About 60 of New Hampshire’s 78 nursing homes have signed a complaint alleging that the state Department of Health and Human Services owes them $4.4 million for care provided to Medicaid beneficiaries since 2002, the Concord Monitor reports. [click link for full article]

USA Today on Wednesday examined a “controversial” [click link for full article]

* During some assessments of child psychopathologies, parental observations can be helpful. * New research looks at how helpful parents may be in terms of assessing their children’s alcohol and/or drug use and abuse. * Findings indicate that parents do not provide valuable information about their children’s use of alcohol and drugs because they are often unaware of it. [click link for full article]

People make decisions all the time: they form preferences, take action, and evaluate outcomes, whether rewarding or aversive. Impaired decision making is regarded as one of the neurobehavioral hallmarks of addiction. New research has found that alcoholics with certain coexisting personality disorders (PDs) have decision-making abilities that are particularly impaired.Results are published in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. [click link for full article]

CMS Administrator Mark McClellan on Thursday said seniors enrolled in the Medicare prescription drug benefit should use generic drugs to reduce costs, Dow Jones reports. McClellan, at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Aging, said more Medicare plans that offer coverage for generic drugs will be available next year, and a list evaluating Medicare drug plans’ generic drug coverage will be available soon. On average, U.S. [click link for full article]

Diabetes puts people at risk of developing critical illness and dying early, but obesity without diabetes does not. A study published today in the open access journal Critical Care reveals that individuals suffering from diabetes are three times more at risk of developing critical illness and dying young than individuals who do not have diabetes. [click link for full article]

Medicare fee-for-service plans are growing in popularity, with enrollment in the plans increasing tenfold to 820,000 during the last two years, the New York Times reports. The increase comes after the federal government raised subsidies for the plans to an average of 11% per beneficiary, according to the Times. [click link for full article]

In a study assessing flood clean-up procedures in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, a team of scientists led by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, report that household levels of mold and bacterial endotoxins in three single-family homes were so considerable that they equaled or surpassed those in waste- water treatment plants, cotton mills, and agricultural environments. [click link for full article]

Acute diverticulitis, a disease traditionally seen in patients older than 50 years old, is now being seen in younger adults who are obese, according to a study conducted by the University of Maryland Medical Center’s department of radiology in Baltimore, MD.Acute diverticulitis is one of the most frequently encountered acute diseases of the colon and is commonly related to a low fiber diet. [click link for full article]

Sulphasalazine, a cheap drug currently used for arthritis and IBS (inflammatory bowel disease) can reverse the scarring that comes with cirrhosis of the liver, say scientists from the University of Newcastle, UK. Doctors had always thought that fibrosis - scarring associated with cirrhosis - was irreversible. This new study on animals has shown the damage can be reversed with Sulphasalazine. [click link for full article]