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News outlets continue to report on the various ways the court might rule on the health law and how those rulings could impact stakeholders and how various policymakers -- from the White House to Congress to state officials -- are preparing for the decision.
While 6.6 million young people signed onto their parents' plans since the provision of the health law took effect, many still lack coverage, according to a new Commonwealth Fund study. Cost, not a "young invincible" belief that they didn't need coverage, appears to be a key obstacle.
The bill signed by Bobby Jindal would also require abortion providers to offer women the opportunity to listen to the fetal heartbeat. In other abortion news, a Michigan legislative panel endorses a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is asking for a federal audit of her state's Medicaid program after a congressional probe found a year's worth of alleged overpayments. In other news, insurers Molina and Centene have won back Medicaid contracts in Ohio after initially being rejected.
A new study found that more U.S. hispanics in need of a heart transplant die while waiting for a heart than do white patients.
NPR reports a scientific development related to fetal genetic testing.
Internists take to Captitol Hill to lobby members of Congress to fix the Medicare physician payment formula.
Marilyn Tavenner, the acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said Thursday that about 30 states will not move forward with state-based exchanges until after the Supreme Court rules and the November elections are finished. She also said her agency is working to streamline the process for early participants in Medicare ACOs.
A selection of health policy stories from Wisconsin, Oregon, Arizona, New York, Virginia, Texas, Massachusetts, Florida and California.
The bill, which is likely to hit tough opposition in the Senate, would roll back a tax in the 2010 health law designed to help pay for the expansion of coverage to people who do not have insurance.
A selection of editorials and opinions on health care policy from around the country.
This week's studies come from The Journal of General Internal Medicine, Health Affairs, the Annals of Internal Medicine and other news outlets.
"If the vision of zero new HIV infections is to be achieved, a reinvigoration of HIV prevention is urgently needed," UNAIDS writes in a feature article on its webpage, adding, "This will be most effective if a combination prevention approach is adopted, where multi-faceted and tailored programs are implemented." The agency writes, "An in-depth exploration of how such an approach can be implemented took place during the thematic session of the 30th UNAIDS Program Coordinating Board (PCB) meeting in Geneva on 6 June" and discusses the session in detail (6/7).
In this post in the Forbes "Leadership" blog, contributor Rahim Kanani interviews U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin about a report titled "Trends in maternal mortality: 1990 to 2010" -- released by UNFPA, WHO, UNICEF and the World Bank in May -- "which shows that the annual number of women who die in pregnancy or childbirth has dropped from more than 543,000 to 287,000, a decline of 47 percent." Among other topics, they discuss key findings of the report, highlight which regions of the world made the most progress, and note some of the "most promising interventions to reduce the number of women around the world dying in childbirth" (6/7).
"With almost 200 million people living in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, a state more populous than the entire country of Brazil, the sheer breadth of exciting, new ways to improve maternal and child health is enormous," Gary Darmstadt, head of the Family Health Division of the foundation, and Wendy Prosser, a research analyst with the division, write in this post in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog. They conclude, "Our partners in Uttar Pradesh are asking for inventive ways to share knowledge to scale successful interventions which have a positive, lasting impact on women's and children's health. And we're working to address this need, given the tremendous potential to increase our collective ability for impact when it comes to maternal, newborn, and child health in India -- and to disseminate this learning from India for benefit throughout the world" (6/7).
In an article in the Lancet, Andy Haines of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and colleagues, write that, 20 years after the Earth Summit and as world leaders prepare to meet at the Rio+20 conference to advance sustainable development, "[i]mplementation of policies that both improve health and promote sustainable development is urgently needed." They add, "Many of the development goals [resulting from the Earth Summit] have not been achieved partly because social (including health), economic, and environmental priorities have not been addressed in an integrated manner," and conclude, "Provision for a healthy world population of 10 billion should be possible without undermining of sustainability. However, such provision will need major changes in policies, institutions, governance, and lifestyles on an unprecedented scale" (6/9).
In this post in the AIDS.gov blog, Buck Buckingham, director of the Peace Corps Office of Global Health and HIV, reflects on the Global Health Service Partnership (GHSP), launched by Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams in March, writing, "Although this partnership is an exciting innovation for the Peace Corps, the commitment to health which it reflects finds deep roots in our history, as Director Williams described at the launch on March 13." He adds, "The partnership will take on fuller definition this summer, when invited physicians and nurses from academic health centers and other centers of expertise in the United States and the three initial countries in the pilot program will gather in Washington, D.C. on July 21 to further plan the contours of its work" (6/7).
In this post in the Guardian's "Poverty Matters" blog, U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin discusses a family planning summit to be held in London next month, writing the UNFPA "is supporting the initiative so that it can gain traction and support among other donors and UN member countries." He writes, "More than 200 million women, largely in the least developed countries, want to use modern family planning methods but can't access them," and continues, "Enabling women to control the number and spacing of their children is essential to reducing maternal deaths." The summit, co-hosted by the U.K. government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, "will be launched to meet this unfilled need for modern family planning in developing countries by tackling the estimated $3.6 billion (
"Two million of the world's poorest children could be saved by introducing routine vaccination programs against diarrhea and pneumonia," according to a new report (.pdf) from UNICEF, BBC News reports (6/8). "Pneumonia and diarrhea account for nearly one-third of the deaths among children under five globally," the Guardian writes, adding, "Nearly 90 percent of deaths from pneumonia and diarrhea occur in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia" (Tran, 6/8). The report "identifies a tremendous opportunity to narrow the child survival gap both among and within countries by increasing commitment, attention and funding," according to a press release from UNICEF (6/8).
Pacific Standard magazine examines efforts by researchers around the globe to biologically modify bugs to fight human diseases, such as dengue fever. "Biologically altering bugs isn't entirely new; it's been done for nearly half a century to protect crops. ... It's only recently, however, that scientists have begun experimenting with using this technology to combat human diseases," the magazine writes, adding, "If they succeed, they could create an entirely new way of stopping not only dengue but other insect-borne scourges, such as yellow fever, West Nile virus, and malaria. And stopping these diseases has never been more urgent."
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