Viewpoints: Birth Control Decision Fallout; Docs On Medi-Cal Reimbursement; Cutting Out Middlemen Insurers
A selection of opinions and editorials, mostly from California.
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A selection of opinions and editorials, mostly from California.
The state's hospitals will get $275 million more a year in Medicare payments because of a special provision inserted in the health law. Critical reactions are coming from both inside and outside of Massachusetts.
Michigan Republican lawmakers Dave Camp and Fred Upton endorsed their home state's request for a temporary waiver from the health law's medical-loss ratio requirement. Meanwhile, The Miami Herald asks if ACOs will be the next health care revolution.
USA Today reports that this gap is evident in an analysis of new Medicare data.
As states seek to find ways to curb costs in their Medicaid programs, many are getting opposition from patients and providers.
News outlets report on a variety of state health policy issues.
The campaign, which will be staged during Congress' August recess and is being advanced by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, will focus on 44 House Republicans and charge them with wanting to cut Medicare. Democrats hope this effort will be aided by the lines drawn during the debt-ceiling negotiations.
Though the initial phase of the debt deal doesn't include immediate provider cuts, analysts say the next phase - the work of the'super committee' - could make significant reductions in spending for entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. Even some elements of the health law and scientific research could be on the chopping block.
This week's studies come from Health Affairs, The Journal Of General Internal Medicine, The Journal Of Cancer Survivorship and The Annals Of Internal Medicine.
Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports that the cost of premiums for Medicare's prescription drug program won't rise in 2012.
"The famine gripping parts of southern Somalia has spread to three new areas of the country, with the entire south likely to be declared a famine zone within the next six weeks, the United Nations said on Wednesday," Reuters reports (Mohamed, 8/3).
"In recent years, nearly every demographic study has painted a dire picture of the world's changing demographics. Yet when the U.N. issued its latest report this past May, it seemed almost sunny," Jonathan Last, senior writer at the Weekly Standard, writes in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. He says that "[t]he catch is that it may not be true" because "the U.N. has had to make one very big assumption: Starting tomorrow, every country in the world with fertility below the replacement rate of 2.10 will increase its fertility. And this rise will continue unabated, year after year, until every First World country has a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) near replacement."
News outlets are reporting on how the next phase called for in the deficit plan will likely follow a rocky road, which could include broken promises on entitlements, danger for the health law and leave the health sector hoping for the lesser evil.
As potential candidates for the 'super committee' emerge on Capitol Hill, lobbyists are trying to figure out how to influence the panel's decisions and also are gearing up for major public relations campaigns. Health care interests are likely to be among the most active because they have a great deal at stake.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "triggered a political controversy last week when he implicitly declared that even human rights have a market price," Inter Press Service reports, noting Ban "admitted it is not acceptable that poor slum-dwellers pay five or even 10 times as much for their water as wealthy residents of the same cities."
"India's health minister announced Tuesday a new initiative underway to boost the country's rate of immunizing newborns by collecting mobile phone numbers of all pregnant mothers to monitor their babies' vaccinations," the Wall Street Journal's "India Real Time" blog reports.
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