Bill amendment could make dental, vision care more expensive

A last-minute amendment to a bill intended to limit when insurance companies could terminate policies may end up costing Kentuckians more out-of-pocket dental and vision expenses, Courier-Journal political writer Joseph Gerth writes in his weekly column.

The implications of House Bill 497 changed when Sen. Tom Buford, R-Nicholasville, "filed a one-paragraph amendment that was brought to him at the last minute by a lobbyist for the Kentucky Dental Association," Gerth writes. "That amendment said that if you have vision or vision insurance, your insurance provider can't require your health care provider to give you discounted rates on services that aren't paid for by the insurance plan."

That could mean that low-cost plans that only cover a few procedures but offer "added benefit by making sure you're not paying inflated prices for other services" may no longer be available, Gerth reports. Opponents say insurance companies will stop offering such plans because people won't buy them without the discounts. And people who can't afford more expensive plans will sacrifice dental and vision insurance.

On Tuesday, the Senate adopted the amendment and passed the bill. The bill cleared the House the next day. Gov. Steve Beshear has not indicated if he will sign or veto it.

Advocates say the bill will save in dental and vision care costs. Opponents say people will have difficulty having access to case. As for who's right, Gerth writes: "Bill advocates have presented no evidence to suggest that, and there have been no full-fledged hearings for the dentists behind the bill to make their case or to answer the questions that need to be asked." (Read more)

How to Get Your Boyfriend Back by Taking Control

Breaking up with your boyfriend is one of the hardest things to have to deal with in your life. The old song, 'breaking up is hard to do' is understood totally by anyone who has been through it. How to get your boyfriend back will be one of the most pressing questions on your mind.

The feelings of despair can be quite intense; especially if it was he who wanted to break up with you - and it broke your heart.

To devise ways of how to get your boyfriend back, ask yourself one very important but difficult question: why did he want to break up with you?

Ask yourself these pertinent questions:

Did you take the relationship for granted in any way?
Was it because of your attitude toward his friends?
Were you both ready for a serious relationship?

Thinking honestly about these questions had will help. Don't put all the blame on him. Think of ways, that when you do get back with him, you can improve your relationship with him.

Ways to get him back

1. First of all, after you have broken up, minimize everyday contact with him. If you share the same circle of friends and can't avoid each other, try to talk to others and avoid too much eye contact with him.

2. Don't open conversations with your ex boyfriend first. Let him be the one to open the conversations. If he does want to talk to you, keep the conversations pleasant, but brief.

3. Think of the things that first attracted him to you. Was it your hair, your eyes, your figure or your charming wit. Do little things to make him notice you. Make him crazy with the things about you that he finds attractive. It might just be your smile, your friendly nature or the way you walk.

4. Be careful not to act too desperate to get him back. Don't be the one to suggest first that you want to get back with him. You want to make him miss you. Constantly trying to contact him might push him away even further.

• Don't text him
• Don't call him
• Don't email him
• Above all - don't stalk him

You need to distract yourself with your own friends for a while. Keep yourself busy - this will help you get over the break up. Ask your friends what they did when they broke up with a boyfriend.

Some ideas to help you fill in the time are:

• Go for walks with friends
• Go to the movies
• Do something new and exciting that you haven't done before such as visit a new city, skydive or visit a zoo or museum.
• Take up a new hobby.
• Take up a new sport.

All of these activities will not only be fun and exciting, but when you do meet up with your ex boyfriend you will have lots of new fun and adventurous things to talk about with him! He will find you interesting and stimulating.

Most importantly, remember he was attracted to YOU and not a fake version of you. He saw something in you that drew him to you in the beginning. Be the person that your boyfriend first got to know.

Lastly, the best advice on how to get your boyfriend back is to always be yourself. The authentic you.
I hoped this brings strength to your situation and you, find the girl power within you and be strong girl.

Thank you for reading my article. Whatever your situation is, and whatever you plan to do, I wish you all the luck in the world in getting your ex boyfriend back! And remember, be strong!

If you need more help to get your guy back, you should make things easier for yourself and check my Blog How To Get Your Boyfriend Back where I show you the best methods I can recommend to you.

Three of four UK's research professorships fund work in health

Three of the four University of Kentucky research professorships awarded for the 2012-13 school year will fund health-related work. Each award is worth $40,000.

Mark Filmore, right, who teaches in UK's Department of Psychology, will research the role that cognitive processes have in promoting risk-taking behavior. It will have an emphasis on recreational drug use, including alcohol abuse and dependence.

Douglas Andres, left, professor and vice chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry,  "had begun to define the molecular pathways that control adult neurogenesis, and have shown that Rit, a Ras family G-protein, plays a critical role in the survival of newborn adult neurons following traumatic brain injury," a press release reads. If that is the case, strategies that target Rit activation may be effective in helping recover or repair the injury.

In the Department of Internal Medicine, Mark Dignan, right, leads a program that focuses on cancer prevention and control in community settings using community-based participatory methods. Using the funds of his professorship, he plans to expand his training, "allowing him to conduct translational research with teams that include basic and clinical scientists as they continue their work to reduce cancer health disparities," the press release reads.

Christopher Pool, professor in the Department of Anthropology, is the fourth professorship recipient. (Read more)

Need for painkillers and social support, shortage of treatment programs, feeds prescription drug abuse in Appalachian Ky.

By Ivy Brashear
Kentucky Health News

Taking opioids is still the best way to treat patients with pain, but the drugs are addictive because they do more than just alleviate physical suffering — they cause patients to feel good too. That's causing big problems in Kentucky, the state with the highest rate of opioid use and overdose.

In Perry County, for example, prescription medicines are the drugs of choice, second only to marijuana, and users may get more of them from relatives than from doctors. And their drug use appears to be part of a social support system.

Those were the findings of three separate studies presented at the second annual Appalachian Health Summit in Lexington last week.

Prescription-drug abuse is "an epidemic" that "seems to have started in rural Appalachia," Jennifer Havens, an associate professor in the University of Kentucky Department of Behavioral Science, said in presenting a study showing how disease spreads through the region.

Havens’ study of Hazard and Perry County found that prescription drug abuse in the county is second to marijuana use, and that painkiller abuse among high school seniors is at the same rate as in adults.

Though it’s not clear why prescription drug abuse is so rampant in the region, Havens speculated that lack of availability of other “hard” drugs, like heroin and cocaine, has led Appalachian drug users to turn to prescription medicine to get high. There are few drug-treatment options for users in the region, and many hospitals aren’t “financially viable” to care for drug abusers, she said.

An earlier study in which Havens was involved revealed that rural adults use more “alternate” methods to take drugs, including snorting and injecting. The study compared drug users in Perry County to those in Louisville and found that more than 40 percent of adults in the Hazard area were injecting prescription drugs to get high, and youth there were 25 percent more likely than those in Louisville to abuse such drugs.

The study found high rates of sharing drug-taking instruments, which increases risk for diseases such as hepatitis and HIV, Havens said. Almost 90 percent of participants said they shared snorting straws, and almost 1 in 3 said they shared syringes. No cases of HIV were found among the participants, but almost 43.7 percent of the 500 interviewed had hepatitis-C, and 11.5 percent had herpes-2.

Eighty percent were lifetime users, and about half first abused Oxycontin through injection. Havens said 28 percent of users had overdosed, and 58 percent had witnessed an overdose.

The study also found that a person’s likelihood of continuing drug use correlated with higher levels of social support, which Havens said contradicts long-held assumptions that drug users continue to abuse prescription pills because of low social support.

“Most people in the study depended on people also using drugs for social support,” Havens said. “As you can imagine, that’s not a good idea.”

No good alternative to prescribing painkillers

Despite widespread opioid abuse in Appalachia, such drugs are “still the best pain therapy,” UK physiology professor Karin Westlund High reported.

The purpose of her study was to determine what effect a high-fat and alcohol diet would have on “visceral pain” in the pancreas, and then what effect opioid gene therapy would have on the organ.

There are clusters of Appalachian counties at high risk for pancreatitis, which can lead to pancreatic cancer. Severe abdominal pain is associated with both, and morphine is typically used to treat it. However, High said, patients usually develop a tolerance to the drug over time.

She and other researchers used rats to test an opioid gene therapy involving herpes simplex-1, which 90 percent of Americans already have, to see if it would reduce pancreatitis pain without building tolerance in the rats. After 10 weeks of treatment, there was no tolerance present and the therapy seemed to be reversing damaged sections of the pancreas caused by the disease.

While opioids are effective in alleviating pain, "There are lots of different kinds of pain, but most opioids act as if they treat the same pain,” said Michelle Lofwall, a UK psychiatry and behavioral science assistant professor. Lofwall set out to discover how pain affects prescription drug abuse, since that is the main reason such drugs are prescribed or first used.

Her study participants, who were all drug users, placed one arm in a cooler of ice to elicit pain, and then were asked about pain levels. The test was repeated after a dose of painkiller.  Researchers were attempting to give the drug to treat patients’ pain only, and not to have the patient feel a high when the drug was in their system, but that failed.

“Unfortunately, in my patients I wanted to say, ‘Yes, let’s treat your pain and you won’t feel any good effects’,” Lofwall said. “I wasn’t able to say that to them.” She said they are now trying to help doctors better prescribe pain medication so that habits aren’t formed.

One of the biggest habit-forming painkillers is Oxycontin, which was introduced in 1996 but wasn’t abused on a large scale until doctors had to start documenting pain in 1999, Lofwall said. Sales of, treatment for, and death from prescription drug abuse have increased since then. She noted that Kentucky has the highest rates of opioid use and overdose.

The makers of Oxycontin have reformulated the drug to make it harder to crush, mix with water and snort, but a new drug has risen to take its place: Opana. Lofwall said researchers have been trying to study Opana use, but can’t get a study supply because it is in such high demand. She said she has seen more of a rise in heroin use by her patients because even heroin is easier to get than Opana.

Though legislators are grappling to curb the proliferation of "pill mills" in the state, Lofwall said "doctor shopping" may not be the problem it's been billed to be. According to the National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health, 56 percent of users get their supply from a relative, of whom 85 percent have a prescription from one doctor. The drug abuser may get the drug from the relative as a gift, by paying for it or by stealing it.

Asked about the Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting system, which allows doctors to search a database for “doctor shoppers” before prescribing pain pills, Lofwall said KASPER is limited because it only covers Kentucky, but “I think the state’s ready to make it better.”

Kentucky Health News is a service of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky, with support from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.

Serious shortage of primary-care physicians expected in Louisville

An aging population, a high number of doctors getting ready to retire, and medical students opting to specialize for better pay and hours are all factors contributing to an expected shortage in primary-care doctors in Louisville.

"By 2020, Jefferson County will need 455 new primary-care doctors — almost as many as the number that work in local medical practices now," reports Patrick Howington for The Courier-Journal. (C-J photo by Matt Stone)

"We see a real workforce crisis in the future — in the immediate future," said Bill Wagner, executive director of Family Health Centers, a group of community clinics that serve low-income residents.

One survey of local physicians found about a third of doctors are 56 or older and are planning to retire within 10 years. Couple that statistic with the fact that the number of American medical-school seniors who entered family-medicine residencies fell from 17 percent in 1997 to 8 percent last year, Association of American Medical Colleges figures show. Part of the reason for the drop is the comparatively low salaries primary care physicians make. On average, they are paid as little as half as much as specialists, such as radiologists and invasive cardiologists.

Though doctor shortages have typically been seen as a rural problem, that's not so anymore. "No matter where you're talking about, we clearly have an aging primary care workforce," because primary care has been "so unpopular," said Dan Varga, chief medical officer of Kentucky's St. Joseph hospitals and a former Louisville internist. (Read more)

40 Women With Breast Cancer Had This "Cosmetic Ingredient" in Their Tissues

By Dr. Mercola

New research has detected the presence of paraben esters in 99 percent of breast cancer tissues sampledⁱ.

The study examined 40 women who were being treated for primary breast cancer.
In 60 percent of cases, five of the different esters were present.

Parabens are chemicals with estrogen-like properties, and estrogen is one of the hormones involved in the development of breast cancer.
The study notes thatⁱⁱ :

"Variation was notable with respect to individual paraben esters, location within one breast and similar locations in different breasts.
Overall median values in nanograms per gram tissue for the 160 tissue samples were highest for n-propylparaben and methylparaben; levels were lower for n-butylparaben, ethylparaben and isobutylparaben...
The source of the paraben cannot be identified, but paraben was measured in the 7/40 patients who reported never having used underarm cosmetics in their lifetime."

Sources and Dangers of Parabens

Deodorants and antiperspirants are some of the primary sources of parabens, but the fact that even those who reportedly never used them still had parabens in their breast tissue clearly demonstrates that these chemicals, regardless of what products they're added to, can, and apparently will, accumulate in breast tissue.

It's important to recognize that whatever you spread on your skin can be absorbed into your body and potentially cause serious damage over time, as this research demonstrates.

(To learn more about the potential toxicity of your cosmetics, I urge you to review the EWG's extensive Skin Deep Report.ⁱⁱⁱ ) Parabens inhibit the growth of bacteria, yeast, and molds, and are used as preservatives. On the label they may be listed as:

• Methyl paraben
• Propyl paraben
• Isobutyl paraben
• Ethyl paraben
• Butyl paraben
• E216

 These chemicals are commonly used in:

• Deodorants and antiperspirants
• Shampoos and conditioners
• Shaving gel
• Toothpaste
• Lotions and sunscreens
• Make-up / cosmetics
• Pharmaceutical drugs
• Food additives

Studies have shown that parabens can affect your body much like the estrogens, which can lead to diminished muscle mass, extra fat storage, and male gynecomastia (breast growth). Other studies besides the one featured here have also linked parabens to breast cancer. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has linked methyl parabens in particular to metabolic, developmental, hormonal, and neurological disorders, as well as various cancers.

How to Avoid Some of the Most Common Culprits

Avoiding parabens and other harmful chemicals requires becoming an avid label reader. Beware that products boasting "all-natural" labels can still contain harmful chemicals, including parabens, so make sure to check the list of ingredients.  Michael DeJong, environmentalist and author of books on green living has a book called Clean Cures^iv, which is chockfull of affordable, easy, natural remedies you can prepare at home to treat ordinary ailments with items you have in your own refrigerator and pantry.

When it comes to deodorants, one option is to skip it altogether. Simple soap and water has served me quite well. For some additional odor-protection, try a pinch of baking soda mixed with a small amount of water.

Beware: There's a Brand NEW Class of Cancer-Causing "Estrogens"...

Recent research has also confirmed the existence of a previously unknown class of cancer-causing materials that can be found in thousands of consumer products. Some of them are even added to supplements and foods as "nutrients". These estrogen-mimicking compounds are: metals.

Yes, a broad range of metals have been shown to act as "metalloestrogens" with the potential to add to the estrogenic burden of the human breast, thereby increasing the risk of breast cancer. The following metals have been identified as being capable of binding to cellular estrogen receptors and then mimicking the actions of physiological estrogens^v :

• Aluminum
• Antimony
• Arsenite
• Barium
• Cadmium
• Chromium
• Cobalt
• Copper
• Lead
• Mercury
• Nickel
• Selenite
• Tin
• Vanadate

 According to Green Med Info^vi :

"... [E]xposure to sodium selenite (and sodium selenate) is difficult to avoid, as it is the primary source of supplemental selenium in mass market vitamins, foods, beverages, etc. The same is true for inorganic forms of chromium, copper, nickel, tin and and vanadium, which you will find on the labels of many mass market multivitamins. Another daily source of metalloestrogen exposure for millions of consumers is aluminum-based antiperspirants."

Cadmium Linked to Higher Breast Cancer Risk

A recent study published in the journal Cancer Research indicates that women whose diets contain higher levels of cadmium are at a greater risk of developing breast cancer. Cadmium is a heavy metal long known to be carcinogenic, and, as you can see by its inclusion on the list above, it's also been identified as a metal that can bind to estrogen receptors, effectively mimicking the female hormone estrogen. The study found that among close to 56,000 women, those with the highest intakes of cadmium were 21 percent more likely to develop breast cancer^vii .

Cadmium leaches into crops from fertilizers, or when rainfall or sewage sludge deposit it onto farmland. Potatoes and whole grains are a couple of the primary sources cadmium, but it's also present in air pollution from the burning of fossil fuel, and can therefore also be inhaled. According to the Los Angeles Times^viii :

"The study offers new evidence in a large human population that environmental chemicals that mimic the effects of the female hormone estrogen may contribute to women's risk of certain cancers, including endometrial and breast cancers.... The finding comes just three months after the Institute of Medicine, a prestigious body of independent biomedical researchers, concluded that a host of other factors — most within a woman's power to control, such as obesity and hormone-replacement medication — were the most important sources of breast cancer risk.

The report they're referring to is Breast Cancer and the Environment: A Life Course Approach by the Institute of Medicine (IOM)^ix issued in December of last year, which discusses environmental impacts on breast cancer risk.
The report is a step in the right direction, as it recognizes the need to further investigate the role environmental toxins play in the development of breast cancer. This is important, because while individuals can do their best to avoid harmful chemicals, if we really want to quell the rise in cancers of all kinds, we must remove chemicals linked with cancer from consumer products, manufacturing, and other sources of exposure. Furthermore, the IOM report also identifies ionizing radiation as one of the primary contributors to breast cancer, which of course includes mammograms...

Could More Women Be Harmed than Helped with Mammography?

Mammograms expose a woman's body to radiation that can be 1,000 times greater than that from a chest x-ray, which increases the risk of cancer. Mammography also compresses breasts tightly (and often painfully), which could lead to a lethal spread of cancerous cells, should they exist.

Earlier this year, the Nordic Cochrane Collaboration issued a report stating that mammography screening may cause more harm than good. Their informative leaflet, Screening for Breast Cancer with Mammography^x , is an important read for every woman. Even more provocative is the new book, Mammography Screening: Truth, Lies and Controversy by Peter C. Gøtzsche, Professor of Clinical Research Design and Analysis Director at The Nordic Cochrane Centre, and Chief Physician. The very first paragraph of the book's ad reads^xi :

"The most effective way to decrease women's risk of becoming a breast cancer patient is to avoid attending screening."

While this may sound too shocking to be true for some, the available data fully supports that conclusion. According to the Cochrane Collaboration, for every 2,000 women invited for screening over the course of 10 years, just ONE woman will have her life prolonged. Meanwhile, 10 healthy women, who would not have been diagnosed with cancer had it not been for the mammography screening, will be misdiagnosed as having breast cancer, and will be treated unnecessarily. Additionally, more than 200 women will experience significant psychological distress for many months due to false positives.

The Cancer Industry is Fraught with Corruption...

There's plenty of damning information out there that can, and ultimately will, be used to call for a congressional hearing on the mammography cover-up. As far back as 1974, professor Malcolm C. Pike at the University of Southern California School of Medicine warned the National Cancer Institute (NCI) that a number of specialists had concluded that "giving a women under age 50 a mammogram on a routine basis is close to unethical." In the 1990's, Dr. Samuel Epstein warned about the dangers of mammography, stating:

"The premenopausal breast is highly sensitive to radiation, each 1 rad exposure increasing breast cancer risk by about 1 percent, with a cumulative 10 percent increased risk for each breast over a decade's screening... The high sensitivity of the breast, especially in young women, to radiation-induced cancer was known by 1970. Nevertheless, the establishment then screened some 300,000 women with X-ray dosages so high as to increase breast cancer risk by up to 20 percent in women aged 40 to 50 who were mammogramed annually."

Yet despite all the evidence against the routine use of it, mammography has remained the number one recommended "prevention" strategy for all women over the age of 40. Alarmingly, there's evidence indicating the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been negligent (to put it mildly) in their approval of a number of cancer-detecting devices. It recently became known that whistleblowers within the agency had been secretly monitored for two years; all of whom worked in the office responsible for reviewing medical devices, including cancer screening devices. The monitored employees had warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that posed unacceptable risks to patients.

Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health has repeatedly tried to take action against the employees, claiming they had disclosed information that undermined the integrity and mission of the FDA. Shuren is also the official who oversees mercury dental fillings, which they have been fraudulently referring to as 'silver fillings.' Shuren promised to make an announcement about dental amalgam by the end of 2011, but just before the end of the work year, the agency conceded that no announcement was forthcoming – not in 2011, and maybe not at all.
Again and again, Mr. Shuren demonstrates loyalty to industry interests rather than public health and safety... But he's not the only one. In a 2009 letter from an unknown number of FDA employees to President Obama's transition team, the authors clearly spell out the need for a complete overhaul of the agency due to deep-rooted systemic corruption at the highest levels^xii . They write:

"Currently there is an atmosphere at FDA in which the honest employee fears the dishonest employee, and not the other way around. Disturbingly, the atmosphere does not yet exist at FDA where honest employees committed to integrity and the FDA mission can act without fear of reprisal. ... America urgently needs change at FDA because FDA is fundamentally broken, failing to fulfill its mission, and because re-establishing a proper and effectively functioning FDA is vital to the physical and economic health of the nation."

Mammograms No Longer Recommended for Women in Their 40's

The US Preventative Task Force revised its recommendations on mammograms in October 2009,^xiii stating that women in their 40's should no longer get routine mammograms for early detection of breast cancer. Instead, the panel recommended waiting until the age of 50, and only doing one mammogram every other year rather than annually. The Canadian task force followed suit in November last year.
While many cancer organizations were outraged and have shunned the task forces' new directive, it's important to realize that the main reasons for this change in guidelines were the documented dangers and short-comings of mammographic screening. All in all, there's convincing evidence that mammography is not all it's cracked up to be, and the FDA is not doing its stated job to protect your health. Instead, they're busy catering to industry and skirting the boundaries of the law to protect a lucrative business model. This is a tragedy, considering how many alternatives there are that could help stem the tide of cancer...
There's a wide variety of prevention and treatment strategies that appear to be both safer and more effective than conventional strategies like mammograms and the "cut-poison-burn" model of cancer treatment... To learn more, please review the related articles listed below.

References:

• ⁱ Journal of Applied Toxicology March 2012; 32(3): 219-232
• ⁱⁱ Journal of Applied Toxicology March 2012; 32(3): 219-232
• ⁱⁱⁱ Environmental Working Group, Skin Deep Report
• ^iv Clean Cures: The Humble Art of Zen-Curing Yourself, Michael DeJong
• ^v Journal of Applied Toxicology December 12, 2011 [Epub ahead of print]
• ^vi Green Med Info March 18, 2012
• ^vii Cancer Research March 15, 2012; 72: 1459
• ^viii Los Angeles Times March 15, 2012
• ^ix Breast Cancer and the Environment: A Life Course Approach, The Institute of Medicine (IOM), December 7, 2011
• ^x SCREENING FOR BREAST CANCER WITH MAMMOGRAPHY (PDF), The Nordic Cochrane Center 2012,
• ^xi MAMMOGRAPHY SCREENING: TRUTH, LIES AND CONTROVERSY, Radcliffe Publishing, January 2012
• ^xii CDRH Staffers To Obama: House Cleaning Urgent At Device Center, National Whistleblowers Center
• ^xiii U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, Screening for Breast Cancer 2009

Source: Green People

Source: Journal of Applied Toxicology March 2012; 32(3): 219-232

Source: Green Med Info March 18, 2012

Source: Los Angeles Times March 15, 2012

Source: Cancer Research March 15, 2012; 72: 1459

Rogers joins bill to link up states' prescription drug monitoring systems

Though a state bill aimed at quashing "pill mills" by proactively tracking drug prescriptions has so far failed to pass in the Kentucky General Assembly, Republican U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers of Eastern Kentucky's 5th District has joined a federal effort to allow state prescription drug tracking systems to share information. Though 48 states have such systems, there is no way for them to communicate with each other.

On Thursday, federal lawmakers introduced legislation "that would establish technical standards and security and encryption procedures to ease sharing information," James R. Carroll reports for The Courier-Journal.

"While my region of Southern and Eastern Kentucky became ground zero for the abuse of prescription drugs a decade ago, it is now wreaking havoc on communities small and large and cutting across socioeconomic and gender lines," Rogers said in a statement.

About 1,000 people in Kentucky died last year from prescription drug abuse, though the real number is suspected to be higher, due to under-reporting.

Missouri and New Hampshire are the only states that do not have, or don't have plans to set up, a drug-monitoring system that allows "doctors, pharmacists and law enforcement to share information that may identify abuse and misuse of pharmaceuticals," Carroll reports.

"It is high time we get these systems linked up to eliminate the interstate doctor-shopping which has been fueling the pill pipeline around our country," Rogers said.

The proposal would not create a new national database, but would also states to communicate with each other through data hubs already in place. The bill is expected to get the support of the White House administration, Carroll reports. (Read more)

Last week, Gov. Steve Beshear said Kentucky would sign an agreement to share and receive prescription drug dispensing data with at least 20 other states. "The blight of prescription drug abuse is tearing our families and communities apart, and we must use every tool available to attack this deadly scourge on our state," he said. "One of our key strategies is sharing information with surrounding states, so that we can not only cut off access to abusers, but also identify the problem prescribers." (Read more)