Archives: Morning Breakouts

Too often patients who thought they had all the right approvals from their insurers get hit with surprise bills for out-of-network medical costs, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says in a report that calls on insurers, doctors and hospitals to help craft reforms (Appleby, 3/8).

Illinois' largest hospital system and biggest health insurer agreed in late 2010 to form an accountable care organization, a network in which the organizations would cooperate to boost quality and restrain cost increases, sharing in any savings. Now, with six months of operating data in hand, they are finding spending reductions that are greater than those for patients outside the network (Hancock, 3/8).

Later this month, just as the Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the 2010 health law, the House is expected to pass a measure that would repeal an advisory board created in the law to curb Medicare spending if it exceeds specific targets. But the debate is not shaping up like the usual House legislative fight over the law. Some key Democrats also want the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) gone (Carey, 3/8).

Inter Press Service has published a two-part series, made possible with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism in Haiti, examining sanitation services in Haiti since the earthquake in 2010. The first article looks at the installation of mobile toilets in displaced persons camps following the earthquake, and says that as relief organizations pull out of the country, the toilets are being removed or left to overflow (Jerome/Daudier, 3/7).

"HIV incidence among non-Muslim men has decreased with greater uptake of voluntary medical male circumcision (MMC) in Uganda, according to data presented Tuesday" by Ronald Gray of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Seattle, HIV Medicine Association Executive Director Andrea Weddle writes in this guest post on the Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" blog. In the same session, Bertran Auvert of the University of Versailles "reported on a trial on MMC in the Orange Farm Township in South Africa among 110,000 adults" that found MMC prevalence has risen from about 11 percent among males ages 15 to 49 in 2008 to about 59 percent now, according to the blog (Mazzotta, 3/7).

"In an attempt to assess the impact of U.S. international assistance for AIDS, researchers from Stanford University carried out a review of the relationship between U.S. support provided through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and adult mortality in PEPFAR focus countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and whether there were differences in outcome between these countries and other African countries which did not receive PEPFAR support," NAM's Aidsmap reports (Alcorn, 3/8). Presenting the results at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Seattle on Wednesday, Eran Bendavid said "[s]tatistical analysis found that adults living in focus countries between 2004 and 2008 had about a 20 percent lower odds of mortality compared to adults in non-focus countries," the Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" writes, adding, "Evidence for unintended health effects with respect to adult mortality is inconclusive, Bendavid said, but the likelihood of PEPFAR interventions eliciting unintended harms is low" (Mazzotta, 3/7).

At the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) on Wednesday, Gabriel Chamie of the University of California, San Francisco "discussed outcomes in a routine linkage-to-care strategy versus and an enhanced strategy for accelerated antiretroviral therapy (ART) start in rural Uganda," the Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" blog reports. In the study, a higher percentage of people who were offered the enhanced strategy received follow-up care, began ART, and remained in care, and "Chamie highlighted the need for enhanced linkage to care efforts for patients at all CD4 cell counts," according to the blog (Mazzotta, 3/7).

"While PEPFAR and the Global Health Initiative (GHI) have dominated the global health community's attention over the past few years, the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) has largely flown under the radar," Rachel Silverman, a research assistant for Center for Global Development's (CGD) global health team, and Victoria Fan, a research fellow at CGD, write in this post in the CGD's "Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Blog." They add, "But just this month, the PMI released the results of an external evaluation which confirms what we've long suspected: PMI is doing a remarkably good job and generating 'value for money' in U.S. global health efforts" (3/7).

In the first part of a two-part series in the Center for Strategic & International Studies' (CSIS) "Smart Global Health" blog, Alisha Kramer, an intern with the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, and Matt Fisher, project coordinator of the CSIS Project on Global Water Policy and a research assistant at the Global Health Policy Center, provide a brief history of Haiti's cholera outbreak, noting, "Ultimately, by the end of 2011, the outbreak had resulted in over 500,000 infections and 7,000 deaths" (3/6). In the second part, the authors recap the international response to the outbreak, writing, "Despite its physical devastation, the Haitian Ministry of Public Health and Population -- aided by PAHO, the CDC, USAID, and other non-governmental organizations -- responded relatively well to the cholera outbreak; the low case-fatality ratio supports this view" (3/7).

A report (.pdf) published on Wednesday by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) -- titled "U.S. Global Health Policy in Palestinian Hands?" and written by J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president and director of the Global Health Policy Center at CSIS, and Haim Malka, senior fellow and deputy director of the CSIS Middle East Program -- examines the relationship between Palestine's bid for statehood and potential membership in U.N. bodies -- including the WHO -- and U.S. global health policy, according to the report summary. CSIS writes on its website, "Under current U.S. laws, such a decision by the Palestinians would trigger an automatic disruption to the United States' assessed and voluntary contributions to WHO, with no waiver provisions" (3/7).

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has signed a contentious bill mandating women who want an abortion get an ultrasound before the procedure.