Red Bluff Daily News

December 15, 2015

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Thesleepinggianthas awakened. The American Medical Association (AMA) is the larg- est organiza- tion of physi- cians in the U.S. At its in- terim meet- ing in Novem- ber, the AMA called for a ban on direct- to-consumer (DTC) advertising of pre- scription drugs. The doctors are con- cerned about "the negative impact of commercially- driven promotions, and the role that marketing costs play in fueling escalating drug prices. ... Direct-to- consumer advertising also inflates demand for new and more expensive drugs, even when these drugs may not be appropriate." You have almost cer- tainly seen a television com- mercial that urges you to "ask your doctor if [drug X] is right for you." In- formal polls that we have taken show that most peo- ple find these ads aggravat- ing. Nonetheless, it is clear that this type of marketing is working. Last year, the pharma- ceutical industry spent more than $4.5 billion on consumer ads. That is up substantially from the prior year. The industry does not spend money on marketing unless it produces results. The organization that represents most major drug companies, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactur- ers of America (PhRMA), responded to the news re- lease from the AMA by tell- ing Bloomberg: "Provid- ing scientifically accurate information to patients so that they are better in- formed about their health care and treatment options is the goal of direct-to-con- sumer pharmaceutical ad- vertising." The Food and Drug Ad- ministration requires drug companies to reveal the most serious side effects of the medications they ad- vertise to the public. Ad agencies have found ways to make this message less scary. One of the most com- mon tactics is to show pic- tures of people having fun, smiling or playing with dogs or children during the voice-over about severe ad- verse reactions. As an example, consider an ad for the antipsychotic drug aripiprazole (Abilify). It was being promoted as an add-on to an antidepres- sant. The announcer read: "Abilify is not for every- one. Call your doctor if your depression worsens or if you have unusual changes in behavior or thoughts of suicide ... "Elderly dementia pa- tients taking Abilify have an increased risk of death or stroke. "Call your doctor if you have high fever, stiff mus- cles and confusion to ad- dress a possible life-threat- ening condition or if you have uncontrollable mus- cle movements, as these can become permanent. High blood sugar has been re- ported with Abilify and medicines like it and in ex- treme cases can lead to coma or death. "Other risks include in- creased cholesterol, weight gain, decreases in white blood cells which can be se- rious, dizziness on stand- ing, seizures, trouble swal- lowing and impaired judg- ment or motor skills." While this long list of side effects was being read, the cartoon woman inter- acted with her smiling car- toon-character colleagues at work and then served lemonade to her smiling cartoon family at a back- yard barbecue. It's hard to focus on life-threatening drug complications when everyone seems to be hav- ing such a good time. JoeGraedonisa pharmacologist. Teresa Graedon holds a doctorate in medical anthropology and is a nutrition expert. PEOPLE'SPHARMACY DoctorscallingforbanonTVdrugads Joe+ Teresa Graedon By Kyra Gottesman Correspondent CHICO The Center for Healthy Communities is re- defining fast food through its new Fresh Pick program. "Fresh Pick provides affordable ready-to-eat, whole-food, to-go meals to the public," said Kristen Gruneisen, program coordi- nator and dietician. A nonprofit organiza- tion of the Chico State Re- search Foundation, Center for Healthy Communities' purpose is to promote and actively support healthy- living through nutrition education, food security and physical activity pro- grams. In line with its pur- pose and mission, Center for Healthy Communities launched the Fresh Pick program in November, and anyone can pre-order, pre-purchase "made-from- scratch" dinner entrées via the program's website. The meals, which need to be ordered a week in ad- vance, are available weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays and cost $9. The idea for the Fresh Pick Program began "bub- bling" during the sum- mer, when the center's team started looking at new ways it could provide healthy meal alternatives to the public. Gruneisen said they started off with two gen- eral concepts: a congre- gate meal program and a healthy meal delivery pro- gram. Both options posed challenges. A congregate program would require hosting a sit-down dinner for people. Problems included higher meal costs to cover facility rental expenses and mak- ing it less-useful for busy people, especially dual working-parent families. "The last thing busy par- ents want to do on work and school nights is to haul the kids somewhere for a good meal," said Grunei- sen. "They need convenient good nutrition at home so they can get on to home- work or extra-curricular activities." In researching meal- shipping programs, Grunei- sen said while people appre- ciated the delivery to their doorstep, they still had to deal with packaging and some preparation. "What we found in talk- ing with people was they wanted good food, fast and easy," said Gruneisen. Ultimately, the center settled on a mash-up of the two different programs of- fering the fully prepared hot and ready entrée of a congregate meal with the convenience of a take-out, eat-at-home meal. "Picking up dinner is so easy. I just park out front of 25 Main St., run in, get my meal and I'm pulling away from the curb 30 seconds later," said Faye Johnson, who has been a Fresh Pick customer "from day one." It's always risky to launch a new program, no mat- ter how much market re- search is done in advance but Fresh Pick is off to an amazing start. "The first week, we sold 82 meals. The second week, 129. Word seems to be spreading quickly and peo- ple are excited about it," said Gruneisen. A friend gave Patti Che- zek a Fresh Pick flyer and she thought "What the heck? I'll give it a try." "The whole deal for me is convenience, convenience, convenience. I work a full eight-hour day and when I get home, cooking dinner is a pain in my side. Now I pick up the boxes, come home and my husband and I eat. It's awesome and a good value. Where else could we get a good, healthy dinner for $9?" said Chezek. Ease and convenience are enticing ingredients in the Fresh Pick program but it's the menu that seals the deal. The fall menu includes six different entrées, every- thing from comfort foods like meatloaf with mashed potatoes and green beans to Thai chicken bowls and black bean butternut squash chili. Vegetarian op- tions of the entrées are also available. Fresh Pick meals are available online and the portions are hearty. Each $9 entrée is 1.5 servings. "I buy one entrée, add a little something like a side salad and my husband and I share it. The food is superb," said Johnson. Gruneisen described the Fresh Pick program as a "two-fer." It provides a healthy, family-friendly, fresh meal service for the general public that, by de- sign, generates adminis- trative funding support for other Center for Healthy Community programs, in- cluding Senior Meals and farm-to-school programs. "We're very proud of this program and we're an- ticipating its continuing growth. I can't wait to see how many meals we are preparing a year from now," said Gruneisen. COMMUNITY CORNER Redefiningfastfood CONTRIBUTEDPHOTO This large bowl is an example of a Fresh Pick dinner, and includes pan roasted chickpeas in a barbecue sauce, tomatoes, avocado, ranch-style hummus and shredded carrots over mixed greens. It's finished with crispy caramelized onion and cheese polenta wedges. FreshPickgets healthy meals to the public By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar The Associated Press It's crunch time to sign up for coverage under President Barack Obama's health care law. The web- site works much better now, but rising premiums and shaken faith among insurers have cast new shadows. Tuesday is the dead- line for millions of unin- sured procrastinators to sign up in time for cover- age to begin on Jan. 1. As the health insurance ex- pansion enters its third year, their decisions are critical to its economic vi- ability. A surge of younger, healthier customers could hold down premiums in a market that's struggling to grow. More than half of the health law's 23 non- profit insurance cooper- atives have folded, and even some major indus- try players have recently gone public with doubts. There have been bumps with the health law, says business owner Rayna Collins of Lincoln, Ne- braska, but overall she counts on it. She's sur- prised, however, that many people she knows have remained unin- sured. "It's heartbreaking to think that they could have affordable insurance," said Collins. "They think it's like going on welfare." One friend believed in- correctly that insurers could still turn down cus- tomers with pre-existing health conditions, a prac- tice barred under the law. Collins, a graphic de- signer, has had to make adjustments. She switched insurers for 2016 because the company she was with left the market. Her pre- mium will be about the same, after subsidies the law provides for private coverage. But her deduct- ible will spike from $500 to $2600. "I'm getting less cov- erage for about the same, and I'm not happy with that," Collins said. "But I don't know what I would do if I weren't getting the government subsidy. I was already being priced out of health insurance before Obamacare." The coverage allows her to get regular preventive care that's im- portant for people like her, in their early 60s. The Obama administra- tion says it's seeing a vig- orous consumer response this sign-up season, with more than 1 million new customers already. "All the evidence for us is that the marketplace is strong, it's vibrant, and it's growing," said Andy Slavitt, head of the Cen- ters for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the government's ma- jor insurance programs. Still, the administra- tion's sign-up target for 2016, the president's last full year in office, is mod- est: 10 million people en- rolled and paying pre- miums at the end of the year, an increase of about 10 percent. Some important things for consumers thinking about signing up for the first time, as well as for those renewing: DEADLINES Tuesday is the deadline to sign up for coverage so it can take ef- fect on the first of the year. It's also the deadline to make any changes to ex- isting coverage so they take effect Jan. 1. Current customers will be auto- matically renewed Jan. 1 if they make no changes, but they may save money now by shopping for a plan with lower premiums. The final deadline for new sign-ups and plan switches is Jan. 31, 2016. After that, new enroll- ments and changes are only allowed under spe- cial circumstances. People who remain uninsured af- ter Jan. 31 risk fines when they file their 2016 taxes. FINES WILL STING The fines for people who re- main uninsured in 2016 have gone up substan- tially. A study from the nonpartisan Kaiser Fam- ily Foundation estimates that the average tax pen- alty will rise to $969 per household, or nearly 50 percent. The fines are one of the law's methods for nudging healthy people to get insured. Fines of $900 would put a serious dent in most in- come tax refunds, and it's enough money to pay sev- eral months' worth of sub- sidized premiums. This year uninsured people got a second chance to sign up and avoid penalties if they found out about the fines upon filing their tax re- turns. There's no such re- prieve next year. WEBSITE WORKING The HealthCare.gov website, famously balky a couple of years ago, is working well by most accounts. The site has some con- sumer-friendly enhance- ments including a cost calculator, a doctor and hospital look-up feature and a way to see whether your prescription drugs are covered. Consum- ers are urged to double- check the physician finder results with their plans and doctors. Ahead of sign-up sea- son, it was expected that premiums for health law plans would go up in most places. A wave of closures among the law's nonprofit insurance co-ops led to more worries. HEALTHCARE Cr un ch t im e ag ai n for health law; Tuesday si gn -u p de ad l in e 645AntelopeBlvd.Su#10 530-330-1096 We've Moved Reformer Pilates and Tabata Bootcamp to frontier village Limitedopeningsin Endsnoring Anestimated80million people in North America snore. Taking into account the snorer's spouse and children, as many as 160 million people are negatively affected by snoring. Snoring not only interrupts your sleep cycle, it can also be a symptom of a condition called sleep apnea. Fortunately, there are cost-effective oral appliances for snoring and sleep apnea that dentists can prescribe to their patients. Traditional mandibular advancement appliances, such as SilentNightSlide-Link,TAP,EMA, help reduce or eliminate snoring by moving the lower jaw forward, opening the airway to allow air to flow more freely. CALL DR. RANDAL ELLOWAY IF YOU ARE SUFFERING FROM SNORING OR SLEEP APNEA. HE WILL BE GLAD TO DISCUSS YOUR SYMPTOMS. PROVIDE YOU WITH THE OPTIMUM APPLIANCE TO HELP YOU SLEEP PEACEFULLY AND WITH SECURITY. CALL (530) 527-6777 OFFICE HOURS MON-THURS 8-5 • FRI 8-12. EVERY OTHER WED 10-7 2426 South Main St., Red Bluff CA redbluff.mercy.org Lupus/FibromyalgiaSupportGroup 5:30pm-8:00pm 12/15 3 rd Tuesday Columba Jackie Kitchell 529-3029 Childbirth Preparation redbluff.mercy.org/classes_and_events 6:00pm-9:00pm 12/17 Thursday Columba 888-628-1948 Childbirth Preparation 6:00pm-9:00pm 12/10 12/17 Grief Support 3:00pm-5:00pm 12/17 Thursdays Wright Kristin Hoskins 528-4207 TCHSA-Public Health Immunization Clinic 2:00pm-4:30pm 12/17 3 rd Thursday Russell Cheyenne Humphrey 527-6824 GiveTheGiftOf Hea lth And Fitness (530) 529-1220 100 Jackson St. Red Bluff Holiday Special $25.00 Come in for details Gift Certificates Available HEALTH » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, December 15, 2015 MORE ATFACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4

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