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Political cartoon: 'Drumming Up Support'

Kaiser Health News provides a fresh take on health policy developments with "Drumming Up Support" by Jim Day.

28 Nov 2011

Henry Schein launches new integrated comprehensive solution to treat sleep apnea

Henry Schein, Inc., the largest provider of health care products and services to office-based practitioners, today announced the launch of its Sleep Complete™ program, a new integrated comprehensive solution that provides all of the information and products necessary for the successful implementation of dental sleep medicine into the dental practice.

28 Nov 2011

First Edition: November 28, 2011

In today's headlines, reports about President Barack Obama's pick to succeed Donald Berwick as chief of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as well as news about the Supreme Court's consideration of the health law and more on the nation's budget.

28 Nov 2011

CHRISTUS Health selects Acuo UCP3 as new vendor neutral archive solution

Acuo Technologies, the leader in high-performance software and services for intelligent medical image lifecycle management and data migration, announced today that CHRISTUS Health has selected the Universal Clinical Platform (UCP3) as the company's new vendor neutral archive solution.

28 Nov 2011

AP: Health law cuts seniors' doughnut hole expenses 40%

Medicare's prescription coverage gap is getting noticeably smaller and easier to manage this year for millions of older and disabled people with high drug costs.

28 Nov 2011

AP: Parties pressuring Kagan, Thomas to recuse themselves from health reform lawsuits

Conservative interest groups and Republican lawmakers want Justice Elena Kagan off the health care case. Liberals and Democrats in Congress say it's Justice Clarence Thomas who should sit it out. Neither justice is budging - the right decision, according to many ethicists and legal experts.

28 Nov 2011

Drugs seniors use most often cause 60K hospitalizations annually

News outlets are reporting on a new study that challenges conventional wisdom about seniors, their medicines and hospitalizations.

28 Nov 2011

Study finds use of retail clinics rising

Researchers from the RAND Corporation found a dramatic increase in adults seeking care at clinics in drugs stores and other outlets.

24 Nov 2011

IPS reports on child poverty in Lesotho

"The triple threat of HIV, poverty and food insecurity is increasingly exposing children to abuse, exploitation and other human rights violations" in Lesotho, Inter Press Service reports in an article examining child poverty in the small southern African country.

24 Nov 2011

Interview with AIDS economist Mead Over

ONE member Erin Hohlfelder presents excerpts of an interview she conducted with AIDS economist Mead Over in this ONE blog post. Over discusses his new book, titled "Achieving an AIDS Transition: Preventing Infections to Sustain Treatment," AIDS program financing, government roles, and creating incentives for HIV prevention program success.

24 Nov 2011

Merck agrees to pay $950 million in Vioxx settlement

The pharmaceutical giant will pay a $321 million criminal fine and a $628 million civil settlement.

24 Nov 2011

House panel seeks records about Kagan and health law

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) on Tuesday asked the Obama administration to provide documents and internal correspondence on Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan's role in defense of the health reform law. Republicans argue that Kagan, while she was solicitor general in the Obama administration, participated in the early defense of the law and should recuse herself as the law goes before the Supreme Court.

24 Nov 2011

Democrats ask Obama not to dilute contraceptive benefits

Democratic lawmakers, fearful that President Obama is on the verge of significantly diluting a proposed regulation that would give millions of women access to birth control without out-of-pocket insurance charges, are furiously lobbying the White House to hold the line.

24 Nov 2011

Congress facing deadline on Medicare payments to doctors

Preventing the cut in Medicare payments to doctors is estimated to cost more than $20 billion next year. It is considered a near certainty that Congress will address it because of the clout that Medicare and doctors have with lawmakers. Within minutes of Monday's announcement that the supercommittee had failed, the American Medical Association was warning that the 27 percent cut would "force many physicians to limit the number of Medicare and TRICARE patients they can care for in their practices."

24 Nov 2011

Community-based program battles gender-based violence

Hillary Anderson, a communications intern for Management Sciences for Health (MSH), writes in this post on MSH's "Global Health Impact" blog about the organization's Community-based Family Planning and HIV & AIDS Services (CFPHS) project, which "worked to address gender-based violence (GBV) in Malawi through behavior change communication (BCC) activities."

24 Nov 2011

Why foreign aid should matter to GOP presidential candidates

"I suggest that GOP presidential candidates apply similar personal finance principles to evaluate why foreign aid is worth the investment," Samuel Worthington, president of InterAction, writes in a CNN opinion piece.

24 Nov 2011

Obama should announce scale-up of AIDS treatment programs

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent speech calling for an "AIDS-free generation" through the use of multiple prevention strategies, including more widespread antiretroviral therapy, "was a dramatic reversal of U.S. policy, which has historically viewed treatment more as a costly expense rather than our most powerful prevention investment," physician Loretta Ciraldo and Katrina Ciraldo, a student at Boston University School of Medicine, write in this Miami Herald opinion piece.

24 Nov 2011

Insurance commissioners back brokers on health law standard

After more than a year of debate, state regulators ... approved a resolution calling for changes to the healthcare reform law's medical loss ratio provision. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) passed the measure 26-20, over strenuous objections from commissioners who said the process and the resolution itself would undermine the NAIC's reputation.

24 Nov 2011

OECD report finds U.S. pays more by far for health care

The U.S. healthcare system is more effective at delivering high costs than quality care, according to a new study that found first-rate treatment for cancer but insufficient primary care for other ailments. The study, released on Wednesday by the 34-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, said Americans pay more than $7,900 per person for healthcare each year -- far more than any other OECD country -- but still die earlier than their peers in the industrialized world.

24 Nov 2011

Guardian International Development Journalism Competition results posted

The Guardian this week posted the results of its 2011 International Development Journalism Competition. "Sixteen finalists -- eight amateur, eight professional -- were sent to the developing world to write a feature on a theme suggested by the non-governmental organization that hosted their trip," the newspaper notes.

24 Nov 2011