Latest KFF Health News Stories
Leaders Should Push For More Frontline Health Workers
“Innovation can transform a company, a culture, and even the world. But innovation doesn’t have to come in the form of a gadget. It can come in the form of a smiling neighbor knocking at a family’s door, toting some basic supplies and the skills to address matters of life and death,” Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation writes in a Huffington Post opinion piece.
Plans For New Hospital Outside Detroit Raise Questions
Developments in hospital news also include an analysis of Maryland’s success with rate regulation, the economic power of health care jobs in San Francisco and reports that a Mass. hospital system is launching a health plan.
House Members Launch First-Ever Bipartisan Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus
Democratic and Republican House members at a press briefing on Thursday formally introduced the first-ever bipartisan Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus, along with its funding proposals, the Washington Independent reports. Through the caucus, led by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), “59 Democrats and Republicans have united in pledging to spend more money for research and prevention efforts to combat the spread of AIDS domestically and worldwide,” according to the news service (Resnick, 9/15). “Prior to Thursday, similar groups in Congress contained only Democrats,” the Huffington Post notes (9/15). According to CQ HealthBeat, “the launch came as advocates also worry about the impact of actions by the deficit-cutting super-committee that could affect research, treatment and health care related to HIV/AIDS” (Norman, 9/15).
List Of Top-Performing Hospitals Includes Small And Rural Hospitals
The Joint Commission found that these facilities heading its list use evidence-based processes that are linked to positive patient outcomes, Medscape reports.
World Should Provide Funding For Peacekeeping Troops To Ensure Humanitarian Aid Routes In Somalia
With the retreat of the Islamist extremist group al-Shabab out of the Somali capital of Mogadishu, where famine is threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, “the U.N.-backed peacekeeping force can and should be quickly expanded,” according to Somalia’s prime minister and the U.N. envoy to the nation, in order to “allow the force to move out from the capital to secure routes for aid,” a Washington Post editorial states.
Viewpoints: Support For HPV Vaccinations; Compassion And GOP Debates
A diverse selection of opinions and editorials.
Medicaid Officials Push Florida, Reach Agreement ‘In Principle’ With Texas
Texas and Florida have requested waivers from the federal government to restructure their Medicaid programs.
Bioethicists Up The Ante In Bachmann’s HPV Brouhaha
Since Monday’s GOP presidential primary debate, Michele Bachmann, a Republican candidate, has been under the microscope for criticizing fellow GOP hopeful Rick Perry for his policy in Texas requiring girls to get the Gardisil vaccine against HPV. Now, a bioethicist in Pennsylvania has offered Bachmann $10,000 if she can prove her claim about the vaccine’s link to mental retardation and another has offered $1,000 if the mother Bachmann referred to will release her child’s medical records.
Perry Attacks Romney On Mass. Health Plan, Similarities To Obama
In a campaign swing through Iowa, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry drew distinctions between himself and Mitt Romney, another Republican presidential candidate, by highlighting the similarities between the federal health law and the Massachusetts health plan that became law while Romney was the state’s governor.
CLASS Act Criticism Continues, But New Report Sees ‘Fixes’
Though conventional wisdom and partisan positions suggest the program is fiscally “out of whack,” experts say there are multiple ways to try to make it more sound.
New York Times Examines International Response To Somali Famine
“Twenty years after the central government collapsed,” Somalia is facing drought, food insecurity and conflict larger in scale than when famine conditions hit the nation in the 1990s, “[a]nd given the world’s limited interest in a major intervention, that is not likely to change anytime soon,” the New York Times reports in a news analysis on the situation.
Medicare Advantage Premiums To Fall 4% In 2012
As premium costs fell, enrollment rose
MedPAC Prepares ‘Doc Fix’ Proposal With Full Cost Offset
The plan takes the commission into an area it generally tries to avoid: how to pay for such a major change to the Medicare system. Its suggestion is to pay for the SGR fix by reducing payments to specialists and imposing cuts on other parts of the health care sector.
Research Roundup: Personalized Info Helps Consumer Decision-Making
This week’s studies come from the National Bureau of Economic Research, Health Affairs, Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, The Archives of Internal Medicine, The Kaiser Family Foundation, Health Management Associates, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute.
State News: Study Finds Economy Hurt By Mass. Health Law
News outlets report on a variety of state health policy issues.
Increase In Hospital Births Helps Lower Neonatal Mortality Rate In China, Study Says
A campaign that began in 2000 encouraging women in China to give birth in hospitals instead of at home helped cut the nation’s neonatal mortality rate by 62 percent between 1996 and 2008, according to a study by researchers from Peking University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, BBC News reports. For the study, published Friday in the Lancet, researchers analyzed “data from China’s Maternal and Mortality Surveillance System to examine trends in neonatal mortality by cause and socioeconomic region,” the news service writes (9/15).
Afghanistan Facing Challenges In Effort To Eradicate Polio By End Of 2012
“Afghanistan is intensifying efforts to eradicate polio by the end of next year, but security remains a major challenge especially in the southern provinces where the virus is localized, says” Arshad Quddus, head of the WHO polio program in Afghanistan, IRIN reports. Polio remains endemic in Afghanistan, according to the WHO, IRIN notes, adding that Afghan “[g]overnment data show that 85 percent of the population now live in polio-free areas, but the virus is still circulating in 13 districts, including the seven where [13] recent cases have been detected.” In addition to security issues, “low literacy rates, poor hygiene practices and low awareness of the benefits of vaccination” are hindering campaigns, according to IRIN (9/15).
U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Chad Thomas Gurtner “says Chad faces daunting food security and health challenges” but that “peace and growing stability in Chad bodes well for the country’s future,” VOA News reports. He cited high rates of food insecurity and malnutrition among children, “insufficient rainfall” that likely will “limit agricultural production,” rising food prices, the “worst cholera epidemic in years,” and the return home of more than 80,000 Chadian migrants who were working in Libya and sending money home to their families, the news service notes.
First Edition: September 16, 2011
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports that, despite dire predictions by health law opponents about the Medicare Advantage program, its premiums are falling and its enrollment is rising.
Public Confidence At Stake In Deficit Panel Deliberations
Meanwhile, media outlets consider whether the ‘super committee’ will ultimately opt to go for a “grand bargain.”
