Latest KFF Health News Stories
Paying Doctors and Hospitals For Better Outcomes May Not Pay Off
Medicare’s largest effort to pay bonuses to hospitals that hit key performance measures — or dock them if they miss — did not lead to fewer deaths for heart attacks and heart bypass surgery, a new study finds. The analysis could lead to a reexamination of the idea of paying providers based on quality metrics, rather than on volume, which is key to the health law.
State Roundup: N.H., Kansas Move Towards Health Care ‘Compacts’
A selection of health policy news from Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Maryland, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Kansas.
Voiding The Mandate, Or The Entire Law, Would Upend Plans By Insurers, Employers
Popular provisions that have already gone into effect, such as letting children stay on their parents’ insurance plans until they turn 26, would fall if the law is thrown out. If only the mandate is declared unconstitutional, however, the law would still affect millions.
Medicaid Questions Complete The Court’s Health Law Review
At some points during the Supreme Court’s consideration of the health law’s Medicaid expansion, conservative justices not only questioned this provision of the law, but the program itself.
Longer Looks At Supreme Court Battle: Justices’ Interactions Key To Decision
This week’s selections come from The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The New Yorker and Salon.
USAID NTD Program Funding Cut By Nearly 25% In Proposed FY13 Budget
“The United States Government has played a major role in ensuring that patients with certain [neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)] receive urgently needed treatments through the [USAID] NTD Program, while simultaneously being the largest funder of basic research for NTDs through the National Institutes of Health,” Rachel Cohen, regional executive director of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) of North America, writes in this post in the Global Health Technologies Coalition’s “Breakthroughs” blog. “However, today U.S. Government funding for NTDs is under threat,” as the “recently announced U.S. fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget request from the Obama Administration has slashed the USAID NTD Program budget, which was already miniscule at $89 million, by nearly 25 percent to $67 million. … This isn’t trimming the fat — it’s cutting into muscle,” she adds (Lufkin, 3/28).
Stop TB Partnership, TAG Release Report On Tuberculosis Research Funding
The Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks” blog reports the findings from the second edition of the 2011 Report on Tuberculosis (TB) Research Funding and Trends from 2005-2010, released Thursday by Treatment Action Group (TAG) and the Stop TB Partnership. “TB research and development investment increased 76 percent between 2005 and 2010, but investment has slowed markedly, with only two percent growth since 2009,” the blog notes, adding, “The $630.4 million 2010 investment is only one-third of the $2 billion needed to stay on track with the Global Plan to Stop TB 10-year implementation and research strategy to eliminate TB as a public health threat by 2050” (Mazzotta, 3/28).
Examining Potential Implications Of The Affordable Care Act On Global Health
In this post in the Global Health Governance Blog, contributing blogger David Fidler, a professor of law at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, examines the potential implications of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on global health law, writing, “In the midst of this constitutional and political moment, I find myself wondering what this seminal American case means, if anything, beyond the United States in the realm of global health.” He concludes, “The lack of clear and immediate connections between the ACA litigation and global health concerns should not blind us … to deeper, more tectonic implications of the ACA’s fate for global health. As in an increasing number of policy contexts, global health practitioners and advocates have much at stake in the outcome of the ACA controversies but no way to influence what happens” (3/28).
Three Nominees For World Bank Presidency Commence Race With Statements
Several news outlets published articles recapping comments made Wednesday by the three nominees for the World Bank presidency. “In a written commentary released by the U.S. Treasury as he embarked on a global tour to sell his candidacy, … Jim Yong Kim, the Korean-American physician nominated by Washington to lead the World Bank, said Wednesday his science training will help him make the Bank more responsive to the needs of developing countries,” and that “the Bank needs to be ‘more inclusive’ and listen more to poor countries’ own ideas about how to solve their problems,” Agence France-Presse reports (3/28). On the two-week tour, Kim will visit “cities including Addis Ababa, New Delhi and Brasilia to seek advice about priorities for the bank, which lent $57 billion last fiscal year,” Bloomberg News notes.
Health Workers Feeling Effects Of Staff, Supply Shortages At Clinics In Southwestern Uganda
Health workers with Medical Teams International, a medical non-governmental organization, “say they are overwhelmed” by high demand at five health clinics in two southwestern Ugandan refugee centers, PlusNews reports. The refugees, “many of whom came from conflict-prone areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),” and local residents are in need of HIV and tuberculosis (TB) prevention information, and care and treatment services, according to the news service. “Uganda suffers from a chronic shortage of health workers — less than half of the vacant health positions are filled — but the recent influx of refugees fleeing violence in neighboring DRC has put even more pressure on [the region’s] health services,” PlusNews writes. Physicians, who see 30 to 50 patients daily and often work double shifts, say gaps in the supplies of antiretroviral (ARV) and TB drugs poses concern, as does trying to follow-up with patients who may not return for visits, the news service notes (3/29).
U.N. Official Warns Millions At Risk Of Starvation In African Sahel
“Millions of people in Africa’s turbulent Sahel region are on the brink of starvation due to drought and conflict, the United Nations said on Wednesday, and aid response plans are less than 40 percent funded ahead of an expected crisis peak,” Reuters reports (3/29). Following a week-long trip to Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, John Ging, director of operations at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said, “This is already an appalling crisis in terms of the scale and degree of human suffering and it will get worse unless the response plans are properly funded. … It’s a matter of life or death for millions who are on the brink,” according to the U.N. News Centre. “More than 15 million people in the Sahel are directly affected by worsening food shortages and malnutrition brought on by the ongoing drought, which has been compounded by conflict and insecurity,” the news service writes, noting that Ging added, “More than 200,000 children died of malnutrition last year and over one million are threatened with severe acute malnutrition right now” (3/28).
Family Planning Bill May Get Vote In Philippines Congress, Bloomberg News Reports
Bloomberg News examines family planning in the Philippines, where “[o]ne in five women of reproductive age … have an unmet family planning need, the U.N. Population Fund says, leading to unintended pregnancies and population growth twice the Asian average.” The article focuses on a reproductive health bill in the country’s congress that would allow for “free or subsidized contraception, especially for the poor.” The bill “has been re-filed and blocked in each three-year congressional term since it was introduced in legislature 14 years ago amid opposition from the Catholic Church,” according to Bloomberg. However, with support from President Benigno Aquino, the bill “may be put to a vote in congress in three months,” the news service notes (Khan/Aquino, 3/27).
Researchers, Experts Debate Publication Of H5N1 Research Amid Updated Studies
“As researchers from both sides of the debate over two controversial H5N1 studies weighed in [Tuesday] on full publication versus a more cautionary approach, two U.S. journals” — the Journal of Infectious Diseases (JID) and its sister publication, Clinical Infectious Diseases — “said they are developing policies to address any future such instances,” CIDRAP News writes. “We are developing policies that address these issues on a case-by-case basis, so that freedom of scientific expression can be maintained without sacrificing individual safety or national security,” JID Editor Martin Hirsch wrote in an editorial, the news service notes, adding, “He also introduced three new JID perspective pieces that discuss the difficult issues” (Schnirring, 3/28).
Scientific Research Is Crucial To Preventing, Controlling, Eradicating Infectious Diseases
The debate about two studies showing that, with few genetic mutations, H5N1 bird flu strains could become more easily transmissible among ferrets, a laboratory model for humans, “has become a debate about the role of science in society. Two questions should be addressed here: should this type of research be conducted at all; and if so, should all data generated by this research be published?” Ab Osterhaus, head of the Institute of Virology, at Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, writes in a Guardian opinion piece. A team from Erasmus conducted one of the two studies, he notes.
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports detailing Wednesday’s Supreme Court oral arguments on severability as well as the Medicaid expansion. News coverage also sums up the week’s high court activity and looks forward to what might happen next.
Justices Consider Whether Medicaid Expansion Is Constitutional Or Coercive
During the Supreme Court’s last hour of a marthon series of oral arguments, some justices indicated strong disagreement with the challenge brought by 26 states to the health law’s Medicaid expansion. Here are summaries of today’s news reports.
Justices Explore Merits Of Preserving Parts Of The Health Law If Mandate Is Overturned
On the third day of the Supreme Court’s consideration of the health law, justices sparred over whether some parts of the measure could proceed if the court decides to void its insurance mandate. Kaiser Health News is tracking coverage of the severability issue.
A Double Dose Of Arguments — Severability, Medicaid Expansion On Today’s Docket
In the final day of Supreme Court health law action, the justices consider whether the entire law must be thrown out if the mandate is overturned. That issue will get 90 minutes, while the challenge to the expansion of Medicaid is on for 60 minutes.
Court Wonders Which Parts Of Law — If Any — Can Stand Without The Mandate
In exploring the severability question, the justices will ponder whether other parts of the health law can go forward if they void the individual mandate, considered the measure’s central element. News outlets examine the “contingency plans” being explored by the law’s supporters in case the mandate falls.
Lack Of Aid Money In Haiti Threatening Health, Human Rights Of Displaced People, U.N. Official Warns
“The United Nations warned on Tuesday that a lack of aid money for Haiti was putting hundreds of thousands of displaced people at risk by forcing humanitarian agencies to cut services in one of the world’s poorest countries,” Reuters reports. Noting Haiti only received half of the $382 million aid request in 2011 and so far has received only 10 percent of this year’s $231 million appeal, Nigel Fisher, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Haiti, said, “(Underfunding) threatens to reverse gains achieved in the fight against cholera through the promotion of sanitary and hygiene practices. … It threatens the very existence of hundreds of thousands of (displaced people) living in camps,” according to the news agency. “Fisher said the humanitarian community was urgently requesting $53.9 million for the April-June period to protect those living in camps and to continue to provide services such as clean water, food and crime prevention and respond to cholera outbreaks, among other things,” Reuters writes (Nichols, 3/27).
