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.
Health Glance
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.
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 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.
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.





























