Latest KFF Health News Stories
Governments Target Contract Workers; Eye Millions Lost In Payroll Taxes, Health Benefits
The Washington Post reports the federal government and states are targeting employers who treat workers as contractors are causing significant financial losses.
Issues That Can Drive Physicians To Quit
One news article details the reasons that drove a primary care physician to quit. Meanwhile, the American Medical Association is launching a media campaign to permanently fix the formula that is used to calculate Medicare payments to doctors.
Arrangements Between Doctors, Medical Device Makers Raise Questions
The Wall Street Journal reports on how such arrangments sometimes create an incentive for surgeons to do more operations, which raises quality issues and health care costs.
First Edition: October 10, 2011
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about the ‘super committee’s’ moving parts and how the fate of the health law may be determined by what happens in 2012.
Advocates Prepare For Battle On PSA Testing; Insurers Review Options
A government panel’s recommendation that healthy men not get a blood test that screens for prostate cancer raises concerns and questions for patients, doctors and insurers.
Budgeting Makes It Hard To Revamp Health Law’s Long-Term-Care Act
AP calls the CLASS Act “zombie” because though the program hasn’t begun, “premiums the government may never collect count” as reducing the deficit. And, the Philadelphia Inquirer looks at a program to train health care professionals to deliver better care.
IOM: Cost Key To Formulating Essential Benefits Package
In its 297-page report, the Institute of Medicine recommended that cost should be a factor in deciding what benefits will be included in plans sold on the health law’s new insurance exchanges.
Task Force Panel Will Urge Men To Skip Prostate Screening, Reports Say
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is scheduled to issue this recommendation on Tuesday, but advance press reports indicate the expert panel will urge the federal government to change its current position to recommend that men under age 75 forgo this widely used test.
AlertNet Footage Shows Scenes Of Food Shortages In North Korea, Says Appeals For Aid Go Unanswered
“Footage of malnourished North Korean orphans and official warnings over failed harvests have given a rare glimpse at the scale of devastating food shortages in the country following a harsh winter and widespread flooding,” the Guardian reports. “The World Food Programme (WFP) … estimated in March that a quarter of the country’s 24 million inhabitants needed food aid and that a third of children were chronically malnourished” and “has warned it has only 30 percent of the funding it needs for its relief operation, which targets 3.5 million of North Korea’s most vulnerable citizens,” the newspaper writes.
WellPoint Is Awarded Medicare-Medicaid Contract
This managed care provider, along with many of its competitors, has been working to diversify its business beyond the employer-sponsored insurance market.
Healthy People: Nation’s Overall Health Improves, But Disparities Persist
Minorities and low-income groups continue to be less likely to have a regular source of medical care, despite a decade of efforts to reverse this circumstance.
Indonesia’s Infant Mortality Rate Has Declined, But Health Services Must Be Improved, Official Says
UNICEF representative for Indonesia Angela Kearney said at a workshop on household to hospital continuum care on Thursday that although Indonesia’s infant mortality rate showed a downward trend in the past few years, it is still high, Xinhua reports. “Based on a UNICEF global child mortality report, over the past 10 years infant mortality rate declined significantly to 35 out of every 1,000 births in 2011 from 97 out of every 1,000 births in 1991, she said,” according to the news service.
IPS Examines The Issue Of Gender-Based Violence Against Women Fleeing Somalia For Dadaab
Inter Press Service examines the issue of gender-based violence (GBV) against women as they make the journey from their homes in Somalia to Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp in search of food aid and refuge, calling it a “hidden side” of the famine crisis in the Horn of Africa. “So far, only 30 cases of rape were reported between January and July 2011 according to the UNHCR at Dadaab,” IPS writes, adding, “But medical experts at the camp say that this is a small fraction of a huge problem faced by women” because many do not report instances of rape out of fear they will be blamed by family members and rejected from the community (Esipisu, 10/5).
Many Cancer Screenings May Be Unnecessary
Cancer screenings are vastly overused in the U.S., according to an investigation by The Center for Public Integrity and iWatch News.
Cuomo Aides Pressed NYC To Support Medicaid Deal
The Bloomberg administration was reluctant to agree to execute a deal brokered by state officials and a powerful union, The Wall Street Journal reports. In other Medicaid news, Kansas officials describe efforts to revamp its program, and Wisconsin boosts a campaign against fraud.
