Women Will Steer the Fate of Health Care Reform

Women Will Steer the Fate of Health Care Reform


By Dora Calott Wang, M.D.,

Author of The Kitchen Shrink: A Psychiatrist's Reflections on Healing in a Changing World


As mothers, daughters, wives and leaders of households, women often steer the health care choices of families. Thus in the coming years, women will also be a major force toward implementing health care reform and the landmark Affordable Care Act.



Whenever we enroll a child into newly available health insurance, whenever we convince parents to get mammograms or colonoscopies that will be free under Medicare in 2011, each time we appeal an insurance company's denial of care, or when we choose health insurance in new marketplaces beginning in 2014 -- we will be helping to shape the future of health care in America. In fact, much of the ACA depends upon the actions and choices of patients, with women often taking the lead.



Many ACA laws are already in effect. For example, nursing mothers in most workplaces are now entitled to time and private space to pump breast milk for a child's first year of life. Did you ever think the feds would mandate this? It's a new era.



The ACA's main goal is for nearly every American to have health insurance. New opportunities are already available, and uninsured members of your family may qualify. If someone in your family has been denied health insurance because of a pre-existing illness, check out the new "high-risk pool" insurance plans available now. Log onto Healthcare.gov to find local options, and get your loved one covered. Medicaid has been expanded, so someone in your family may be newly eligible. By September 23, you can insure your children under your own health plan until they are age 26, and insurance companies will have to accept all children under age 19 with pre-existing illnesses.



Patients (and the women often guiding them), might possibly exert the most influence on health care reform through two important ACA measures -- appeals processes that should be in place by Sept. 23, and the new health insurance marketplaces in effect by 2014.



In the words of President Obama, the ACA aims to protect patients against the worst abuses of health insurance companies. The ACA provides many safeguards against insurance companies denying coverage. Yet the devil is still in the details when it comes to holding insurers more accountable toward paying for care. To fight against insurance companies taking our premiums, then trying not to pay for medical care, the federal government is cracking down on fraud, waste and abuse. The ACA eliminates life-time caps on health insurance benefits, while mandating that insurance companies now must spend at least 85 percent of their dollars on medical care, rather than on profit and administration.



We the public can do our part to keep insurance companies honest through new appeals processes which should be in place by Sept. 23 for new insurers. If you feel your new insurer is unfairly denying care, or is stalling on time-sensitive care, you will be able to appeal to the insurer itself, but also to an external review process. The ACA leaves it up to individual states to institute these appeals processes, but the federal government will hear grievances if state processes are inadequate.



These appeals processes will be an all-important aspect of health reform -- which will be driven by patients making appeals, and therefore reliant upon all of us.



Another crucial step is that by 2014, we can shop for health insurance in new exchanges offering comparisons between different plans. So if we see an insurance company hiking rates by 70 percent in one year, for example, or if an insurance company has a reputation of not paying for care (yes, this will still happen under the ACA), the new exchanges will offer options. Collectively, by choosing insurance for our families, we'll determine which insurers succeed or fail, and thus shape the landscape of American health care.



The lady of the house has always had a large role in steering the health care choices of her family. Now with the new Affordable Care Act, the actions of women on behalf of their families will collectively shape the future of health care in America.



For more information about the ACA and its timeline, log onto the excellent website, Healthcare.gov.



© 2010 Dora Calott Wang, M.D., author of The Kitchen Shrink: A Psychiatrist's Reflections on Healing in a Changing World



Author Bio

Dora Calott Wang, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. A graduate of the Yale School of Medicine and the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, she received her M.A. in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and has been the recipient of a writer's residency from the Lannan Foundation. Her memoir, The Kitchen Shrink: A Psychiatrist's Reflections on Healing in a Changing World was published by Riverhead Books, The Penguin Group.





For more information please visit www.doracalottwang.com and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.

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Three Ways to Make the Most of Women's Intuition

Three Ways to Make the Most of Women's Intuition


By Sherrie Dillard,

Author of Love and Intuition: A Psychic's Guide to Creating Lasting Love

For generations the term "women's intuition" has been used to describe the unexplainable, non-logical, sometimes quirky wisdom that women often possess. No one quite knows how or why intuition works. But it does.



Intuition has been defined as simply knowing something without any reasonable and logical way of knowing it. Associated with the right side of the brain, intuition resides in the elusive realm of emotions, creativity and imagination, the domain of the feminine.



Everyday in ways that normally go unnoticed, our intuition is at work. We intuit the unspoken feelings and emotions of our partner, co-workers, children and even the check out girl at the grocery store. We know when a loved one in the other part of the house or even miles away is struggling or having difficulties and we can sense the honesty or dishonesty of our children's excuses and the car mechanic's estimate with surprising ease.



Although we don't always know how we know these things, when we listen to our inner voice and follow through with our gut feelings we are almost always right.



There are many ways that you can employ your intuition to make your life easier and frankly more fun.



Try these:



Intuitive Listening



Your intuition is telling you that there is something that your partner, who is slumped in his chair, needs to talk about. When you ask him he tells you there is nothing wrong. Although this is frustrating it may be that he is unable to put into words what he is feeling. Give him the benefit of the doubt. He may not be intentionally withholding information.



Instead of pushing him to talk, take a seat near him and sit quietly. Take a long deep breath and relax. Come into an open hearted receptive state and listen within. When you feel moved to talk, express from the heart what you are receiving. Do not lecture, push or tell him how he feels, instead use "I" statements and talk about what you are experiencing.



This simple practice will help your partner to relax, open up and communicate.



Open hearted intuitive listening is also affective with your children, other family members, friends and even co-workers. It creates a calm intuitive environment of safety and love.



Intuitive Eating



It's been a long day. You finally have a few minutes to relax. Before making your way to the couch or bed, you scan the refrigerator and cabinets for a special treat. A little chocolate, a piece of left over fried chicken, and some popcorn never hurt anyone, right?



Before you grab the bag of tortilla chips, sit down, take a deep breath and listen within. Imagine that your body can intuitively communicate with you.



Ask within if you are hungry? If the answer is no, ask your body to reveal to you what is prompting the desire to eat.



There is a message behind the hunger, listen to it. You might find that emotions like loneliness, frustration or stress surface. You may be bored or want to fill an inner feeling of emptiness.



Instead of eating to dull the feelings, spend some time in inner listening.



Eating is a way to nurture ourselves, but there are other more affective ways. What is the best way to nurture and take care of you?



Listen to your intuition and commit to those actions that will empower you with self care. Often times just listening within and acknowledging how you feel will help you to release the feelings and dissipate the gnawing hunger. Acknowledge all that you accomplished during the day and have loving compassion for you.



Intuitive Career Decisions



Something feels off at work. You can't quite put your finger on it, but you feel restless and find yourself scanning job boards for other employment possibilities. You talk to your manager and he tries to assure you that your job is secure. As much as you would like to believe this, that little inner voice keeps telling you to start looking.



At this point you have a choice. You can convince yourself that this is just your insecurity and caution speaking or you can without any outside evidence, listen and act on your intuitive impressions.



In these kinds of situations, I often advise people to pay attention to outer synchronicities that may reinforce your intuition. Synchronicity is the random occurrence of unlikely coincidence and a form of intuition. In this situation, you might for instance receive a call from a friend who randomly lets you know that the company she works for is hiring. While exercising at the gym you overhear a couple of people discussing a new division about to open in an exciting and innovative company. You have dreams of being in interesting places involved in new activity and wake feeling more sure and ready to pursue other career options. I have a friend who woke up at 2:00 in the morning, spontaneously went to her computer and looked at the job postings of a company that she had always wanted to work for. There was a job listed that was perfect for her. Two weeks later she was hired.



Your intuition is like a muscle that must be exercised. Be creative and explore the many ways throughout the day that your intuition can guide you. As you do this you will become more adept at recognizing and confidently following through with intuitive messages. You will more often than not be glad that you did.



© 2010 Sherrie Dillard, author of Love and Intuition: A Psychic's Guide to Creating Lasting Love





Author Bio

Author of the bestselling Discover Your Psychic Type, Sherrie Dillard has been a New Thought pastoral counselor, professional psychic, medium, and teacher for over twenty years. She has taught classes and workshops, both nationally and internationally, on the life-enhancing aspects of intuition development. Her writing has also appeared in New Age Journal and on Wellness.com and HitchedMag.com.





For more information please visit www.SherrieDillard.com and follow the author on Facebook.

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How to Determine if You Are Being Patient or Simply Being a Chicken

How to Determine if You Are Being Patient or Simply Being a Chicken


By Kristen Moeller,

Author of Waiting for Jack: Confessions of a Self-Help Junkie: How to Stop Waiting and Start Living Your Life


The line between waiting and patience is a fine one. Let me define what I mean by waiting. Waiting is a passive way of being -- the symptoms of which are: putting our life on hold; thinking the next big thing is just over the horizon; looking outside ourselves for answers; or believing it will be better someday.



If you find yourself saying (or thinking) the following you may be waiting:



I'm not ready, yet.

I don't have the right education.

I need to lose 10 pounds first.

I don't have enough money.

I'm not inspired.

They should apologize first.

Patience, on the other hand, can be defined as our ability to accept delay. It is a state of being peaceful or thoughtful. It is a time of introspection and quiet. As it is said, patience is a virtue. It can be a powerful place to be -- and it can be misused, misunderstood or manipulated. We may pretend we are being patient when actually we are being wimpy.



It is useful to distinguish which state we are in. Here are some general guidelines to know if you are waiting:



1. You have a sense of unease -- you know there is something you need to be doing and you are not doing it. And sometimes, you have waited so long in a particular area; you even struggle to identify what the source of unease is.



2. You are dissatisfied -- you are not living in the moment. You are sure your life will be better when it is different in some way than it is right now (e.g.: you find your perfect mate, complete that project, go on your next vacation).



3. You are grumpy -- you feel like life is passing you by. You get in bed at the end of the day and realize you don't have any clear memories of anything you did because in all your busyness you weren't even present. You don't even remember if you took a deep breath.



Waiting can hide out in the nooks and crannies of our life. To assist my clients in determining how and where they are waiting, I ask them to list the top 10 reasons they won't accomplish something they say is important to them. This gives them the freedom to be unabashedly truthful -- to put on paper the lingering doubts that are hovering quietly in the background or screaming loudly in their face. We humans are sneaky. We have all sorts of ways we sabotage our dreams. Only by telling ourselves the blatantly honest and sometimes brutal truth can we tell if we are waiting or being patient.



To illustrate, I did the same exercise when I was writing my book. I looked at the top 10 reasons I wouldn't complete the project. Here is a sampling:



I will continuously distract myself with busy work -- cleaning out the junk drawers never seemed as appealing as when I am trying to write.

I will repeatedly doubt and question my ability as a writer and compare myself to other "successful" writers.

I will continue to look outside myself for inspiration.

I will take on other projects and commitments and not schedule any time to write.

You tell me. Do you hear patience in any of these "reasons"? No! These are excuses I could use for not taking action on something that was tremendously important to me.



Now, I encourage you to look for yourself. Pick an area of your life that you have been working on for a while. Make your top 10 list. Be willing to shed light on those hidden ways you wait. Be bold and tell yourself the truth. See where patience is needed or where you are making excuses.



As a final note, the best place to exercise patience is in our relationships with others. All too often, this is where true patience is lacking. And yes, it is important to be patient with ourselves, but once again, we can be on a slippery slope. I can lull myself into believing I am being patient when in fact, it's important to take bold action. Or I may actually be lacking acceptance for the way things are and what is needed is a touch of patience.



Being an eternally creative and mischievous human, I have to ask myself constantly, am I being patient with my process or am I simply letting myself off the hook?



© 2010 Kristen Moeller, author of Waiting for Jack: Confessions of a Self-Help Junkie: How to Stop Waiting and Start Living Your Life



Author Bio

Kristen Moeller, MS, is the bestselling author of Waiting for Jack: Confessions of a Self-Help Junkie: How to Stop Waiting and Start Living Your Life. As a coach, speaker, and radio show host, Kristen delights in "disrupting the ordinary" and inspiring others to do the same. She first discovered her passion for personal development in 1989 after recovering from an eating disorder and addiction



Kristen is also the founder of the Chick-a-go Foundation -- a not-for-profit that provides "pay it forward" scholarships for life altering training programs reaching people who otherwise cannot afford such opportunities.



When she is not actively making a difference in the world, she thrives in the beauty of Colorado and enjoys hiking, snowshoeing, riding her horse or just spending time reading or relaxing in her magical, solar-powered house on the side of a mountain with two large dogs, an ornery cat and her best friend and husband of 15 years.



For more information please visit www.waitingforjack.com and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

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Know Why You Gained Weight: It May Stop Your from Regaining It

By Judith J. Wurtman, PhD,

Co-Author of The Serotonin Power Diet: Eat Carbs -- Nature's Own Appetite Suppressant -- to Stop Emotional Overeating and Halt Antidepressant-Associated Weight Gain 


Sharon, my new weight-loss client, laughed when I asked her whether she had been on any other diets. "How much time do you have? My mother probably put me on a my first diet when I was around eleven. since I am now fifty, that means forty years of dieting."



I nodded. The story was a familiar one. The only clients who had never been on a diet were people who had gained weight from medication such as antidepressants. All the rest had bounced from one weight-loss program to another, often following whatever was fashionable. Some had even had bariatric surgery to reduce drastically the amount of food they could swallow. Yet they had managed to gain weight by constantly eating small amounts of extremely caloric foods.



Sharon talked about her inability to control her eating when she switched from liquid low-calorie beverages or calorie-controlled prepackaged meals to her own food. She related how much she overate when she went off of diets without carbohydrates or three-day fasts or a week of residential spa food. She was now considering surgery but she wasn't heavy enough to qualify.



She told me that she thought her weight gain was due to her love of food but when I pointed out that many thin people love food also, she grew quiet. Eventually she said that she suspected she ate out of emotional needs. "My needs keep changing but my response is always the same. When I eat, my problems disappear -- for the moment."



Dieters like Sharon are likely to regain their weight unless they have insight into the causes of their overeating and are helped to develop strategies to control it. Unfortunately, diet programs tend to focus on how to get the dieter to his or her weight-loss goal rather than giving the dieter tools to prevent the weight from reappearing again. Even Oprah Winfrey, who certainly receives more support in her weight-loss efforts than the average dieter, has lost and regained weight continually during her television career.



The most effective way of preventing weight gain after a diet is to tackle the problems that caused it. Although each of us has our own overeating triggers, usually they can be grouped in a few categories:



1. Logistics or too much to do and too little time to do it. Sometimes the problems caused by impossible schedules seem insurmountable and affect everything from the ability to shop for food to getting too little sleep. Often the dieter's life has to be brought under control before the eating can be controlled. With either family or professional help (like a life coach), this usually can be accomplished. One client who used to overeat when she came home from work and found the beds unmade and dirty breakfast dishes in the sink solved her problems by making her kids get up earlier and doing chores before school.



2. Work schedules, business travel and meals, toxic supervisors and fear of unemployment. Some work situations place almost unlimited obstacles in front of the dieter, especially when personal relationships are involved. And these days, the option of leaving a virulent workplace is difficult. Recognizing how work stress is affecting eating is an important first step. The dieter should seek out help, either from the weight-loss counselor or someone trained to deal with worksite problems, to develop strategies to deal with the problems. However, sometimes a job change is really necessary, as in the case of a client who worked as a pastry chef.



3. Family and social problems may influence everything from menu planning to emotional well being. Neither the dieter nor the diet counselor can hope to solve chronic problems that may have led to years of overeating. Recognizing them and seeking help (whether from a dating service, divorce lawyer or therapist) will increase your chance of not gaining weight after the diet is over. If the problems are particularly difficult to handle, it may even be wise for the dieter to consider putting weight-loss efforts on hold to concentrate on resolving the issues that caused the weight gain. Temporarily stopping the diet may also be necessary when financial, medical or family crises arise. Seeing how your eating changes when a crisis arises is helpful in preventing overeating after the diet is over and another crisis occurs.



4. Sabotage by not-well meaning friends, family, co-workers and casual acquaintances. Especially those who have not managed to lose weight may regard a successful dieter as a weight-gaining time bomb. Often subtle and not so subtle methods will be used to make the dieter overeat, such as asking the dieter if she has been very sick recently or mentioning that a particularly caloric dish won't hurt her. Self-sabotage is also common, especially if the successful dieter is now complimented on his or her appearance. Many clients have told me that they both enjoy and resent the attention they receive when they have lost a lot of weight. A college student made herself gain about 75 pounds after losing that amount because guys who had ignored her the year before when she was fat asked her out on dates.



Losing weight is not as hard as keeping it off. Still, as someone who was called "butter-ball" in second grade, I know it can be done.

© 2010 Judith J. Wurtman, PhD, co-author of The Serotonin Power Diet: Eat Carbs -- Nature's Own Appetite Suppressant -- to Stop Emotional Overeating and Halt Antidepressant-Associated Weight Gain

Author Bio

Judith J. Wurtman, PhD, co-author of The Serotonin Power Diet: Eat Carbs -- Nature's Own Appetite Suppressant -- to Stop Emotional Overeating and Halt Antidepressant-Associated Weight Gain, has discovered the connection between carbohydrate craving, serotonin, and emotional well-being in her MIT clinical studies. She received her PhD from George Washington University, is the founder of a Harvard University hospital weight-loss facility and counsels private weight management clients. She has written five books, including The Serotonin Solution, and more than 40 peer-reviewed articles for professional publications. She lives in Miami Beach, Florida.



For more information, please visit www.SerotoninPowerDiet.com.

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