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Today’s Headlines – May 21, 2012

Here are your Monday morning headlines to get your week rolling:

NPR’s Shots Blog: Poll: What It’s Like to Be Sick In America
In the lull between the Supreme Court arguments over the federal health overhaul law and the decision expected in June, we thought we’d ask Americans who actually use the health system quite a bit how they view the quality of care and its cost (Knox and Neel, 5/21).

NPR: Stories Of Being Sick Inside The U.S. Health Care System
To get a feeling for what being sick in America is really like, and to help us understand the findings of our poll with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, NPR did a call-out on Facebook. We asked people to share their experiences of the health care system, and within 24 hours, we were flooded with close to 1,000 responses (Knox and Neighmond, 5/21).

For more headlines …

The Washington Post: Data Trove May Shed Light On Health-Care Uncertainties
How much do hospitals and doctors actually charge insurers for their services? How much and which of those services are privately-insured patients using? And, most significantly, what drives changes in health-care use, costs, and total spending? (Aizenman, 5/21).

Politico: Study: Higher Prices For Care May Be Driving Health-Care Costs
A new study could pose a challenge to the basic premise of President Barack Obama’s approach to controlling health costs — that spending will come down if doctors don’t give patients as much unnecessary medical care (Feder, 5/21).

The Associated Press/Washington Post: Republicans Romney, Sen. Brown Play Down Connections As They Face Different Election Fights
The distance between the candidates is more than strategic. Romney and Brown have adopted competing views on several big issues, from a new nuclear weapons treaty with Russia to the fate of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. Romney has said Roe v. Wade should be reversed. Brown says a woman should have the right to an abortion, although he opposes federal money for the procedure. Brown voted for the new START treaty with Russia, saying it was important for national security. Romney said the treaty was Obama’s “worst foreign policy mistake” (5/21).

NPR: A Dire Sign Of The Obesity Epidemic: Teen Diabetes Soaring, Study Finds
Karlton Hill was only 12 years old when when he found out he had diabetes. Even though he was only in seventh grade, Karlton knew what diabetes was; he had watched the disease destroy his great-grandmother’s life (Stein, 5/21).

The Washington Post: ‘Radical’ Bill Seeks To Reduce Cost Of AIDS Drugs By Awarding Prizes Instead Of Patents
Prizes, not patents. That could be the slogan for a radical idea that leading economists say would lower the price of new drugs for treating HIV/AIDS (Vastag, 5/19).

Los Angeles Times: Backers Of Health Insurance Rate Regulation Edge Closer To Ballot
Supporters of a proposed ballot measure seeking tighter regulation of health insurance rates in California turned in 800,000 petition signatures, confident that they will qualify for the Nov. 6 election (Terhune, 5/19).

The New York Times: Down To One Hospital, Rockaway Braces For Summer Crowds
Summer is coming to the Rockaway Peninsula, the thin strip of land lapped on either side by Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. And with the warmth will come the usual hordes who play and bask on its beaches, and, inevitably, suffer heatstroke, volleyball sprains, beach glass lacerations and near-drownings — the sorts of seaside scrapes that send people to the emergency room every season (Nir, 5/20).