Happy Meals, Medicaid Woes and ScienceBlogs: Summer Edition

Here's our daily round-up of news and resources for your work and pleasure:

ScienceBlogs: If you've been following the ScienceBlogs/PepsiCo debacle, it's over: ScienceBlogger PZ Myers reports that the blog network has "expelled" Pepsi's "Food Frontiers" blog.

COBRA Fail: From the WTF? files: The COBRA insurance administrator Discovery Benefits recently cut off a leukemia patient's insurance mid-treatment because she owed them a single penny. Did we mention that the patient had recently lost her job, too? The Colorado Springs Gazette reporter who wrote the story has a great blog post about how Discovery Benefits tried to undermine her reporting – and failed.

Teens and tobacco: American teenagers are smoking less than they used to in the 1990s, but the rate of decline in smoking has slowed in this decade, according to the CDC's Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to cut back on all those state tobacco control programs?

Medicaid: Tough times ahead for Medicaid expansion under health reform? The Washington Post reports that 2.7 million children on Medicaid in nine states, many of them in outsourced Medicaid managed care programs, are not receiving required screenings and immunizations.

UnHappy Meals: Not-so-happy tussling is still going strong between McDonalds and healthy food advocates, who want the fast food giant to stop selling toys with Happy Meals.  

Heat Wave Dining: During a heat wave, watermelon sounds a lot better for you than a Happy Meal. Check out this Huffington Post slide show of healthy foods to eat if you're stuck in the Northeast, where temperatures still are approaching triple digits.