The cost of health care
America spent $2.6 trillion on health care last year. But a third of that spending—$750 billion—was squandered on unnecessary treatments and tests, byzantine paperwork, fraud, and other inefficiencies, according to a new analysis by the Institute of Medicine.
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The toll of medical costs on seniors
About 25 percent of seniors receiving Medicare spend all their savings and must sell their homes and other assets to pay for non-covered medical care in the last five years of life, a new study found. Nursing care accounts for much of that cost.
The Washington Post
America's fat pets
America’s pets are even more prone to obesity than its human residents. An estimated 60 percent of domestic cats and dogs in the U.S. are obese or overweight, and are thus at increased risk of diabetes, joint and mobility problems, and shortened life spans.
HuffingtonPost.com
Brooklyn's new wealth
The New York borough of Brooklyn, for decades a proud haven of gritty immigrants and the working class, is now the second most expensive community in the U.S., surpassing Honolulu, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley hub San Jose. Only Manhattan is pricier.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Public worker rolls: trimmed but still up
Since 2008, 716,000 state and local government workers have lost their jobs. But even so, public worker rolls are still 7.3 percent higher than they were in 2000.
New York Post
Fewer Americans are smoking
The percentage of Americans who smoke has fallen from 20.4 percent in 2008 to 18.9 percent today—the lowest ever. That drop followed a big hike in federal taxes on cigarettes to $1.01 a pack.
USA Today
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August 16 editorial cartoonsCartoons Saturday’s political cartoons include football season anticipation, and Donald Trump angling for Putin's autograph
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5 hilariously cold cartoons about the Alaska summitCartoons Artists take on the Alaskan totem pole, a peace flag, and more
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Journalists killed in Gaza: a chilling assaultIn the Spotlight Anas al-Sharif and three of his Al Jazeera colleagues were targeted by the IDF
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Mass shootings and mental health, and morefeature The mental health of the killer has not been an issue in most of the mass shootings that have occurred since 2009.
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Aging inmates and health-care costs, and more
feature The increasing age of the nation’s inmates is causing steep rises in health-care costs for prison systems.
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Bin Laden’s bad health, and more
feature The medicines recovered from Osama bin Laden’s compound show he no longer suffered from kidney disease, but he did have drugs for other ailments.
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The costs of prolonged exposure to combat, and more
feature In a historical first, more U.S. troops were hospitalized for mental-health disorders last year (17,538) than for battle wounds or other injuries (11,156).