Health Creative Services

Archive for the ‘Mississippi Health Policy’ Category

Over the past twenty years, a rising health crisis has been causing severe problems for thousands of Americans. Obesity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only one state in 2007, Colorado, had a prevalence of obesity less than 20 percent of the population. Three states, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, had a prevalence of obesity that was equal to or greater than 30% of the population. The state of Texas has an obesity rate of about 21 percent.

With the rising prevalence of obesity comes a rise in obesity related health problems including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, breathing difficulties, osteoarthritis, and certain types of cancer. Obesity is the leading preventable cause of death worldwide.

Bariatrics is a branch of medicine, created around 1965, that deals with the causes, treatment, and prevention of obesity. Bariatrics may include such treatments as dietary counseling, exercise programs, psychological approaches, or in cases of extreme health risk, bariatric surgery.

For residents of Victoria, Texas, there are several treatment centers available to address these needs. One such center is Better Life Bariatrics in Victoria. Better Life Bariatrics is an outpatient clinic working under the direction of Dr. B. Dean McDaniel and in association with Citizens Bariatric Center hospital program. The center specializes in comprehensive weight management and bariatric laparoscopic surgeries.

People suffering from obesity need not despair. There are bariatric medical experts dedicated to the treatment of obesity and committed, through the use of weight management programs and surgery, to helping those suffering from obesity live healthy and productive lives.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a junk food junkie or a health conscious eater, if you’re eating supermarket food of any sort, you are at risk for all sorts of health problems. Cancer rates have skyrocketed in the last 20 years, as well as other diseases and health issues such as heart, kidney, and liver ailments. Why? Because our food is unsafe.

Commercial growing, often using genetically modified seeds, depends on petrochemically created nitrogen fertilizer and plenty of petrochemical pesticides and herbicides. Then, when farm crops are picked, they’re shipped for packaging to processing plants that have been shown to be under-inspected, where it’s very possible your food could be contaminated with mold, mildew, e coli, and salmonella.

Two different types of genetically modified corn have been tied to organ damage in humans. GM crops have also been tied to Bee Colony Collapse, which threatens our whole food supply. And scary new diseases, such as Morgellon’s Disease, are appearing, with many indications that they’re being caused by corporate meddling for profit with something nature knows best– genes. Even worse, in the US there is no requirement that food be labeled as genetically modified, so we can’t even know for sure whether what we’re buying in the supermarket has been tampered with at the genetic level.

Nitrogen fertilizer runs off factory farm fields and into our streams and rivers and has caused huge dead zones in the Mississippi Delta and along the Gulf coast, as well as in the Chesapeake Bay and other estuarial waters, contaminating areas that formerly provided us with much food in the form of fish, shrimp, crabs and other shallow water seafood.

Petrochemical pesticide and herbicide residue has been found in infants’ bloodstreams, as well as in our water supplies. These pesticides and herbicides are very difficult to wash off our greens and other veggies, and the pesticides and herbicides are known carcinogenics. The skyrocketing rate of Cancer in the US is roughly analogous to the increased use of petrochemically “enhanced” growing methods by big growers.

There’s been a lot in the news about our unsafe food processing plants. What people are just now realizing is that it doesn’t matter if the food is “processed” or not, or even if it’s been organically grown! If it’s been shipped to a large scale packaging facility, it could be making you sick. Some of the foods that should be the healthiest for us, foods like raw lettuce, carrots, cauliflower, tomatoes, spinach and broccoli, are often contaminated with dangerous strains of e coli and salmonella during packaging.

What’s the solution?

Grow your own Organic Food.

There are additional health benefits to growing your own food. It’s on your table in minutes instead of days, or even weeks, which preserves much more of the nutritional benefit. Food grown organically is much more nutritionally dense. And even better, it tastes better!

Even if you have no yard, you can still produce at least some of your own organic food on a patio or balcony, and make your own sprouts for salads.

If you have a yard with a sunny spot, you can grow a lot of your family’s organic food. It’s not hard to do, and it’s a very cost effective way of feeding your family good, nutritious foods that will help fight diseases instead of causing them. Growing your own Organic Veggies and sprouts will ensure you a safe, nutritionally dense, and tasty food source free of carcinogens, pesticides and genetic modifications.

While many states have embraced new health care policies, Mississippi, however, is one of the states that have been left behind due to socioeconomic problems. Poverty affects Mississippi’s economic and health policies mainly because private and public payers were less involved or concerned in reducing the health care spending, and believed that the state has insufficient budget for health and long term care services.

In fact, Mississippi was voted the worst state in terms of health care system in 1999. Mississippians have poor health status compared to residents of other states, and Mississippi is the 50th state with premature mortality rate. Several factors influence these trembling health concerns such as heart disease, smoking, cancer, infant mortality, and motor vehicle deaths. However, Mississippi prides of having the highest child immunization rates in the country. The low quality of health care can be blamed on demographic factors such as poverty, high unemployment and illiteracy rate.

From 1994 – 1995, 20 percent of non-elderly Mississippians were uninsured, which is 4% higher than the national rate. The high rate of uninsurance in Mississippi is caused by low level of employer-sponsored insurance. Although Medicaid limits the number of eligible policyholders, many impoverished residents (about 16 percent of the state population) participate and rely in Medicaid.

Medicaid Expenditures
Medicaid provides the second largest state budget for health care. This budget comes from the federal government and revenue contributed by health care providers. Mississippi has the highest federal Medicaid reliance in the country that rose to about 77.2 percent in fiscal year 1997.

Mississippi’s Medicaid expenditure has been higher the national average since 1990s. The large expenditures were triggered by the growth of DSH spending and higher spending per enrolee. Unfortunately, less Medicaid budget is appropriated for long term care services compared to other services, primarily because of the restrictions on nursing home and home health capacity. With at least 30 percent Medicaid spending that goes on long term care services, the state receives relatively lower than the national rate of 40 percent.

The state government has changed several insurance regulations in the states, which include the limits on pre-existing condition exclusions and portability of insurance. This led to the changes in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. The state pursued a high-risk insurance pool to about 1,500 people with serious health conditions, who were not eligible for any health insurance. The risk pool was funded by the insurance companies and member premiums.

Long Term Care
Mississippi has somewhat stringent policies in terms of long term care. The state issued the “certificate-of-a-need-system” that diminished the number of nursing home beds and creation of new home health agencies. The restrictions on nursing home expansion as well as limiting the average stay in nursing home facilities resulted to low occupancy rate of 99 percent. Although Mississippi receives the largest share in Medicaid, the budget that should have been used for long-term care was, otherwise, used on institutional care. Even though home and community-based services have flourished within the state, these programs are dominated by Medicare and remain unpopular that the institutional care. Half of elderly and disabled Medicaid enrolees in Mississippi need long term care services.

Given those underlying health care problems, the Mississippi government enacted the reform bill in 1997. The bill carried few changes on the state’s financial system, but it did not make necessary reforms for Medicaid. Lawmakers became worried that recipients would lose cash assistance might lose Medicaid benefits as well.

Meanwhile, the state adopted the long term care partnership program that has been running previously in other states. The Mississippi Long Term Care Partnership program contains the same vision of other states: to help residents protect their assets against the spend down requirements of Medicaid. This program will lessen the burden of getting long term care insurance in Mississippi. The partnership policies have the following features: long term care insurance inflation protection, asset protection, and tax deductions.