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House reform outline includes public insurance option

"House Democrats released the outline of their health care reform bill Friday - a proposal that would create a public insurance option, expand Medicaid, and require employers to provide coverage or pay a tax," Politico reports. "The outline did not include details on how Democrats would pay for the plan."

21 Jun 2009

As reform stalls, Senators scramble to scale back or cut costs

"The high cost of securing health insurance for all Americans, the top domestic priority of President Obama, has Congressional Democrats scrambling to scale back their proposals or find ways to trim tens of billions of dollars a year from existing health programs," the New York Times reports.

21 Jun 2009

Finance Committee seeks to trim cost of bill

"A draft proposal in the Senate to overhaul the nation's health-care system would require most people to buy health insurance, authorize an expansion of Medicaid coverage and create consumer-owned cooperative plans instead of the government coverage that President Obama is seeking," the Washington Post reports.

21 Jun 2009

Frank, Dodd, Grassley speak their minds

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, remains on the fence about several provisions in a Democratic plan, The Washington Post reports: "Winning over the Senate Finance Committee's ranking Republican would represent a major coup for Democrats and a rare defection from the GOP party line for Grassley, a populist at heart but a loyal Republican according to his voting record.

21 Jun 2009

Facing Congressional squabbling, President pushes for reform

The press for health care reform hit a snag this week as Congress sputtered to resolve its differences, but President Barack Obama continues his call, almost daily, to continue to try to change the system, The New York Times reports.

21 Jun 2009

Bartering for health care is on the rise as the recession drags on

CNN reports that bartering is booming and that "business owners with an eye toward cutting costs are increasingly viewing bartering as a viable option for obtaining medical services for themselves and their employees."

21 Jun 2009

Beth Israel patients to get a look at online doctors' notes

A Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center project called "open notes" will make doctor's notes available to as many as 35,000 patients online along with the rest of their medical records for a year, the Boston Globe reports.

21 Jun 2009

NY Times interview with Sebelius: "I'm very encouraged"

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, spoke to The New York Times about the state of health care reform on Capitol Hill during a 15-minute interview.

21 Jun 2009

Texas "medical home" provides personal and coordinated health care

The Houston Chronicle reports on a medical philosophy that focuses on providing coordinated care and personal care to older patients, mostly indigent seniors. The paper examines Select Senior Clinic, a Texas facility that ascribes to the medical home concept.

21 Jun 2009

Race disparities plague treatment and outcomes in health care

CNN examines race disparities in health care during a 4-minute segment that is part of the station's week-long focus on health care issues.

21 Jun 2009

U.N. Human Rights Council adopts 'landmark' maternal mortality resolution

The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a "landmark resolution" acknowledging that "preventable maternal mortality and morbidity" is a human rights issue and that national and international efforts to protect women worldwide should be scaled up, the Hudson Valley Press Online reports. More than 70 U.N. member states cosponsored the resolution, led by Colombia and New Zealand (Hudson Valley Press Online, 6/18).

21 Jun 2009

HIV-positive Cambodians evicted from Phnom Penh homes

To make way for a Ministry of Tourism garden, 20 families with HIV-positive members have been evicted from their homes and moved outside of the city, reports the Phnom Penh Post.

21 Jun 2009

Economist examines schistosomiasis in China

The Economist examines schistosomiasis in China. The disease, which is also called snail-fever, is the "world’s second-most prevalent tropical disease after malaria, affecting 207 million people of whom 726,000 are Chinese, according to the most recent official figures, from 2004," the Economist reports.

21 Jun 2009

Reproductive health bill could reduce maternal mortality in Philippines

The number of Filipino "women who die yearly due to childbirth and pregnancy complications has doubled in the last four years," and a reproductive health bill opposed by some lawmakers and stalled in Congress could address this rise in maternal mortality, health groups say, ABS-CBN News reports.

21 Jun 2009

Some call for more action at conclusion of Pacific Health Summit

Some Pacific Health Summit attendees said more action should have come from the tuberculosis-focused conference, which ended on Thursday in Seattle, Seattle Times' "Business of Giving" blog reports.

21 Jun 2009

BBC examines river blindness program in sub-Saharan Africa

BBC examines a campaign in sub-Saharan Africa that is helping to distribute drugs to prevent onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness - a disease "caused by a parasite that is spread from human to human by the black fly, which once flourished along river beds where there is fast-flowing water."

21 Jun 2009

U.S. flu funds; South Africa confirms first case; EU encouraged to coordinate pandemic vaccine policy

The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a $105.9 billion war-funding bill that "includes $7.7 billion to prepare for pandemic flu," the Washington Post reports (Bacon, Washington Post, 6/19).

21 Jun 2009

PEPFAR and IDUs; economic crisis and health; human-rights and pharmaceutical companies

Although PEPFAR has helped to provide "antiretroviral therapy to 2.1 million people with HIV, almost all of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa, and has spent more than US$18 billion on the continent" it has failed to reach "thousands of injecting drug users in PEPFAR countries in Africa, many of whom have HIV," according to the authors of a recent comment in the journal Lancet.

21 Jun 2009

Lancet studies examine aspects of global health funding

"Global health funding boosted by private donors has quadrupled since 1990, but the extra money has not always gone to the right countries and diseases, according to a pair of studies released Friday," in the journal Lancet, AFP/Google.com reports (Hood, AFP/Google.com, 6/18).

21 Jun 2009

New theory for global diabetes epidemic

A new "fertility first" hypothesis published this week by a group of international experts in the American Journal of Human Biology, proposes that the global epidemic of Type 2 diabetes has its origins in the struggle, over millennia, to sustain human fertility in environments defined by famine.

19 Jun 2009