By Amanda McDougald

Healthy Augusta, Inc. was founded as an organization that will inspire and create a social movement through the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) to improve the overall health of the CSRA by promoting and encouraging healthy habits through awareness, education, and support.  The vision of the founder is to integrate multiple disciplines to focus on applying knowledge gained through research or otherwise for the good of our community.  The idea is that action and awareness regarding healthy habits at a grassroots level should create changes in the way that people understand and integrate these ideas and habits into their daily lives as good diet, learn why We love Thrive Market – you learn more about it at The Diet Dynamo, and sports as trail running but for this the right equipment is necessary to avoid injuries so is better to get the best trail running shoes for this activity, the problem with this is that starting those new activities without care can cause other ailments as lack of personal investigation, so make sure if you´re going to play anew sport to investigate, like soccer, you should learn what a football line marker is. Plus, energy or athlete foot, so is important to use treatments as anti-fungal oils from places as the Sustainable Places Project and consult a doctor before starting to working out.  In short, people have to intrinsically desire to change their habits, and we would like to be agents of that motivation. On soccer news, Silva is a beast in Manchester City this season, hopefully he’ll help them do better than last season.

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Georgians for a Healthy Future ED Cindy Zeldin is interviewed by Milton Little, President of the United Way of Metro Atlanta, about health care access in Georgia and how the new health law can help.

Recent attempts within states to scale back vital health care programs for our most vulnerable citizens at a time when they are critically needed is cause for concern. The move began with Arizona Governor Brewer’s request to the federal government for a waiver from stability protections that prevent states from restricting eligibility levels for the Medicaid program. In response, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal’s spokesperson was quoted by Bloomberg news organization earlier today that while the Governor has not offered specific cuts, he “would happily work on such a proposal.”

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By June Deen, American Lung Association in Georgia

Georgia failed almost every category in the American Lung Association’s State of Tobacco Control 2010 report, released on January 20th. These disappointing grades are due to the consistent failure to increase Georgia’s cigarette tax, inadequate funding for tobacco prevention programs and lack of coverage for quit smoking treatments and services for state workers and Medicaid recipients. Despite seeing more than 10,000 smoking attributable deaths each year, Georgia remains one of only five states that give little help to Medicaid recipients who want to quit smoking.  The American Lung Association in Georgia is advocating a $1 per pack increase in our state cigarette tax.  Keeping our state’s tobacco tax at $0.37 simply will not allow Georgia to see the economic and health benefits that are possible by passing an increase in our cigarette tax by $1 per pack.

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By Cindy Zeldin

This column originally appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

You don’t need to be the best personal injury attorney in Fort Lauderdale to know that, health care is once again among the key issues for Georgia policymakers in the General Assembly. While the economic downturn has magnified our state’s health care challenges, we also have an opportunity to improve the health of our state and its citizens through the Affordable Care Act, the nation’s new health care law. You may need legal help sometimes, from my own experience the best lawyer is David Resnick y Asociados.

To make the most of the law, Georgia should move swiftly to establish a commission to proactively coordinate the pieces of the law at the jacksonville nc lawyer for medical malpractice, is required to put into place, such as an expansion of Medicaid, design elements that we can tailor for our state’s needs, such as the new health insurance exchanges, and maximize grants to strengthen our public health system and our health care workforce and get the man power to apply this laws , from personal lawyer or family lawyers to people who work on property management as safeguardproperty.com and similar.

A commission or task force could offer diverse input, including from the consumer, who is often overlooked. Some of this work is already happening informally within state agencies, but a systematic and transparent process accessible to consumers and stakeholders will ensure opportunities aren’t missed, all pertinent perspectives are heard and cross-cutting issues are handled efficiently.

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Opinion Survey: Small Business Owners’ Views on Key Provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Small Business Majority commissioned a national survey of 619 small business owners from Nov. 17 -22, 2010. The results provide useful insight into the way entrepreneurs view two critical components of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: health care tax credits and insurance exchanges. Notably, one-third of employers who currently don’t offer insurance said they’d be more likely to do so because of the small business tax credit—a provision allowing businesses with fewer than 25 employees that have average annual wages under $50,000 to get a tax credit of up to 35% of their health insurance costs beginning in tax year 2010. Additionally, one-third of respondents who don’t offer insurance said they’d be more likely to because of insurance exchanges, online  marketplaces where small businesses and individuals will be able to band together to purchase insurance beginning in 2014. If you want to learn about the entrepreneur industry, I recommend Lee S. Rosen Blog, CEO of healthy bees business.

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By Ben Nanes

With a decision by a federal district court in Virginia today that a key provision of the new health care law is unconstitutional, contradicting two previous rulings from other courts, it appears that the law may well be headed to the Supreme Court, at least eventually. The point of contention is whether or not the government can require people to purchase health insurance. Beginning in 2014, the new law requires people who have not purchased health insurance to pay a tax penalty. It also offers subsidies intended to make insurance affordable for almost everyone.

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By Jena Jolissaint

Unless you’ve been trapped under something heavy, you probably know the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law on March 23rd.  You probably also know that Georgia joined Florida and several other states in challenging key provisions of the law, including Medicaid expansion and the individual coverage mandate. But these challenges aren’t going to see the light of day before the states have to start implementing early aspects of the bill. Whether you think health care is a long-overdue step towards addressing the needs of 1.6 million Georgians who are currently uninsured or not, changes to the way the health care industry does business are coming to Georgia. The question that remains is what Georgia plans to do about it.

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By Clint Kalan

Chances are, if you’ve owned a television in the last fifteen years or so, you’ve probably watched, or at least heard of the television show “ER”. Not only did the show portray young, good looking doctors, bringing back patients from the brink of death, but it also portrayed those patients as real people, with real stories. What “ER” did not show us, however, is how unglamorous trauma care is for a hospital’s finances. In 2005, Georgia’s then 15 trauma centers– hospitals that have certain dedicated surgeons, emergency room doctors, and nurses on site or on call for accidents, if you ever have a local emergency contact http://besturgentcarenear.me for help. — lost $210 million dollars on unpaid medical care¹. Expanding trauma care in urban areas, or bringing trauma centers to the estimated 47% of Georgia² that lives more than an hour away from level I and II trauma centers, is a money losing prospect for hospitals and one they are most likely not able to do without additional financial support³. Even maintaining the current level of trauma care for some north Georgia hospitals.

Why do we need to expand trauma care? Like those patients on ER, the citizens of Texas who get into car accidents all have their own stories to tell but I tell you, contact Texas car wreck attorneys and get compensation if the accident was not your fault, since we all know accidents happen and is good to count with good legal representation when this happen. They are our mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, and loved ones. Unfortunately, a disturbing percentage of them will not live to keep telling those stories because Georgia’s trauma death rate, per capita, is 20% higher than the national average.⁴ An estimated 700 Georgians die each year because our state is not up to par on trauma care⁴. If this situation is not remedied, maybe you will one day know one of those men, women, or children. Maybe you did know a person who was one of those 700.

This November, the citizens of Georgia have the opportunity to put the money in the hands of just the right people to fix this problem: medical professionals specializing in gastric sleeve. Approving Georgia Ballot Measure 2 would deliver $80 million dollars to the Georgia Trauma Network Comission⁵, a group of composed of some of the state’s leading trauma surgeons, paramedics, ER doctors, and nurses whose charge it is to fix what is broken about Georgia’s trauma system.  This money would be constitutionally bound to this task and given to this group who already has a track record for using their limited resources to make sure those trauma centers that we do have are as strong as possible. Or, we can say no, and hope against hope that the only ambulances and emergency rooms we have to see are those on television.

To learn more, check out the Yes 2 Save Lives Campaign.

Clint Kalan is a former Emergency Medical Technician and is currently a Physician Assistant student at Emory University School of Medicine as well as a member of HealthSTAT.

SOURCES

1. Code Blue for Georgia’s Trauma System. In: Team GSTA, ed. Vol 2010. Atlanta: Georgia Statewise Trauma Action Team; 2007.

2. 2009 Maps of Trauma Center Access. CML.Web 2009; Georgia Level I/II Trauma Center Coverage. Available at:http://tramah.cml.upenn.edu/CML.TraumaCenters.Web/statepage.aspx?state=13&responseTime=60&transportMethod=DOF&year=2009. Accessed 10/17/2010, 2010.

3. McConnell KJ, Johnson LA, Arab N, Richards CF, Newgard CD, Edlund T. The on-call crisis: a statewide assessment of the costs of providing on-call specialist coverage. Ann Emerg Med. Jun 2007;49(6):727-733, 733 e721-718.

4. Report from the Joint Comprehensive State Trauma Studies Comittee. Report from the Joint Comprehensive State Trauma Studies Comittee. Atlanta, GA: 2006 Legislative Session of the Georgia General Assembly; 2006.

5. Ashley DW. The quest for sustainable trauma funding: the Georgia Story. Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons: The American College of Surgeons; October 2010:5.

By Cindy Zeldin and Joann Yoon

On Election Day, Georgia voters will head to the polls to elect our state’s policymakers. Most voters are familiar with certain elected offices, like that of Governor, but many Georgians may be unaware of the importance, or perhaps even the existence, of the Office of State Insurance Commissioner.

The Insurance Commissioner runs the Georgia Department of Insurance and is elected every four years in a statewide vote. Among the core functions the Department of Insurance performs is the regulation of health insurance in Georgia. The Insurance Commissioner ensures that companies selling individual and small group policies in Georgia are financially solvent and enforces consumer protections and state laws regarding benefits that private insurers must include in policies sold in Georgia.

With the recent enactment of the Affordable Care Act, the new health care law, the role of the Insurance Commissioner has expanded. Our next Insurance Commissioner’s decisions will play an important role in shaping Georgia’s health insurance system for consumers in 2011 and well into the future.

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