Latest KFF Health News Stories
Medicaid News: Ore. Competitors Work Together; Calif. ‘Duals’ Project Launches
A selection of Medicaid news from California, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah and Colorado.
U.S. Spending On Prescription Drugs, Doctor Visits Levels Off
A study by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics found that senior citizens in particular are filling fewer prescriptions as out-of-pocket costs increase.
Presidential Campaign Focus Turns To Budget, Medicare Issues
President Barack Obama and GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney are using their differences on Medicare issues and entitlement spending — in the context of the nation’s fiscal challenges — as key campaign themes.
Contraception, Abortion, Fetal Care Issues Flare Up In State Legislatures
Women’s health issues continue to roil politics in Texas, Mississippi and Nebraska.
Longer Looks: Berwick Calls For Leaders To Rise Above ‘Political Catechism’
This week’s selections come from Rolling Stone, the Economist, the Atlantic, The New Yorker and Outside.
Study: MLR Rule Would Have Translated Into $2B In Rebates To Consumers
If the health law’s requirement that insurers spend at least 80 percent of premiums on medical care had gone into effect in 2010, instead of a year later, private plans would have had to refund as much as $2 billion to consumers, either in rebates or reduced premiums, according to a study by the Commonwealth Fund, which supports the law.
“Nations have crafted a draft treaty to fight a booming trade in illicit tobacco products that’s costing governments as much as $50 billion a year in lost tax revenue, officials said Wednesday,” the Associated Press/Washington Post reports. “But there are notable holdouts to the negotiations — the United States, Indonesia and more than a dozen other nations — where the treaty would have no effect,” the news agency writes (4/4). According to the WHO, tobacco-related diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes, and other illnesses, kill almost six million people annually, Reuters notes. “Formally a protocol to the 2005 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the world’s first public health pact, the new agreement was reached after nearly five years of negotiations, including a fifth and final round this past week,” the news agency writes (Nebehay, 4/4).
Development Gains In Afghanistan Must Be Made Sustainable
Alex Thier, assistant to the administrator and director in the USAID Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs, writes about the agency’s new report, titled “USAID in Afghanistan: Partnership, Progress, Perseverance,” in this IMPACTblog post. “Afghanistan’s literacy, life expectancy, infant mortality statistics, as well as access to communications, electricity, and paved roads, were dismal” in 2002, but a decade later, “Afghanistan has shown incredible gains in health care, education, and economic growth,” Thier writes. The report “outlines these impacts in a transparent and frank accounting of the roughly $12 billion in civilian assistance that USAID has implemented in Afghanistan to date,” he notes. “But these gains are fragile,” he writes, adding, “We must cement the gains from this incredible investment, and make them sustainable” (4/4).
Comprehensive Approach Needed To Combat Typhoid In Africa, Worldwide
Though the focus on typhoid fever traditionally has focused on Asia, where the disease is endemic, “[s]ince early November 2011, there has been a surge of typhoid fever outbreaks in central and southern Africa, affecting children and adults alike,” Christopher Nelson, director of the Coalition against Typhoid (CaT) at the Sabin Vaccine Institute, and Ciro de Quadros, executive vice president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, write in this Atlantic opinion piece. “Apart from the illness, severe complications, and death that accompanies these typhoid outbreaks, disruptions of local water supplies interrupt the daily activities of entire communities and cities. Despite this large burden, typhoid has remained on the back burner of the global public health agenda, allowing the cycle of endemic disease and episodic outbreaks to continue, particularly in Africa,” they write and discuss the activities of CaT, which advocates for people with the disease and supports research, prevention, control, and surveillance programs.
GAVI Announces HPV, Rubella Vaccines Will Be Available To Developing Countries
“The GAVI Alliance has announced that it will include human papillomavirus (HPV) and combined measles-rubella vaccines in its portfolio for the first time” to help protect women from cervical cancer and children from disability or premature death, Africa Science News reports. GAVI already supports the funding of several childhood vaccines in developing countries, including the five-in-one pentavalent vaccine, yellow fever vaccine, meningitis A vaccines, and pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines, according to the news service (Mwaura, 4/5).
PBS NewsHour Interviews Developer Of ‘Solar Suitcase’
In this PBS NewsHour report, NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels interviews obstetrician Laura Stachel about the “solar suitcase,” a “a suitcase containing elements to produce and store solar energy,” devised by Stachel with the aim of reducing maternal mortality rates in the developing world after “witnessing the consequences of power outages in Nigeria’s health facilities.” “We estimate that 300,000 health facilities do not have reliable electricity around the world. So this is a huge problem,” Stachel said in the interview, according to the transcript. Stachel discusses her experiences in Nigeria’s health facilities, the development of the suitcase, and efforts to ramp up production to meet global demand. The news service contains a link to a related slideshow (4/4).
TEDxChange To Host Live, 90-Minute Webcast Featuring Melinda Gates On Thursday
TEDxChange on Thursday will host a live, 90-minute webcast, convened by Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and hosted by TED curator Chris Anderson. According to the TED website, the webcast, scheduled to begin at 11:30am EDT, will examine the questions, “Why should we, as a society, continue to invest in global health and development? How can we work across borders and political boundaries to make positive change? And what returns can we expect on our investments?” (4/5).
Global Fund Updates Global Health Community Advocates On Recent Changes To Organization
“Christoph Benn, director of resource mobilization and donor relations at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, updated global health community advocates Wednesday on … the multilateral organization,” the Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks” blog reports. Benn spoke about staffing changes at the Fund, the organizations’ new risk management framework and the Transitional Funding Mechanism (TFM), and the Obama Administration’s proposed FY 2013 budget request, according to the blog (Mazzotta, 4/4).
Humanosphere Blog Reports On ‘Diseases Without Borders’ Forum
KPLU 88.5’s “Humanosphere” blog reports on a “Diseases without Borders” forum held in Seattle on Tuesday at which Nils Daulaire, director of the Office of Global Affairs for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, stressed that global health is a domestic issue. “‘Our only chance to keep Americans safe is if the systems for preventing, detecting and containing disease
NIH To Award $20M Over 5 Years To Support Global Health Training For Scientists
“A network of global health research training institutions will increasingly focus on the rising levels of chronic diseases in developing countries, the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center announced on Wednesday,” CQ HealthBeat reports (Bristol, 4/4). NIH will award “about $20.3 million … over the next five years to support 400 early-career health scientists on nearly year-long research fellowships in 27 low- and middle-income countries,” according to a press release from the Fogarty International Center. “Program trainees will study the traditional global health problems such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and maternal and child health, and will address the chronic non-communicable diseases that cause a majority of deaths in developing countries, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes,” the press release states (4/4).
2-Day Meeting Examining Issues Of Censorship Of Scientific Studies Leaves Questions Unanswered
A two-day Royal Society meeting held this week in London — which examined “whether scientific journals should occasionally publish censored versions of papers because the full ones might prove useful to terrorists” — “brought scientists no closer to resolving the question of whether there are any kinds of experiments whose results should be kept from the public,” the Washington Post reports. “The audience of about 200 scientists and ethicists considered numerous questions,” the newspaper writes, noting, “There was general agreement that some experiments are off limits, such as attempting to make the AIDS virus transmissible by air,” but “[t]here was less agreement about the experiments at hand, which changed the characteristics of H5N1 bird flu.”
‘Political Will, Dogged Organization’ Needed To Maintain Momentum Of Deworming Campaigns
In this New York Times opinion piece, journalist Amy Yee examines the cost-effectiveness of and challenges to deworming treatment campaigns in the developing world, deworming campaigns in India and Kenya. She writes, “Intestinal worms are pervasive in the developing world and can have devastating effects. But there is growing awareness about how easy and inexpensive it is to treat worms, as well as surprising longer-term socioeconomic benefits. Research shows deworming to be extremely cost-effective.” Yee provides statistics from previous studies on the various benefits of deworming school-aged children and asks, “If giving deworming pills to schoolchildren is so easy and effective, why haven’t more large-scale programs taken off?”
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about how the budget debate is mixing into presidential poiltics.
Mississippi Legislature Passes Abortion Clinic Bill
The bill will require any doctor performing abortions in the state to be a board-certified OB-GYN with admitting privileges at a local hospital, which could make staffing the state’s sole abortion clinic very difficult.
Study: Chemo Costs Less In Doctors’ Offices
Chemotherapy costs significantly more at a hospital than at a physician’s office, and patients might have decreased access to the cheaper option, according to reports out this week. The first report, by Avalere Health, found that chemotherapy received in a hospital outpatient setting costs, on average, 24 percent more than when received at a physician’s […]