Your health: Dealing with fall allergies
Fall allergies are nothing to sneeze at
Are you fighting fall allergies?
Here are some simple and practical allergy tips, reported by FOX News, to help you:
• Wear oversized sunglasses to block airborne pollens and molds from entering your eyes and lids.
• Wear a hat. Go for a wide-brimmed one and avoid hair gels that turn your 'do into a pollen magnet.
• Pollen levels are highest on windy, dry and sunny days. Check your local weather reports to identify high allergy days.
• Get your seasonal allergies confirmed. Simple in-office allergy tests can pinpoint your problem.
• Start early with allergy treatment. Many medications will work better (nasal antihistamines/steroids, oral antihistamines and eye drops) if you start them even before symptoms begin.
• Consider allergy shots and/or sublingual allergy treatment. These are the only immune-based therapy that will help reduce allergy symptoms. The goal is to provide excellent long-term relief, in a large majority of allergy sufferers.
Fewer choices in health insurance
The American Medical Association says Illinois has made its first appearance on the group's annual list of 10 states with the least competitive commercial health insurance markets.
The lack of competition means consumers and employers in Illinois have fewer choices among commercial health insurers than consumers and employers in almost any other state, the AMA reports.
According to the AMA's newly released Competition in Health Insurance: A Comprehensive Study of U.S. Markets, the two largest health insurers in Illinois are Health Care Service Corp. and UnitedHealth Group. Together these companies controlled 75 percent of the state's commercial health insurance market in 2012, up from 67 percent in 2010.
As Illinois' two biggest insurers got bigger, competition in the state's commercial health insurance market faded by nearly 20 percent between 2010 and 2012, according to an index used by the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission to gauge marketplace competition.
The study also examined 11 of Illinois' metropolitan areas. The least competitive health insurance market was the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet area where Health Care Service Corp. had a 68 percent market share.