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Tough questions by the conservative justices at the Supreme Court are driving commentators to consider what happens if the health law, or at least the individual mandate, is struck down.
Passage of the GOP budget advanced by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., will likely be along party lines. Meanwhile, a bipartisan alternative was rejected Wednesday.
News outlets take a look at key personalities on the bench, in front of the justices, in the gallery and in the creation of the health law itself -- including examinations of the closing arguments by both the plantiffs' attorney and the federal government's lawyer.
Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren continue to spar over health policy issues. At the same time, Brown's election to the Senate could continue to impact the fate of the health law.
All sides agree that, despite the uncertainly that surrounds what the court will decide, the decision will have political repercussions.
California is revamping its adult day health care program as well as its program for people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. In Florida, a judge orders the Medicaid program there to cover autism therapy, and Georgia prepares to restructure its program.
A split in the Republican party between moderates and conservatives has stalled a birth control bill aimed at allowing employers to opt out of covering contraception in their health plans.
A selection of editorials and opinions on health care policy from around the country.
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.
A selection of health policy news from Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Maryland, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Kansas.
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.
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.
This week's selections come from The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The New Yorker and Salon.
"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).
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).
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).
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 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).
"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).
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).
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