Latest KFF Health News Stories
Capsules: Donald Berwick On Turning 65, Enrolling In Medicare
He will be the first head of the health insurance program for seniors to be a beneficiary at the same time.
4th Circuit Appeals Court Rejects Virginia, Liberty University Challenges To Health Law
The Virginia case, brought by state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, was considered one of the highest profile challenges to the health law’s individual mandate. The appellate court also concluded that Liberty University’s challenge to the law should be dismissed.
Global Fund Facility Offering Subsidized Malaria Drugs ‘Could Do More Harm Than Good’
In this article in The American, a journal of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Roger Bate, the Legatum Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Richard Tren, director of Africa Fighting Malaria, write that the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria “launched a $225 million facility that offers subsidized malaria drugs …provid[ing] subsidies so that shops can sell relatively expensive drugs at low cost, thereby using the reach and power of markets to save lives,” they write, adding that the mechanism “is perverting the market for malaria drugs and could do more harm than good.” The authors call on Congress to examine the subsidy system, writing, “The United States is not funding the subsidy, but the subsidy is harming programs the United States is supporting. Understanding and then stopping wasteful spending decisions would save money and lives” (9/8).
Lift Restrictions On Abortion Under Helms Amendment As Applied To Rape Victims
Though President Barack Obama signed an executive order on his third day in office to “lif[t] the odious ‘global gag rule’ that denied federal money for family planning work abroad to any group that performed abortions or counseled about the procedure, even with its own money,” he left standing a policy that is “an overly restrictive interpretation of the [1973] Helms amendment.” The policy “imposes similar speech restrictions and bans using foreign aid money for abortions — even to save a woman’s life or in cases of rape in war zones like Congo, Sudan and Burma,” a New York Times editorial states.
Health Law Subject To Attack During GOP Presidential Debate
As candidates threw accusations at Democratic policies and each other, they didn’t always get the specifics right. Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney especially clashed on health policy issues. Meanwhile, Romney expressed his support for Medicaid block grants and Perry blamed the federal government for Texas’ high number of people without health insurance.
‘Super Committee’ Faces Big Challenges, Lots Of Input From Stakeholders
In order to lay out some specific options from which the panel might extract savings, House Ways and Means Democrats have provided a list of Medicare trims.
Washington Post Examines Conditions Within Mogadishu Hospital
The Washington Post looks at the conditions within Banadir Hospital in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. “The scenes … reflect the immense challenge facing this Horn of Africa nation, already besieged by multiple woes, from civil war to radical Islamist militants to a weak transitional government incapable of governing effectively, despite massive support from the United States and its allies,” the newspaper writes (Raghavan, 9/7).
U.N. Member States Must Face Health, Economic Impacts Of NCDs
In this Huffington Post opinion piece outlining many facts and statistics surrounding non-communicable diseases (NCDs) worldwide, Susan Blumenthal, public health editor of the Huffington Post and former assistant surgeon general, along with Katherine Warren and Lauren Macherelli, who previously worked at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, where Blumenthal is director of the health and medicine program, write, “The world is at a crossroads when it comes to the chronic disease epidemic and its enormous health and economic impacts.”
U.N. Member States Reach Tentative Agreement On NCD Declaration
U.N. member state representatives recently reached an agreement “on a political declaration document for the 19 September U.N. high-level meeting on the prevention and control of on non-communicable diseases (NCDs),” although the document is “somewhat watered down from an original version,” ScienceInsider reports (Reardon, 9/7). “The process has hit delays and setbacks, including resistance from some member countries to setting hard targets for reducing disease,” according to the PBS Newshour blog “The Rundown” (Miller, 9/7).
In this CSIS “Smart Global Health” blog post, J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president of CSIS and director of the Global Health Policy Center at CSIS, outlines “five key steps that the U.S. can take, in close partnership with South Africa, to reduce … risks and raise the prospects of success” as the countries undergo a transition in lead responsibilities from the U.S. to South Africa in their partnership against HIV/AIDS in South Africa, a transition that Morrison writes is “highly fraught with risks.”
In a report released Wednesday, New York-based Human Rights Watch “accused the United States government, the World Bank and other international donors of indirectly funding forced labor in Vietnam’s drug rehabilitation centers,” Inter Press Service reports. The report “said that Vietnam’s system of forced labor centers for people who use drugs has expanded over the last decade” and they “have been sustained by a variety of international donors, none of which has made objections,” the news service writes.
State Roundup: Calif. Hospitals Fined For Errors; Va. Dental Health Concerns
News outlets report on a variety of state health policy issues.
First ladies, health and finance ministers, and parliamentarians from 12 developing countries participating in the U.N. Population Fund’s (UNFPA) Global Programme to Enhance Reproductive Health Commodity Security, which was launched in 2007, declared at a U.N. meeting held on Wednesday that “voluntary family planning, secured by a steady supply of contraceptives, is a national priority for saving women’s lives,” the U.N. News Centre reports. “More than 215 million women in developing countries want to avoid or space pregnancies but are not using modern methods of contraception, according to the UNFPA,” the news service writes.
Rich Countries Watering Down NCD Commitments To Appease Multinational Companies
In this Sydney Morning Herald opinion piece, Boyd Swinburn, a professor and director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University in Australia, examines how “rich countries, … particularly the U.S. and European Union but also Australia, Canada and New Zealand, … are joining forces with tobacco, food, alcohol and pharmaceutical corporations to water down commitments that might flow from” this month’s U.N. High-level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in New York.
Cholera Epidemics Spread Through West And Central Africa Affecting Tens Of Thousands, OCHA Reports
“Cholera epidemics have hit tens of thousands of people and killed more than 1,400 others in seven West and Central African countries since the start of the year, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a report on Tuesday,” AlertNet reports. According to the news service, affected countries include Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Republic of Congo (Fominyen, 9/7). The Red Cross, which said the outbreak was spreading, expressed concern that it could hit refugee camps along the Sudanese border, according to Agence France-Presse (9/7).
Viewpoints: Lessons From Massachusetts?; FTC And ACOs; Arizona Partner Benefits
A selection of opinions from a variety of publications.
Cochrane Review Studies Quality-Oriented Payment Models
Medscape reports that the study’s authors found insufficient evidence to support or oppose payment approaches such as accountable care organizations or medical homes.
Medicare Fraud Dragnet Snares 91 Nationwide
In its continued health care fraud crackdown, the Obama administration announced Wednesday that charges were filed against 91 people in eight cities. These people are accused of bilking Medicare out of an estimated $300 million.
Feds Stop Brain Stent Stroke Study After Failures
The federal study found these stents actually did more harm than good and was abruptly stopped.
Seniors, Medicare Drug Coverage And The Doughnut Hole
A Kaiser Family Foundation study finds that fewer Medicare drug plan enrollees are hitting the coverage gap. Those who are in it, however, bought fewer drugs.
