Kids' Home-Packed Lunches: Not As Safe As We Think

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August 8, 2011

food safety, school lunch, reporting on healthFood Safety: An unsettling new study found that nearly 90 percent of the perishable foods in 700 preschoolers' home-packed lunches were at unsafe temperatures before lunchtime, despite refrigeration or the inclusion of ice packs in nearly half the lunches, Reuters reports.

Hospitals: Budget cutbacks and tougher regulations are making it harder for California's hospitals to get their construction projects approved, delaying billions of dollars worth of projects, Lora Hines reports for the (Riverside) Press Enterprise.

Breast Cancer: An uninsured 26-year-old has been denied Medicaid coverage for breast cancer because he's a man, Alicia Tejada and Courtney Hutchison report for ABC Good Morning America. The disease is rare in men but occurs in about 2,000 U.S. men each year.

Senior Health: California state officials are floating a plan they say could help keep 35,000 elderly people from being placed in nursing homes now that Medi-Cal budget cuts are forcing the closure of many adult day healthcare centers around the state, Alexandra Zavis reports for the Los Angeles Times. But advocates say the alternative care options cited in the plan aren't always available.

Medicare: Ouch. Medicare fraud and improper payments by the federal health program accounted for 40 percent of all government waste according to a new General Accounting Office (GAO) report, Charles Feigl reports for American Medical News.

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