Supreme Court To Rule on Health Reform

Health Reform: Making headlines today is the Supreme Court's decision to rule on challenges to the Affordable Care Act, including whether the individual mandate to obtain health insurance is constitutional. The court will hear an unprecedented 5.5 hours of testimony and its decision is expected by June 2012 when the court's term ends, Robert Barnes reports for the Washington Post. In related news, the Obama administration is earmarking $1 billion in innovation grants for programs improving health care quality and reducing costs, Alister Bull and Anna Yukhananov report for Reuters.

Prevention: New federal guidelines recommend that children, not just adults, routinely should be screened for high cholesterol to stave off heart disease, diabetes and other chronic conditions, Bonnie Rochman reports for Time's Healthland blog.

Parkinsons: A new international study has found that exposure to the industrial solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) is linked to a six-fold increase in the risk for Parkinson's disease. Neil Bowdler reports for the BBC News.

Duals: Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Anna Gorman examines how seriously ill people eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid often fall through the cracks of both federal programs, which sometimes pay too much for their care or deny it outright.

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Photo credit: Steve Petteway via Wikimedia (U.S. Supreme Court, 2009)