Latest KFF Health News Stories
GOP Fissures Likely To Emerge With Efforts To Revamp Budget Deal, Medicare
House Republicans appear divided over whether to push for deeper spending cuts in the 2013 budget plan than those agreed upon during last year’s debt ceiling deal. Democrats and Republicans are also preparing for a Medicare fight. Meanwhile, some GOP senators have requested a hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to discuss revised cost estimates for the health law.
Misconception That Syphilis Has ‘Disappeared’ Presents Major Impediment To Preventing Infant Deaths
In this Globe and Mail opinion piece, columnist Andre Picard examines the efforts of a new group, the Global Congenital Syphilis Partnership — which includes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Save The Children, the CDC, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and the WHO — to “make screening for syphilis a routine part of pregnancy care with the goal of eliminating congenital syphilis.” Picard writes, “According to the World Health Organization, some 2.1 million women with syphilis give birth every year,” and notes, “Almost 70 percent of their babies are stillborn, and many of the rest suffer from low birth weight (putting them at great risk for a host of illnesses), hearing loss, vision loss and facial deformities.”
Foreign HCWs Make Decisions To Emigrate Based On Information
Michael Clemens, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), addresses a recent New York Times article on “medical brain drain” in this CGD “Global Development: Views From The Center” blog post, saying the article’s approval of “a horrific proposal to put recruiters of health workers on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity … is breathtakingly misguided.” He continues, “Recruiters do not ‘steal’ people. They give information to people about jobs those people are qualified for. The professional ambitions of those people have equal value to yours and mine, and those ambitions cannot be realized without information.” Clemens says “coercively blocking the unconditional right of a health worker to emigrate — such as by declaring her to be owned by a government and prosecuting her recruiter at The Hague — is a crime against humanity,” and cites several other articles he has written on the subject (3/12).
Haitian Cholera Vaccination Pilot Project Temporarily Postponed, NPR Reports
“A long-planned project to find out whether vaccination is feasible in the midst of an ongoing cholera outbreak in Haiti has been stymied — temporarily, its proponents insist –” after “a Port-au-Prince radio station reported that the impending vaccination effort was actually a ‘medical experiment on the Haitian people’ — a potentially incendiary charge,” NPR’s health blog “Shots” reports.
BMJ Examines Mother-To-Mother Peer Educational Initiative
“As Southern African policymakers gather in London this month to discuss strategies for reducing new HIV infections in children, [freelance writer] Karen McColl reports on an initiative that uses affected mothers to provide support” in this BMJ feature article. BMJ provides a brief history of how the mothers2mothers (m2m) initiative — established by obstetrician Mitch Besser and colleagues to develop a model of peer education and psychosocial support — developed, writing, “What started as a few mothers providing education and support to their peers has now evolved, 10 years on, into an international program operating on 589 sites in seven countries” and “now employs 1,457 mentor mothers” (3/12).
Narcotic Drug Use Should Be Treated As Illness, U.N. Drug Office Director Says
“Prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, reintegration and health have to be recognized as key elements in our strategy” to fight drug demand, supply and trafficking, U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime Executive Director Yuri Fedotov said Monday at the opening session of the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, United Press International reports. Fedotov added, “Overall, our work on the treatment side must be considered as part of the normal clinical work undertaken when responding to any other disease in the health system,” according to UPI (3/12). “He called on countries to recognize that drug dependence, which claims some 250,000 lives annually, is an illness,” the U.N. News Centre writes (3/12).
Kenya, Tanzania Face Ongoing Health Worker Strikes
About 2,000 Kenyan health workers attended a demonstration outside the Ministry of Health on Friday, the Associated Press/Seattle Times reports, noting, “Some 40,000 health workers nationwide went on strike on March 1 to protest low pay and poor working conditions.” According to the news service, “[t]he government announced Thursday that it fired 25,000 workers who defied an order to return to work” (3/9). “Anyang Nyong’o, minister for medical services, said on Thursday that the sacked workers would be required to re-apply if they are to be considered for reappointment,” MWC News notes (3/9).
The Peace Corps, PEPFAR and the Global Health Service Corps on Tuesday will announce a public-private partnership program to place U.S. health workers overseas to help address medical professional shortages, CQ HealthBeat reports (Bristol, 3/12). “The Global Health Service Partnership (GHSP) will address health professional shortages by investing in capacity and building support for existing medical and nursing education programs in less-developed countries,” a joint press release (.pdf) states, adding, “The new program is expected to begin in Tanzania, Malawi and Uganda in July 2013.”
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about the Obama administration’s new rules for health insurance exchanges as well as the latest wrinkles in the federal budget process.
Health Insurance Exchange Rules Highlight ‘State Flexibility’
The Department of Health and Human Services today released many of the rules for health insurance exchanges, which include specifics about state functions and responsibilities.
Global Fund Donors ‘Earmark’ Funds For Capacity-Building, Fund’s General Manager Says
Gabriel Jaramillo, the general manager of the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said in an interview on Friday that “quite a few donors” to the fund “have earmarked portions of their donations to us, their contributions, to capacity-building,” the Associated Press/Washington Post reports. According to the AP, the Global Fund “is increasingly being forced to devote a portion of its donations to improving its own spending controls rather than disease-fighting,” the news service writes. “France, whose nearly $2.9 billion in donations have made it the fund’s second-largest contributor after the U.S., will sign a new pledging agreement this month requiring that five percent of its money go to tighten financial accountability among grant recipients, he said,” the AP writes.
Analyzing Dynamics Of Supreme Court Health Law Arguments
News outlets report on key issues, dynamics and even personalities that will be in play when the Supreme Court takes up the health law later this month.
Overcoming Challenges To Health Law Implementation At Federal, State Levels
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is central to implementing the health law, which leads to questions about its capabilities and resources. Meanwhile, states await a final rule on health exchanges.
Partner Reduction Strategies Essential To Reversing Spread Of HIV
“The rising enthusiasm for providing more medicines threatens to come at the expense of promising initiatives for preventing HIV infections in the first place — initiatives that could save many lives, with less money,” Craig Timberg, the newspaper’s deputy national security editor, and Daniel Halperin, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, write in this Washington Post opinion piece. “Ambitious treatment efforts and smart prevention programs are, of course, not inherently at odds. But especially in an era of fiscal constraint, these two goals could come into conflict,” they write, continuing, “The result, wasteful in dollars spent and lives diminished, would represent only the latest misjudgment by powerful donor nations such as the United States, which still struggle to understand the root causes of an epidemic that has spread most widely in weaker, poorer nations.”
Feds Won’t Renew $30 Million Funding For Texas’ Women’s Health Program
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius confirmed Friday that the federal government would stop funding the program which provides care to more than 100,000 women, after Texas barred Planned Parenthood and other “affiliates of abortion providers” from participating. Gov. Rick Perry has pledged to replace the money, but has not said where it would come from.
Syrian Government To Allow U.N. To Conduct Survey Of Basic Medical Needs In 4 Crisis-Hit Areas
“The Syrian government will allow the United Nations to assess the basic medical needs of Syrians in four areas where opposition forces have clashed with government troops and to also carry out a preliminary humanitarian needs assessment, officials said Friday,” the Associated Press/Huffington Post reports. WHO spokesperson “Tarik Jasarevic says a ‘very preliminary and basic survey’ overseen by his agency and the U.N. Population Fund will be carried out next week with the cooperation of Syria’s health ministry,” the news service writes.
A selection of editorials and opinions about health policy from around the country.
Park Named Federal Chief Technology Officer
Todd Park, who held the CTO position at the Department of Health and Human Services, will replace Aneesh Chopra in this post.
Officials Examine Medicaid Coverage, Quality In Context Of Burgeoning Costs
Growing demand for Medicaid services puts a burden on states as they wrestle with tight budgets and patient quality issues.
Feds Reject J&J’s $1 Billion Drug Settlement
The Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors have rejected the proposed settlement, which was first worked out earlier this year.
