Latest KFF Health News Stories
The Top Cloud-Based EHRs; ‘Meaningful Use’ Compliance Slow
Health IT’s future, and who’s doing it best right now, make news as the national coordinator for health IT and former CMS head Donald Berwick weigh in on “meaningful use” compliance by clinicians across the country.
For A Family Of 4, Health Care Costs Can Top $20,000
A study by the benefits consultant group Milliman notes the average annual health care costs for a family of four are $20,728 — a 7 percent increase from last year.
HHS Launches Health System Management Project
This new online tool will enable consumers to search a variety of federal health care data sets to monitor how the health system is performing.
State Roundup: La. Panel Kills Health Exchange Plan
News outlets report on a variety of state health policy issues in California, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Oregon and Utah.
U.S. Bishops Make Official Their Opposition To Birth Control Mandate
The Catholic bishops said that, without quick congressional action, their organization will sue the Obama administration for requiring insurance plans to provide birth control to women without a co-pay.
Health Law’s Health Coverage Expansions Pose Logistical Challenges
Politico reports on how immigration status will play into this effort, and McClatchy notes the strain that will be felt by the physician workforce as a result of the across-the-board push to increase access to care.
Contraception Coverage Rule Ripples Through College Campuses
A fight over allowing HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius — a key player in creating a mandate to force student health plans to cover contraception — to speak at Georgetown’s graduation continues. In the meantime, a Catholic university in Ohio is ending its student health insurance plan instead of complying with the mandate.
Mass. Gov. Patrick: Cut Health Care Costs, Allow Government A Role
Patrick said he is confident the commonwealth can slow the growth of health care costs, although he did not endorse either of two proposals before the legislature. He also defended the effort to provide universal health care.
Workers OK Strike At 8 Minneapolis-St. Paul Hospitals Over Contract Dispute
About 91 percent of 3,500 workers at eight Minnesota hospitals have authorized a strike after the latest contract kerfuffle with officials, though they haven’t said if that strike will occur.
For Same-Sex Couples, Medicare, Federal Health Programs Problematic
These couples still face hurdles created by the Defense of Marriage Act.
VA Hospital Incident Adds To Questions About Nurse Skills
ProPublica reports on this incident at a Manhattan Veterans Affairs hospital.
A selection of editorials and opinions on health care policy from around the country.
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including the growing partisan faultlines regarding budget issues, including spending cuts and entitlement reforms.
Reuters Examines Use Of Statistics In Public Health Ahead Of WHO Report
“Above all else, analyzing the state of the world’s health — be it by looking at obesity rates, cancer cases, malaria deaths, or HIV-free births — requires decent statistics,” Reuters reports in an article examining the use of statistics in public health ahead of the WHO’s World Health Statistics report. “The year’s report, due on May 16, will give data on everything from rates of measles deaths around the world, to the percentage of women who have no access to contraception, to the number or psychiatrists one country has compared to another,” the news service writes. “But some recent high-profile disputes about some sets of data have focused a spotlight on the way the WHO collects its data and compiles its estimates,” it notes.
Policy Innovation Memorandum Examines Safety Of World Drug, Vaccine Supply
“The world is facing two immediate health crises concerning drugs and vaccines: affordable and reliable access to life-sparing medicines and the safety and reliability of those medicines,” Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), writes in the council’s Policy Innovation Memorandum No. 21, titled, “Ensuring the Safety and Integrity of the World’s Drug, Vaccine, and Medicines Supply.” According to the memorandum, “Unless this issue is addressed, millions more lives and the credibility of medicines and vaccines will be lost. The Groups of Eight (G8) and Twenty (G20) countries should take the lead, as a matter of urgency, in promoting cooperation among national safety regulators, tougher legal frameworks, and regional networks of surveillance and prosecution” (May 2012).
Center For Global Development Blog Post Examines Debate On Whether Health Is ‘Fungible’
In this post in the Center for Global Development’s (CGD) “Global Health Policy” blog, David Roodman, a research fellow at CGD, writes about “the debate on whether health is ‘fungible,’ i.e., whether giving money to governments to spend on health leads them to cut their own funding for [the] same, thereby effectively siphoning health aid into other uses.” He writes, “Two years ago, a team of authors mostly affiliated with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle concluded in the Lancet (gated) that health aid has been highly fungible,” but “two physician-scholars at Stanford have reanalyzed IHME’s data in PLoS Medicine (quite ungated) and judged the Lancet findings to be spuriously generated by bad and/or extreme data points.” Roodman notes that he is continuing to analyze data from both studies and plans to “get to the bottom of the latest research on health aid fungibility” (5/14).
Women’s Rights To Family Planning Should Not Be Controversial
“There should be #NoControversy about a woman’s right to plan when and how many children to have, to have the opportunity to improve her own health and that of her children, to educate her children and to grow her family’s economic productivity,” Gary Darmstadt, head of the family health division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Wendy Prosser, a research analyst with the family health division, write in this post in the foundation’s “Impatient Optimists” blog. The authors highlight a recent TEDxChange talk by Melinda Gates, co-chair of the foundation, in which “she addresses the issues surrounding birth control and how it is literally life-saving for millions of women and children around the world.” They continue, “But of course, any time politics, religion, and sex are intertwined, controversy tends to emerge,” and discuss several viewpoints that have emerged in media coverage of the issue (5/14).
With Limited Budget, Prioritizing Investments In Projects To Advance Human Welfare Is Critical
“If you had $75 billion to spend over the next four years and your goal was to advance human welfare, especially in the developing world, how could you get the most value for your money?” Bjorn Lomborg, an author and director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, asks in this opinion piece in Slate Magazine’s “Copenhagen Consensus 2012” section. “That is the question that I posed to a panel of five top economists, including four Nobel laureates, in the Copenhagen Consensus 2012 project,” he writes, noting, “The panel members were chosen for their expertise in prioritization and their ability to use economic principles to compare policy choices.”
Agreement On Voluntary Land Guidelines Shows Collaboration On Food Security Is Possible
“The endorsement of voluntary guidelines [.pdf] to improve the way countries govern access rights to land, fisheries and forest resources by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) on Friday marks a historic milestone not only for the way in which land tenure is managed, but also for international consensus-building,” Jose Graziano da Silva, director-general of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), writes in this post in the Guardian’s “Poverty Matters” blog. As the “eradication of hunger depends in large measure on how people, communities and others have access to, and manage, land, fisheries and forests,” and “weak governance of tenure hinders economic growth and the sustainable use of the environment,” the “voluntary guidelines on the responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests in the context of national food security set foundations that are indispensable to resolve these issues,” he argues.
FAO Committee On World Food Security Endorses Global Guidelines On ‘Land Grabbing’
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Committee on World Food Security (CFS) on Friday “endorsed a set of far-reaching global guidelines aimed at helping governments safeguard the rights of people to own or access land, forests and fisheries,” according to an FAO press release. “The new Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security outline principles and practices that governments can refer to when making laws and administering land, fisheries and forests rights,” the press release adds (5/11). “Giving poor and vulnerable people secure and equitable rights to access land and other natural resources is a key condition in the fight against hunger and poverty,” FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said, the U.N. News Centre notes (5/11).
