NBC News reports that in a truly cruel twist of fate, America’s caregivers neglect their own medical needs in order to help the patients for whom they are responsible.

And the trend isn’t limited to just professional caregivers. Surveys have estimated that roughly 40 million American households contain at least one person caring for a family member. That adds up to tens of millions of Americans who don’t receive crucial preventative care due to limited time and resources:

“Caregivers don’t go to the dentist; they don’t get mammograms or annual checkups,” says Melissa Gartenberg Livney, a clinical psychologist with the PENN Memory Center at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “So they get sick.”

Even worse, Livney says, “there’s some evidence that this kind of stress can contribute to the onset of dementia” which is why she and others are trying to encourage caregivers to get help, to find ways to take breaks, and to make and keep their own doctors’ appointments.

The saddest irony of all is the fact that by not receiving preventative care, the caregivers themselves are adding to the rising cost of health care. While Obamacare encourages preventative treatments as a means of containing medical costs, that won’t make much of a difference for people who just don’t have the time to go to a doctor.

Which is also why proposals to cut Medicaid funding should be heavily scrutinized. Medicaid is already underfunded despite being the only means of health coverage for America’s poor and disabled populations. And professional caregivers — who often earn minimum wage for the work they do — have proven themselves to be exceptionally dedicated to their patients, even weathering natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy in order to keep caring for the sick, elderly, and disabled who need them.

A top Senate Democrat is claiming that President Obama is no longer open to raising the Medicare eligibility age as part of a package to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, the Wall Street Journal reports. Obama himself didn’t rule out keeping younger seniors out of the health care program during an interview with ABC News on Tuesday, saying he would “look at every avenue.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the assistant majority leader, told reporters that officials have informed him that “it was no longer on the table.” “It’s no longer one of the items beings considered by the White House,” he said.

Obama flirted with the proposal during the 2011 budget talks, though the majority of Democrats oppose it. Indeed, the idea would only save the federal government a net $5.7 billion, while shifting an added $11.4 billion in health care spending to states, employers, and individuals, who would have to find coverage elsewhere.

During a press conference today, Democratic Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) bluntly rejected the idea. “As I have said, don’t even think about raising Medicare age,” she said. “We are not throwing America’s seniors over the cliff to give a tax cuts to the wealthiest people in America.”

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked about the Medicare provision on Thursday, but did not address it directly.

A petition calling for beverage producers to stop using a little-known chemical additive in their products has gained more than 150,000 signatures on Change.org, sparking a debate about the U.S.’s current regulation of the food and beverage industry.

15-year-old Sarah Kavanagh started the petition after checking the label on her Gatorade and discovering that “brominated vegetable oil” (BVO) — an additive used to keep flavor from separating — was listed on the bottle. When she researched the substance further, she found out that it can be associated with serious neurological and fertility issues, and wondered why it was still allowed to be used in the United States:

Use of the substance in the United States has been debated for more than three decades, so Ms. Kavanagh’s campaign most likely is quixotic. But the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.

“B.V.O. is banned other places in the world, so these companies already have a replacement for it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “I don’t see why they don’t just make the switch.” To that, companies say the switch would be too costly.

The renewed debate, which has brought attention to the arcane world of additive regulation, comes as consumers show increasing interest in food ingredients and have new tools to learn about them. Walmart’s app, for instance, allows access to lists of ingredients in foods in its stores.

BVO is found in approximately 10 percent of all drinks sold in the U.S., including Mountain Dew, Fanta Orange, Fresca, and Gatorade. Although evidence suggests serious effects of BVO may not occur unless consumed in very large quantities, its use points to larger issues concerning the way food is regulated in the United States. Serious loopholes in laws and regulations allow thousands of additives into food without any oversight from the FDA.

When setting up regulation of food additives, Congress exempted two types from FDA oversight: those already approved by the agency and those “generally recognized as safe.” It is the second type — “the loophole that swallowed the law” — that is a cause for concern. As the New York Times points out, companies using this loophole “can create a new additive, publish safety data about it on its Web site and pay a law firm or consulting firm to vet it to establish it as ‘generally recognized as safe’ — without ever notifying the F.D.A.” In fact, of the 10,000 additives allowed in food, 3,000 have never been reviewed by the FDA.

And the debate over BVO is just the latest of several controversies surrounding the chemical content of other beverages, in which energy drinks have been tied to more than a dozen deaths, and sugary drinks conclusively linked to obesity.

– Greg Noth

Raising the age at which Americans qualify for Medicare from 65 to 67 has gained more and more prominence as one option to cut spending in a fiscal cliff deal. Although top Democratic leaders have ruled out the notion, the White House itself has not.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) informed the Washington Post’s Greg Sergeant that he and other liberal Senators roundly condemned the idea at a recent private caucus among Senate Democrats. “The overwhelming sense was that this would be absolutely unacceptable,” he told The Post, adding that he “can’t imagine” President Obama is seriously considering the policy.

According to Merkley, Congress should actually consider lowering the eligibility age for the program:

“I do a lot of town halls,” Merkley said. “I can’t tell you how many times someone will come up to me and say, ‘Here’s the thing. I’m 61, and I have these major health problems. I don’t have insurance. I’m praying I make it to 65.’ The idea that we’re going to take all these folks with diseases setting in as they get older, and move them two years later? Absolutely unacceptable.”

“We should be lowering the age, not raising it,” Merkley said. Speaking of the president, Merkley added: “I hope he hears long and loud from us who are connected to the real lives of working people.”

Just as Merkley points out, increasing Medicare’s eligibility age by two years would come with a human cost. In states that don’t participate in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, over 160,000 seniors would be left out in the cold — too rich to qualify for their state’s Medicaid program, but too poor to purchase decent coverage on their own. And as the oldest Americans looking for coverage outside of Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, those seniors would face particularly high premiums and out-of-pocket costs. Altogether, about 435,000 seniors would be at risk of having no insurance coverage whatsoever in 2021 if the eligibility age went up.

Making seniors wait longer to qualify for Medicare would also force many to stay longer in their jobs in order to keep their employer-based health insurance. But lower-income seniors’ jobs are more likely to be unpleasant and physically damaging — and they’re also the same seniors least likely to have benefited from the gains in life expectancy that have accrued mainly to the more well-off.

The policy would also increase costs throughout the rest of the health care system. Since the seniors who are no longer eligible would be shifted into other coverage pools — where they would be older and sicker in comparison to other enrollees — the Center for American Progress estimated that Americans would actually wind up spending $2 in the health care system as a whole for every $1 that raising the eligibility age would save in federal spending.

Washington, D.C. just released the results of the nation’s first standardized test measuring students’ knowledge of health and human sexuality. Although high school students were able to answer about 75 percent of the questions correctly, the results confirm that they knew less about practical solutions for sexual health issues, such as how to locate health information and assistance.

The District’s education department administered the 50-question health exam to more than 11,000 students in the city’s public schools and public charter schools last spring, developing age-appropriate assessments for students in grades 5, 8, and 10. Overall, D.C. students correctly answered about 62 percent of the questions on the exam, which focused on health topics like emotional wellness, disease prevention, and sex education. But fifth and eighth graders aren’t as educated about the human body as they should be, and high schoolers could only identify about 40 percent of the correct answers about where they can access more health resources if they need them.

Adam Tenner, the executive director of the community health organization Metro TeenAids, told the Washington Post that although the District’s students still have room for improvement, the exam does represent an important milestone for sexual education efforts:

“In a city with such high rates of HIV, teen pregnancy and STDs — let alone obesity and other diseases that plague our community — we’re not where we should be,” Tenner said in an interview. [...]

But the exam was also hailed by advocates as a step toward understanding — and ultimately decreasing — the city’s high rates of childhood obesity, sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy.

Tenner called the test “historic” and praised officials for their willingness to begin examining the root causes of the city’s health problems. Now the question is what needs to be done to make sure schools have what they need to improve health education, he said.

Public schools in Washington, D.C. are required to include medically-accurate sexual health instruction in their health curricula, including information about sexual orientation and HIV prevention, although parents may choose to opt their children out of those courses. But 38 states across the country don’t currently mandate sexual education in schools, and often push misleading, shame-based “abstinence only” programs instead — with serious consequences for their students. One recent survey of sexual education curricula in New York, which doesn’t have specific standards for medically accurate instruction materials about sexual health in classrooms, found that public schools had “shocking gaps” in their sex ed courses.

Although the District’s students are already ahead of the national average, there is still room for improvement, as Tenner points out. Other surveys have found that the majority of college students don’t know how to use the Internet to figure out how to locate contraception, the same lack of knowledge about accessing health resources that D.C. high school students revealed. More comprehensive sexual education curricula could help prevent D.C. students from being in the same situation once they reach their undergrad years.

On Wednesday, Gov. Brian Sandoval (R-NV) became the first Republican governor to endorse Obamacare’s expansion of the Medicaid program, noting that expanding Medicaid is the right thing to do for the 78,000 low-income residents Nevada will be able to add to its rolls.

And now Sandoval’s fellow Republicans are coming out in support of the governor’s decision, backing his plan to extend health coverage to their state’s poorest residents:

State Senate Republican leaders lined up Wednesday to back Gov. Brian Sandoval’s decision to expand Medicaid eligibility for Nevada’s poorest residents. [...]

“Ensuring that poor Nevadans have access to primary health care through Medicaid is very simply the right thing to do, both for our citizens and our economy,” said Sen. Michael Roberson, R-Henderson.

Sen. Ben Kieckhefer, R-Reno, said expanding Medicaid to include poor childless adults — a population segment historically excluded from Nevada’s Medicaid eligibility — will help improve the state’s rates for chronic illnesses.

However, the GOP voices of support for Medicaid expansion still remain in the minority. Other conservatives in Nevada are skeptical about Sandoval’s decision to implement a crucial part of the Affordable Care Act, warning that it may end up being too costly for the state — despite the fact that expanding Medicaid will actually save Nevada an estimated $17 million, thanks to the additional federal government funding designated for states that choose to expand their programs.

And across the country, Republican governors are digging in their heels against health care reform at the expense of their states’ poorest residents. GOP governors in some of the states with the highest rates of uninsurance, like Texas and Florida, have already explicitly rejected Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, denying health coverage to thousands of low-income Americans who need it.

Michigan’s Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has incited a political firestorm over the controversial anti-union “right-to-work” law that he signed this week. That bill has significant implications for labor rights, particularly for Michigan’s middle class, and may threaten the health care benefits that union workers receive through their collective bargaining abilities.

According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), union workers have much better access to health insurance than their non-union counterparts. In 2005, a full 86 percent of unionized workers had access to health insurance, compared to 59.5 percent of non-union workers:

The report goes on to say that while non-union workers enjoy more health coverage as dependents, unionized workers have a significantly lower uninsurance rate as a consequence of their ability to negotiate with employers. That bargaining power is pretty significant in an era in which employers increasingly try to push the cost of essential benefits such as health care onto their workers. For some context, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that Michigan adults have an uninsurance rate of 18 percent.

In fact, a Center for American Progress report estimated that if the states that don’t currently have right-to-work laws lowered their benefit levels to those in anti-union states, 2 million fewer workers would receive health insurance benefits.