Latest KFF Health News Stories
Longer Looks: Perry’s Personal Health Policies; 5 State Medicaid Strategies; Medical Illiteracy
Today’s articles come from Time magazine, Governing, American Medical News and Mother Jones.
First Edition: September 1, 2011
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including California lawmakers shelving their effort to pass a bill to regulate health insurance rates and Florida’s aggressive efforts to shut down “pill mill” clinics.
GOP Tax Expert Tapped To Lead The ‘Super Committee’
The selection of Mark Prater, who has served as chief tax counsel for Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee for nearly two decades, was announced in a joint statement by the panel’s co-chairs, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Tex. Many view his appointment as an encouraging sign that the deficit committee will produce a plan to control federal borrowing.
GOP Govs Point To Medicaid Flexibility As Means To Reduce Spending
In a report issued Tuesday, these Republican state executives urged a loosening of federal “maintenance of effort” rules and called for flexibility so that states could custom design programs to give their children as well as poor and disabled citizens the best care.
Compensation System Urged For People Harmed During Scientific Research
A subcommittee of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues concluded that many other countries have requirements in place to protect and compensate research subjects who are harmed.
COBRA Subsidies For Laid-Off Workers End Today
With the end of this benefit, considered one of the key elements of the federal stimulus package, many are concerned about how unemployed people will now afford these costs.
Researchers Develop Potentially Less-Expensive, Faster Method For Diagnosing TB
“A potentially cheaper and faster method for diagnosing tuberculosis (TB) has been developed by researchers” at the University of Basel, Switzerland, “who hope to test it in Tanzania,” according to a study published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology last week, SciDev.Net reports. “The lack of a cheap, quick and accurate test makes it hard to control the TB epidemic, which claims millions of lives every year in developing countries,” according to the news service.
Leading Iowa Insurer Undecided About State’s Planned Insurance Exchange
In other health law implementation news, Rep. Renee Ellmers, R-N.C., wrote in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, that HHS has not adequately addressed the needs of small insurance companies and other small businesses.
Perry’s Remarks, Health Positions Draw Political Attention
News outlets are reporting on GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry and a letter he once sent to then First Lady Hillary Clinton praising her efforts to push health reform. Perry, the governor of Texas, also made comments ten years ago about the feasibility of “bi-national health insurance” for both U.S. and Mexican residents along the border.
Federal Judge In Texas Halts Enforcement Of Abortion Law
The Texas case involves a new law that requires expectant mothers to see a sonogram of the fetus and hear the heartbeat. Meanwhile, Kansas, Virginia and Mississippi are also dealing with abortion issues.
State Roundup: N.H. State Employees Agree To Health Concessions
News outlets report on a variety of state health policy issues.
Obama Pledges To Protect Health Care, Other Benefits For ‘The 9/11 Generation’ Of Veterans
President Barack Obama pledged to spare veterans’ health care and other programs from the budget-cutting that is currently underway on Capitol Hill.
Medicaid News: Colo. Finds Expansion Too Expensive
Two years ago, Colorado officials opted to expand their Medicaid program to poor adults without children. But the cost has been much higher than expected, and they are now scaling back. In other Medicaid news, Kansas decides on a new high-tech system for residents to use to establish eligibility; California insurers question the state’s plans for adult day care, and Florida faces a suit over treatment of veterans.
Comprehensive Approach To NTDs ‘Fosters Social Equity’
Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) “are diseases of socially excluded populations that promote poverty by relatively depriving individuals from basic capabilities and freedoms,” Carlos Franco-Paredes of the Children’s Hospital of Mexico and Jose Santos-Preciado of the Faculty of Medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico write in this PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases editorial. The authors examine “[t]he social pathways of becoming ill with an NTD” which “include socially determined failures including widespread illiteracy, malnutrition, poor living conditions, unemployment and the overall failure of ownership relations in the form of entitlements.”
Rural Areas Bear Higher Burden Of Dengue Fever, Study Shows
“In dengue-endemic areas such as South-East Asia, in contrast to conventional thinking, rural areas rather than cities may bear the highest burden of dengue fever,” according to a study led by Wolf-Peter Schmidt from the Nagasaki Institute of Tropical Medicine in Japan and published in this week’s PLoS Medicine, a PLoS press release states. The authors “analyzed a population in Kanh-Hoa Province in south-central Vietnam (~350,000 people) that was affected by two dengue epidemics between January 2005 and June 2008” and “found that at low human population densities, mostly in rural areas, dengue risk is up to three times higher than in cities, presumably because the number of mosquitoes per individual is higher in low-density areas,” according to the release (8/30).
Women In Haiti Have Limited Access To Maternal Health Care, May Trade Sex For Food, HRW Report Says
“Tens of thousands of women in Haiti have severely limited access to reproductive and maternal healthcare, many are compelled to trade sex for food and most are vulnerable to rape, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Tuesday,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur/M&C reports (8/30). The report said “[d]espite a mammoth humanitarian-care push in the wake of the Jan. 12, 2010 quake that killed as many as 300,000 people, serious gaps exist in the healthcare that women and girls are receiving,” the Los Angeles Times writes.
Mexico To Administer HPV Vaccine To All Girls Beginning In 2012
“Mexico plans to administer the vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause cervical cancer, to all girls beginning next year, the country’s health ministry said Tuesday,” Agence France-Presse reports. Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova “said while deaths from cervical cancer had fallen 47 percent in the country over the past two decades, there were still 13.4 cases for every 100,000 women last year,” AFP writes, adding, “Cervical cancer kills about 4,200 women in Mexico each year” (8/30).
Ghanaian Bill Aims To Improve Mental Health Care By Combating Stigma
“A bill before Ghana’s parliament aims to improve mental health care and encourage more health professionals to enter the sector by tackling one of the greatest impediments to both — stigma,” IRIN/Guardian reports. “The draft reforms — developed with support from the World Health Organization — were completed in 2006, but the bill is only now under consideration by parliament,” which “is expected to take it up again when it reconvenes in October,” according to the news service.
UNHCR Head Calls For Additional Aid For Somalia; World Bank To Provide $407M To Help Kenya
“U.N. refugee agency chief Antonio Guterres said Tuesday that relief groups should increase aid to war-battered and drought-hit Somalis to reduce the exodus to neighboring countries,” Agence France-Presse reports. “‘Our objective is to create conditions for Somalis to be able to live in Somalia and for Somali refugees, when they have the opportunity, to go back home safely,’ Guterres added,” the news agency notes. “Tens of thousands of Somalis have in recent months fled to camps in Ethiopia and Kenya due to the drought, the Horn of Africa’s worst in decades,” AFP writes (8/30).
Cell Phones Prove Useful In Tracking Disease Outbreaks
When a cholera outbreak began months after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, health workers used cell phones to help track the movements of people leaving the epicenter, allowing them “to alert medics to go where infected people might carry the disease,” according to a report published on Tuesday in PLoS Medicine, NPR’s health blog “Shots” reports. “The second wave of cases did appear exactly in the areas where most of the population was moving to … out of the cholera zone,” public health specialist Richard Garfield of Columbia University said, the blog notes. Health officials also used the phones to send health advice to Haitians over voice mail or text messaging, according to the blog (Joyce, 8/31).
