Latest KFF Health News Stories
Obama To Issue Order To Address Medicine Shortages
President Barack Obama is scheduled to issue an executive order Monday to help resolve a number of shortages related to vital medications.
First Edition: October 31, 2011
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about a key medical group’s take on accountable care organizations and how a “merger wave” is hitting the health care sector.
Weighing The Cost And Benefits Of Screenings and MRIs
The New York Times offers two stories examining medical advances that help find disease and injuries and whether that has improved health or increased health costs.
Parties Still Far Apart As Deficit Panel Eyes Benefits, Taxes
Media outlets report on Capitol Hill reactions to the super committee proposals and counter-proposals that surfaced this week. For instance, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, gave his “most pessimistic” take to date on whether the panel would be able to offer recommendations by Thanksgiving on how to reach the deficit-reduction target.
New KFF Poll Finds Dwindling Democratic Support For Health Law
The overhaul’s popularity reached an all-time low this month, a change that was driven by eroding confidence among Democrats, according to a new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Targets For Somalia Aid Likely To Be Missed In 2011, U.N. Draft Report Says
“Despite a massive increase in humanitarian operations and international funding since famine was formally declared 100 days ago, the relief effort in Somalia is expected to miss almost all its key targets for 2011, a draft United Nations report reveals,” the Guardian reports, adding, “[m]alnutrition rates have more than doubled, less than 60 percent of the 3.7 million people targeted have received monthly food assistance, and only 58 percent of a targeted 1.2 million people received critical non-food aid items.”
Food Aid Vouchers Are Faster, Cheaper Alternative Than Shipping Food Aid Abroad
In this New York Times opinion piece, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tina Rosenberg reports on the use of food vouchers by some aid organizations in Somalia, highlighting the efforts of World Concern, “a Seattle-based Christian humanitarian group, and its Somali partner, the African Rescue Committee, [which] provide 1,800 families every two weeks with rice, beans, cooking oil, salt and sugar for their tea.”
Advocates Call For Supplementary Budget To Address Shortage Of Health Workers, Midwives In Uganda
“The shortage of health workers in Uganda is a ‘crisis,’ says the Minister of Health, and activists say expectant mothers are bearing the brunt of the country’s staffing deficiency,” IRIN reports. “Just 56 percent of Uganda’s available health positions are filled,” the news service writes, adding, “A parliamentary committee’s recent attempt to redirect 75 billion Ugandan shillings — about US$27.5 million — out of a national budget of more than 10 trillion shillings ($3.6 billion) towards hiring enough health workers was rebuffed in September.”
State Highlights: Wash. Gov. Announces More Budget Cuts
News outlets examine health policy issues around the country.
“Tanzania is to become the first country in the world to move exclusively to using syringes that self-destruct after a British entrepreneur played the health minister undercover footage of children being injected with used needles,” the Guardian reports. “Marc Koska, the designer of an auto-disable syringe and founder of a charity called Safe-Point,” who went to the Tanzanian government with the video, “hopes to persuade four other countries in east Africa to follow suit — Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda — before he takes on the rest of the world,” the newspaper writes.
Seeking A Broad Scientific Consensus On Disease Eradication
In a SciDev.Net letter to the editor, Rashid Zargar from the Centre of Research for Development at the University of Kashmir, responds to an editorial published by the news service last week in which editor David Dickson suggested that “focusing on the science and technology required to eliminate a disease, rather than just control it, can pay off.” Zargar writes, “Dickson offers an in-depth perspective on disease eradication, and he is correct in saying that eradication strategies, though important, will be challenging.” However, he adds, “Ecologists may have reservations about the idea of eradicating a disease, which stem from the belief that mechanisms already exist in nature to maintain ecological balance and the co-existence of living organisms.”
Some Experts Question Early Release Of RTS,S Malaria Vaccine Trial Data
Nature News reports on last week’s announcement of preliminary results from a large clinical trial testing the efficacy of GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) RTS,S malaria vaccine, writing that while media coverage of the announcement touted it as a “big breakthrough in the long campaign to create a malaria vaccine,” “several leading vaccine researchers, who are critical of the unusual decision to publish partial trial data, argue that the results raise questions about whether the RTS,S/AS01 candidate vaccine can actually win approval.” According to Nature, low rates of protection suggested by the results and “the frequency of serious adverse events, such as convulsions and meningitis,” have added to speculation about the vaccine.
Feds Make Arrests in $18 Million Medicare And Medicaid Scam
The alleged fraud was based on an “elaborate” prescription drug scheme that invovled a physician, a pharmacist and 15 others and included the recruitment of veterans, homeless people, poor people and the elderly.
Obama Ahead In Campaign Cash Race
The National Journal reports that President Barack Obama is outpacing the GOP candidates in fundraising from the health industry. Meanwhile, in other campaign news, the abortion issue pops up again in the GOP presidential primary race and also in a congressional campaign.
State Spending On Medicaid Skyrockets, Further Straining State Budgets
A 50-state survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that state spending on Medicaid will increase 29 percent this year.
House Votes To Fix Medicaid Glitch
The House easily passed legislation that would fix a Medicaid “glitch” created by the health law that would have allowed up to 3 million middle-class couples earning as much as $64,000 onto the already struggling Medicaid rolls starting in 2014. The House also voted to adjust a definition that determines eligibility for certain health care programs.
“United Nations officials [on Thursday] called for concerted efforts to ensure the world’s fast-growing population has enough food, stressing that global food production will have to double by 2050 when the planet is expected to host one billion inhabitants,” according to the U.N. News Centre. “Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed that guaranteeing sustainable food and nutrition security for all will require the full engagement of governments and the private sector” and “said he was encouraged by the renewed political interest in food security, including the prominence that is being given to the issue by the Group of 20 of the world’s largest economies,” the news service adds (10/27).
