Latest KFF Health News Stories
Viewpoints: Recession’s Effect On Health Spending; The Flaws In Raising Medicare Eligibility Age
A selection of editorials and opinions on health care policy from around the country.
Patient Advocates Seek More Time To Weigh In On Essential Benefit Rules
A group of 75 patient organizations has asked the Department of Health and Human Services to extend the comment period, which now has a Jan. 31 deadline, until March 15. They note that the design of “essential benefits” will impact the entire health system and an estimated 70 million patients.
Longer Looks: Politicians Play Whac-A-Mole With Medicare
Today’s selections includes articles from The Washington Post Magazine, Columbia Journalism Review, Slate, Reason and American Medical News.
Promoting New Investments In Global Health Workforce
In this post in the Public Health Institute’s (PHI) “Dialogue4Health” blog, Jeff Meer, director of PHI’s Washington-based advocacy on global health, reports on the Frontline Health Workers Coalition, launched Wednesday, which is “developing support for new investments in the global health workforce, particularly those working at the community level who are the first and often the only link to health care for millions of people.” He outlines the Coalition’s targets and quotes a number of officials indicating “that the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress are coming to adopt the same view” (1/11).
Suing Others For Spread Of Disease Ignores Dynamics Of Infectious Disease
In this post in the Center for Global Development’s (CGD) “Global Health Policy” blog, Victoria Fan, a research fellow at the CGD, and Richard Cash, senior lecturer on global health at the Harvard School of Public Health’s Department of Global Health and Population, report on a lawsuit brought forth against the U.N. on behalf of some of Haiti’s 15,000 cholera victims, writing that “the thought of suing the ‘sending’ government — Mexico for H1N1, India for polio, etc. — for the spread of these diseases seems absurd because it does not recognize the dynamics of infectious diseases” (1/11).
Ghana Likely To Meet MDGs, Development Economist Jeffrey Sachs Says
After visiting Ghana on a recent tour to examine poverty reduction strategies and progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and “one of the world’s most prominent development economists, says Ghana is proving to be one of the strongest performers on the [MDGs] in Africa and unlike some of its African counterparts is likely to fulfill them by the 2015 deadline,” the Christian Science Monitor reports. Ghana “has been investing for a long time in health and education, gender and equality, and it has made a lot of progress. But there are parts of Ghana that are extremely poor and really need a lot of accelerated investments,” Sachs told the Christian Science Monitor during an interview in Accra, according to the news service.
SciDev.Net Reports On International Forum On Development Aid Models To Take Place In April
SciDev.Net reports on Forum 2012, an international meeting to take place in Cape Town, South Africa, in April, which “aims to shake up donor-recipient relations in a quest for more enduring health gains.” The meeting, themed “Beyond Aid,” “will consider a funding model in which poor countries develop their own contracts and partnerships, and use their own resources, and how donors can support that model rather than just provide development aid,” the news service writes.
WHO To Convene Meeting On Yaws Eradication Efforts Based On Study Of Oral Treatment
“Findings that a one-time oral treatment to cure yaws, a neglected tropical disease, is as effective as the currently recommended penicillin injection have prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to convene a meeting on how the disease may be wiped out,” IRIN reports. “‘We may be closer now than we have been in decades,’ Kingsley Asiedu, a yaws expert with WHO’s Department of Neglected Tropical Disease Control, told IRIN, calling the study on the bacterial skin disease, which leads to chronic disfiguration and disability in 10 percent of untreated cases, the most significant in half a century,” the news service writes.
Wildlife Products Smuggled Into U.S. Pose Potential Human Health Risk, Study Suggests
“In a new study published on Tuesday in the journal PLoS One, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the EcoHealth Alliance, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other institutions reported on the first effort to identify new viruses in wildlife products that had been smuggled illegally into the U.S.,” TIME’s “Ecocentric” blog reports (Walsh, 1/11). According to BBC News, retroviruses and herpesviruses were identified in meats confiscated at U.S. airports, “some of them isolated from remains of endangered monkey species,” and the “authors say better surveillance measures are needed to ensure this trade does not result in the emergence of new disease outbreaks in humans” (1/11).
“Unless steps are taken to eliminate cholera from Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic, the disease will likely resurge and could even spread to other parts of the Caribbean, international health officials said Wednesday,” CQ HealthBeat reports (Bristol, 1/11). Officials from the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), UNICEF and the CDC “said they would join with the Haitian and Dominican governments to develop a plan to eradicate cholera from the island the two countries share by extending clean water and sanitation to stricken areas,” Reuters writes, adding, “The effort faces a daunting financial challenge if it is to meet a goal of reaching at least two-thirds of the Haitian population by 2015, a task that could cost $1.1 billion” (Morgan, 1/12).
Bangladesh Works To Vaccinate 500K Children Against Polio In Annual Immunization Drive
“Mobile health teams in Bangladesh are conducting ‘child-to-child’ searches to reach the remaining half million children not vaccinated during a nationwide polio immunization campaign launched on 7 January,” IRIN reports. With a goal of vaccinating 22 million children, health workers are heading into hard-to-reach and high-risk areas to vaccinate the remaining 560,791 children, the news service writes. “Since a polio outbreak in 2006 of an imported viral strain, the government has not reported any infections, pledging annual polio vaccinations until [neighboring] India is declared polio-free,” IRIN notes, adding the next round of polio vaccinations in Bangladesh is scheduled for February 11 (1/11).
Nature interviews Amy Patterson, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Science Policy, which administers the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), about the board’s decision in December to advise against full publication of “two papers on avian flu (H5N1) [that] could pose a biosecurity risk if published in their entirety.” Patterson discusses the efforts of the board and the “international flu community” to “develop a mechanism by which important details from the papers could be withheld from the general public while remaining accessible to public health officials and researchers studying the virus,” Nature writes (Ledford, 1/11).
India Marking Health Achievement In Polio-Free Year But Cautious Optimism Remains Among Some Experts
“On Friday, India marks a huge public health milestone — a year since a case of polio was found in the country — a critical step in being declared polio-free and an achievement that many experts long argued was impossible,” the Globe and Mail reports (Nolen, 1/11). “The achievement gives a major morale boost to health advocates and donors who had begun to lose hope of ever defeating the stubborn disease that the world had promised to eradicate by 2000,” the Associated Press/Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes (Nessman, 1/12).
First Edition: January 12, 2011
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including news about the high court’s consideration of how the medical leave law applies to state government workers and reports from the GOP presidential primary campaign trail.
States File Brief Against Health Law’s Medicaid Expansion
In a brief filed Tuesday, the 26 states that are involved in a challenge to the health law argued the measure’s Medicaid expansion is “unconstitutional coercion” and linked it to the individual mandate.
Raising Medicare’s Eligibility Age Would Save Money, But Also Shift Costs
A new Congressional Budget Office estimate found the federal government could save $148 billion over 10 years by gradually increasing the Medicare age to 67.
Food Security Remains High-Level Priority In 2012
In this post in the Department of State’s “DipNote” blog, Jonathan Shrier, acting special representative for global food security, reflects on food security issues and accomplishments in 2011, writing, “These efforts leave us well situated in 2012 to lead the [L’Aquila Food Security Initiative (AFSI)] group, which aims to strengthen mutual accountability among participating governments in meeting food security commitments. … Ultimately, our goal is to ensure that food security remains a high-level global priority through the U.S. presidency of the G8 and beyond” (1/10).
Trends In Compulsory Licensing Of Pharmaceuticals Since Doha Declaration
In this PLoS Medicine research article, Reed Beall and Randall Kuhn of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver provide an analysis of trends in compulsory licensing (CL) of pharmaceuticals since the Doha Declaration. “Almost 10 years after the Doha Declaration, we examined the subsequent occurrence of CL episodes, an important direct indicator of treaty impact,” they write. Given that “compulsory licensing activity has diminished greatly since 2006, … the researchers conclude, health advocates who pushed for the Doha Declaration reforms have had little success in engaging trade as a positive, proactive force for addressing health gaps,” according to the article’s Editors’ Summary (1/10).
Investing In Frontline Health Workers Effective In Saving Lives Of Mothers, Children
In the Huffington Post’s “Impact” blog, Carolyn Miles, president and CEO of Save the Children, writes about the Frontline Health Workers Coalition’s call on the U.S. government to train 250,000 new frontline health workers in developing countries, stating, “At a time when every dollar counts more than ever, the new Frontline Health Workers Coalition believes this focus is the most cost-effective way to save mothers’ and children’s lives around the world, address global health threats, and help advance strategic U.S. interests in a secure and prosperous world.”
State Roundup: Ga. Moves To Keep Docs; Ore. Health Plan Could Save $3.2B
A selection of health policy stories from around the U.S.
