Latest KFF Health News Stories
Budgeting Makes It Hard To Revamp Health Law’s Long-Term-Care Act
AP calls the CLASS Act “zombie” because though the program hasn’t begun, “premiums the government may never collect count” as reducing the deficit. And, the Philadelphia Inquirer looks at a program to train health care professionals to deliver better care.
IOM: Cost Key To Formulating Essential Benefits Package
In its 297-page report, the Institute of Medicine recommended that cost should be a factor in deciding what benefits will be included in plans sold on the health law’s new insurance exchanges.
Task Force Panel Will Urge Men To Skip Prostate Screening, Reports Say
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is scheduled to issue this recommendation on Tuesday, but advance press reports indicate the expert panel will urge the federal government to change its current position to recommend that men under age 75 forgo this widely used test.
AlertNet Footage Shows Scenes Of Food Shortages In North Korea, Says Appeals For Aid Go Unanswered
“Footage of malnourished North Korean orphans and official warnings over failed harvests have given a rare glimpse at the scale of devastating food shortages in the country following a harsh winter and widespread flooding,” the Guardian reports. “The World Food Programme (WFP) … estimated in March that a quarter of the country’s 24 million inhabitants needed food aid and that a third of children were chronically malnourished” and “has warned it has only 30 percent of the funding it needs for its relief operation, which targets 3.5 million of North Korea’s most vulnerable citizens,” the newspaper writes.
WellPoint Is Awarded Medicare-Medicaid Contract
This managed care provider, along with many of its competitors, has been working to diversify its business beyond the employer-sponsored insurance market.
Healthy People: Nation’s Overall Health Improves, But Disparities Persist
Minorities and low-income groups continue to be less likely to have a regular source of medical care, despite a decade of efforts to reverse this circumstance.
Indonesia’s Infant Mortality Rate Has Declined, But Health Services Must Be Improved, Official Says
UNICEF representative for Indonesia Angela Kearney said at a workshop on household to hospital continuum care on Thursday that although Indonesia’s infant mortality rate showed a downward trend in the past few years, it is still high, Xinhua reports. “Based on a UNICEF global child mortality report, over the past 10 years infant mortality rate declined significantly to 35 out of every 1,000 births in 2011 from 97 out of every 1,000 births in 1991, she said,” according to the news service.
IPS Examines The Issue Of Gender-Based Violence Against Women Fleeing Somalia For Dadaab
Inter Press Service examines the issue of gender-based violence (GBV) against women as they make the journey from their homes in Somalia to Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp in search of food aid and refuge, calling it a “hidden side” of the famine crisis in the Horn of Africa. “So far, only 30 cases of rape were reported between January and July 2011 according to the UNHCR at Dadaab,” IPS writes, adding, “But medical experts at the camp say that this is a small fraction of a huge problem faced by women” because many do not report instances of rape out of fear they will be blamed by family members and rejected from the community (Esipisu, 10/5).
Many Cancer Screenings May Be Unnecessary
Cancer screenings are vastly overused in the U.S., according to an investigation by The Center for Public Integrity and iWatch News.
Cuomo Aides Pressed NYC To Support Medicaid Deal
The Bloomberg administration was reluctant to agree to execute a deal brokered by state officials and a powerful union, The Wall Street Journal reports. In other Medicaid news, Kansas officials describe efforts to revamp its program, and Wisconsin boosts a campaign against fraud.
MedPAC Approves Draft Proposal To Junk Medicare’s Physician Pay Formula
The MedPAC plan, which relies on cuts to provider reimbursements to offset its proposal, has drawn opposition from physician groups and other provider organizations, which argue the approach would impact patients’ access to care.
Huffington Post Profiles UNITAID Chair
The Huffington Post profiles Philippe Douste-Blazy, U.N. under-secretary-general of Innovative Financing for Development and chair of UNITAID, a financing mechanism he conceived in 2004 to help provide medicines for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria in developing countries. The article discusses Douste-Blazy’s work and background, UNITAID, and other innovative financing schemes (Lines, 10/6).
DfID’s Reduction In Bilateral AIDS Spending May Increase Need For Funding Later
In a letter to the Guardian in response to the news that the U.K. Department for International Development (DfID) plans to cut bilateral aid for HIV/AIDS by nearly one-third, Nathan Ford, medical coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres, writes that the agency’s decision “comes at a critical moment,” after “[v]arious studies published in the past year have shown widespread access to treatment and prevention can dramatically cut HIV/AIDS transmission, and allow for consideration of an end to the epidemic.”
MSF Calls On Brazilian Government To Step Up Production Of Only Drug For Chagas Disease
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has called on the Brazilian government “to ensure its state-owned drug company steps up production of the only drug for Chagas disease, which affects 10 million people in Latin America,” Guardian Health Editor Sarah Boseley writes in her “Global Health Blog” (10/6). “Thousands of people with Chagas disease will go untreated in coming months due to a shortage of benznidazole, the first-line drug used in most endemic countries,” according to a MSF press release and a related article published by the organization. According to the press release, MSF has stopped diagnosing Chagas in Paraguay and has suspended new projects in endemic areas of Bolivia due to the shortage (10/5).
News Highlights: Brewer Defends Request For Exchange Funds
News outlets report on a variety of state health policy issues.
