Older Australians weigh cost of changes to health insurance rebates - ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Nearly 80,000 older Australians are expected to dump their private health cover by the end of the decade as a result of the federal government's controversial proposed changes. The latest estimate is nearly double the 44,000 figure repeatedly cited by the federal government in defence of the policy. The proposal would wind back the rebate Australians aged 65 and over receive on their private health cover, banking about $3 billion to spend elsewhere in the aged care system. However, health department analysis released under Freedom of Information (FOI) laws reveals that while 44,000 Australians are expected to drop their cover in 2028-29 as a result of the policy, that is forecast to rise to a cumulative total of 78,000 by the following year. The Coalition said Health Minister Mark Butler had consistently used the smaller figure to defend the policy. Anne Ruston says older Australians cannot afford to live without private health insurance. (ABC News: David Sciasci)"Either he didn't read his own briefs, or he's been deliberately misleading older Australians," Shadow Health Minister Anne Ruston said.

Bioengineer.org news storyFor millions of people living with HIV, antiretroviral therapy has transformed a once-fatal infection into a manageable chronic condition. Yet the very drugs that suppress the virus can carry quiet costs, and one of the most insidious is bone loss. Tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, or TDF, has been a cornerstone of HIV treatment worldwide for two decades, prized for its potency, durability, and low cost. But a growing body of evidence has linked TDF exposure to measurable reductions in bone mineral density, raising an increasingly urgent clinical question: once bone has been lost on a TDF-based regimen, can it be recovered? A new prospective cohort study, published in BMC Infectious Diseases, offers some of the most detailed longitudinal evidence to date that the answer, for many patients, is yes. The research team enrolled 223 virologically suppressed men living with HIV who had low bone mineral density while taking TDF-based antiretroviral therapy.