If Gov. Andrew Cuomo gets his way, New York will join 10 other states and the District of Columbia in requiring paid sick leave for workers.
Cuomo included the paid sick leave mandate in his State of the State agenda. Under the proposal, which must be approved by the state Legislature, companies with five to 99 employees must provide workers with at least five days of job-protected paid sick leave annually. Workers at businesses with at least 100 employees would receive at least seven days of paid sick leave a year.
I like the idea of dedicated paid sick leave. I don't have it at my current job, which is something I miss from working for the state. While I have plenty of general "paid time off", having dedicated sick time, would be a way to encourage people to stay home when they are sick, keeping the office off.
George Herman Ruth was sick. It had all started with a deep, searing pain behind his left eye. Now, he could hardly swallow. And the pain seemed to be seeping down his body, like an invisible weight tugging at his hips and legs. Soon, he’d have to use his bat as a cane. But he was no ordinary patient. He was the Babe, the greatest baseball player who had ever lived. And his medical team at what is now Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, just a short train ride south from Yankee Stadium, intended to treat him as such. While it seems possible that no one ever told Ruth himself, the baseball legend had terminal cancer. A tumor had grown from behind his nose to the base of his skull and was working its way into his neck. Treatment would be harrowing, but his doctors were determined the Sultan of Swat would get better. Though their effort to save him was ultimately unsuccessful, the record-setting Ruth became a cancer pioneer in the process.
It appears Texas will get one of the strongest laws in the nation against surprise medical bills after all.
Earlier this year, lawmakers passed legislation to protect people in state-regulated health plans from getting outrageous bills for out-of-network care.
The law, which takes effect Jan. 1, wavered last month when the Texas Medical Board drafted the rules for its implementation. The board, made up of health care providers, tried to get a blanket exception to the law for virtually all nonemergency cases.
Instead, after an outcry from advocates and media coverage by KUT, NPR and Kaiser Health News, the board decided to relinquish its rule-making authority.
Thanksgiving leftovers are a distant memory, and December's extra travel, shopping and family commitments are already straining nerves, budgets and immune systems. It's officially "the holidays" — which also means we're well into a new flu season.
It's never too late to benefit from a flu shot, even into December and January, says Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt School of Medicine in Nashville.
Just get your flu shot. It's free, easy and if keeps you from getting the flu even once it's well worth the hassle.
The first human-to-human heart transplant in the United States and the second in the world was performed by Adrian Kantrowitz 3 days later, on December 6, 1967, at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. The recipient was an 18-day-old male infant who received the heart of a 2-day-old anencephalic male. The procedure, carried out under hypothermia rather than cardiopulmonary bypass, was technically successful; however, the patient died 6 hours after surgery with severe metabolic and respiratory acidosis. Barnard performed his second transplant on January 2, 1968, also at Groote Schuur Hospital. The patient, a 58-year-old man who received the heart of a 24-year-old man, was still alive on October 23, 1968—the date of compilation of the world's earliest heart transplants worldwide.