New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Men are at it again. They are buying more–for themselves.

The male shopper, who laid low at the onset of the recession, is back. He is buying more and spending more, and retailers are delighted.

Men are not just purchasing suits, dress shirts, ties and shoes. They are rivaling their female counterparts by loading up on accessories. They are buying bracelets, bags, hats, umbrella, belts, scarves, pocket squares, caps, metal cuffs –you name it.

Some industry forecasters predict sales growth for men’s clothing and accessories during the first three months of 2012 will set a 20-year high.

In a move to make traditional women’s accessories more appealing to men, some designers are giving them manly monikers. A bracelet is dubbed wristwear, and a purse is called a holdall.

Men were well represented at last week’s New York Fashion Week, and male adornments took center stage.

Spending on accessories is driving the men’s category. In the last half of 2011, sales grew 14 percent to about $6 billion, according to market research firm NPD Group. The trend is expected to continue.

The return of the male shopper could help pick up retail sales. And, the rebound in male shopping may also bode well for the unemployment rate. It may reflect an improved jobs pictures for men.

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Fort Washington, PA, United States (AHN) – McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of McNeil-PPC, Inc., is voluntarily recalling at the wholesale and retail levels seven lots, comprising approximately 574,000 bottles, of Infants’ Tylenol Oral Suspension, 1 oz. grape distributed nationwide in the United States.

Infants’ Tylenol is an over-the-counter product indicated as a pain reliever/fever reducer.

McNeil is initiating this voluntary recall as a precaution after receiving a small number of complaints from consumers who reported difficulty using the Infants’ Tylenol SimpleMeasure dosing system.

SimpleMeasure includes a dosing syringe that a parent or caregiver inserts into a protective cover, or “flow restrictor,” at the top of the bottle to measure the proper dose.

In some cases, the flow restrictor was pushed into the bottle when inserting the syringe. Children’s Tylenol products are intended for children two years of age and older and remain available.

No adverse events associated with this action have been reported to date and the risk of a serious adverse medical event is remote.

Consumers can continue to use Infants’ Tylenol provided the flow restrictor at the top of the bottle remains in place.

If the flow restrictor is pushed into the bottle, the parent or caregiver should not use the product.

Consumers can request a refund by visiting www.tylenol.com disclaimer icon or contacting McNeil at 1-888-222-6036 Monday-Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time; Saturday-Sunday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time.

Parents and caregivers with any health questions or concerns should contact their healthcare provider and visit www.tylenol.com disclaimer icon for additional information.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Congress Friday swiftly passed a deal to extend the payroll-tax cut through the end of 2012, continue paying unemployment benefits and avoid a steep cut in Medicare doctors’s fee, moving forward from a lengthy fight that had tied up legislators for months.

The House voted 293-132 to pass the measure. The Senate quickly followed with a 60-36 vote.

The move averts a tax increase on millions of Americas and the end of this month.

Under the deal, the tax paid by workers to Social Security will remain at 4.2 percent instead of reverting to 6.2 percent on March 1.

The deal also avoids a 27 percent cut in payments to doctors who serve Medicare patients, and extends through year’s end payment rates for Medicare doctors. The costs will be offset in part by taking $5 billion from a prevention and public health program established under President Obama’s signature and hotly debated health-overhaul bill.

Both parties are claiming victory.

Lawmakers now head out of town for a week-long recess.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Actress Susan Sarandon has donated $75,000 to the New York public school system to support the improvement of children’s table tennis. Sarandon, who co-owns ping-pong franchises SPIN, presented the NYC Department of Education on Wednesday with the sizable check. The funds will be used to pay for proper equipment and coaching.

The “Dead Man Walking” star and New York native, has long believed in and touted the benefits of ping-pong. Sarandon is convinced the sport relieves stress, is a great form exercise, and helps children learn to focus.

Ping-pong started as a social hobby in England in the late 1800s by army officers who used rounded wine corks for balls and old cigar boxes as handles. It lingered as a popular party game for the rich until it officially became a competitive sport in 1927.

Ping-pong became an official Olympic event in 1988 at the Summer Games in Seoul.

Table tennis is recognized as the most popular racket sport in the world, and is ranked second in terms of participation. Over 10 million players compete in sanctioned ping-pong tournaments every year.

The world’s top tennis players can smash the ball at speed of more than 100 miles per hour.

Jackie Bellinger and Lisa Lomas set a world record in 1993 by hitting 173 balls back and forth in 60 seconds.

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New Brunswick, NJ, United States (AHN) – Johnson & Johnson has been plagued by product recalls, and on Friday a unit of the pharmaceutical giant issued another one.

McNeil Consumer Healthcare said it is recalling some 574,000 bottles of a grape-flavored version of its liquid infant Tylenol because of problems with the device on the bottle that helps measure dosage.

The bottles come with a syringe and have a protective cover, or flow restrictor, at the top to help measure the right dose. McNeil says the restrictor has been pushed into the bottle in some cases when the syringe is inserted.

McNeil is one of three business segments for New Brunswick, NJ-based J&J. The latest recall is among about two dozen recalls issued in more than two years.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – New claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week to the lowest level in nearly four years.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 348,000, the lowest since March 2008. Economists had forecast claims rising to 365,000.

The four-week moving average for new claims, a better measure of the labor market, fell 1,750 to 365,250, the lowest since April 2008.

The number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid fell 100,000 to 3.43 million in the week ending Feb.4.

While the numbers are welcome and encouraging, and signal renewed strength in the labor market, things are still not so rosy.

Some 23.8 million Americans are currently either out of work or underemployed. There are no job openings for nearly three out of every four unemployed.

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Washington, DC, United States (KaiserHealth) – Across the national airwaves and on the Republican campaign trail, the Massachusetts health law that many now call “Romneycare” is routinely trashed. Here’s Texas Governor Rick Perry in a debate last October.

“Romneycare has driven the cost of small business insurance premiums up by- percent over the national average in Massachusetts.” And from former Senator Rick Santorum last month we heard, “it (Romneycare) was the basis of Obamacare and it was an abject failure.”

So you might think this drubbing would rub off on Massachusetts residents, about two-thirds of whom have consistently endorsed the state’s coverage plan since it passed in 2006. Not so.

In the latest WBUR poll, 62 percent support the law and 33 percent oppose it. Steve Koczela is president of the Mass, Inc. polling group, which conducted the poll.

“Even with all the attention the Massachusetts law has gotten nationally,” said Koczela, “it really hasn’t driven down support among voters here in Massachusetts.”

The difference between national and local opinions about the law is part politics, part misinformation, and partly a difference of experience, says Robert Blendon, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School. Massachusetts residents are living with the law. Opinions outside the state are based on speculation.

“A substantial share of Americans believe that the national law will fail and they assume that the Massachusetts law, which in their minds is related to this, is not working well either,” Blendon said.

That’s the case, said Blendon, even when he presents evidence to audiences outside Massachusetts that a strong majority of residents in the Commonwealth are happy with the state law.

“People are convinced,” laughed Blendon, that “[the poll] can’t be right.”

In Massachusetts, most residents in the WBUR poll (68 percent), see former Governor Mitt Romney’s opposition to the national law as an effort to win votes in his presidential campaign. Only 25% see his opposition as a disagreement based on principle.

“Taking that, in concert with the level of influence people thought the state law had on the national law, at least suggests there’s some difficulty distancing yourself from what happened nationally to what happened here at home,” says pollster Koczela.

That dynamic may translate into problems for Republican Sen. Scott Brown, who, like Romney, supports the state law but hopes to repeal the national law.

Robert D’Ambrosio is one of the WBUR poll respondents who said he likes the state health care law and is not sure whom he supports in the Senate race. D’Ambrosio finds Brown’s position confusing.

“I don’t understand why he doesn’t bother the same with the national as he does with the state,” says D’Ambrosio, who lives in Malden, a suburb just north of Boston. “If you like one, how can you not like the other?”

Many residents polled say they want to know how Brown and the leading Democratic contender Elizabeth Warren would control health care costs. Paula Zindler from Cummington in western Massachusetts, is another undecided voter. She says the state law, which both Brown and Warren support, has forced up the cost of her health coverage.

“We had to switch to a different carrier, because my insurance, I was told, was inadequate,” explains Zindler. “So I either had to change my insurance or pay a fine, and I’m not happy with that.”

While health care is expected to be a key issue in the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts, there are at least two major, yet to be determined, factors that will shape this debate. One is whether the US Supreme Court will let all or part of the federal Affordable Care Act stand. Two is who the Republican presidential nominee will be. But health care will also play into the standard practice of US political races, says Professor Blendon.

“Even though they (Brown and Warren) have a truce on how each side will describe each other, there will be an effort to put one far on the left and one far on the right and health care examples will be very prominent in that effort,” explains Blendon.

By “truce,” Blendon refers to the agreement Warren and Brown reached a few weeks ago to donate half the cost of any political ad funded by an outside organization to charity. Several residents in the WBUR poll praise this deal and say watching whether it holds will be one of the most interesting parts of this year’s Senate race.

– Provided by Kaiser Health News.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Chances of getting a work-related visa to the United States are slimmer for anyone with an Indian passport, according to a recent report that found immigration authorities increased the denial rate in the last four years.

The increase resulted in many employers being unable to transfer their employees into the U.S. to work on research projects or serve customers, the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) said in its report entitled “Data Reveal High Denial Rates for L-1 and H-1 Petitions at USCIS.”

The denial rate for India-born applicants for new L-1B petitions rose from 2.8 percent in fiscal year 2008 to 22.5 percent in FY 2009, the report said.

“USCIS [United States Citizens and Immigration Services] adjudicators have demonstrated a capacity to keep skilled foreign nationals out of the U.S. by significantly increasing denials, along with often time-consuming Requests for Evidence, despite no change in the law or relevant regulations,” said Stuart Anderson, NFAP’s executive director and former head of policy and counselor to the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

According to the report, denial rates for L-1B petitions filed with USCIS, which are used to transfer employees with “specialized knowledge” into the U.S., rose from 7 percent in 2007 to 22 percent in 2008, despite no change in the law or relevant regulation.

Immigration authorities denied more L-1B petitions for new petitions for Indians in FY 2009 (1,640) than in the previous nine fiscal years combined (1,341 denials between FY 2000 and FY 2008), the report found.

The report noted, “If one considers that in FY 2011 63 percent of all L-1B petitions received a Request for Evidence and 27 percent were issued a denial, that means U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services adjudicators denied or delayed between 63 percent to 90 percent of all L-1B petitions in 2011.”

Denial rates for H-1B petitions, which are similar to L-1B visas, increased from 11 percent in 2007 to 29 percent in 2009, and remained higher than in the past for H-1Bs at 21 percent in 2010 and 17 percent in 2011, it noted.

“The dramatic increase in denial rates and Requests for Evidence for employment petitions without any change in the law or regulations raises questions about the training, supervision and procedures of the career bureaucracy that adjudicates petitions and the U.S. government’s commitment to maintaining a stable business climate for companies competing in the global economy,” the report said.

NFAP, an Arlington, VA-based policy research group, noted that its report used official data from USCIS.

“The data indicate much of the increase in denials involves Indian-born professionals and researchers,” the report said.

Anderson added, “The high denial rates belie the notion adjudications have become more lenient.”

The U.S. State Department, which controls the visa process, commented that the report “only covers adjudications made via USCIS,” and did not use “any State Department data.”

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Boston, MA, United States (KaiserHealth) – Voters are hearing a lot about health care this year. Republicans want to make the 2012 elections a referendum on the health care law that President Obama signed two years ago.

That law was largely based on one that then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed into law nearly six years ago in Massachusetts.

Romney is now a GOP presidential contender, and that has made the Massachusetts universal health care law a political football. Romney’s rival Rick Santorum recently called it “an abject failure.”

But “Romneycare,” as Santorum and others call it, isn’t controversial in its home state. And a lot of people there don’t call it Romneycare because it took the support of a lot of other people — Democratic legislators, business leaders, insurers, hospitals and doctors, consumer groups — to get it passed.

But it’s true that Romney got the ball rolling. When I interviewed him in 2006, Romney said he got the idea from talking to Massachusetts business leaders.

“The key insight was this: People who don’t have insurance nonetheless receive health care — and it’s expensive,” Romney said.

Romney saw a state fund set up to provide free care — paid for by a growing surcharge on private insurance premiums — was spending a billion dollars a year.

“My question was, could we take that billion dollars and help the poor purchase health insurance — let them pay what they could afford? We’d subsidize what they can’t,” Romney said.

And he proposed a requirement that people buy private health insurance if they’re able. That’s the “individual mandate” that has become a curse word in Republican politics these days.

“We’re going to say, ‘Folks, if you can afford health care, then, gosh, you’d better go get it,’ ” Romney said back in 2006. ” ‘Otherwise you’re just passing on your expenses to someone else.’ That’s not Republican, that’s not Democratic, that’s not Libertarian — that’s just wrong.”

Flash forward to 2012. Romney’s successor, Democrat Deval Patrick, says the health plan Romney launched is no abject failure — it’s working.

“I think it’s just been a terrific success,” Patrick said in an interview. “And [it's] a statement of value — about our values here, about how people aren’t all on their own, that we are in this together.”

Patrick says no state can match Massachusetts’ record of getting more than 98 percent of its citizens insured for health care — and virtually every last child. And, he boasts, “It has cost the state about 1 percent in additional new state spending.”

The Massachusetts law has had strong and steady support — and little opposition. Last year, an attempt to repeal the “individual mandate” — the part that requires most people to have insurance — couldn’t get enough signatures. Last week, only 39 people had “liked” its Facebook page.

To get an idea of how it’s working at the ground level, I stopped by the office of Dieufort Fleurissaint, a self-employed Haitian-American businessman. He has a tax prep and insurance business. He’s also an evangelical minister who worked with the group Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, which helped get the health law passed.

“Close to 500,000 people didn’t have health insurance,” Fleurissaint says. “Now, because of the passing of the law, they have health insurance.”

And one of them, it turns out, is Fleurissaint. He used to be a mortgage broker, but his business crashed in 2008. He couldn’t pay his health insurance premiums.

But under the new law, Fleurissaint qualified for state-subsidized insurance.

“My premium … dropped from $1,200 on a monthly basis [to] $770 for the same coverage for the same family of four,” he says. And when his income dropped again during the recession, so did his health insurance costs.

“The law has been extremely good for me,” he says, but he admits that not all his business colleagues like the law.

“They complained that they were forced, basically obligated to purchase health insurance,” Fluerissaint says. “So I explained to them that it’s much better to have health insurance than not having it.”

In fact, despite some initial grumbling, more Massachusetts businesses of all sizes have begun offering insurance.

When I called the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, it said it didn’t know of any members that don’t offer coverage. That was surprising, since restaurant owners have been among the most opposed to health laws like this one.

Similarly, Bill Vernon, who heads the Massachusetts office of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, says the law “works for Massachusetts.” The NFIB is a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Obama health plan that will be argued later this month before the U.S. Supreme Court.

But in Massachusetts, Vernon says, “my guess is that we would probably be pretty much split on the issue of whether to repeal the law or not. That suggests repeal is not something we would favor. And I don’t think it’s politically realistic, either.”

Likewise, the individual mandate has not met with nearly the resistance that many predicted.

“The sky did not fall,” says Andrew Dreyfus, president of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the state’s largest insurer. “And by the way, we have much stronger penalties around the individual mandate than the national law has, and despite that, the sky did not fall.”

The penalty for not buying insurance can be on the order of $1,200 a year for a 37-year-old single person in Boston. But only about 1 percent of taxpayers end up paying any penalty.

Meanwhile, a new study in the journal Health Affairs shows that more Massachusetts citizens are seeing a doctor regularly, fewer are going to emergency rooms for care, and the percentage who rate their own health as “good” or “excellent” is going up.

But that doesn’t mean everything about Massachusetts health care is wonderful.

The 2006 law didn’t do anything about controlling the state’s health costs, which were already among the nation’s highest.

So now the conversation in Massachusetts has turned to cost control. And some very interesting things are beginning to happen.

They didn’t happen overnight. When Patrick took over the governor’s office in 2007, he called together top insurers, hospital executives and doctors to talk about controlling costs. He says it was an exercise in frustration.

“I finally lost my patience,” Patrick says. “Because they’d sit around the table and everyone would start their response the same way — ‘Well, governor,’ they’d say, ‘it’s complicated.’ “

Patrick says the insurers would point to the hospitals, the hospitals would point to the doctors, the doctors would say it’s malpractice suits or red tape or the imaging center down the street.

Patrick says he got fed up. “I understand it is complicated,” he says. “But the point is, we have to stop being defeated by that complexity.”

So, two years ago, the governor directed his insurance commissioner to exercise a little-used power to turn down a requested rate increase because it was excessive. Not every state has this power.

Insurance companies were outraged. But Dreyfus of Blue Cross Blue Shield now says it was a pivotal point.

“It sent a message to the entire health care community and the business community that we had to change,” Dreyfus says.

And change seems to be happening. Insurers have torn up their contracts with hospitals calling for annual reimbursement increases of 8 percent and 10 percent, and negotiated agreements providing for 3 percent, 2 percent and even zero percent increases.

Blue Cross Blue Shield has persuaded some of the state’s biggest hospitals, and thousands of doctors, to accept a new kind of payment. Instead of getting paid every time they do something — a venerable system called fee-for-service that encourages them to provide more and more services — they’re paid a fixed amount each month for each patient.

That was tried in the 1990s, and it failed, largely because of backlash over its incentive to stint on care. The new wrinkle is that this time hospitals and doctors have to meet 60-some different quality measures to show they’re not cutting back on care.

Dreyfus says a third of his company’s 2.8 million subscribers are now on these so-called “global payment” plans, and he’s hopeful that most of the state will be on this kind of reimbursement within the next two to three years.

The various steps seem to be working to moderate Massachusetts’ historically high health care inflation rates. “We’ve got some more work to do here,” the governor says, “but average premium increases were almost 17 percent two years ago. They are less than 2 percent right now.”

But he doesn’t trust that it will automatically go on that way. Patrick and many others, inside and out of government, say Massachusetts now needs some legislation to lock in these changes and go further — cut down on administrative costs, reform the malpractice system and other innovations.

The big idea you often hear these days is to hold total Massachusetts health spending to a target tied to the state’s overall economic growth.

“I want to assure … that it’s sustainable,” Patrick says, “that we don’t continue to have increases above the rate of growth in the economy.” Otherwise, he says, health care will “eat up everything else.”

Legislators, who are wary of tampering with a health sector that accounts for 20 percent of the state’s economy, are expected to come up with their own proposals this spring.

But significantly, no one is talking about repealing the 2006 law. Not even businessmen like Fred Difinis, who runs a small business selling parts for playground equipment. He’s unhappy with the Massachusetts health plan because it requires him to buy coverage for prescription drugs, which he says he doesn’t need.

“I’m not sure I necessarily want to see the law repealed,” he says. “What I want to see is some balance on the cost side of the equation.”

If Massachusetts can do that, it might become a national model — again.

– Provided by Kaiser Health News.

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Washington, DC, United States (KaiserHealth) – This fact sheet was released by the White House in advance of President Barack Obama’s Feb. 10 comments about mandated health insurance coverage for contraception.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

____________________________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Feb. 10, 2012

FACT SHEET: Women’s Preventive Services and Religious Institutions

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, most health insurance plans will cover women’s preventive services, including contraception, without charging a co-pay or deductible beginning in August, 2012. This new law will save money for millions of Americans and ensure Americans nationwide get the high-quality care they need to stay healthy.

Today, President Obama will announce that his Administration will implement a policy that accommodates religious liberty while protecting the health of women. Today, nearly 99 percent of all women have used contraception at some point in their lives, but more than half of all women between the ages of 18-34 struggle to afford it.

Under the new policy to be announced today, women will have free preventive care that includes contraceptive services no matter where she works. The policy also ensures that if a woman works for religious employers with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide contraception coverage, but her insurance company will be required to offer contraceptive care free of charge.

The new policy ensures women can get contraception without paying a co-pay and addresses important concerns raised by religious groups by ensuring that objecting religious employers will not have to provide contraceptive coverage or refer women to organizations that provide contraception. Background on this policy is included below:

Section 2713 of the Affordable Care Act, the Administration adopted new guidelines that will require most private health plans to cover preventive services for women without charging a co-pay starting on August 1, 2012. These preventive services include well women visits, domestic violence screening, and contraception, and all were recommended to the Secretary of Health and Human Services by the independent Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science.

Today, the Obama Administration will publish final rules in the Federal Register that:

Exempts churches, other houses of worship, and similar organizations from covering contraception on the basis of their religious objections.

Establishes a one year transition period for religious organizations while this policy is being implemented.

The President will also announce that his Administration will propose and finalize a new regulation during this transition year to address the religious objections of the non-exempted religious organizations. The new regulation will require insurance companies to cover contraception if the non-exempted religious organization chooses not to. Under the policy:

Religious organizations will not have to provide contraceptive coverage or refer their employees to organizations that provide contraception.

Religious organizations will not be required to subsidize the cost of contraception.

Contraception coverage will be offered to women by their employers’ insurance companies directly, with no role for religious employers who oppose contraception.

Insurance companies will be required to provide contraception coverage to these women free of charge.

Covering contraception saves money for insurance companies by keeping women healthy and preventing spending on other health services. For example, there was no increase in premiums when contraception was added to the Federal Employees Health Benefit System and required of non-religious employers in Hawaii. One study found that covering contraception lowered premiums by 10 percent or more.

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– Provided by Kaiser Health News.

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