Friday, June 28, 2013

Administration Clarifies Insurance Rules For Contraceptives

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Maine Once Again Allows Mail-Order Canadian Drugs To Cut Costs

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Wednesday, June 26, 2013

How The End Of DOMA Will Affect Obamacare, Federal Employees

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Sunday, June 23, 2013

Ohio Family-Planning Services At Mercy Of Budget Bill

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Family-planning clinics would be pushed down the list of health services receiving funding from the state if a budget bill moving through the Ohio Legislature is signed into law.

iStockphoto.com

Family-planning clinics would be pushed down the list of health services receiving funding from the state if a budget bill moving through the Ohio Legislature is signed into law.

iStockphoto.com

Working its way through the Ohio Legislature is a state budget bill that has major implications for the way family-planning services are provided. The Ohio budget contains language that puts family-planning clinics at the bottom of the list to receive funding.

Family Planning Association of Northeast Ohio operates several independent family-planning clinics. They do not provide abortions and have no affiliation with Planned Parenthood, but the clinics are still at the end of the line under a new tiered system because they give referrals.

Ahead of the facilities are local health departments, places like emergency rooms and free clinics. Family Planning's executive director, Mary Wynne-Peaspanen, says if there's any money left over � which she says is not likely � "then they could consider applications from independent, specialty clinics like my organization and like Planned Parenthood."

The budget bill from the Republican-controlled Legislature could well put the nonprofit out of business. Since 1970, it has served primarily low-income women, but it's facing an anticipated 40 percent hit to its funding.

"They've been very clear about the fact � at the General Assembly � that their target is Planned Parenthood. But that doesn't change the fact that there are other organizations that will be impacted by this funding," Wynne-Peaspanen tells Jacki Lyden, host of weekends on All Things Considered.

National Trend

In Ohio and elsewhere, family-planning clinics typically provide a range of women's health services, like cancer screenings, blood pressure tests and contraceptive services.

Judy Waxman, vice president for health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center, says the vast majority of women who are sexually active have used contraception at some point in their lives.

"So on one level, we as a nation have recognized that contraceptives are not only what everybody uses, but they also are very important for women's health," she says. "There is, however, a minority of politicians who try to use any issue related to 'sex' to make some kind of political hay out of it."

Waxman says a handful of states are looking at centers that receive Medicaid or state funding for family-planning services � and some are cutting the budgets. Those states include Indiana, Arizona, Wisconsin and now Ohio.

The Anti-Abortion Lobby

Michael Gonidakis is the president of Ohio Right to Life, one of the groups that lobbied hard for the current legislative approach. He admits the ultimate objective is a straightforward one.

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"Our goal is to find a way to end abortion. Not make it illegal, but to end it," he says. "We're big proponents of adoption reform, foster care reform, and we want to find ways to continue to help women who find themselves in unintended pregnancy, to realize that they can have their baby, that there's support services there for them to keep their child."

He doesn't expect that women will have less access to family planning, not even those who are low-income.

"There's nowhere � and I repeat, nowhere � in the state of Ohio where there won't be other options in a very close walking proximity to ... a clinic that may go out of business," he says. "We're doing some good things here in Ohio, and there's access to these types of services and care for low-income women across the state."

But it still worries Jess Locher, a 28-year-old uninsured cosmetologist in Chardon. She went to the local branch of the Family Planning Association as a teenager. Ten years later, the mother of two still goes to the same clinic because she can't afford anything else.

"If they took family planning away, I wouldn't be getting the female care that I need because my job doesn't offer me insurance, so I couldn't afford to go to a gynecologist," Locher says.

Take Texas, For Example

Ohio is on the verge of making decisions that would alter the way family planning is funded. Texas started down this road two years ago.

"When the Tea Party wave came through Texas in 2010, there was a big movement to oust Planned Parenthood from all of the state health programs," says journalist Becca Aaronson.

Aaronson, who covers health care for the Texas Tribune, says state lawmakers took a three-pronged approach to cutting family-planning funds. They cut family-planning funding, then set up a tiered financing system prioritizing comprehensive health clinics. Third, they prohibited any group affiliated with a provider that performed abortions from participating in the Medicaid women's health program.

More than 50 clinics throughout Texas closed their doors. As the dust settled, the consequences of this policy started to become apparent, Aaronson says.

"The state estimates that roughly 24,000 babies are going to be born as a result of these changes, and that's because women don't have as much access to birth control," she says.

The spike caused enough of a stir in Texas for state legislators to restore some of the funding to family planning.

"They decided to put an extra $100 million toward primary care for women's health, so that many uninsured women of all ages could get cancer screenings, diabetes treatment and family-planning access," Aaronson says.

Waxman of the National Women's Law Center considers the Texas legislation "a failure for women in the state."

"It's possible in some circumstances that women could go somewhere else, but many other health centers don't provide family-planning services because they know Planned Parenthood is available to do that," she says.

Stay Tuned

Waxman says the issue is an ideological one. "I can only hope that those people that are really outliers on this issue not continue to erode and really hurt the women in their states," she says.

Who's hurt and who's helped by laws on access to family-planning services is in part, of course, a matter of deeply held opinion and even religious faith.

In Ohio, Wynne-Peaspanen at the Family Planning Association is bracing herself.

"I've been with the agency for 27 years. And funding cuts happen and, you know, funding increases happen. But this is ... the most serious," she says.

Gonidakis from Ohio Right to Life says he's confident things will be just fine.

"I do not foresee any situation whatsoever where a woman's going to be denied services because of the availability of so many other clinics in the state of Ohio," he says.

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Friday, June 21, 2013

FDA OKs Prescription-Free Plan B For All Ages, Ending Battle

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Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Some States Will Make It Easier To Get Insurance Answers

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Friday, June 14, 2013

Scientists Go Medieval To Solve Ancient Leprosy Puzzle

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Thursday, June 13, 2013

Judge Reluctantly Approves Government Plan For Morning-After Pill

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Prevention Pill Cuts HIV Risk For Injecting Drug Users

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Prevention Pill Cuts HIV Risk For Injecting Drug Users

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Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Feds Drop Opposition To OTC Sales Of Morning-After Pill

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Saturday, June 8, 2013

Datapalooza: A Concept, A Conference And A Movement

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Friday, June 7, 2013

30 Million to Remain Uninsured Under Obamacare

Harvard and CUNY researchers say 4.9 million Texans and 3.7 million Californians will still be uninsured in 2016

A study released today on the Health Affairs blog finds that between 29.8 million and 31.0 million people will remain uninsured after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2016 and breaks down those figures by state.

The research team from Harvard Medical School and the City University of New York School of Public Health projects that the demographic composition of today�s uninsured population will change little under Obamacare.

The share of the uninsured who are U.S. citizens will rise slightly from 80 percent to 81 percent. White persons (of all ethnicities) will continue to constitute 74 percent of all uninsured Americans. About 59 percent of the uninsured will have incomes between 100 percent and 399 percent of poverty, while 27 percent will have incomes below poverty.

The researchers also estimated uninsured figures for each state (see table below).

The study analyzed Census Bureau data on current patterns of uninsurance, and used a coverage prediction model based on the model used by the Congressional Budget Office.

The researchers projected two coverage scenarios for each state. One assumed that the state turns down a Medicaid expansion and the other assumed that the state implements Medicaid expansion despite the Supreme Court ruling that such expansion is optional. The national estimates use the Advisory Board Company�s latest summary of which states are likely to participate in the Medicaid expansion.

Study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor at CUNY and visiting professor of medicine at Harvard, said: �Many people believe that Obamacare will cover everyone. But the reform is so deeply flawed that 30 million or more will still be uninsured after it�s fully implemented. Even if the Supreme Court hadn�t let states of the hook for Medicaid expansion, 26 million would have been uninsured. We need to replace Obamacare with a simple single-payer system that would cover everyone.�

Lead author Dr. Rachel Nardin, chief of neurology at Cambridge Health Alliance and assistant professor of neurology at Harvard, commented: �Even in Massachusetts, where a reform like Obamacare has been in place since 2006, too many patients still can�t get the care they need. Hundreds of thousands are still uninsured, and many more have such skimpy coverage that they face unaffordable co-payments.�

�The Uninsured After Implementation of the Affordable Care Act: A Demographic and Geographic Analysis,� Rachel Nardin, M.D., Leah Zallman, M.D., M.P.H., Danny McCormick, M.D., M.P.H., Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., David Himmelstein, M.D. Health Affairs blog, June 6, 2013.

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Thursday, June 6, 2013

Court Says Some Morning-After Pills Must Be Available OTC Now

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Saturday, June 1, 2013

Survivor Of Boston Marathon Bombings Has Long Road Ahead

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D.C. Agency Approves 2 High-Tech Cancer Centers

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