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The Department of Health and Human Services is sending $229 million in exchange establishment grants to 10 states -- half of which are receiving this funding for a second time around. However, an Associated Press analysis found that progress among states in setting up these health insurance marketplaces remains uneven.
At issue was a federal appeals court ruling allowing patients and health care providers to sue over California's cuts in Medicaid payment rates. The high court sent the case back to the court in San Francisco to consider whether private parties or only the federal government can object to Medicaid reductions.
A selection of health policy stories from Oregon, Colorado, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, California, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Kansas and Arizona.
GOP candidates sparred during last night's face-off over a range of issues including the Massachusetts health law that Mitt Romney signed while that state's governor, family planning and contraception, and abortion.
Virginia lawmakers backed off a proposal Wednesday to require women seeking abortions get an transvaginal ultrasound after Gov. Bob McDonnell said he wouldn't support it. Virginia House lawmakers instead approved an amended bill requiring only an external ultrasound.
A Democratic lawmaker has proposed denying men vasectomies as a parody of a Republican bill that would prohibit abortions for women more than 20 weeks pregnant. Elsewhere, a Wisconsin bill would require physicians to give women a physical exam and be present when giving abortion-inducing drugs.
This long-awaited guidance will be published as a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register.
The judge said the law was meant to force religious objectors to dispense the drug Plan B instead of simply give access to those that need it. In other cases, other federal judges blocked a challenge to a Mass. law on abortion buffer zones and said the government can't deny health benefits to a lesbian couple.
Pat Quinn, the Democratic governor, underscored the need for cuts to Medicaid and the state worker pension system, but some critics said his proposals did not offer enough specifics about how to reduce the state's underfinanced liabilities.
A framework for the plan was unveiled in January. This more fleshed-out version builds on that outline, makes treatment a top priority and focuses on the burden the disease places on families and caregivers.
Lawmakers in Vermont and Oklahoma are the latest to grapple with creating a state health insurance exchange. In Vermont, the governor is defending his proposal for an exchange for small businesses while Oklahoma lawmakers are mulling creating their own so the federal government doesn't do it for them.
A selection of opinions and editorials from around the U.S.
Bloomberg reports that, based on a previous opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia could be key to the fate of the health law.
"Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development [on Wednesday] launched its second call for innovative prevention and treatment approaches for pregnant women and newborns in poor, hard-to-reach communities around the world," a USAID press release states. With the launch of the second round of the Saving Lives at Birth partnership, "the partners aim to invest at least $50 million in groundbreaking and sustainable projects with the potential to accelerate substantial progress against maternal and newborn deaths and stillbirths at the community level," according to the press release (2/22).
"Researchers say they've developed the first vaccine for visceral leishmaniasis (VL) -- a disease that affects 500,000 people each year and has been called the 'parasitic version of HIV,'" although the diseases are unrelated, U.S. News reports. "The vaccine took researchers more than two decades to develop and entered Phase I trials in recent weeks, according to Steve Reed, founder of the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI), the vaccine's developer," the news service writes (Koebler, 2/22).
"More than seven months overdue, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria grant will finally be released to key South African AIDS organizations that have been struggling to survive," PlusNews writes, adding, "Some were on the verge of shutting down." According to the news service, "The Global Fund released US$7,106,426.91 to the South African National Treasury on February 6, the same day seven of the grant's sub-recipients delivered an open letter to Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi, pleading for intervention."
"Decades of war, neglect, and lack of development have left South Sudan with nine out of 10 of th[e] key neglected tropical diseases [NTDs] -- all but Chagas disease, which is endemic to South America," and health workers in the new nation are hoping that the recent formation of a large public-private partnership to combat the diseases "will finally help to have an impact on South Sudan's appalling health indicators," IRIN reports. With only one in four people in South Sudan able to access health care, people "seek other explanations for diseases such as sleeping sickness, as they are liable to blame its symptoms on witchcraft and only seek medical attention as a last resort," the news service writes. The nation has the highest incidence of guinea worm disease and the third-highest incidence of sleeping sickness, according to IRIN (2/23).
In this post in the Global Health Technologies Coalition's (GHTC) "Breakthroughs" blog, Mandy Goldberg, global health research and development (R&D) advocacy intern at Research!America, shares the organization's findings about the state of New Jersey from an analysis conducted in target states to measure the health and economic impact of global health R&D in the U.S. "Despite ranking eleventh in population size, New Jersey ranks third in R&D investment among states, thanks mainly to robust private-sector investment," she writes, adding, "R&D spending in New Jersey increased by 11.4 percent in 2010, and global R&D spending was up by $1.4 billion, according to a 2011 report by the Healthcare Institute of New Jersey, implying even more future economic benefits for the state" (Halnon, 2/21).
This post in KPLU's "Humanosphere" blog examines the "gap between the disease burden of mental illness and the amount of funding and attention devoted to solving the problem," referencing a post published Friday in the Global Health Interest Forum's "Blog of Scientists for Global Health," written by Paul Southworth, a visiting scholar on malaria and vaccine science at the NIH. The blog provides a breakdown of the global burden of disease in terms of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) and notes, "As you can see from the pie chart, mental illness (aka 'neuropsychiatric disorders') is the biggest slice in the pie. Yet it is rarely even mentioned at global health meetings or confabs, says Southworth" (Paulson, 2/21).
In this post in the Results for Development Institute's "Center for Global Health R&D Policy Assessment" blog, Project Director Jean Arkedis and Program Associate Edith Han interview Megumi Gordon, deputy director for malaria at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), "to take an exclusive look into the [Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria (AMFm)] and its innovative mechanism to increase access to antimalarials." Megumi discusses "AMFm's current status, early lessons, and the latest in the ongoing -- and sometimes contentious -- debate about whether to subsidize [artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs)] in the private sector" (2/22).
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