Latest KFF Health News Stories
Viewpoints: Mixing Politics And Deficit Cutting; Transparency In Health Care; Doctors’ Salaries
A variety of views about health policy from around the country
HHS Publishes Guidance For Health Exchange State Partnership Model
Meanwhile, Arizona’s efforts to create an exchange are morphing into a political hot potato. Also in the news, WellPoint has purchased its own private exchange to compete with the state-run versions envisioned in the health law.
MedPAC Offers Possible Offsets For Medicare Physician Pay Fix
Still, Obama’s deficit-reduction plan, released yesterday, includes no funding for the doc fix. Some are eyeing a Medicaid adjustment that will garner $13 billion in savings as a possible source of money — but competition is stiff for these funds.
Insurers Agree To Supply Health Claims Data To New Academic Institute
This agreement, which The New York Times described as “unusual,” will create a database for research on health care costs and utilization, according to The Wall Street Journal.
First Edition: September 20, 2011
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including details and analysis of President Barack Obama’s debt-reduction plan, which would trim health programs by $320 billion and links such entitlement trims to new taxes.
Obama Debt Plan Includes Cuts To Medicare, Medicaid
News reports offer details of the plan, which is designed to reduce the federal deficit by more than $3 trillion over the next 10 years, also includes a $3.5 billion reduction in funds for the health law’s prevention and public health trust fund as well as a new Medicaid “blended rate.”
Leverage Mobile Technology And Social Networking To Strengthen Health Systems
Alexander Finlayson, Katherine Hudson and Faisal Ali, all affiliates of MedicineAfrica, a social enterprise providing a platform for health care educational and research partnerships between Northern and Southern collaborators, write in a SciDev.Net opinion piece, “Health scientists in developing countries can use social media to tackle research priorities, … build[ing] networks and shar[ing] the knowledge needed to make strategic progress towards strengthening health systems.” They say that mobile technology can enable “direct interaction with patients, helping remote training of health care workers, and supporting the education of scientists,” and that the use of social media outlets, such as Twitter, can “facilitate collaboration between scientists in developing countries,” preventing duplication of research (9/15).
Introduction Of Free Caesarean Sections In Congo Leads To Increase In Procedure
“A health policy shift that saw the introduction in May of free caesarean section operations in 35 hospitals across the Republic of Congo — to curb the growing rate of maternal and infant mortality — seems to have prompted a proliferation of such operations, according to health officials,” IRIN reports. “‘We are virtually living in the hospital because there are so many consultations,’ said Jean-Claude Kala, head of gynecology at Makelekele Hospital, south of Brazzaville,” the news service writes.
Global Trade Negotiations Must Consider Inequalities In Access To Medicines
Some of the issues to be addressed at the U.N. High-level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) taking place this week in New York “are controversial, including those relating to intellectual property rights for new medicines, diagnostics and medical devices,” James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, writes in an Al Jazeera opinion piece. “By continuing to assert that the Doha Declaration is in fact limited in various ways, U.S. and European trade negotiators have tried to discourage the granting of compulsory licenses on patents for high-priced drugs for cancer and other non-communicable diseases,” he continues, before outlining a proposal called the “cancer prize approach” that would de-link drug prices from research and development incentives.
Major Donors Should Consider Funding For Potential Malaria Vaccine
When the results of a large clinical trial testing the effectiveness of the RTS,S malaria vaccine among children in Africa are made available later this year, “it will be time to start discussing what to do with the vaccine,” Orin Levine, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins University, writes in a Huffington Post opinion piece. “If the vaccine is safe and effective, one of the most important questions will be how to pay for it … and even though Andrew Witty, the CEO of the vaccine’s manufacturer, GSK, has promised to price the vaccine at a point just above its production cost, this price may still end up being too high for many malaria-affected countries to pay for it,” he writes.
GlobalPost Examines GHI In Kenya
As part of its special report “Healing the World,” GlobalPost examines how the Obama administration’s Global Health Initiative (GHI) is affecting U.S. health-related work in Kenya.
World Bank Report Examines Gender Equality, Highlights Mortality Disparity Between Men And Women
The World Bank’s annual World Development Report, which was released on Sunday and this year “focuses on gender equality around the world, offers some stark facts about how women and girls fare in developing countries despite decades of progress,” the Wall Street Journal reports (Reddy, 9/18). “The most glaring disparity is the rate at which girls and women die relative to men in developing countries, according to” the report, Reuters/AlertNet reports (Curtis, 9/19).
Obama’s Debt-Reduction Plan: $3 Trillion In Savings
The proposal, which is scheduled for release today, will include $320 billion in health care savings, but it its changes to Medicare and Medicaid are less aggressive than previously considered.
GOP Candidates Quiet On Medicare’s Drug Plan
The Associated Press reports that, even with their emphasis on deficit reduction, most of the GOP presidential candidates don’t seem to be talking about the Medicare drug program, a massive entitlement with future unfunded costs of about $7 trillion, as much as the 2010 health law.
Independent Panel Calls For Stronger Financial Safeguards For Global Fund
After a six-month review of the financial systems at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a seven-member independent panel “recommended a substantial overhaul Monday in the grant organization’s practices,” the Wall Street Journal reports. The panel, led by former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt and former Botswana President Festus Mogae, “said in a report the fund must improve risk management, simplify grant application processes, and place greater emphasis on results,” according to the newspaper.
New York Times Examines Possible Entry Into Global Market Of Generic Drugs For NCDs
The New York Times describes how, as the U.N. begins its meeting on non-communicable diseases (NCDs), Chinese and Indian generic drug makers “say they are on the verge of selling cheaper copies” of costly biotech medications used to treat cancers, diabetes, arthritis and other chronic illnesses. “Their entry into the market in the next year — made possible by hundreds of millions of dollars invested in biotechnology plants — could not only transform the care of patients in much of the world but also ignite a counterattack by major pharmaceutical companies and diplomats from richer countries,” the newspaper writes.
WHO, WEF Reports Examine Cost Of Treating And Preventing, Economic Burden Of NCDs
Low-income countries “could introduce measures to prevent and treat millions of cases of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and lung disease for a little as $1.20 per person per year, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Sunday” in a report released on the eve of the U.N. High-level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) taking place this week in New York, Reuters reports (Kelland, 9/19).
“World leaders at a meeting of the United Nations on Monday will agree to a deal to try to curb the spread of preventable ‘lifestyle’ diseases,” including heart disease, cancers and diabetes, also known as non-communicable diseases (NCDs), “amid concern that progress is already being hampered by powerful lobbyists from the food, alcohol and tobacco industries,” the Guardian reports. “The scale and disastrous potential of these diseases has led the U.N. to call only its second high-level summit on a health issue on Monday — the first was over AIDS in 2001. Months of negotiation have led to a draft declaration [.pdf] that will be signed at the summit,” the newspaper writes (Boseley, 9/16).
Emergency Health Workers: A Strategy To Prevent Health Problems
The New York Times reports that emergency medicine is moving into new territory by not waiting for a health crisis but instead trying to prevent it from happening in the first place.
