Latest KFF Health News Stories
Report Looks At Autoworker Health Care For Spending Variation Clues
A new report looks at autoworker health care claims to find clues as to why spending varies by region and finds that hospital price variation made up one-third of the difference.
Bishops Plan United Front Campaign Against Contraception Rule
While most of the public favors the Obama administration’s contraception compromise, the Catholic bishops will launch TV and radio ads against the mandate.
Drilling Down Into Obama’s Budget
The Wall Street Journal reports the plan would scale back money for public health and prevention programs; The Associated Press covers the debate about the proposed defense budget, which would scale back retirees’ health coverage.
Private U.S. Investments Improve Maternal Care Capacity In Ethiopia
Writing on the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s website, Sarah Sagely Klotz, executive director of Hamlin Fistula USA, reports on how private U.S. investments “are building maternal care capacity and producing tremendous results” in Ethiopia. “Unfortunately, around the globe women are often neglected and have very limited access to maternal care,” she writes, adding, “Through the generous investments made by many Americans, however, communities in developing countries are yielding substantial and lasting benefits” (2/14).
Impact Of Child Malnourishment Similar To That Of AIDS
“Globally, malnutrition is the most important cause of illness and death,” Jeremy Laurance, health editor at the Independent, writes in this editorial. Laurance details the physical effects of malnutrition on a child and notes, “Malnutrition contributes to more than half of child deaths worldwide. … It affects virtually every organ system,” and “[i]ts impact on the immune system is similar to that of AIDS.”
Debate Over Medicare, Health Law Already Playing Out In 2012 Races
Nearly all the candidates for president are weighing in on how to make Medicare fiscally sustainable, while Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli says the health law will factor into which candidate he endorses.
State Roundup: Legislatures Tackling Abortion Restrictions, Medicaid Cuts/Revamps, Rx Drug Abuse
A selection of health policy stories from California, Georgia, Maine, Wisconsin, Oregon, Minnesota and Virginia.
Researchers Share Libraries Of Chemical Compounds To Spur Development Of Drug Candidates
Nature reports how “[i]n the hunt for drugs that target diseases in the developing world, … [p]harmaceutical companies are making entire libraries of chemical compounds publicly available, allowing researchers to rifle through them for promising drug candidates.” The journal writes, “The latest push for open innovation, unveiled last month as part of a World Health Organization road map to control neglected tropical diseases, will see 11 companies sharing their intellectual property to give researchers around the world a head start on investigating drug leads.”
Drugmaker Warns That Fake Cancer Drug Is On The Market
The Wall Street Journal reports that the manufacturer of Avastin says it has found counterfeit vials of the drug in the United States.
Tentative Deal Reached To Prevent Physician Pay Cuts, Preserve Payroll Tax Cut
But senior aides warned that negotiators still had to sign off on the agreement and that obstacles could surface given the long-running tensions over the measure.
States are in various stages of implementing, or opposing, aspects of the health care law.
A selection of opinions and editorials from around the U.S.
In addition, a hospital in Plano, Texas makes a major marketing deal.
Reid Will Allow Repeal Vote On Contraception Mandate
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will allow a vote on a Republican amendment to allow employers to opt out of health coverage mandates – including one requiring free coverage of birth control for women – that they find immoral.
Zimbabwean health officials responding to typhoid outbreaks in the capital of Harare that have affected more than 2,000 people “have called on the local and central governments to overhaul water and sanitation systems” to stem the spread of the disease, VOA News reports. Portia Manangazira, chief of epidemiology and disease control in the Ministry of Health, “said Zimbabwean and international health authorities responded well to the crisis,” which has raised “fears for many Zimbabweans of the deadly 2008-2009 cholera epidemic which hit tens of thousands and left more than 4,200 people dead,” the news service writes.
Seven Sahel Region Nations Declare Emergencies With At Least 12M People Threatened By Hunger
“Seven out of the eight governments in [Africa’s] Sahel … have taken the unprecedented step of declaring emergencies as 12 million people in the region are threatened by hunger,” Inter Press Service reports. “Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria have all called for international assistance to prevent yet another hunger crisis on the continent,” the news service writes, noting that Senegal “has refrained from announcing an emergency, largely for political reasons,” as it is holding presidential elections later this year (Palitza, 4/15).
Reuters Examines Upcoming WHO Meeting To Discuss Debate Over Bird Flu Research
Bird flu experts are scheduled to begin a two-day meeting at the WHO in Geneva on Thursday “to try to settle an unprecedented row over a call to [censor] publication of two scientific studies which detail how to mutate H5N1 bird flu viruses into a form that could cause a deadly human pandemic,” Reuters reports in an article describing the debate in detail. “But experts say whatever the outcome, no amount of censorship, global regulation or shutting down of research projects could stop rogue scientists getting the tools to create and release a pandemic H5N1 virus if they were intent on evil,” the news service adds.
First Edition: February 15, 2012
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations include news of a tentative agreement on Capitol Hill on a measure that would extend the payroll tax cuts and stop planned cuts in Medicare payments to doctors.
Capsules: Californians Don’t Talk About End-Of-Life Wishes
Though 82 percent of Californians think it’s important to write down what kind of measures they do or don’t want when they’re dying, only 23 percent have done so.
USAID Improves Health Through Access To Clean Water In Timor-Leste
In this post in USAID’s “IMPACTblog,” Carlos dos Reis, foreign service national environmental health officer for Timor-Leste, reports on a trip to the country’s remote district of Oecusse with U.S. Ambassador Judith Fergin and USAID/Timor-Leste Mission Director Rick Scott to “inaugurate the new clean water supply system built with the support of USAID.” He writes, “Having the chance to see the completed water supply system and witness the benefits that people get from having access to clean water, I’m beginning to believe that a seemingly impossible thing can become possible when people work together,” and adds, “I believe that the cooperation between USAID and Oecusse District SAS has really improved the lives of many residents in [the town of] Bobometo by giving them access to clean water and improved sanitation and hygiene” (2/13).
