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What Will 2011 Bring To Your Health?

The parties are over. So are the hangovers, we hope.

With 2011 shifting into gear, here's a look at health in the new year.

Kaiser Health News has compiled nine ways the federal law overhauling health care could affect you. The Food and Drug Administration has a March deadline to finalize rules requiring chain restaurants to post calorie counts, though some  eateries have started already. If you've got a flexible spending account at work, you can't use the money to cover over-the-counter remedies anymore.

USA Todayknows that almost all of us have vowed to lose weight this year, just like last year and the year before that. To boost the odds of success, here are 25 of the best tips creamed by nutrition reporter Nanci Hellmich. I like the idea of buying a pedometer. Not so sure about hanging a pair of old jeans in the kitchen for motivation.

The Boston Globe has 11 resolutions for good health in 2011. For starters, don't diet but instead find sustainable ways to eat better (try eating real food, for instance). And try making sure your family eats one meal a day together without the TV on.

The New York Times, and quite a few other outlets, aresizing up the ambitions of Republicans to undo at least some of the health care law enacted last year. In the House, now controlled by the GOP, Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who'll chair the Energy and Commerce Committee overseeing key parts of health care policy, said on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace that he expects a vote to repeal overhaul before soon. "As part of our pledge, we said that we would bring up a vote to repeal health care early," Upton said. "That will happen before the president's State of the Union address."

Of course, Democrats still control the Senate and the White House. And as NPR's Julie Rovner noted a few months back, some of the industries most affected by overhaul -- from insurers to drugmakers -- aren't keen on a total repeal. "Almost without exception, they say they'd rather work to make changes to this law than scrap it and start over," Rovner told Scott Simon.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Scott Hensley edits stories about health, biomedical research and pharmaceuticals for NPR's Science desk. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he has led the desk's reporting on the development of vaccines against the coronavirus.