"As the debate on how to fix health care picks up pace, so does discussion about one of the most lucrative ways to pay for it:" taxing employer-provided health benefits, CNN reports. The "tax-free arrangement" in which an employer"s contribution to employee health benefit "is treated as tax-free to the employee in terms of income tax and payroll tax," was "born during the days of wage control in 1943." According to Paul Fronstin, director of the health research program at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, employers were not allowed to "attract workers on the basis of better pay," so instead they offered the benefits "as a way to compete for the best talent." Over the past 66 years, employees have come to expect it. But "tax and health experts say it"s inequitable. High-income workers and those with the most expensive health insurance plans enjoy the biggest break as a result of the tax exclusion."
Less than two weeks after instituting new therapeutic hypothermia treatment for heart attack patients, Providence Tarzana Medical Center has applied the body-cooling treatment in three cases - and each patient showed remarkable neurologic recovery. Therapeutic hypothermia treatment, where cardiac arrest patients are cooled to 92 degrees, is being studied nationwide to help prevent brain damage caused by a loss of blood supply. Its initial use this month in the Providence
Tarzana Emergency Department and intensive care units has been 100 percent successful. "With the institution of the protocol, in the first week-and-a-half, we"ve had three patients who have had complete recovery of neurologic function after prolonged cardiac arrest," said G. Scott Brewster, M.D., medical director of the Emergency Department at Providence Tarzana.
Expanded results of a study conducted on children with eye cancer (retinoblastoma) shows that chemotherapy delivered through endovascular (through the vessel) means not only successfully cures the cancer in a majority of cases, but achieves this cure with preserved vision. Study outcomes were presented this week at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery (SNIS) 6th Annual Meeting in Boca Raton, FL by lead author Pierre Gobin, Professor of Radiology in Neurosurgery and
Neurology at the Weill Cornell Medical Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. "This is an exciting development in the neurointerventional community, as results prove that chemotherapy delivered through endovascular techniques is a powerful tool in addressing the most severe forms of retinoblastoma," says Gobin, who says that the study is the product of teamwork between New York Presbyterian Hospital. 
New research from the US suggests that divorce and widowhood damage health in ways that even getting married again doesn"t heal. The study was the work of University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite, who is Lucy Flower Professor in Sociology and Director of the Center on Aging at the National Opinion Research Center at the University, and her colleague Mary Elizabeth Hughes, Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins" Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their findings
will appear in the September issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Although researchers have explored links between health and marriage before, this is the first study to look at links between a wide range of health dimensions and marital transitions and marital status. Other research shows that taking into account genetics and other factors, one can regard people as entering adulthood with a particular "stock" of health and each person"s experience of marital gain and loss affects
this "stock". 
A new multisite study by UCLA and RAND Corp. researchers and colleagues has found that 7 percent of fifth-graders and their families have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives and that the occurrence is even higher - 11 percent - for African American children and those from the poorest households. The study also found that children who had experienced homelessness at some point during their lives were significantly more likely to have an emotional, behavioral
or developmental problem; were more likely to have witnessed serious violence with a knife or a gun; and were more likely to have received mental health care. The research is the first population-based study to describe the lifetime prevalence of family homelessness among children and its association with health and health care. The findings will be published in the August issue of the American Journal of Public Health and are currently available online by subscription.