Latest KFF Health News Stories
An Even Bleaker Prognosis For Medicare?
Medicare Chief Actuary Richard Foster argues the program’s financial future is even bleaker than what the trustees suggest.
Under the slogan “Every Child Deserves a Fifth Birthday,” USAID on Monday launched a social media campaign featuring childhood photos of celebrities, global health leaders and lawmakers, with the aim of “build[ing] support to fight preventable deaths of children,” CQ HealthBeat reports. “‘By asking others to remember their own fifth birthdays, we want to remind people that more than seven million children each year never get the chance to celebrate that milestone,’ USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah said in a statement,” the news service writes, noting, “Children who reach age five are much more likely to become adults, experts say.” The article notes, “The campaign is a different tack for USAID, engaging the public as well as congressional leaders who decide the agency’s funding.” “The trend follows an attempt by the Obama administration, through its Global Health Initiative (GHI), to broaden and better coordinate U.S. global health policies, … addressing systemic health care problems in developing countries, rather than focusing primarily on individual diseases like HIV/AIDS or malaria,” CQ writes, noting, “Many advocates say that while the president’s [global health] plan is the right approach in terms of long-term international development,” it has “attracted tepid support from some lawmakers and has been dogged by the anti-spending environment in Congress.”
U.N. SG Ban Speaks About Need For Reproductive Health Care For Young People, Releases UNFPA Report
In remarks to the U.N. Commission on Population and Development, which on Monday opened a week-long session in New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon “stressed the need to provide reproductive health care for young people, as well as give them access to the necessary information and the means to protect themselves from sexual abuse and violence,” the U.N. News Centre reports. Ban “underlined the importance of combating HIV/AIDS among youth, lowering the rates of teenage pregnancies, and protecting children from early marriage” the news service writes (4/23). “In order to empower the youth of the world, said Ban, the international community must ensure that they have jobs and resources, including reproductive health care,” Xinhua/Mysinchew.com notes (4/23).
Speaking at a press conference at U.N. Headquarters ahead of World Malaria Day, observed Wednesday, a U.N. envoy on Monday called for “[a]n increase in collaboration and partnerships among donor and recipient countries … to boost efforts to prevent and treat malaria, … while also calling for an increase in funding to combat the deadly disease,” the U.N. News Centre reports. The U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Malaria Ray Chambers “said that although malaria deaths have declined significantly in recent years, there is still much to be done to reach the target of zero deaths by 2015, and countries would need to increase their coordination in addressing the issue,” the news service notes (4/23).
Global Health Council To Close Operations This Year
On Friday, the Board of Directors of the Global Health Council (GHC) announced “[w]ith deep regret, … that the Council will close operations within the coming months,” according to a statement on the organization’s homepage. “For the past four decades, the Council has been the neutral convening place for a diverse community of organizations, all advocating for improvement and equity in global health” and “working together to form broad-based coalitions to address challenges that affected us — whether advocating for increased U.S. government funding on global health or developing common positions on major health policy issues,” the statement says, concluding, “Although the Global Health Council will no longer play the same role, we will continue to fight for the goals that first inspired us to action” (4/20).
Report Examines Efforts To Move To Universal Health Coverage
The Council on Foreign Relations recently released a new report titled, “The New Global Health Agenda: Universal Health Coverage,” in which “authors Oren Ahoobim, Daniel Altman, Laurie Garrett, Vicky Hausman, and Yanzhong Huang discuss [a] rise in support for universal health coverage and the financial benefits that may be reaped by implementing such schemes, and provide examples of models used to date by countries in establishing universal health coverage,” according to the report summary (4/19).
Opinion Pieces Marking World Malaria Day Urge Sustainability In Prevention, Treatment Programs
Wednesday, April 25, marks World Malaria Day, which this year has the theme “Sustain Gains, Save Lives: Invest in Malaria.” The following opinion pieces address the fight against malaria.
“A senior Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives is asking more questions about how the U.S. government reviewed two controversial H5N1 avian influenza studies, and how it wrote a new policy for reviewing taxpayer-funded studies that might be used for good and evil,” ScienceInsider reports. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) on Monday “sent a letter [.pdf] to Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), asking him to clarify how the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) reached its recent decision to recommend publication of the two studies after recommending against publication late last year,” the news service writes, noting, “The letter also asks for more information on which government officials were involved” in the new policy regarding research that might be “dual use research of concern” (DURC).
Blog Posts Comment On Launch Of USAID’s ‘Every Child Deserves A Fifth Birthday’ Campaign
The following is a summary of several blog posts commenting on the launch of USAID’s “Every Child Deserves a Fifth Birthday” social media campaign by USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah at an event at the Kaiser Family Foundation on Monday.
5 Reasons Global Health Programs Should ‘Be Spared The Chopping Block’
“President Obama and his GOP challenger Mitt Romney have both prioritized deficit reduction, which, of course, is a worthy goal,” former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), chair of the non-profit Hope Through Healing Hands, writes in an opinion piece in The Week. “[M]any surveys put global health at the top of the list of things to slash. That’s a mistake,” he continues and lists five reasons why global health programs “ought to be spared the chopping block.”
The number of deaths from measles fell about 74 percent between 2000 and 2010, from slightly more than 535,000 in 2000 to an estimated 139,200 people worldwide in 2010, “missing an internationally agreed target for a 90 percent fall mainly because of low vaccine coverage in India and Africa where the virus kills tens of thousands a year,” Reuters reports. A study led by the WHO and involving researchers from Penn State University and the CDC, published on Tuesday in the Lancet, “found that despite rapid progress, regular measles outbreaks in Africa and slow implementation of disease control in India were major concerns and led to the target being missed,” the news agency writes (Kelland, 4/24). According to the Associated Press/Seattle Times, “the figures come with a big grain of salt [because] scientists only had solid data for 65 countries,” and “[f]or the 128 others, they used modeling to come up with their estimates” (Cheng, 4/23). “[E]xperts say increasing vaccination rates to above 95 percent worldwide and keeping them up is the only way to eradicate measles,” according to Reuters (4/24).
“Progress in eradicating malaria is jeopardized if programs to combat the disease are cut,” a study published in the Malaria Journal on Tuesday concluded, according to a BMJ news article. The study “looked at 75 documented cases of malaria resurgence worldwide since the 1930s” and “found that in 90 percent of the cases, resurgence was linked, in part, to weakening of malaria control programs,” the article states. “The study warns: ‘Today, the threat of resurgence again looms as constrained global funding and competing priorities threaten the sustainability of successes,'” and it “highlights brief increases in the incidence of malaria in some countries, including Rwanda and Zambia, as a matter for concern,” BMJ notes (Gulland, 4/24).
Trustees Say Medicare Will Be Solvent Until 2024, Urge Fixes
News outlets report on the predictions offered by the Medicare trustees, and examine the assumptions behind them as well as the political landscape.
What If? … The Health Law And Supreme Court Decision Scenarios
Depending on how the high court rules, its decision has potential to trigger a variety of changes — both in government health programs such as Medicare as well as in the private sector.
Survey: After Supreme Court Arguments, Public Still Divided On Health Law
The Kaiser Family Foundation’s tracking poll found that the oral arguments held last month before the high court raised awareness about the health law, but didn’t sway public opinion.
Capitol Hill Is Focus Of Disability Protests, Claims About Effects Of Health Care Law
The 2012 campaign is seeing charges – true and false – about what the health care law will do.
Veterans Wait As Long As 50 Days For Mental Health Services
An internal investigation by the Department of Veterans Affairs concluded that almost half of veterans who seek mental health care face waiting times in excess of those generally cited by the department.
Health System ‘Sticker Shock’ And Other Critiques
NPR reports on how one cancer specialist diagnoses the health system’s ills, while The Associated Press reports on how the costs for a common operation to remove the appendix ranged from $1,500 to $180,000 in one state.
State Medicaid Programs Scrutinized For Fraud
In Louisiana, Minnesota and elsewhere, officials are cracking down on Medicaid fraud.
