As the cost of food, medicine and rent continues to climb, new data shows the benefits miners receive are now 40% less than what they received in 1969, when adjusted for inflation. Vonda Robinson, Vice President of the National Black Lung Association, said she is grateful for the benefits her husband receives, but points out the high cost of gas and grocery bills are a constant challenge. "My husband worked in the coal mines for 30 years." Robinson said. " .
Nurses are concerned about the closure of a Portland-area birth center set to go through today. The Family Birth Center at Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center is closing because the hospital says "it maintains a low volume of births with an unusually high-cost care model." Nurses in the facility were in the process of unionizing. Labor and Delivery Registered Nurse Alejandrina Felipe works in the center and said it provided a valuable 24-hour service to an underserved area east of Portland. .
President Joe Biden s proposal to increase taxes on Americans earning more than $400,000 a year from 3.8% to 5% in order to shore up Medicare is being welcomed by an unlikely constituency, the ultrarich. Morris Pearl, chair of the group Patriotic Millionaires and a former managing director at BlackRock, said there is more than enough money to fund Medicare. He argued the wealthiest Americans, especially those living off of their investments, can and should be paying more. .
Billboards have gone up across California warning about the negative effects of unchecked mergers in the health-care system. The Protect California Patients campaign is a coalition of more than 30 organizations that support Assembly Bill 1091, which would give the attorney general more oversight on mergers worth more than $15-million. Rachel Linn Gish is director of communications for Health Access California, which is helping lead the campaign. .
Early Sunday morning, Nevadans lost an hour of sleep but gained an hour of afternoon daylight as they moved their clocks forward for Daylight Saving Time. Dr. Vishisht Mehta, director of interventional pulmonology for Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada, said while changing clocks has become a nuisance for many, the time change also presents health impacts, such as influencing people s circadian rhythms, which he said can be thought of as the body s "own internal clock." Mehta said from November to March, the body is better aligned with the light and dark cycles in standard time, and added when that alignment is disrupted, that is where trouble starts. .