Latest KFF Health News Stories
“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, through its Grand Challenges Explorations initiative, [on Wednesday] announced over 100 new grants of $100,000 each to support innovative global health and development proposals that have the potential to unlock transformative, life-saving solutions in the developing world,” a foundation press release reports. “Additionally, the Gates Foundation announced additional funding of up to $1 million each for six existing Grand Challenges Explorations projects to enable grantees to continue to advance their ideas towards global impact,” the press release adds (5/9).
Steps Toward A Permanent Medicare ‘Doc Fix’?
Rep. Allyson Schwartz, D-Pa., and Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., introduced the latest bill Wednesday aimed at reforming how Medicare pays health care providers and preventing a scheduled, Jan. 1, 2013 cut to physician reimbursement rates. The bipartisan measure would replace Medicare’s current pay formula.
Feds Pinpoint $5.6 Billion In ‘Suspect’ Medicare Billings From Pharmacies
This report from the Health and Human Services inspector general concluded that corner drugstores are vulnerable to fraud.
Global Fund Announces $1.6B In Additional Funding For 2012-2014
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria “expects to have an additional $1.6 billion to fund projects in 2012-2014, [the fund’s General Manager Gabriel Jaramillo] said on Wednesday, a turnaround from a funding freeze last year,” Reuters reports (Miles, 5/9). “The new funds are a result of ‘strategic decisions made by the Board, freeing up funds that can be invested in countries where there is the most pressing demand,’ a statement by the fund said,” according to PlusNews (5/10). “The money includes funds from new donors, from traditional donors who are advancing their payments or increasing contributions and from some donors, such as China, that have offered to support projects in their own country to free up cash for more pressing needs elsewhere, Jaramillo said,” Reuters notes (5/9). “This forecast is better than expected, and it comes from the fantastic response we are getting to our transformation,” Jaramillo said, adding, “But we need more to get the job done. Countries that implement our grants are saving more and more people, but demand for services is still enormous,” according to the statement (5/9).
Small Businesses Miss Out On Health Law’s Tax Credit, Report Finds
According to a report from Families USA, millions of businesses with fewer than 25 employees failed to take advantage of a tax credit that would help them provide health coverage to their workers.
Viewpoints: Can Medicare Taxes Really Fund Student Loans?; Daschle On Diabetes And Kids
A selection of editorials and opinions on health care policy from around the country.
When To Retire? Health Costs Enter Into The Decision
The New York Times reports on how many people are opting to delay retirement for financial reasons and climbing health costs are among their main concerns.
Longer Looks: More 20-30 Somethings Are Taking Care Of Elderly
Every week, Kaiser Health News reporter Shefali S. Kulkarni selects interesting reading from around the Web.
MSF Says Additional Resources Needed To Improve ART Access In Burma
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the largest provider of antiretroviral treatment (ART) in Burma, also known as Myanmar, are calling for the gap between the need for and access to ART in the country to be closed, the Guardian reports. Approximately 240,000 people live with HIV in Burma, and doctors say half are in need of “urgent” ART, but national data estimates less than 30,000 were receiving ART in 2010, the newspaper writes, adding, “In a country where nearly 33 percent of people live below the poverty line, thousands of Burmese are unlikely ever to be able to afford ART, which, according to [MSF], cost $30 a month.”
Efforts To Stem Childhood Mortality In Ghana Will Not Be Enough To Reach MDG, UNICEF Official Says
Anirban Chatterjee, chief of health and nutrition for UNICEF in Ghana, said the country “is doing a lot” to fight child mortality — referring to a recently launched vaccination campaign and an initiative to educate mothers about nutrition — but “I don’t think it’s enough” to reach the fourth U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to reduce the under-five mortality rate by two thirds by 2015, Inter Press Service reports. “I think there is definitely scope and need for more improvement,” he added, according to the news service. A GAVI Alliance-supported campaign to provide vaccines against rotavirus and pneumococcal disease is underway, but Chatterjee added that efforts to improve nutrition need to be provided simultaneously because he “said malnourishment can sometimes double or triple the chances of dying from a condition like diarrhea or pneumonia,” IPS writes.
Female Presidents Of Liberia, Malawi Pledge To Address Gender Equality, Improve Women’s Health
“The only two female heads of state in Africa, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Malawian President Joyce Banda, have just committed to using their positions to improve the lives of women across the continent,” Inter Press Service reports. The article describes the presidents’ comments at a recent women’s right event in Monrovia, Liberia, and says, “[T]he challenges before them are great. Using the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a barometer, Liberia and Malawi generally score low in the areas of gender equality and women’s empowerment, education for girls, and maternal health.”
Foreign Aid For Health Services Not Significantly Displaced, Analysis Says
In an article published in the May 8 edition of PLoS Medicine, Rajaie Batniji, an affiliate of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and Eran Bendavid of FSI’s Stanford Health Policy, found that a 2010 Lancet study by researchers at the University of Washington that “concluded that about half the money given to international governments for providing health care services isn’t used as intended” is “flawed” and “should not be used to guide decisions about how much money to give and who should get it,” according to a Stanford University news story. “Once Batniji and Bendavid excluded conflicting and outlying data, such as huge discrepancies between WHO and [International Monetary Fund] estimates and information about countries that were getting very small amounts of money from other countries, ‘There was no significant displacement of foreign aid,’ Bendavid said,” the article states (Gorlick, 5/8).
Policy Responses Needed To Address Global Water Security
In his Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) blog “The Internationalist,” Stewart Patrick, senior fellow and director of the CFR Program on International Institutions and Global Governance, writes about the first U.S. Intelligence Community Assessment of Global Water Security (.pdf), which “predicts that by 2030 humanity’s ‘annual global water requirements’ will exceed ‘current sustainable water supplies’ by 40 percent.” According to Patrick, the document says “[a]bsent major policy interventions, water insecurity will generate widespread social and political instability and could even contribute to state failure in regions important to U.S. national security.” He describes several factors that are pushing a “combination of surging global demand for increasingly scarce fresh water in certain volatile regions of poor governance.” Though “the intelligence community has performed a great service” with this report, “the policy response to date has been just a drop in the bucket,” Patrick concludes (5/8).
Opinion Piece, Editorial Address Results From Millennium Villages Project
The Millennium Villages Project (MVP), established in Africa to determine what improvements can be made when programs addressing health, education, agriculture, and other development needs are implemented simultaneously, published its first results in the Lancet on Tuesday. The following opinion piece and editorial address the findings.
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about Capitol Hill’s guns vs. butter budget battles as well as news about Medicaid physician payments.
FDA Leans On Device Makers To Cut X-Ray Doses For Kids
This story comes from our partner ‘s Shots blog. The Food and Drug Administration has a proposition for the companies that make X-ray machines. Make sure your new equipment has settings and instructions that minimize radiation hazards for kids, or the agency will look to slap a label on the machines that recommends they not […]
Medicare Spotlights Hospitals With Especially Costly Patients
The new data, which include beneficiaries’ bills in the hospital and for 30 days afterward, are a first step toward using bonuses and penalties to encourage more efficient care.
Interactive Chart: Medicare Spending At Individual Hospitals
The Average Hospital Spending Per Patient measure in the chart below shows how much the federal program spends for the average patient admitted at a specific hospital, compared to how much Medicare spends per patient nationally. This measure includes all payments to doctors, hospitals or other facilities for services provided to a patient during the […]
Interactive Chart: Medicare Spending By State
The Average Hospital Spending Per Patient measure in the chart below shows how much Medicare spends per patient at hospitals in that state, compared to how much Medicare spends per patient nationally. This measure includes all payments to doctors, hospitals or other facilities for services provided to a patient during the three days before the […]
Lawsuit Challenges Medicaid Managed Care Decision In Missouri
Missouri’s efforts to winnow contracts for its Medicaid managed care business are being challenged by one of the companies left out in the cold: Molina Healthcare, which alleges the state changed the bidding rules in the middle of the process.