If you’re anything like me, and many other HBO-loving Americans, you have seen a few episodes of “The Sopranos.” Ok, if you’re anything like me you’ve sat down and watched marathons of the show on DVD for weeks at a time, but that’s besides the point. There are a few of the mobster’s mothers who have to be cared for in assisted living and nursing home, and they are not shy about mentioning how much that type of care is costing them to pay for. Even if you’ve never seen a minute of this show and don’t have anyone in your life who needs long term care, it can’t be hard to imagine that it costs an arm and a leg.

Factor in the cost of the room combined with availability of medical services and round-the-clock attention and you can understand why a year’s worth of care in a private room back in 2007 cost $74,806. If you are looking into long term care insurance to help cover these astronomical costs for a member of your family, there are a lot of things to know and consider.

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If you or a loved one has ever dealt with cancer, you know what a nightmare treatments can be. While they can work wonders in curing the disease itself, side effects like losing one’s hair, nausea, exhaustion and a laundry list of other symptoms can leave patients feeling drained and sometimes hopeless.

If you are one who believes in treatments beyond the norm, you may want to learn more about alternative forms of therapy. Some may be covered by your health insurance provider, while other simply reply on positive thought or just moving your body. Even if you are initially skeptical, opening your mind to alternative treatments may prove incredibly rewarding for your health and well being.

Take Control of Your Body: Biofeedback

Personally, I’m very intrigued by this form of therapy, as I feel it could be applied to so many things beyond dealing with cancer treatments. Biofeedback basically a form of therapy that strives to connect the body and mind. It’s designed to enable the patient to use thoughts and will to control the body. Biofeedback is based on the idea, confirmed by scientific studies, that people have the innate potential to influence with their minds many of the automatic, involuntary functions of their bodies.

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Specimen from malignant pleural effusion in metastatic breast cancer

Estrogen, that amazing female hormone, is one of the things that makes us uniquely and beautifully women. Unfortunately, if you are an older woman who is overweight, that very estrogen circulating in your body can increase your risk for breast cancer. A study conducted by Women Veterans’ Comprehensive Health Center at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center looked at more than 287,000 post-menopausal women and came to the conclusion that a woman’s weight is directly related to her risk for breast cancer.

How Weight Affects Estrogen

Of the older women surveyed in this study, the ones who were considered overweight had a 10-35% increased risk of breast cancer than their thinner counterparts, and the risk just kept climbing related to the woman’s weight. The reason is that women who are above a healthy weight have more estrogen circulating in their bodies than women at a healthy weight, and these extra hormones are helping to promote tumor growth.

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Hospitals are meant to be safe havens, providing care and a place of recovery for the sick, injured and infirmed. Unfortunately, they have become places where many are robbed of their hard-earned money in hidden charges, fees for unnecessary treatments and lack of coverage from their health insurance plan. According to recent studies, hospitals are overcharging unsuspecting consumers a whopping $10 billion per year. Luckily, you are not doomed to a lifetime of high hospital charges. There are tips and tools at your disposal to make sure that you are only paying the fees that are necessary for you, and you can ensure that the money saved can go toward preventative care to help you stay out of the hospital in the future.

Request an Itemized Bill

You may get a bill at the end end of a surgery or extensive hospital stay for something like $25,000 dollars, and have no idea what you are being charged for. Before the bill even gets placed in your hands, request that the hospital make it into an itemized bill for you. One woman whose husband had just had hip replacement surgery saw charges for newborn blood work and a crib mobile. Unless her husband had had a baby while he was in the hospital, these charges were ridiculous and egregious. Hospital overcharges average about $1,300 per patient, per hospital visit, so requesting an itemized bill can help you avoid paying for things like $129 for a box of tissues.

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Recently, U.S. News & World Report released findings on various types of health care plans throughout the United States. They surveyed members of commercial health plans, Medicare and Medicaid that operate throughout the country. The survey used criteria like customer satisfaction, physician ratings, prevention, and treatment.

According to U.S. News “…the 469 ranked plans received scores of 0 to 100 and overall ratings of 1 to 5 stars. Star ratings are also shown for individual measures, combinations of measures (such as ‘women’s reproductive health’), and the three major categories—prevention, treatment, and consumer assessment. An additional 94 plans did not provide enough data to be ranked but are listed with the information available.”

The following five health care plans are the top rated commercial plans according to this study. You’ll learn what geographic areas they cover, how they rated in terms of overall score and what makes it so darn wonderful to be a member of these plans.

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Winter is almost here, and with it comes the inevitable plethora of sicknesses. The flu, the cold, the sniffles, the aches and the calling in sick to work because you just can’t hack it. You don’t have to become a victim of the cootie bugs this year; there are simple and effective ways to keep the germs at bay and your health insurance company happy! Here are the top five tips to keep your health in winter.

1-Wash those hands. And then wash them again. One of the best ways to make sure that germs don’t get you is to wash your hands. Simplistic? Yes, but if you’re meticulous about washing your hands after you shake hands with people, use public restrooms (or any restroom at all, let’s stay hygienic here people), cough or sneeze, touch handles of public doors…you get the picture. If you think you might feel self conscious about running off to the bathroom every 3 minutes, grab yourself a handy little bottle of hand sanitizer and carry it around with you.

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