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Political cartoon: 'Don't Go Breakin' My Heart?'

Kaiser Health News provides a fresh take on health policy developments with "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart?" by Gary Markstein.

14 Feb 2013

Out-of-hospital death does not equal less aggressive care

Rates of intensive care unit use in the last month of life among patients aged 65 years and older increased between 2000 and 2009 in the USA, despite a reduction in rates of in-hospital death, conflating the notion that there is a trend toward less aggressive care, say researchers.

14 Feb 2013

Study finds strong preference among families and older pediatric patients for IV feeding

About 60 percent of pediatric cancer patients experience malnourishment during treatment. At that point, patients and families have a choice: tube feeding or IV nutrition supplement. Which would you choose? A study published this week in the Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing shows that families' perceptions, especially of the discomfort of tube feeding, leads to choosing IV over tube - despite the fact that tube feeding is usually the better choice, associated with better gut function and lower rates of infection.

14 Feb 2013

Blog examines future of European Union aid

In a post in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog, Elisa Baldini, an advocacy and campaigns officer with Plan E.U., examines the future of European Union aid, writing, "Last week, European Union leaders came together for a decisive summit to discuss how much they think the E.U. should spend from 2014-2020, and what they should spend the budget on."

14 Feb 2013

Implementation issues trigger action, analysis

News outlets examine health law issues ranging from how states are planning to market the health plans that will become available this fall to whether accountable care organizations will help control health care costs.

14 Feb 2013

Women raped in war need access to safe abortion

"While there is welcome attention focused on the plight of women and girls raped in war, there are still significant gaps in the international response to this global scourge," Glenys Kinnock, founder and president of One World Action and a board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, writes in the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog," adding that women who become pregnant as a result of rape in war need access to safe abortion services.

14 Feb 2013

Blogs address IHME report on global health funding

"Last week, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) released 'Financing for Global Health: The End of the Golden Era?,' its fourth annual report analyzing trends in Development Assistance for Health (DAH) from 1990 through 2009, with estimates through 2011," the Maternal Health Task Force blog reports, noting, "One of the areas where there has been an increase in spending is the overall area of maternal, newborn and child health, including family planning." The blog outlines sections of the report that discuss MNCH funding.

14 Feb 2013

Debating U.N. resolution on universal health coverage

Writing in the "UHC Forward" blog, Nkem Wellington, program officer at the Results for Development Institute (R4D), summarizes a debate that took place on the Performance-Based Financing Community of Practice online discussion forum following the December 12 U.N. General Assembly vote on the "Global health and foreign policy" draft resolution, which focused on universal health coverage (UHC).

14 Feb 2013

Cambodia, China report cases of avian influenza H5N1

"Cambodia reported on Wednesday that another four-year-old girl has contracted avian influenza H5N1, becoming the seventh person who infected the virus in 2013," Xinhua reports.

14 Feb 2013

UNDP administrator calls for 'permanent' focus on NCDs

At the London launch of a Lancet series on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) on Monday, U.N. Development Programme Administrator Helen Clark said if NCDs are placed "permanently on the global development agenda, people's lives, opportunities, and future prospects will improve -- thereby advancing sustainable human development overall," Devex's "Development Newswire" blog reports.

14 Feb 2013

State roundup: Ore. considers rural doc loan repayment

Oregon would restore $4 million in the next biennium to fund a loan repayment program that assists primary health care providers willing to work in rural areas, under a bill being pushed by Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, D-Beaverton. The program ran for nearly two decades before it was cut in 2009 in the depths of the recession.

14 Feb 2013

Eleventh global case of SARS-linked virus confirmed in U.K.

"British officials say a mysterious virus related to SARS may have spread between humans, as they confirmed the 11th case worldwide of the new coronavirus in a patient who they say probably caught it from a family member," the Associated Press reports.

14 Feb 2013

The Atlantic examines 'paradigm shift' in global health response

"The world has an 'historic opportunity' to contain and end three of humanity's deadliest scourges by focusing on their 'hot zones,' according to Mark Dybul, the newly appointed director of the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria," the Atlantic reports in an article examining a "paradigm shift" in the global health response.

14 Feb 2013

College health plans beginning to accommodate transgender students

Over the last decade, as activists started pushing colleges to accommodate transgender students, they first raised only basic issues, like recognizing a name change or deciding who could use which bathrooms.

14 Feb 2013

State policies, positions on Medicaid expansion continue to take shape

North Carolina will not expand Medicaid coverage under President Barack Obama's signature health care reform law and will play no role in setting up the required health insurance exchange, Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, said on Tuesday.

14 Feb 2013

Study: No link between hospital readmissions and saving patient lives

A Journal of the American Medical Association study released Tuesday has found that higher hospital readmissions don't lead to fewer patient deaths.

14 Feb 2013

More polio workers killed than reported cases of disease, NPR reports

"The global effort to eradicate polio has reached a bizarre stage: More people have been gunned down recently over the disease than actually infected with it," NPR's "Shots" blog reports.

14 Feb 2013

Will more availability of some Medicare therapies spark a budget crisis?

Politico looks at how making some therapies more widely available to Medicare recipients -- as one lawsuit is asking for -- could strain the program's budget. In addition, The Associated Press examines Medicare records to find that monitoring some kidney cancer patients instead of operating could improve their chances to live.

14 Feb 2013

Blogs examine root causes, implications of myths about polio vaccination

Citing a review by Telegraph correspondent Rob Crilly criticizing the film Zero Dark Thirty "for getting its facts wrong about the CIA vaccination campaign that sought to confirm the DNA of Osama bin Laden's children," development blogger Tom Murphy writes in the Humanosphere blog, "Crilly's larger point is to say that the film gives further ammo to polio vaccine conspiracy theorists."

14 Feb 2013

Rubio' repeats GOP calls for overhauling Medicare, other entitlement programs

During his televised speech responding to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also criticized the health law.

14 Feb 2013