TV News LIES

The new year will bring important changes to U.S. health-insurance rules, as new provisions related to last year's massive health-care overhaul take effect. The new year will bring important changes to U.S. health-insurance rules, as new provisions related to last year's massive health-care overhaul take effect.

*A provision that limits what health insurers can do with the money their customers send in as premiums. The rule requires that insurers spend at least 80 percent of this money on the customers themselves.

It takes more than physicians to treat a patient with multiple chronic diseases like diabetes mellitus and heart disease. A new trial suggests a nurse who acts like a coordinator for the health care intended for a patient can help improve the outcomes dramatically.

Patients with diabetes mellitus and or heart disease are at higher risk of depression.  When depression strikes, the medical treatments would not be as effective. The trial led by Dr. Wayne J. Katon and colleagues at University of Washington found patients who received care from nurses who worked with patients and physicians to manage the care for depression and diabetes and heart disease had better outcomes.

Hundreds of herbal medicinal products will be banned from sale in Britain next year under what campaigners say is a "discriminatory and disproportionate" European law. With four months to go before the EU-wide ban is implemented, thousands of patients face the loss of herbal remedies that have been used in the UK for decades.

From 1 May 2011, traditional herbal medicinal products must be licensed or prescribed by a registered herbal practitioner to comply with an EU directive passed in 2004. The directive was introduced in response to rising concern over adverse effects caused by herbal medicines.

Canada says it will increase the size of anti-smoking warnings on cigarette packages to cover three-quarters of the surface of the packs.

The federal government says the new health warnings will feature images of an iconic Canadian cancer victim covering 75 percent of the packages of cigarettes and little cigars, Postmedia News reported Wednesday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost or misplaced more than $8 million in property in 2007, losing track of items including computer and video equipment, government auditors say. Agency officials said Wednesday they have corrected the lapses that led to that amount of waste.

The report was released this week by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the CDC. In 2007, the auditors checked on 200 randomly sampled items and found 15 were lost or not inventoried, including a $1.8 million hard disk drive and a $978,000 video conferencing system.

Animals in factory farms are given doses of antibiotics -- both to keep them alive in stressful, unsanitary conditions, and to make them grow faster. The practice leads to new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as the now-widespread form of staph (MRSA) known as ST398.

Federal regulators have in the past refused to release estimates of just how much antibiotics the livestock industry uses. But recently the FDA released its first-ever report on the topic. And the amount? Twenty-nine million pounds of antibiotics in 2009 alone.