Have you ever pondered what health insurance and healthcare was like throughout your state? Or maybe you and your family are planning a move to another part of the country and want to know what you can expect in terms of health coverage in a state. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is making sleuthing like this a whole lot easier for inquiring minds who want to know. They have created a stellar resource website at statecoverage.org, where you can find statistics for all 50 states. Want to compare the coverage provided by employers in Wisconsin versus the coverage provided by employers around the country? Are you curious about the Medicaid coverage in Oregon?

What Makes this Health Insurance Tool Useful

I’m so impressed with this site’s usability and easy of navigation. I’ve always wanted to live in Oregon, as I have a on of family living there and let’s face it: it’s absolutely beautiful there. But let’s say I wanted to truly make a move there and was worried about what type of health coverage would be available me. Once I open the “State Profiles” page, I’m presented with a map of the United States, broken out into states. I clicked on Oregon, and up popped information that can be useful to everyone, despite how you like your information presented. On the Oregon page, I discovered both graphical representation of data (read: bar graphs) and some cold hard numbers.

If you’re looking at a particular state’s data and wondering just where in the heck these statistics came from, the site does a terrific job of citing their sources. Just click on the “Resources” tab for any given state, and you will see listed any source that data was gathered from, including a link to the exact report. For those of you cynics who don’t like to take things at face value, I think this is valuable addition.

Muddling Through the Insurance Jargon

If you’re at the beginning of your insurance journey, you may be looking at terms like Medicaid or SCHIP and scratching your head. Luckily, State Coverage Initiatives has done all of the information gathering for you. Instead of only providing you with facts and figures with no explanation of terms (leaving you opening countless different windows trying to track down what these terms mean), you can click on “Coverage Strategies” at the top of the page and be given in depth definitions of many of the types of coverage you’ll see talked about on other parts of the site. Also impressive is the readability of the definitions-no confusing, misleading trickery here-they lay everything out for you so that it is easy to understand and digest.

Insurance Resources Galore

One fantastic thing about the internet is that there is a wealth of information to be found on just about any subject. It can be difficult to find a reliable and informative site sometimes, and State Coverage Initiatives seems to be one of the good guys. Once you have gotten the specific state information you are looking for, you may be ready to look into purchasing some type of insurance for yourself. There are so many different plans out there, and they vary drastically by carrier and area, so please visit our health insurance by state section arm yourself with even more information to help you with any insurance decisions you’re facing.

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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Prescription Drugs apparently kill more than illegal drugs, according to a recent Florida study

It’s Friday night after work. You have to stop by your local pharmacy to pick up your prescription because you would rather spend your weekend doing more enjoyable things. When you arrive, there is a line of at least 10 people waiting. You stand there, toe tapping impatiently, checking your watch, thinking about meeting up with your friends or family later and feeling nothing but frustration at these crowds. Before you write the rush off as another busy Friday evening, consider that the busy nature of the pharmacy might not be due to everyone wanting to stand in line and stare at the back of someone else’s head, but an indicator of a dangerous and growing trend here in the United States.

If you’re like many of us, you have heard many horror stories about illegal drugs like heroin or cocaine, and how they lead to addiction, overdoses and sometimes death. Scary as illegal drugs may be, prescription drugs and their abuse are becoming even scarier. People are abusing drugs prescribed to them by their doctor, and many are not living to tell the tale.

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