, she says, coffee has been shown to boost blood levels of the phytoestrogen enterolactone. It is linked in other studies with a decrease in ER-negative breast cancer risk, she says.
In her own research, Zhang has found that several cups of coffee daily, overall, do not seem to pose a risk for breast cancer.
However, in research published in 2008, she found coffee intake was linked with an increased risk of ER-negative cancers -- exactly the opposite of the new study.
Li's finding that heavy coffee drinking may reduce ER-negative breast cancer risk, she says, is interesting. However, she isn't convinced. "It is unclear if this observation was a chance finding."
Courtesy: http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20110510/does-coffee-drinking-cut-breast-cancer-risk