Latest KFF Health News Stories
Home Health Stocks Suffer Fallout From Senate Investigation
Stocks for three home health care providers fell Tuesday after the Senate Finance Committee released findings of an investigation that indicated these companies “gamed the Medicare system.”
Medicare Enrollment Ends Early This Year
Health News Florida reports that nearly two-thirds of seniors don’t know that the Medicare enrollment period is occurring earlier than usual this year. Meanwhile, The Hill reports on one member of the U.S. Senate who is holding a strong line against raising Medicare’s eligibility age.
Shah Announces Additional Funding To Fight Food Insecurity During Visit To Ethiopia
During a visit to Ethiopia’s capital on Tuesday, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah announced new grant programs to help the nation address food insecurity, the Associated Press reports. Shah said the U.S. will provide $110 million to a food security program that will benefit 1.5 million people, $10 million for a nutrition program and $1.2 million for loans to farmers, the news agency notes (10/4).
Berwick Advances The Quality Cause
The Los Angeles Times reports that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Chief Donald Berwick is pressing for health care quality improvements and innovations.
Pharmaceutical Companies Should ‘Get On Board’ With Unitaid’s ‘Patent Pools’
In this Guardian opinion piece, Jill Filipovic, a freelance writer and blogger at Feministe, reports on how Unitaid, an organization “largely funded through innovating financing methods, including a tax on airplane tickets,” is working to increase access to HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis treatments in developing countries through “patent pools” and urges pharmaceutical companies to “get on board.”
U.S. Investment In Global Health Strengthens Communities, Economies
“It’s time to respond … [to Americans who] have not been given a comprehensive explanation of how U.S. investments in foreign aid — particularly global health — are used or how they benefit Americans here at home,” Karl Hofmann, president and CEO of PSI, writes in a Huffington Post opinion piece. “Global health investments benefit the globe. … Healthy families yield healthy societies and economies. Everyone everywhere benefits,” he states.
Small U.S. Investments In Global Health Help Strengthen Economies
In this Huffington Post opinion piece, singer and actor Mandy Moore writes that during her travels as a PSI ambassador, “sometimes the disconnect I see is truly striking: people can get cold Coca Cola, but far too infrequently malaria drugs; most own mobile phones, but don’t have equal access to pre-natal care.” Noting that technology has helped the U.S. and Europe improve health standards and therefore strengthen their economies, she writes, “It’s simple and logical, but to grow economies, the basic building block of health is necessary.”
Global Fund Is Smart Investment In Fighting Disease
“For the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Fund [to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria] is an invaluable partner, and the progress they have achieved is bringing us closer than ever to the reality of global health equity,” Joe Cerrell, director of the Gates Foundation’s European office, writes in an AlertNet opinion piece, adding, “Every day, programs supported by the Global Fund save at least 4,400 lives.”
Global Corporations Create Shared Value Through Social Responsibility Programs
In this post in the Guardian’s “Sustainable Business Blog,” Mark Kramer, founder and managing director of the non-profit consulting firm FSG and senior fellow at the CSR Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, examines how “[g]lobal corporations are increasingly finding ways to create shared value — pursuing business initiatives that improve social and environmental conditions while earning the company a profit and conferring a competitive advantage.”
Health Clinic In Indonesia Promotes Conservation Through Medical Care
VOA News profiles a medical clinic in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, called Alam Sehat Lestari, or ASRI, and established by American Kinari Webb, that aims to promote health and wellness through quality medical care and conservation. In addition to allowing patients to pay for health care “through non-monetary means, such as woven baskets, seedlings or labor exchanges,” clinic workers educate patients about conservation as they wait to register, and each month they visit surrounding communities to determine whether they are illegally logging from a nearby national park, the news service notes. “Communities that do not participate in illegal logging pay about 40 percent less than those that do,” according to VOA News (Schonhardt, 10/4).
Britain To Cut Bilateral Aid For Global HIV/AIDS Projects By Nearly One-Third By 2015
Britain is cutting bilateral aid for HIV/AIDS projects in developing countries by 32 percent, from 59.9 million pounds to 41 million pounds, between now and 2015, according to data from the Department for International Development (DfID), the Guardian reports. “The drop in support comes despite a 92 percent rise in Britain’s bilateral aid for global health, from 376 million pounds to 723 million pounds by 2015, when reproductive, maternal and newborn health will absorb 64 percent of DfID’s global health funding,” the newspaper writes.
CBS News Reports On Afghanistan’s Efforts To Improve Maternal Health
CBS News reports on Afghanistan’s efforts to improve maternal health, writing, “In larger cities, maternity care is improving. But modern health care is a world away for most Afghans. For a pregnant woman, traveling the rough terrain to a clinic is nearly impossible. Only one in four births take place under professional care, so even the smallest medical issue can be fatal.” The news service adds, “One bit of hope: USAID helps sponsor midwife classes to fill the gaping hole in the number of trained medical professionals, a result of the Taliban’s prohibition on educating women. More than 2,500 midwives have graduated, and the infant mortality rate has since declined 22 percent” (Clark, 10/4).
First Edition: October 5, 2011
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about Congress’ continuing struggle with budget and spending issues.
High Court Hears Medicaid Case, Weighs Right To Object To Cuts
The Supreme Court kicked off its new term Monday by hearing arguments in a key Medicaid case that tests whether providers and patients can go to court to challenge decisions by cash-strapped states to reduce Medicaid payments.
Health Law Decision Will Have Lasting Impact On Supreme Court
Politico Pro examines concern about the impact an election-year health law decision could have on the institution of the court how it could could steer the justices away from this timeline.
New York Times Reports On Proposed Cuts To Foreign Aid
As Congress looks to reduce the U.S. national debt, “both the Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate have proposed slashing financing for the State Department and its related aid agencies at a time of desperate humanitarian crises and uncertain political developments,” the New York Times reports. The proposed cuts to President Barack Obama’s FY12 spending request would be “the first significant cuts in overseas aid in nearly two decades, a retrenchment that officials and advocates say reflects the country’s diminishing ability to influence the world,” according to the newspaper. The reductions would affect global health programs and humanitarian assistance for disaster-hit areas, among other programs, the newspaper notes.
Uganda’s Free Health Care System ‘In Crisis,’ Daily Monitor Reports
Uganda’s Daily Monitor reports on the status of the country’s free health care system, which it writes “is in crisis despite the billions of shillings of mostly donor money flowing in every year.” According to the newspaper, “Visits to a dozen health centers across the country revealed a chronic shortage of beds, drugs and medical personnel, confirming a recent verdict by the Anti-Corruption Coalition of Uganda that ‘service delivery and general care is almost not there.'”
Vodacom Tanzania, Local NGO Use Mobile Phone Banking To Help Women With Obstetric Fistula
The Guardian examines a text messaging program in Tanzania initiated by Vodacom Tanzania and local NGO Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania (CCBRT) that utilizes Africa’s mobile phone banking system, M-Pesa, to provide women suffering from obstetric fistula, caused by difficult childbirth, with the funds necessary to travel to health facilities for treatment. “CCRBT and Vodacom have now appointed a team of 60 ‘ambassadors’ to travel around the country diagnosing women with the condition. Within an hour of an ambassador finding a patient a date is set for surgery and money for transport is texted to the ambassador, who takes the patient to the bus stop,” according to the Guardian.
