Medicare will cover Wegovy to reduce heart disease risk

Medicare will cover Wegovy to reduce heart disease risk

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Medicare will provide coverage for Wegovy for patients with an increased risk of heart attack, stroke or other serious cardiovascular problems, an agency spokesperson said Thursday.The decision, experts say, could grant millions of patients access to the popular yet expensive weight loss medication.Medicare, which currently provides health insurance to more than 65 million people in the U.S., has long been barred from paying for weight loss drugs.Earlier this month, however, the Food and Drug Administration expanded the approval for Wegovy, saying that it can be prescribed to people who are overweight or have obesity to reduce their risk of heart disease.The change prompted the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to consider coverage because reducing heart disease risk is a medically accepted use under federal law, the spokesperson said. Medicare…
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Rare disorder causes man to see people’s faces as ‘demonic’

Rare disorder causes man to see people’s faces as ‘demonic’

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Victor Sharrah had always had sharp vision. But one life-altering day in November 2020, he noticed out of the blue that people’s faces around him looked demonic. Their ears, noses and mouths were stretched back, and there were deep grooves in their foreheads, cheeks and chins.“My first thought was I woke up in a demon world,” said Sharrah, 59, of Clarksville, Tennessee. “You can’t imagine how scary it was.”Someone he knew taught visually impaired people and suggested he might have prosopometamorphopsia, or PMO. The extremely rare neurological disorder of perception causes faces to appear distorted in shape, size, texture or color. Sharrah felt the symptoms were a match, and he was formally diagnosed last year.The distortions appear only when he sees people in person — not in photographs or through…
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First over-the-counter birth control pill hits store shelves

First over-the-counter birth control pill hits store shelves

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Opill, the first birth control pill approved to be sold without a prescription, has landed on shelves at some Walgreens stores.The pill is also available to order online from Amazon, CVS, Walgreens and the Opill website.It’s the first time that U.S. residents are able to buy birth control pills over the counter — the same way they would purchase Tylenol or Advil — though many states allow pharmacists to dispense birth control pills to patients without a prescription.Sriha Srinivasan, 21, said she plans to start taking Opill as soon as she can find it at a store near her home in Fairfield, California — both for its convenience and because she wants to support a product that’s expanding access to contraception. Srinivasan, a contraceptives activist, said she tried to schedule appointments at…
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Wyoming governor vetoes abortion restrictions and signs trans medical care ban for minors

Wyoming governor vetoes abortion restrictions and signs trans medical care ban for minors

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CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Wyoming’s governor on Friday vetoed a bill that would have erected significant barriers to abortion, should it remain legal in the state, and signed legislation banning gender-affirming care for minors.The abortion bill rejected by Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, would have required facilities providing surgical abortions to be licensed as outpatient surgical centers, adding to their cost and the burdens they face to operate.Women would have had to get ultrasounds no less than 48 hours before either a surgical or pill abortion to determine the fetus’s gestational age and location and viability of the pregnancy.Abortion is legal in Wyoming pending the outcome of a lawsuit challenging new laws to ban the procedure. The bill was aimed at the state’s only full-service abortion clinic, Wellspring Health Access. The…
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