Latest KFF Health News Stories
State News: Calif. Blue Shield Begins Issuing Credits After Profit Cap
News outlets report on a variety of state health policy issues.
Stanford Hospital ER Data Posted On Public Website, Now Removed
In what is being described as a major breach of privacy, the medical records of 20,000 emergency room patients were posted on a commercial website for a number of months. This situation raises questions about how to safeguard such information when it passes through numerous hands.
LA Times: Gov. Perry And Texas’ Struggling Health Care System
In the 11 years that Gov. Rick Perry has been in office, private health care costs have increased and the safety net has diminished.
Scorecard Shows Which States Are Best At Long-Term Care Support
The report, developed by AARP and the SCAN Foundation, found that Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado and Maine are performing best in a variety of ways, but still have room to improve.
Preventive Benefits, Exchanges… A Catch-All Of Health Law News
Media outlets report on a range of health law issues, including the latest estimates from the Department of Health and Human Services regarding the number of Medicare beneficiaries getting free preventive care, what difficulties may be ahead for health exchanges and the adminstration’s new “Enroll America” campaign.
Viewpoints: 4th Circuit Decision; Advice For The FDA; Docs And The AMA
A few opinions and editorials today.
In Deficit Reduction Debate, Some Stakeholders Point To Medicare
The American Hospital Association is lobbying to raise the program’s eligibility age from 65 to 67 as a means of heading off additional cuts to Medicare hospital payments. Meanwhile, some conservatives view the program’s fiscal challenges as the problem that stands above all others.
AARP Strategist Moves On To Health Care Coalition
After 27 years at AARP, John Rother will move on to head up the National Coalition on Health Care. He says his new position will give him a platform to take on health care costs, as issue he views as central to the nation.
Deficit Reduction, Entitlements Are Buzzwords As Debt Panel Starts Work
The ‘super committee’ held its first meeting this week, kicking off its mission with a note of bipartisanship. Many observers worry, though, that this might be the end of this spirit of cooperation. Meanwhile, a groups of Senators from both parties also met this week – privately – to revive the hope for a “grand debt-cutting bargain.”
Research Roundup: Medicare Advantage Stops Some Hospitalizations
This week’s studies come from Health Affairs, The Journal Of The American Medical Association, The Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Care Management Science.
First Edition: September 9, 2011
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision blocking two health law challenges as well as details about the congressional debt panel’s first meeting.
Capsules: Seeking The Best Place For Long-Term Care? Head North
According to a report released today, in many places there isn’t nearly enough long-term care help to go around.
Capsules: Donald Berwick On Turning 65, Enrolling In Medicare
He will be the first head of the health insurance program for seniors to be a beneficiary at the same time.
4th Circuit Appeals Court Rejects Virginia, Liberty University Challenges To Health Law
The Virginia case, brought by state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, was considered one of the highest profile challenges to the health law’s individual mandate. The appellate court also concluded that Liberty University’s challenge to the law should be dismissed.
Global Fund Facility Offering Subsidized Malaria Drugs ‘Could Do More Harm Than Good’
In this article in The American, a journal of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Roger Bate, the Legatum Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Richard Tren, director of Africa Fighting Malaria, write that the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria “launched a $225 million facility that offers subsidized malaria drugs …provid[ing] subsidies so that shops can sell relatively expensive drugs at low cost, thereby using the reach and power of markets to save lives,” they write, adding that the mechanism “is perverting the market for malaria drugs and could do more harm than good.” The authors call on Congress to examine the subsidy system, writing, “The United States is not funding the subsidy, but the subsidy is harming programs the United States is supporting. Understanding and then stopping wasteful spending decisions would save money and lives” (9/8).
Lift Restrictions On Abortion Under Helms Amendment As Applied To Rape Victims
Though President Barack Obama signed an executive order on his third day in office to “lif[t] the odious ‘global gag rule’ that denied federal money for family planning work abroad to any group that performed abortions or counseled about the procedure, even with its own money,” he left standing a policy that is “an overly restrictive interpretation of the [1973] Helms amendment.” The policy “imposes similar speech restrictions and bans using foreign aid money for abortions — even to save a woman’s life or in cases of rape in war zones like Congo, Sudan and Burma,” a New York Times editorial states.
Health Law Subject To Attack During GOP Presidential Debate
As candidates threw accusations at Democratic policies and each other, they didn’t always get the specifics right. Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney especially clashed on health policy issues. Meanwhile, Romney expressed his support for Medicaid block grants and Perry blamed the federal government for Texas’ high number of people without health insurance.
‘Super Committee’ Faces Big Challenges, Lots Of Input From Stakeholders
In order to lay out some specific options from which the panel might extract savings, House Ways and Means Democrats have provided a list of Medicare trims.
Washington Post Examines Conditions Within Mogadishu Hospital
The Washington Post looks at the conditions within Banadir Hospital in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. “The scenes … reflect the immense challenge facing this Horn of Africa nation, already besieged by multiple woes, from civil war to radical Islamist militants to a weak transitional government incapable of governing effectively, despite massive support from the United States and its allies,” the newspaper writes (Raghavan, 9/7).
U.N. Member States Must Face Health, Economic Impacts Of NCDs
In this Huffington Post opinion piece outlining many facts and statistics surrounding non-communicable diseases (NCDs) worldwide, Susan Blumenthal, public health editor of the Huffington Post and former assistant surgeon general, along with Katherine Warren and Lauren Macherelli, who previously worked at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, where Blumenthal is director of the health and medicine program, write, “The world is at a crossroads when it comes to the chronic disease epidemic and its enormous health and economic impacts.”
