WENN.com

By now, we know in the world of entertainment terms like “exhaustion” and “dehydration” are simple code words for bigger problems. For most celebs, exhaustion usually means someone went a little too hard on the drinks or drugs, but in Beyonce’s case, it’s likely confirmation of what many have been expecting for the last two weeks or so: she’s pregnant again!

The Associated Press just released details of an email from Bey’s publicist explaining why she’s cancelling her concert in Belgium today. AP Says Beyonce’s doctors have ordered her to rest and that is why she won’t be performing  at the Sportpaleis in Antwerp. Consequently, the show will be rescheduled and tickets can be used at the new show. Wednesday’s show at the same arena may also be in the air, as her publicist’s statement says:

 ”She is awaiting word from her doctors before making a decision.”

This news — on top of the fact that we’ve never, in the history of all her gyrating and booty popping, heard of Bey needing to take a break for exhaustion  — only further heightens suspicions that Mrs. Carter is in fact expecting baby number two.  Just yesterday, the NY Post ran a story saying several sources at last Monday’s Met Gala told them Bet is pregnant. Then there’s the issue of those pics of Queen Bey in that skin tight blue body suit with a tiny pudge in the middle that isn’t characteristic of the woman we’ve seen nearly every toned crevice of in H&M ads. And let’s not forget, Bey was just talking about Blue Ivy needing some company in a “Good Morning America” interview last week. Add all of these details together and it sounds quite likely that we’ve got one pregnant mama on our hands.

While the Carters are probably ecstatic about this possibility, I imagine U.S. fans will find the news a little bittersweet as the singer hasn’t even made her way back to the states to start this leg of her Mrs. Carter tour. And if she’s already showing and having medical issues, it doesn’t bit well for the likelihood of her finishing the tour in Brooklyn August 5. We’ll keep our fingers crossed for you and hope the other insiders who told Us Weekly, “don’t be silly,” when they asked if Beyonce is pregnant, are right.

What do you say? Do you think Bey’s expecting again?

Source: Shutterstock

From Your Tango

Is a health insurance check-up on your financial to-do list for 2013? Whether your employer offers you a couple different plans to choose from, or you pay out of pocket for your own policy, how do you know if you’re getting the most for your money?

Health insurance expert Katherine Woodfield provides 10 tips on how to navigate the sometimes confusing lingo, mathematic calculations and insurance coverage options to help make sure you’re getting the best deal on health insurance.

1. Call your family’s doctors.

Ask for the office manager and find out if there are any providers or any plans that they do not accept. While the office manager may suggest plans they prefer, understand that they’ll prefer plans that pay higher. Since you’ll want to choose a plan with the lowest premium, note that the provider’s suggestions may not be in your best interest.

Check out the other tips on YourTango.com.

Source: mail.com

Next time you’re looking to see a new physician to get your body together, you might want to do some research on that person. Because based on the story I’m about to tell you, that so-called doctor could be a random man or woman perpetrating as a physician, and the same way you wouldn’t want a random man on the street to “check your pulse” (aka, have an excuse to be all on  your chest), you wouldn’t want a fake doctor to do the same.

In this real-life scenario, Ernest Addo of Austell, South Carolina. is accused of stealing the ID of a colleague and using it in order to get work at clinics in the state. Addo, a Ghanaian man, did have a little bit of medical training, but he clearly didn’t have enough to become a licensed physician in the United States. So, when his friend, a doctor by the name of Arthur Kennedy, teamed up with Addo in the hopes that they could work together to open a clinic in the near future, Addo pounced. Paperwork necessary to do so was filled out by Kennedy and Addo stole all of the papers, got himself an ID, and went ahead, assuming Kennedy’s identity. With Dr. Kennedy’s good reputation, credentials and recommendations, Addo was hired at a few senior centers and rehabilitation clinics in the state.

Addo seemed smooth enough with patients to keep most people from becoming suspicious, but the jig was up when a nurse began to worry after she found that he had used Ask.com to figure out how to treat a patient. Yeah, you read that right. And the last straw came when he made a mistake on a death certificate. When the REAL Dr. Kennedy was contacted by medical officials about it, he was highly confused. Why? Well, because he said he hadn’t practiced in the States in a year because since had been in Ghana teaching at medical school. According to the AP, Addo could face about 10 years in prison for his bad deeds, and authorities are looking into whether his work, or lack thereof with patients, could have caused them any harm. He had seen more than 500 in the time the real Dr. Kennedy was out of the country, and according to investigators, a few of the patients had passed.

If you were wondering, Addo wasn’t operating on anyone, but instead, he just did regular family doctor-esque exams on patients. However, he also had the chance to write up prescriptions, and some of them were written out for himself. Some of the clinics he worked at have come forward to say that their patients are fine, including the Agape Senior Primary Care Center:

“We have found no inappropriate diagnosis or plan of treatment. We are convinced that all of our patients are safe and receiving proper care.”

According to AP, Dr. Kennedy says his former friend not only tarnished his reputation and put people’s lives at risk, but he also opened credit cards in his name. Addo has been charged with unlawful practice of medicine and obtaining goods under false pretense. The man has a history of money troubles, even declaring bankruptcy twice. If anything, it’s clear that Addo did all of this in the hopes of getting some money in his pockets (and the chance to drive a Benz which was provided through one of the clinics). Either way, the fact that he was able to see more than 500 people and utilize weak websites like Ask.com (no disrespect to them) to work on and with them, now that’s a scary thing…

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It gives me great pleasure to tell you about these two stellar young ladies, Ashley and Asia Matthew. You don’t know them by name, they’re not famous but we think you should know about them. Ashley and Asia are identical twin sisters. Naturally, as twins they shared a majority of their life experiences together, including their undergraduate experience at Xavier University in New Orleans.

After graduation, both of these young women wanted to pursue careers in medicine and decided to apply to University of Massachusetts’ prestigious and extremely competitive MD-PHD program. As challenging as its name might let on, the program is eight years of medical school and a PHD in biomedical research simultaneously. The University interviews 40 students worldwide and only admits 7-10 each year. The Matthew sisters defied all kinds of odds when both of them were accepted to the program on a full scholarship. (Bow!)

As if the story couldn’t get any sweeter, these two want to take their knowledge and give back by opening up their own hospital in an underprivileged neighborhood.

Absolutely amazing. You can watch the Matthew twins in their interview with a local news station below.

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Source: Sciencephoto.com

How much more do male doctors make than female ones?

Researchers say the gap is 12-thousand dollars per year and that’s adds up to more than $350,000 over a typical-30 year career!

The Huffington Post reported:

Women physician-scientists are paid much less than their male counterparts, researchers found, with a salary difference that over the course of a career could pay for a college education, a spacious house, or a retirement nest egg.

To get the fairest comparison, the study authors took into account work hours, academic titles, medical specialties, age and other factors that influence salaries. They included only doctors who were involved in research at U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals, all at the same stage in their careers. And they still found men’s average yearly salaries were at least $12,000 higher than women’s.

While previous studies have found that female doctors are frequently paid less than male doctors, many observers have assumed that’s often related to having children – working fewer hours, or choosing less time-consuming, lower-paying specialties to allow time for child-rearing.

The new study did find more women in less lucrative specialties, including pediatrics and family medicine, and more men in the highest-paying fields, including heart surgery and radiology. But it still found salary inequities even among women and men without parental responsibilities, in similar jobs.

A common reason given in situations like these (including this one) is that men tend to be more aggressive at self-promoting and asking for pay raises than women. That may be true, but when will we stop using that as an excuse to pay women less than what they’re worth? Especially when we know and it has been documented that women make less. Shouldn’t these companies begin to look at their hiring practices and how they determine salaries and raises instead of always leaning on the “women aren’t aggressive” argument?

I’m not buying it. I think women across the board (not just doctors, but in other professions as well) are paid less because companies know they can get away with it. The companies forbid employees to talk about their salary, and, as a result many women don’t even realize they are making less than they deserve. Then when it takes a national study to point it out, everyone goes back to the “women don’t ask for raises” excuse.

Of course, these doctors salaries are nothing to sneeze at considering this report says the women are pulling in an average of $168,000 a year. That’s not exactly poverty, however that’s still not enough when the men are making on average $200,400 per year. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but how many more of these studies have to be released before someone starts looking into these companies and hospitals and determining whether the blame for the disparity really falls on the women employees or if the human resources department hasn’t clearly determined that women just aren’t worth the money?

Alissa Henry is a freelance writer living in Columbus, OH. Follow her on Twitter @AlissaInPink or check out her blog: This Cannot Be My Life

visualphotos.com

You can’t do anything without your health, which is why it’s not an expense people skimp on. When a medical issue comes up, people are taking out loans, dipping into emergency funds, and appealing to their insurance company with every breath they have. That’s why there is job security in the health care field—health care is something that sells itself. If you’re interested in a job in health care, these jobs have been experiencing increased hiring over the last 4 years and are expected to continue to do so.

Source: Black Voices.com

From BlackVoices.com

The average time most doctors spend with their patients during each visit is just 20 minutes, according to 2009 estimates by the National Center for Health Statistics. And a survey last year by health care consultant group Press Ganey determined that before patients even get in to see a doctor, they’ve waited an average of 23 minutes.

But while health care professionals have offered advice on how to minimize waits and how to make the most of your one-on-one time with a doctor, few have ever addressed a hurdle that many black patients may face — racial bias.

In a study published in a March issue of the American Journal of Public Health, researchers found that two-thirds of doctors harbored “unconscious” racial biases toward patients. When those biases were present, researchers found that doctors tended to dominate conversations with African-American patients, pay less attention to their personal and psychosocial needs and make patients feel less involved in making decisions about their health.

“It’s been really extensively shown that minorities don’t receive the same quality of health care as whites in the United States,” said Lisa A. Cooper, M.D., M.P.H., a professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and lead author of the study. “I’ve been interested in the extent to which that is accounted for by the fact that a lot of minorities see physicians who are different from them culturally and racially, and that there might be some problems with cultural misunderstandings or miscommunication.”

Get the rest of the story and learn what you can do to fight this mistreatment  at Black Voices.com. 

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From HelloBeautiful.com

In this exclusive opinion piece, actor Gabrielle Union issues an impassioned and very personal plea to spare the Affordable Care Act, now under attack by politicians.

————

I am going to do something that most people in my position don’t do often – tell you my age. I am 39 years old. I am at an age where I realize that life isn’t always fair and that unlike fairy tales, life doesn’t always have a happy ending.

Nearly two years ago, I lost a close girlfriend to cancer. Diagnosed with stage 4 cancer at 32 years old, I remember thinking this wasn’t part of the plan. We were too young to worry about getting sick. In fact, we were supposed to be invincible.

For the complete story, visit HelloBeautiful.com.

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From BlackEnterprise.com

thinkstock.com

We’re no more than two days into National Minority Health Month and already a grim report has surfaced.

New research presented Sunday shows that black women are at a higher risk of contracting and dying from cervical cancer than white women. In addition, the study revealed black women have a much harder time getting rid of HPV than their white counterparts, according to researchers at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. All 326 white and 113 black students were given Pap tests and HPV exams every six months throughout their years in school.

Until now, many doctors thought less access to screenings and follow-up health care were the reasons why there was such a racial disparity in surviving the disease. However, the study involving young college-age women suggests that the reason might be biological.

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If you think you have what it takes, or could actually stomach working for Kanye West, here’s your chance.

Last night the rapper/fashion designer/inventor? announced plans to launch a design company named DONDA to develop products and services that “marry our wants and needs.”

“DONDA is a design company which will galvanize amazing thinkers and put them in a creative space to bounce their dreams and ideas,” he wrote.

“I am assembling a team of architects, graphic designers, directors musicians, producers, AnRs, writers, publicist, social media experts, app guys, managers, car designers, clothing designers, DJs, video game designers, publishers, tech guys, lawyers, bankers, nutritionist, doctors, scientist, teachers.

“DONDA will be comprised of over 22 divisions with a goal to make products and experiences that people want and can afford,” he said. “We want to help simplify and aesthetically improve everything we see hear, touch, taste and feel. To dream of, create, advertise and produce products driven equally by emotional want and utilitarian need.”

Kanye’s passion for his new idea is undeniable and he’s also pretty proud of the company’s name.

“I’m so excited about the name…. it’s got the best name ever of all companies of all time!!!” he wrote. “The name of the company is DONDA.”

Just be warned. Kanye revealed the details of the new company amidst a three-hour twitter rant on missed opportunities, closed doors, and fronting his owm money to pursue his passions, so he’s still the same old Ye. Nevertheless it’s cool to see him thinking outside the box like this and honoring his mother’s memory at the same time. He also told anybody who wants in on the team to drop a line to contactDONDA@gmail.com.

What do you think about Kanye’s idea? Can he pull it off?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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