Medicare Advantage isn’t that great an advantage for seniors compared with traditional Medicare, researchers say. The privatized form of Medicare offers more supplemental benefits than traditional Medicare, including dental, vision and hearing benefits. But many seniors aren’t using those additional benefits, and their out-of-pocket costs are about the same as with regular Medicare, researchers report in a study published recently in JAMA Network Open. For example, just a little more than half of seniors (54%) with Medicare Advantage are aware of having either dental or vision coverage, even though nearly all plans offer those benefits, results show. “Supplemental benefits are a major draw to Medicare Advantage, but our findings show that people enrolled in Medicare Advantage have no better access to extra services than people in traditional Medicare, and that much of the cost comes out of their own pockets,” senior researcher Dr. Lisa Simon, an assistant professor of general and internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said in a news release. “Older adults and people with disabilities deserve better from Medicare,” Simon added. About 51% of Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare Advantage in 2023, researchers said in background notes. The federal government pays Medicare Advantage plans about 22% more than the cost of covering similar beneficiaries under traditional Medicare, which amounted to about $83 billion in 2024. For the study, researchers…  read on >  read on >

Popular GLP-1 medications for weight loss and diabetes may have unexpected benefits for reducing risks for conditions such as substance abuse, psychosis, infections and even dementia.  But these drugs also come with risks that shouldn’t be overlooked, researchers warn in a study published Jan. 20 in the journal Nature Medicine. The study is among the first to take a comprehensive look at how these meds — Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound — affect overall health. Researchers reviewed data from nearly 2 million people treated by the Veterans Health Administration, including more than 216,000 patients prescribed GLP-1 medications. The study found that people taking GLP-1 medications had a 24% lower risk of developing liver failure and a 22% reduced risk of cardiac arrest compared to those on other diabetes treatments. In all, researchers found that people taking GLP-1 medications had lower risks for 42 health outcomes, including liver failure, lung failure, cardiac arrest, aspiration pneumonia and shock.  These medications have also been associated with a potential impact on obesity rates, which declined in the U.S. for the first time in more than a decade in 2023, CNN reported. However, the drugs weren’t without drawbacks. People taking GLP-1 medications had higher risks for 19 health outcomes, mostly involving digestive issues such as heartburn, nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and gastroparesis (stomach paralysis). They were also more likely to…  read on >  read on >

Hormone replacement therapy to ease menopause symptoms doesn’t increase a woman’s risk of brain tumors. Researchers found no link between hormone therapy and gliomas, the most common brain tumors in adults, according to results of a new study published recently in the journal Menopause. “Compared with nonusers, users of hormone therapy were not significantly associated with glioma risk,” a team led by senior researcher Dr. Hui Tang, a neurosurgeon with North Sichuan Medical College in Nanchong, China, wrote. No link was found even when researchers considered how long a woman had been taking hormone therapy, and whether she was currently using it. “Although there is a known sex difference in the incidence of gliomas, with women being six times more likely to develop the disease compared with men, there does not appear to be an association between glioma and hormone therapy use in postmenopausal women,” Dr. Stephanie Faubion, medical director for The Menopause Society, said in a news release. Hormone therapy is prescribed to treat common menopause symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings and vaginal problems, researchers mentioned in background notes. The therapy had been widely used until 2002, when early clinical trial results showed an association between hormone therapy and increased risk of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke and blood clots. Since then, further study has shown that hormone therapy is indeed…  read on >  read on >

Menthol cigarettes are under fire in the United States for promoting smoking among Black Americans, with a number of cities and states banning the smokes. In response, the tobacco industry has come up with “menthol mimics” that imitate the cooling effect of menthol, and smokers are taking note of the innovation, a new study published Jan. 14 in JAMA Network Open says. A substantial portion of U.S. adults are “aware of and had already experimented with synthetic cooling agent menthol-mimicking cigarettes,” concluded a research team led by Kelvin Choi, a senior investigator with the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. “These products may serve as a substitute for menthol cigarettes and reduce the public health benefits of a menthol cigarette ban in promoting smoking cessation,” Choi said. Menthol masks the irritation and harshness of cigarette smoke, making it easier for smokers to pick up the habit, researchers said in background notes. This reduced irritation also allows for deeper inhalation, resulting in higher nicotine exposure, researchers added. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proposed a ban on menthol cigarettes, but that effort stalled under the Biden administration. Despite this, the states of Massachusetts and California and cities in Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Ohio and Oregon have pressed forward with their own bans on the products, researchers said. A recent evidence review found that…  read on >  read on >