Latest KFF Health News Stories
New York’s Beth Israel Hospital Admits To Inflating Medicare Fees
The hospital will pay $13 million for “fraudulently” inflating Medicare inpatient fees between 1998 and 2003 – a practice known as “turbocharging.”
States Consider Their Own Legislation Limiting Contraception Coverage, Abortion
Lawmakers in Mississippi, Arizona, Georgia, Texas and Florida are considering bills to limit contraception coverage or abortion.
Mayo Takes Over Ga. Health System
The Mayo Clinic gains a presence in Georgia, while hospital boards approve other mergers and acquisitions around the U.S. There’s also news about the debate over delivery of charity care by nonprofit hospitals in Illinois.
Gingrey: Outlook Dim For Long-Term Fix For Medicare’s SGR
Politico Pro reports the Rep. Phil Gringrey, R-Ga., a physician, predicted that, because of the congressional calendar and election-year politics, the most likely outcome to the medicare payment problem is a Band-Aid approach.
Republican presidential hopefuls Rick Santorum and Ron Paul launch new criticisms of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich – not to mention of each other.
A selection of opinions and editorials from around the U.S.
Funding Gaps Could Hinder Future Of Health Care In Africa, Report Says
The “improvement and extension of health care in Africa is … being constrained by gaps in financing,” according to a new report (.pdf) by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) based on research commissioned by Janssen Pharmaceutica, a Belgian subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, the Financial Times’ “beyondbrics” blog reports (Wheatley, 3/1). The report, titled “The Future of Healthcare in Africa,” “discusses the continent’s traditional health care issues, such as communicable diseases or financing health care in economically difficult circumstances” and “also addresses less well-known topics, such as the threat of obesity and heart disease, the use of mobile technology, development of more preventive care, and more,” according to the Janssen website (3/1). The report “identif[ies] the key trends shaping African health care systems” and uses them “to develop [five] scenarios that depict the possible health landscape on the continent in 2022,” a Janssen press release (.pdf) states (3/1).
“HIV organizations, researchers and activists have criticized the WHO and UNAIDS for not clearly communicating [guidelines on HIV and hormonal contraception] to African women, who remain the most affected by the continent’s high HIV prevalence rates,” PlusNews reports. In February, the WHO confirmed its existing recommendations after a study published last year suggested that using hormonal contraceptive injections might double the risk of women acquiring HIV or transmitting the virus to a male partner, according to the news service. “However, because the U.N. agency was unable to definitively rule out the possibility that progesterone-only birth-control shots like Depo-Provera posed no HIV risk, it is now strongly advising women at risk of or living with HIV to use condoms concurrently to prevent HIV infection or transmission,” PlusNews writes.
Sachs Says He Is ‘Eager For Challenge’ Of World Bank Presidency
The new president of the World Bank “should come to office understanding the realities of flooded villages, drought-ridden farms, desperate mothers hovering over comatose, malaria-infected children, and teenage girls unable to pay high school tuition. More than knowing these realities, and caring to end them, the bank president should understand their causes and interconnected solutions,” Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, writes in a Washington Post opinion piece. “My good fortune to see the world through the eyes of others, during 30 years working on some of the world’s most vexing problems, has helped me understand various regions’ challenges and the need for tailored solutions,” which is why “I am eager for this challenge” to lead the World Bank, he writes, advocating for his nomination to be considered for the position.
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about the Senate’s vote to reject an effort to expand exemptions to the Obama administration’s birth control coverage rule.
VOA Examines Constitutional Debate In Nigeria Over Government’s Right To Require Polio Vaccination
“A constitutional debate is under way in Nigeria over whether the government can prosecute parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated against polio, or if it has the power to force parents to have their children vaccinated against any communicable disease,” VOA News reports. “The debate comes on the heels of a resolution by the government of Nigeria’s northern Kano state to prosecute any parent who refuses to have their children receive the oral vaccine against the highly contagious disease,” the news service notes.
Research Roundup: The Push For Hospital Quality And Concerns About Disparities
This week’s studies come from the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, The American Journal Of Managed Care, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, The Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Senate Rejects Blunt Amendment
In a mainly party-line vote, the Senate rejected this amendment, offered by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., to an unrelated transportation bill. The amendment would have broadened religious exemptions to the Obama administration’s birth control rule. KHN offers a summary of news coverage since the vote.
Senate Set For Showdown On Obama Birth Control Rule
An amendment by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., which is scheduled for a Senate vote today, would allow employers and insurers to opt out of provisions in Obama’s health care law to which they object on religious or moral grounds.
House Subcommittee OKs IPAB Repeal
The House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee voted 17 to 5 to do away with a Medicare cost-cutting panel derided by Republicans as a “rationing board.”
Stateline reports that some GOP governors are moving very slowly on health insurance exchanges. Also in the news, a bill in the Georgia House would restore child-only plans.
WHO, PAHO Release New Guidelines On Mosquito-Borne Chikungunya Virus
The Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), a regional arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), on Tuesday “unveiled new guidelines to help countries throughout the Americas detect and prevent transmission of the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus — a disease which has already infected more than two million people around the world,” the U.N. News Centre reports. “The guidelines’ authors, PAHO adviser on viral diseases Otavio Oliva and PAHO adviser on dengue Jose Luis San Martin, warned that the fact that people in the Americas have not been exposed to chikungunya virus, placed the region at particular risk for the introduction and spread of the virus,” the news service adds (2/28).
Women Need More Contraception Options That Protect Against Pregnancy, HIV
In this Huffington Post “Black Voices” opinion piece, Vanessa Cullins, vice president for external medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, responds to an announcement by the WHO in February that the agency would not revise its contraception guidelines for women living with and at risk of HIV infection based on a “study suggesting that hormonal contraception increases women’s risk of [acquiring and] transmitting HIV to their partners.” A panel found “there was not enough evidence” to support women abandoning hormonal contraception and concluded there should be “no restrictions on hormonal contraception,” Cullins states.
Inexpensive Test, Treatment For Syphilis Could Save Nearly 1M Infants Annually
An inexpensive test and single-dose treatment could help save the lives of nearly one million infants annually if pregnant women in low-income countries were offered rapid tests for syphilis, experts from the Global Congenital Syphilis Partnership said on Thursday, Reuters reports. “A team of researchers led by Rosanna Peeling and David Mabey at the [London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)] found in a study due to be published soon that introducing rapid tests to increase access to syphilis screening was both feasible and cost effective,” the news agency writes.
March Issue Of WHO Bulletin Available Online
The March issue of the WHO Bulletin features an editorial on global shortages of medicines; a public health round-up; an article on breast cancer awareness; a research paper on interventions for the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa; and a paper on the global burden of cholera (March 2012).
