Cases of diabetes skyrocketed in states across the country between 1995 and 2010, and particularly in the South, according to new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, the number of diabetes cases diagnosed in that time period rose by 50 percent or more in 42 different states — and by 100 percent or more in 18 states.

And the diabetes epidemic disproportionately affects Americans who live in Southern and Appalachian states. The states that had the most serious jumps in diabetes cases over the 16-year period were Oklahoma (up 226 percent), Kentucky (up 158 percent), Georgia (up 145 percent), and Alabama (up 140 percent). In West Virginia, where nearly 70 percent of residents are either overweight or obese, the number of people diagnosed with diabetes rose 131 percent. In places like these where diabetes cases are especially highly concentrated, the difference compared to the general population can be stark. By some estimates, a full third of the Appalachian region is diabetic, versus just 15 percent of the general population.

CDC officials noted, however, that there is some good news for the diabetic community. Thanks to improvements in diabetes treatments, more Americans may be living longer with the disease, which helps contribute to the increased number of reported cases. But treatment can be cost-prohibitive. Drugs for pre-diabetic or borderline patients can cost up to $100 for those who aren’t covered by Medicaid or Medicare — pointing to the fact that Obamacare’s optional expansion of the Medicaid program could have a positive impact on the nation’s diabetes epidemic.

Governors who choose to expand the eligibility threshold so that additional low-income Americans are able to access Medicaid coverage could help ensure that those with diabetes aren’t forced to forgo their treatment, especially as this public health epidemic continues to spread and affect more and more of their residents. The Republican governors in Oklahoma, Kentucky, and West Virginia have yet to decide whether they will accept the Medicaid expansion, while Georgia’s and Alabama’s governors have already rejected it.

As lawmakers prepare to strike a deal to prevent the so-called “fiscal cliff,” some Democrats have suggested compromising with Republicans in Congress by offering up deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. At a press conference on Thursday, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) confirmed that she is not among the Democratic lawmakers who support making a deal at the expense of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.

Asked whether she would be willing to accept “structural changes” to Medicare and Medicaid in order to get Republicans to agree to new revenue, Pelosi harshly critiqued that euphemism for obscuring the fact that slashing benefits would harm seniors and struggling Americans. She responded that she would not support those types of adjustments to social programs as part of a debt deal:

PELOSI: Those issues — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — they should be in their own realm. Whatever adjustments would be made in Social Security should be there to strengthen Social Security, not to subsidize a tax cut for the wealthiest people in America and say that’s how we balance the budget. The same thing with Medicaid and Medicare… Sen. Reid and others have spoken out, we’re not going to touch any of the entitlements, so I think that gives you some indication of the likelihood of something like that happening… Unless somebody wants to define — you are asking me if I would support what they’re saying. I don’t know what they’re saying by “structural.” Is that a euphemism for “I’m going to cut your benefit if you’re a middle-aged senior”? Is that what structural change means? No, I don’t support that.

Watch it:

One “structural change” currently being floated is potentially raising the Medicare eligibility age above 65, a policy that is included in Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget. But that type of reform would actually only serve to shift the cost burden onto employers, states, and the older Americans who fall between 65 years old and the new eligibility age. Raising the eligibility age to 67 would have a negligible effect on Medicare’s long-term spending growth — since the program’s younger beneficiaries tend to be healthier and have fewer medical costs — while increasing the out-of-pocket insurance costs for the seniors who would have been covered by Medicare before the eligibility threshold changed.

And as Pelosi points out, that type of adjustment would simply be a concession to the Republicans who insist on offering tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans — and wouldn’t actually help strengthen the future of the nation’s health care programs.

Women now make up 20 percent of new military recruits, 15 percent of those serving on active-duty, and 17 percent of the reserve and National Guard forces. But a new report finds that women in the military report lower rates of contraception use than most U.S. women, and military women also have a higher rate of unintended pregnancies.

“Because of its potentially high burden for military women as well as the impact on military operations, prevention of unintended pregnancy is one reproductive health issue of particular importance,” said Dr. Vinita Goyal, the study’s lead author. An unintended pregnancy can limit a woman’s career advancement and future earnings in the military, so Goyal said health care providers in military communities and at the Veteran’s Administration need to be aware of women’s need for reproductive health care, including contraception access:

Goyal cited several factors that may play into the high unintended pregnancy rate for women in the military, stating that they are predominantly young, unmarried racial minorities of lower education achievement and lower socioeconomic status. The lower rate of contraceptive use was also a major factor.

“(Research shows that) 50 to 62% of servicewomen presenting with an unintended pregnancy were not using contraception when they conceived,” said Goyal. “Similar surveys of active-duty personnel of reproductive age demonstrate that although 70 to 85% were sexually active, nearly 40% used no contraception.”

Goyal stated that a possible cause for the low contraceptive use includes a lack of confidence in contraceptive knowledge of overseas military medical personnel. She also cited the Uniform Military Code of Justice’s prohibition on adultery, for which contraceptives can be viewed as incriminating evidence.

Women in the military also lack the same access to abortion care that federal civilian employees have. Currently, military insurance plans only offer abortion coverage if the woman’s life is in danger. A Senate committee passed Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s (D-NH) amendment to ensure that military insurance plans cover abortion services in cases of rape and incest, but the measure likely could not make it through Congress.

Employees at the 40 Denny’s restaurants and five Hurricane Grill and Wings owned by John Metz now have fair warning: their hours are getting cut back in January of 2014.

To avoid having to provide health care for his employees, Metz — who owns restaurants in Florida, Virginia and Georgia — told Fox News today that he will cut back many of his workers’ hours to part time. At the same time, he’ll add a five percent “Obamacare surcharge” to his customers’ bills:

“Everyone’s looking for a way to not have to provide insurance for their employees. It’s essentially a huge tax on all us business people.”

To further offset the costs, Metz, who oversees roughly 1,200 employees as president and CEO of RREMC Restaurants, LLC, said he also will slash most of the staff’s time to fewer than 30 hours per week. That change will be announced to employees next month, he said. [...]

At Denny’s restaurants operated by Metz, the average check is $9, he said, meaning the ObamaCare surcharge if implemented would be 45 cents on that bill. At Hurricane Grill & Wings locations, where the average bill is $14.50, the surcharge would total 72 cents.

Metz is just one of a growing number of CEOs in the business sector who are trying to pass expensive health care onto their employees instead of simply providing the essential coverage that their workers otherwise couldn’t afford. The company that owns Olive Garden used Obamacare as an excuse to cut back hours for its employees, Papa John’s is following suit, and an Applebee’s franchise CEO threatened to fire people and enstate a hiring freeze because of the health care requirement.

Under the Affordable Care Act, businesses with more than 50 employees are asked to provide health care to their employees. If they do not, and their employees qualify and receive subsidized coverage in the exchanges established by the ACA, employers must pay a penalty. The policy, championed by Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), is designed to discourage employers from opting out of providing health coverage, and to ensure that they contribute to the system as a whole.

While Metz makes it sound like that requirement spells the end of business as usual, he might be pleasantly surprised by the positive effects of choosing to provide employer-based health care. Studies have shown that Obamacare will ultimately decrease health care costs for small businesses. On top of that, providing insurance coverage generally leads to higher retention rates, more satisfied employees, and a more competitive hiring market.

President Obama’s landmark health care reform includes multiple provisions with significant positive implications for women, including putting an end to discriminatory gender-based insurance costs and ensuring affordable access to contraceptive services and maternity care. But Obamacare could also have another unexpected effect on women’s lives: helping ensure they don’t have to rely on a spouse for their health coverage, or worry about losing that coverage after a change in their marital status.

According to a new study from the University of Michigan, about 115,000 American women lose their private insurance coverage following a divorce each year, and 65,000 of those women remain uninsured because they don’t have any way to access health care without a spouse. Women are much more likely than men to be covered as a dependent — nearly a quarter of women under 65 years old were dependents last year, versus just 14 percent of men in the same age group — because they continue to be less likely to be insured through their jobs, partly because they tend to be in fields that don’t offer comprehensive benefits. Men are still more likely to have jobs that offer better insurance packages, and the Michigan study suggests that’s one reason why women often choose to access health insurance through their husbands’ plans.

Once those women get divorced, however, they lose the ability to access coverage as a dependent, and they often can’t afford the high costs of private insurance on their own. And rather than just a temporary gap in coverage immediately following a divorce, researchers observed that the rates of insurance coverage for divorced women remained depressed for more than two years after their splits occurred. “Insurance loss may compound the economic losses women experience after divorce and contribute to as well as compound previously documented health declines following divorce,” researchers warned.

This study builds on previous research that has already drawn a link between marital status and uninsurance rates. Unmarried women are estimated to be between 1.5 and 2 times more likely to be uninsured than the women who have a legal spouse — and even when unmarried women are insured, they are more likely to rely on public insurance programs like Medicaid. In fact, women make up 68 percent of the recipients in the Medicaid program.

But thanks to Obamacare, women may not have to keep relying on insurance plans that are only available through their husbands — something that will help women who choose to remain unmarried, women who seek a divorce, and LGBT women who live in states where they cannot legally marry. By requiring that all employers provide their workers with insurance, preventing insurance providers from charging women more than men for the same medical care, and expanding the eligibility levels for the Medicaid program, the health reform law actually represents a step toward ensuring that women’s ability to have insurance isn’t impacted by women’s ability to get married.

According to CNN Money, the cost of employer-sponsored health insurance plans rose by just 4.1 percent this year, representing the lowest increase in employer health expenditures in 15 years. Premiums have continued their upward trend since the Bush Administration, but their rate of increase has seen a decline under President Obama, while government programs such as Medicare Advantage have actually seen a net reduction in premium costs.

Although the latest figures on employer-sponsored health insurance premiums are encouraging, they are largely a result of employers simply shifting health care costs onto their employees by increasing workers’ contributions to health coverage and offering expensive, risky “high-deductible health plans.” Employers have been engaging in a misleading blame-game, citing Obamacare as an excuse for their shoddy cost-shifting practices when they are actually just trying to squeeze out extra profits:

Increasingly, employers are offering plans that charge significantly lower premiums but require employees to cover more out-of-pocket costs like higher deductibles. These consumer-directed health plans, or CDHPs, carry premiums that are about 20% less than other types of plans, making them much more affordable for employers, Mercer said.

Even among traditional health care plans, employee costs are increasing with the average deductible at large employer plans climbing by about 13% to $666, and at small employers rising by 3% to $1,452.

“Employers are very aware that in 2014, when the health reform law’s provisions kick in, they will be asked to cover more employees and face added cost pressure,” said Julio A. Portalatin, CEO of Mercer. “They’ve taken bold steps to soften the impact and it’s paying off already.”

While this is one way for employers to reduce their share of health care expenditures, it comes at the expense of workers. So-called “consumer-driven” health plans have lower premiums but significantly higher deductibles — which means that in the face of a chronic medical need, employees could potentially be forced to choose between paying exorbitant out-of-pocket medical costs or forgoing care. Even though these plans typically have low satisfaction rates among subscribers, industry leaders widely agree that the trend toward health plans with high deductibles will continue for the foreseeable future.

Studies have found that Obamacare will actually decrease small businesses’ health care expenditures while raising large employers’ costs only modestly. Nevertheless, large employers still continue to use the health reform law as a convenient and misleading excuse to pay lower wages, move workers to part-time status, and generally shift their costs onto the backs of their employees. Even aside from the argument that employers may have an ethical responsibility to to safeguard their workers’ physical and fiscal security by providing them with health coverage, businesses’ focus on their short-term bottom lines might actually come back to haunt them — since companies that offer full benefits typically have higher worker retention rates and draw more highly-skilled labor pools.

Americans who consume popular energy drinks like Monster could be taking in unsafe levels of caffeine, new reports from the Food and Drug Administration suggest. The federal agency confirmed yesterday that it has received reports of 13 deaths over the past four years that cite the 5-Hour Energy drink as a possible cause — and that’s on top of previous reports that say Monster may have contributed to five deaths over the past three years.

Although the FDA’s incident reports don’t provide conclusive scientific evidence for the cause of death, The New York Times reports that the agency has documented multiple links between energy drinks and American deaths:

Since 2009, 5-Hour Energy has been mentioned in some 90 filings with the F.D.A., including more than 30 that involved serious or life-threatening injuries like heart attacks, convulsions and, in one case, a spontaneous abortion, a summary of F.D.A. records reviewed by The New York Times showed. [...]

The number of reports filed with the F.D.A. that mention 5-Hour Energy appears particularly striking. In 2010, for example, the F.D.A. received a total of 17 fatality reports that mentioned a dietary supplement or a weight loss product, two broad categories that cover more than 50,000 products, according to Mr. Fabricant, the F.D.A. official. [...]

Another federal agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, reported late last year that more than 13,000 emergency room visits in 2009 were associated with energy drinks alone.

Energy drinks, which are especially popular among young people, represent the fastest-growing segment of the soft drink industry, with sales totaling around $9 billion. But energy drink companies are currently able to sidestep some FDA regulatory guidelines by marketing their products as “drinks” or “dietary supplements.” Companies that classify their products as drinks do not have to report to the FDA, and they don’t have to disclose how much caffeine is their products.

And since reporting caffeine levels remains optional, many energy drink companies choose to forgo it — or in some cases, even falsely advertise it to downplay how much caffeine is really in their beverages. According to Consumer Reports, 11 of the country’s 27 top-selling energy drinks don’t specify the amount of caffeine in their products, and five of the 16 drinks that did list their caffeine amount actually contained more caffeine per serving than their labels claimed.

The FDA says it doesn’t currently have enough scientific information to change its regulatory practices over the energy drink industry, although some lawmakers are pressuring the agency to look into the issue further. Last month, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) asked the FDA to investigate the effect that energy drinks’ caffeine levels could have on children and adolescents. And in July, New York’s Atorney General issued subpoenas to three energy drink companies to obtain more information on the their marketing practices.