Latest KFF Health News Stories
State Roundup: Mass. May Vote On Assisted Suicide; Colo. To Try Medical Homes
Health policy news from Masschusetts, California, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado and Connecticut.
Out-Of-State Insurers Show No Interest In Georgia
Also, CalPERS finds wide variation in knee and hip replacement costs, and Allina Health offers grants for wellness programs in Minnesota.
Humana Reports Drop In First Quarter Profits
The insurer attributed the decrease to paying out more in claims, as well as additional investment as it anticipates strong growth in its Medicare Advantage plans.
High-Deductible Plans Become ‘Mainstream’ In The Marketplace
The PBS News Hour story examined how high-deductible health plans work, and possible consumer risks with this form of health coverage.
Some Parts Of Health Law Expected To Take Hold Regardless of Court Decision
Many experts believe state-level health exchanges are here to stay. However, Politico reports that some state officials worry that if the individual mandate is struck down, healthy people could avoid buying policies and premiums for everyone else could skyrocket, putting them in a bind.
Without Sustained Investment In Malaria Fight, World Faces Resurgence Of Disease
“If we needed more evidence that the funding cuts at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria were going to be detrimental to people’s lives, a new study … makes it clear: Providing funding to fight malaria makes malaria go away,” Kolleen Bouchane, director of ACTION, a global partnership of health advocacy organizations, writes in the Huffington Post’s “Impact” blog. “The authors write that as substantial new financial resources have become available to fight malaria since 2000, malaria has decreased considerably in many parts of the world,” she continues, adding, “But in the past, malaria has returned when malaria control programs have been weakened — and they’ve usually been weakened when resources dried up.”
Dutch Government Grants Export License Allowing Publication Of Controversial H5N1 Study
“The Dutch government has agreed to grant an export license to allow Ron Fouchier, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical University in Rotterdam, to publish his work on H5N1 avian influenza in Science,” Nature’s “News Blog” reports (Owens, 4/27). “Fouchier had to get permission first from the Dutch Department of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation — in line with E.U. regulations — because a risk existed that the H5N1 virus, as well as its research, ‘could be used for the wrong purposes,’ the Dutch department said in a statement,” according to Agence France-Presse (4/28).
“Ignoring widespread concern over the safety, efficacy and cost of pentavalent vaccines” — which provide protection against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B and haemophilus influenza type b (Hib) — “India’s central health ministry has, this month, approved inclusion of the prophylactic cocktail in the universal immunization program in seven of its provinces,” Inter Press Service reports. Pentavalent vaccines have “had a history of causing adverse reactions and deaths in India’s neighboring countries like Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan,” the news service writes, noting that India’s National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) in 2010 “recommended limited introduction of pentavalents in southern Kerala and Tamil Nadu and evaluation of results over a year before extension to other states.” Despite this recommendation and outstanding public interest litigation, the government on April 16 announced the vaccines would be introduced in five additional states, IPS reports.
Farm Bill Could Do More To Improve Food Aid
“The policy changes in the [Senate’s draft Farm Bill] represent improvements to U.S. food aid policy, but we think Congress could do more,” Kelley Hauser, a policy analyst with ONE, writes in this post on the Care2 blog. She describes a letter sent by ONE to U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Chair Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Ranking Member Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), “asking them to buy emergency food aid closer to where it is needed — to save on shipping and food costs, as well as to speed up delivery” and “to require more efficiency when organizations sell U.S.-grown food in developing countries to fund development projects.” She concludes, “By increasing the impact of our food aid dollars and making monetization more efficient, we can save more lives and help more people break the cycle of malnutrition and poverty as part of ONE’s Thrive campaign” (Matsuoka, 4/27).
FAO Head Calls On Oil-, Mineral-Rich Countries To Establish Fund To Fight Hunger In Sahel
Speaking at a conference in Brazzaville, Congo, on Friday, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva “appealed to oil- and mineral-rich nations to set up a fund to combat the food crisis gripping the Sahel desert region and other parts of Africa,” Agence France-Presse reports. He said the organization needs $110 million in the short term to combat hunger in the region, which includes Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger, according to the news service (4/27). He said, “We are very concerned about the Sahel because there are already many conflicts in the region,” Bloomberg notes, adding “[m]ore than five million people in Niger are facing food insecurity, along with three million in Mali and 1.5 million in Burkina Faso, according to the FAO” (Mbakou, 4/27).
Financial Times Examines Cuban Company Selling Larvicides For Malaria Control In Africa
Though “[m]ost international support credited with the recent decline in malaria in Africa has been channeled to providing bednets, diagnostics and drugs, a Cuban company called Labiofam is marketing bacterial larvicides in Africa to help fight the disease,” the Financial Times reports. According to the newspaper, “health specialists have voiced concerns about the cost and effectiveness of the technology the Cubans are selling,” and the WHO “is finalizing guidance that concludes larvicides have only a ‘specific and limited’ role to play, where there are sites for mosquito larvae that are ‘few, fixed and findable’ — something that is rarely the case in Africa.”
Airborne Drones Could Provide Innovative Method Of Delivering Food, Medicines
In a Foreign Policy opinion piece, former U.S. Ambassador Jack Chow, who served as a special representative for HIV/AIDS under former Secretary of State Colin Powell and currently is a professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College of Public Policy, examines the challenges of delivering humanitarian aid and how “[t]he technological versatility of airborne drones, the flying robots that are already transforming warfare, … has the potential to revolutionize how humanitarian aid is delivered worldwide.” He describes the work of several start-up companies looking to employ drones for such a purpose, saying “waves of aid drones might quickly deliver a peaceful ‘first strike’ capacity of food and medicines to disaster areas.”
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including a variety of health policy headlines ranging from reports about state-level health law implementation progress to marketplace news.
Ryan Says His Budget Will Protect Seniors
In GOP weekly address, House Budget Committee chairman says Republican budget plan “saves and strengthens” Medicare.
Obama Says Romney, GOP ‘Out Of Touch’ On Women’s Health Issues
President tells women’s forum that the recent controversy over contraception access was like “being in a time machine.” Romney’s campaign, however, accuses Obama of using the “same empty rhetoric.”
House Votes To Use Health Law Prevention Fund To Help Pay For Student Loan Program
Republicans said the only way to keep the U.S. student-loan interest rate from doubling on July 1 is to use funds from the Affordable Care Act’s prevention fund. The president is threatening a veto.
Breaux: Bipartisanship Necessary To Fix Medicare Finances
After testifying to the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, the former senator jokes that his blueprint from 1999 might just do the trick.
Global Fund Deputy GM Says Organization ‘Not In Crisis’ At Roundtable Discussion
“Although coming off a rocky year in 2011, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is ‘not in crisis,'” Inter Press Service reports, referring to comments made by the organization’s deputy general manager, Debrework Zewdie, at a roundtable hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday. Zewdie noted the resumption of commitments to the fund from bilateral donors, despite the international economic crisis and last year’s allegations of mismanagement, the news service adds.
“Young people today face greater risks to their physical and mental health than generations past, new research has found, with adolescents in the developing world rapidly acquiring the unhealthy habits of their wealthier counterparts,” the Financial Times reports. A series of studies published on Wednesday in the Lancet “present a general portrait of increasing hazard due to drug and alcohol abuse, unprotected sex, violence and inadequate employment opportunities,” the newspaper writes (Rowland, 4/25). Decreasing child mortality rates have led “to the largest generation of adolescents in history: 1.2 billion to be exact,” CNN’s “The Chart” blog notes, adding, “As many of those teens face poverty, natural disasters and wars in addition to overwhelming physical and emotional changes, researchers worry about the lack of available health resources” (4/24).
According to the 2012 Progress Report on U.S. Leadership in Global Agricultural Development, released by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on Thursday, “[t]he U.S. government risks losing the gains it has made in fighting world hunger unless it maintains its effort of the last three years in improving global agricultural practices and food security,” Reuters reports. The council’s “Global Agricultural Development Initiative evaluated the U.S. government and agencies for their leadership in global agricultural development,” and “examined the impact the efforts from Washington had in Ethiopia, Ghana and Bangladesh,” the news service writes.
