Latest KFF Health News Stories
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.
Today’s Headlines – May 9, 2012
Here are your morning headlines: Los Angeles Times: Senate Republicans Block Proposal To Keep Student Loan Rates Low Republicans also want to avoid raising the rate on college loans, but would pay for it by eliminating a public health fund in Obama’s new healthcare law. The stalemate comes as both parties turn routine legislative votes […]
Federal Budget: Health Care Politics Trump Policy
KHN’s Mary Agnes Carey and Jackie Judd discuss the congressional wrangling over the federal budget and what’s ahead for the automatic cuts scheduled for January.
House Appropriations Subcommittee Releases FY 2013 State And Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill
The House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations subcommittee on Tuesday released a draft (.pdf) of its FY 2013 appropriations bill, Devex reports (Mungcal, 5/8). “The bill, to be marked up by the subcommittee Wednesday morning, would provide $40.1 billion for the base budget of the State Department, USAID, and international affairs programs in other agencies, in addition to $8.2 billion for diplomatic and development programs related to the ongoing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan in what’s known as the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account,” Foreign Policy’s “The Cable” writes, noting, “If enacted, the legislation would represent a 12 percent cut from the administration’s $54.71 billion budget request” (Rogin, 5/8).
UNAIDS Launches Campaign Aimed At Ending New HIV Infections Among Children By 2015
UNAIDS on Tuesday launched a new campaign “aimed at ending new HIV infections among children by 2015 and ensuring mothers living with HIV remain healthy,” Xinhua reports (5/8). “The campaign, ‘Believe it. Do it.,’ is part of a global plan of action that was adopted last year at the U.N. High Level Meeting on AIDS, when world leaders committed to end new HIV infections among children by 2015,” the U.N. News Centre writes (5/8). “Each year, about 390,000 children become newly infected with HIV and as many as 42,000 women living with HIV die from complications relating to HIV and pregnancy,” according to a UNAIDS press release (5/8).
Report Identifies Challenges, Solutions To Increasing Routine Vaccination In Nigeria
In this post in PSI’s “Healthy Lives” blog, Deputy Editor Tom Murphy examines routine vaccination solutions in Nigeria, where “[t]he Decade of Vaccines Economics projects 90 percent vaccine coverage against Hib, pneumococcal disease, rotavirus, measles and pertussis can save 600,000 lives and $17 billion in Nigeria over the next 10 years.” Murphy highlights a “new report [.pdf] by the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) at Johns Hopkins University [that] identifies the challenges and solutions to increasing routine vaccinations in” the country, noting it also “identifies supply, human resource and demand solutions to increasing vaccination access” (5/8).
Senate Embroiled In Partisan Struggle Over Student Loan Rates
At issue is how to pay for an extension of the current interest rate. Democrats propose increasing the Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes on high-earning stockholders of some privately owned corporations. Republicans would like to take funds from the health law’s prevention fund.
Examining The Need For WHO Today
Responding to an opinion piece published in Nature Medicine last week in which Tikki Pang, a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore and former director of research policy and cooperation at the WHO, and Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, argue the case for reforming and improving the WHO, KPLU’s Tom Paulson writes in a post on KPLU 88.5’s “Humanosphere” blog, “It’s a good overview of what’s wrong with the WHO and what these two think needs to change.” Paulson summarizes an email from Garret in which she says the WHO is the only international agency able to respond to drug resistance, drug safety and integrity, the threat of pandemic flu, health systems metrics development, and drug-resistant malaria (5/8).
HHS Awards 26 Innovation Grants
The grants, which were created by the 2010 health law, were made to support projects that aim to improve coordination of care and reduce health care costs. News outlets also offer a look at some of the programs that will receive a funding boost.
USAID Launches Five-Year Initiative In Nigeria To Strengthen HIV, TB Services
U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria Terence McCulley on Tuesday in Abuja, Nigeria, launched a five-year, $224 million USAID program, titled Strengthening Integrated Delivery of HIV/AIDS Services (SIDHAS), that aims to “increas[e] access to high-quality comprehensive HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis prevention, treatment, care and related services through improved efficiencies in service delivery,” the Daily Trust reports (Odeyemi/Odafor, 5/8).
Globe And Mail Examines Sustainability Of Sierra Leone’s Free Health Care System
The Globe and Mail examines the sustainability of Sierra Leone’s free health care system, writing, “The reform has been hugely successful and the death rate has dropped sharply. … [But t]he country’s hospitals are overwhelmed with new patients, the drug supply can’t keep up, the medical staff are overloaded, and it’s unclear if the $36-million program would survive without foreign donations.” According to the newspaper, “The principle of free health care is a sharp break from earlier ideology” that supported “‘cost recovery’ — a system of user fees in hospitals” — which leaders thought “would generate money to fix their badly underfunded health systems.” However, the user fees “were widely criticized, they failed to solve the funding problems, and they created a new barrier to health care” for many without the means to pay, the Globe and Mail writes.
Report Examines Foreign Affairs Budget Reforms In Light Of Austerity
“The United States should be more selective about where and how it spends foreign assistance,” according to a new report (.pdf), titled “Engagement Amid Austerity: A Bipartisan Approach to Reorienting the International Affairs Budget,” co-authored by John Norris of the Center for American Progress and Connie Veillette of the Center for Global Development (CGD), the CGD website notes. The report “identifies four flagship reforms that would help U.S. foreign affairs institutions to better reflect national interests and reduce ineffective spending,” including “[a]ccelerat[ing] cost-sharing arrangements with upper middle income recipients of” PEPFAR and “[o]verhaul[ing] U.S. food aid laws and regulations,” according to the website (5/8).
Increased Investment In Nurses Will Help Strengthen Health Systems Worldwide
“It is in poor countries and communities, where health needs are greatest and physicians are scarce, that nurses take an even greater role in health care delivery, often serving as the sole providers in rural villages or urban slums,” Sheila Davis, director of global nursing at Partners In Health, writes in a Huffington Post “Impact Blog” opinion piece, noting this is International Nurses Week. “But although nurses deliver 90 percent of all health care services worldwide, they remain largely invisible at decision-making tables in national capitals and international agencies. Their absence constitutes a global health crisis,” Davis continues.