Health

People with pre-existing medical conditions now have the option of paying lower premiums and higher deductibles if they enroll with Michigan’s Health Insurance Program.

State officials are trying to get more people to take advantage of the program that is a precursor to national health care reforms taking effect in 2014.

Eric Schneidewind, president of the Michigan chapter of AARP, says only a few hundred people have enrolled with the program so far.

“I think it’s a new program, for one thing, and they just don’t know it exists. And so they aren’t aware of it, they haven’t taken advantage of it, and so it’s really potentially a very good deal for a person who has a chronic condition of health—bad health.”

Schneidewind hopes offering the lower premium and higher deductible will encourage thousands of people to enroll. He says hundreds-of-thousands of people in Michigan are eligible.

"I’ve run across members who have tragic stories about themselves or their children who really probably died prematurely because they couldn’t get adequate health care for a chronic condition. What I’m telling our members at AARP and elsewhere, there now is an option, it is affordable."

The health care company that runs the pool recently got federal approval for a plan to bring down rates that can still be hundreds of dollars a month. The new plan allows people with preexisting conditions to pay higher deductibles and lower premiums than were previously offered.

Michigan is one of a group of states suing the federal government to opt out of national health care reform.

Dr. Lazar Greenfield, an emeritus professor of surgery at the University of Michigan, resigned as president-elect of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) after writing a controversial editorial in a February issue of  Surgery News. Greenfield also served as the lead editor for ACS' content in the publication - a post he has also resigned.

The editorial suggested that semen has a mood-enhancing effect on women. It concluded, "so there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates."

The entire February issue of Surgery News was retracted by ACS after receiving complaints.

You can find Dr. Greenfield's editorial as originally posted on Retraction Watch.

Residents of White Lake gathered this morning to dispute their inclusion on a list of cancer clusters in Michigan. The list was compiled by the National Disease Cluster Coalition.  

Claire Schlaff  started the White Lake Cancer Mapping Project after her son passed away from a rare cancer. She says the National Disease Cluster Coalition misinterpreted information from the White Lake Cancer Mapping project:

“The materials they put out kind of made it look like all of these were confirmed clusters, including ours, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Although we’re looking into it, nothing has been confirmed.”

Schlaff said the White Lake Mapping Project data will not be ready for analysis for at least a year. She says the project was meant to find a link between cancer and the environment:

“I’m not looking for a yes or no answer about whether there’s a cancer cluster here. What I am trying to do and what our group is trying to do is to learn more about the connection between the environment and cancers.”

White Lake was put on a list of toxic hotspots in the mid-1980s because of pollution from the Occidental Chemical Company.

Detroit is the site of an important medical discovery that’s expected to reduce infant mortality.

Doctors at the Detroit Medical Center, Wayne State University, and the National Institutes of Health identified women likely to deliver their babies early with a simple hormone gel. They treated those women with a hormone gel and reduced the chance of premature delivery by 45 percent. Mike Duggan is the President of the Detroit Medical Center.

"The idea that you could spot a likelihood of that premature delivery and prevent it in really remarkable numbers it is a world changing discovery. This is going to change the infant mortality rate."

Doctor Tom Malone is the head of DMC’s Hutzel Women’s Hospital.

"Prematurity and small for gestational age probably impacts infant mortality more than anything else, and the infant mortality rate in the city of Detroit is the highest in the state. So you get an idea of how significant this study is."

Over 500,000  babies are born early each year in the United States. Prematurity is the leading cause of infant mortality.

New University of Michigan research finds more women are having more children by more than one father. The U of M study shows 28% of women with two or more children had those children by more than one man. Among African-American women that number goes up to 59%.

Cassandra Dorius is a demographer at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.

“I think it’s just that families are changing. That families have been changing for a long time and that this is just one more indication that they are new and different today."

Dorius says families with multiple fathers face higher stress levels, as children and parents try to balance emotional and financial pressures. 

She says the growing remarriage trend , as well as single parenthood, is increasing ‘Multiple Partner Fertility’ in the U.S.