Latest KFF Health News Stories
Insurers Must Justify Double-Digit Rate Increases
Despite opposition from insurers, HHS finalizes a rule stipulating that health insurance premium increases greater than 10 percent will trigger scrutiny.
Kenyan HIV/AIDS Advocates Ask Government To Boost Health Funding
IRIN/PlusNews reports that hundreds of Kenyan HIV/AIDS advocates took to the streets of Nairobi on Wednesday “to demand that the government meet its commitment to increase annual health and HIV funding.”
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations include reports on an Obama adminstration rule for scrutinizing health insurance rate increases.
HHS Issues Finalized Health Insurance Rate Review Regulation
The rule’s effective date, which was initially slated for July, has been delayed until September.
Water Shortages Most Extreme In Middle East, African Regions, Report Says
“Water shortages are worst in Africa and the Middle East, and the hardest hit are nations in the Gulf, including Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, according to a study released Wednesday by risk analysis firm Maplecroft,” the Associated Press reports in an article examining the firm’s “Water Stress Index.”
OPINION: U.S. Administration Must Address Humanitarian Situation In Haiti
Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Donald Payne (D-N.J.), and Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) write in a Huffington Post opinion piece that the “increasing gravity of the situation” of internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Haiti “requires an urgent response. This is why we and 50 other members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking the U.S. administration to ‘take decisive action’ and ‘work with the incoming government of Haiti and the international community to ensure that the rights and vital needs of IDP communities are addressed in a timely and efficient manner. … In short, an already intolerable situation is about to get worse. Swift, efficient action is needed if we are to avoid another full-fledged humanitarian crisis” (5/17).
Bill To Expand Reproductive Health Services In The Philippines Introduced In Country’s Congress
A reproductive health bill introduced Tuesday in the House of Representatives in the Philippines “would require the government to provide information on family planning methods, make contraceptives available free of charge and introduce reproductive health and sexuality classes in schools,” the Associated Press/Seattle Times reports, noting the scope of controversy surrounding this issue.
African LGBT Advocates Warn Against Cutting Multilateral Aid To Uganda
At a World Bank panel discussion in Washington, D.C., on homophobia in developing countries, LGBT advocates from Africa expressed concern that if multilateral development organizations cut aid to Uganda in protest of attempts to make homosexual acts crimes punishable by death, the human rights situation for them could worsen, the Washington Blade reports.
New York Times Examines DDT Use In Uganda
“In the Apac region of Uganda, the United States focused on two conflicting agendas: developing organic farming and eradicating malaria, ultimately affecting the livelihoods of tens of thousands of farmers. … Now Uganda’s constitutional court is expected to hear a case brought by a Ugandan environmental organization against the government that asserts that officials failed to meet W.H.O. standards for using DDT, including failure to properly prepare the local population,” the New York Times writes in a story looking at the challenges associated with the use of DDT for malaria control in Uganda.
China’s HIV/AIDS-related mortality has dropped from 39.3 per 100 person-years in 2002 to 14.2 in 2009, or 64 percent, since the nation began providing free antiretroviral therapy (ART) in 2002, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and published online Wednesday in Lancet Infectious Diseases, the New York Times reports (McNeil, 5/18).
In a press briefing on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday “cited two major issues for the U.S.: the eradication of polio, as concerns remain in countries where the disease is endemic, such as Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan, with outbreaks in other nations, and maintaining the stocks of smallpox virus, which has already been eradicated,” Intellectual Property Watch reports.
Court Documents Detail Fed’s Case For The Individual Mandate
The federal government offered an aggressive defense of the new health law in a reply brief filed Wednesday in the multi-state challenge to the overhaul.
Dominican Republic Health Officials Raise Alerts About Possible Cholera Outbreaks
Health authorities have raised alerts in 17 “mainly poor” neighborhoods in the Dominican Republic capital of Santo Domingo after 16 people were hospitalized with suspected cholera, BBC News reports (5/17).
Health Care ‘Compact’ Advances; Some States Wrestle With Exchanges, MLR
States take a variety of steps regarding their roles in implementing the health law or trying to stop it.
Parliamentarians Issue Call For G8 Nations To Focus On Role Of Women In Development
Ahead of next week’s G8 summit in Deauville, France, “parliamentarians from 35 countries have issued a strong call for leaders of the world’s major economies to focus on the role of women and girls in development,” Inter Press Service reports.
Funding Shortages Mean WFP Will Stop Food Aid To Nearly 1 Million Nepalese
On Wednesday, the World Food Program (WFP) said “it does not have enough funds to continue flying supplies by helicopter to western Nepal, where road access is patchy and around a million people rely on U.N. food aid,” Agence France-Presse reports.
Viewpoints: Coburn On His Dropout; Malpractice Reform And States
A selection of viewpoints from around the nation.
Consumers, Employers Confronting Higher Health Care Costs
Meanwhile, an Associated Press poll finds that college graduates have been hit by the recession – and their health insurance coverage is one of the key indicators.
Study: Costs Get In Way of Cancer Patients Refilling Their Prescriptions
The findings, which were released Wednesday, came from the Journal of Oncology Practice and the American Journal of Managed Care.
