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More Hospitals Ban Free Infant Formula Samples - Health Day News
More Hospitals Ban Free Infant Formula Samples
Health Day News
A nationwide effort to stop new mothers from receiving free infant formula samples appears to be having an effect.
In 2011, nearly half of about 2,600 hospitals in a survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they no longer gave formula samples to breastfeeding mothers, up from one-quarter of hospitals in 2007. The survey did not ask about giving samples to non-nursing mothers, The New York Times reported.
The health authorities and breastfeeding advocates leading the effort to ban formula samples say the samples -- which often come in fashionable bags with infant formula company logos -- can lure women away from breastfeeding.
Their campaign is leading to changes. For example, all hospitals in Massachusetts and Rhode Island have halted free formula samples, and 24 hospitals in Oklahoma recently agreed to a ban, The Times reported.
Formula makers and some mothers say the samples are a healthy alternative that can provide relief if breastfeeding causes fatigue, pain or frustration. They dispute the charge that the samples can sway mothers from breastfeeding.
"We're not anti-formula," Dr. Melissa Bartick, a founder of Ban the Bags, a breast-feeding advocacy group, The Times reported. "If a woman makes an informed choice to formula-feed, the hospital should provide that formula. But hospitals shouldn't be marketing it."
Politics, budgets and reform pummel state Medicaid programs
Politics, budgets and reform pummel state Medicaid programs
October 12, 2012 | Mary Mosquera Government Health IT
State Medicaid directors are caught in the vice grip of competing interests driven by the looming election, lean state budgets, uncertainty about expansion caused by the Supreme Court health reform decision and the threat that Congress will cut the health program to help balance the federal budget.
At the same time, Medicaid directors have an opportunity to make significant changes away from the traditional fee-for-service care delivery and payments that will ripple throughout the healthcare system, according to Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors.
Medicaid directors are “trying to do the herculean, Manhattan
More states are moving their Medicaid programs toward managed care, although it may not necessarily mean a managed care organization, but “intermediary steps where they are empowering primary care physicians to take a more aggressive and empowered role in shepherding people through the fee-for-service fractured system,” such as medical homes and accountable care organizations.
“Medicaid is clearly in the forefront in a way that it hasn’t really been in the past,” he said, adding that its increased visibility is commensurate with its role and value in the healthcare system and society at large.
“Even when times are good, we try to pay providers too little. In a situation where the bottom dropped out of state financing, finding savings on top of already low levels of reimbursement rates is difficult,” Salo said at an Oct. 5 conference sponsored by America
On top of that, the Medicaid population is one that “most people want to forget about because they are difficult, expensive and they need a lot of complex care and care coordination,” he said.
Post-election, Medicaid directors will have to figure out what to do depending on how health reform survives or thrives and whether their states will expand Medicaid. The decision to expand or not will be complicated, in part political and a large part financial, based on what it means to the state’s bottom line, Salo said.
Whoever wins the election, Congress is going to get real serious about the federal deficit and budget cuts, and that will mean Medicaid changes.
“There will be a lot going on that states cannot control,” he said. Some changes could help the program, while others could cast uncertainty. Will the federal government shift the program to the states? What would block grants look like, and what does that mean for Medicaid expansion? Will the government reduce the federal match?
State elections matter too, said Joan Henneberry, principal at Health Management Associates, in Denver ,Colo. , and former planning director for Colorado
“There are choices being made today that could be overturned or modified when new leadership comes in, such as state legislators in addition to governors. In many states, the insurance commissioner is also an elected office,” she said.
The health reform law is not expected to initially change the market for employer sponsored insurance, which accounts for about 60 percent of those covered. Some states have already expanded Medicaid, and there are states that will choose to expand to individuals who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level as called for under the law but who are not there yet.
Uninsured individuals in the middle from 138 percent to 400 percent of the poverty level will access coverage through the health insurance exchange starting in 2014 and get premiums subsidized through IRS and, if eligible, some of their co-pays too, she explained.
Some states may choose not to expand Medicaid eligibility, however, like Texas
“You have a big empty spot where people in that state up to 138 percent have no coverage,” Henneberry said.
“While there are some states who have said they’re not doing this, I think that over time, you will see growing pressure on the part of hospital associations, provider groups, advocates, legislators, that we have got to rethink that decision and figure out how to do something because it will not be sustainable for a state to leave that one layer of individuals out in the cold without any coverage,” she said.
The initial instinct is to look at how much this is going to cost. While the first few years of healthcare spending are fully federally funded, enormous administrative costs remain, including eligibility and enrollment, program integrity, and appeals issues.
If they look hard, those states may find savings by expanding their Medicaid, such as:
• With full expansion, states may save on other programs where services are no longer needed because they are included in their insurance coverage or Medicaid.
• Medicaid expansion may provide potential savings to the system overall, such as in reducing the cost of uncompensated care.
• When all individuals are covered, states may be able to cut administrative costs if they can manage the churn of people falling in and out of Medicaid coverage by having a seamless integrated system between the exchange and Medicaid.
• With full coverage, states that have big counties that traditionally spend significant funds on healthcare programs may be able to negotiate what to do with the monies that are freed up.
Or conversely, in states like Louisiana and Texas
“We don’t know if they can do that, and it would be very hard without the state support,” Henneberry said, adding that CMS should talk with them about such a plan.
States also need to be prepared for the “woodwork” effect of many individuals who have been eligible for Medicaid and not enrolled but will sign up for it now.
”Even if you don’t expand Medicaid in your state, the efforts around marketing the exchange and subsidizing health plans through the exchange is going to increase Medicaid whether you want to or not,” she said. “We also think that CMS, if it wants, could give states flexibility to allow them to phase in these expansions."
Some states may know they have to figure out how to do expansion but just can’t meet the October 2013 deadline, including for political reasons. Some might have legislatures that don’t meet annually and some have biennial budgets. For example, CMS could allow states to phase in expansion, for example go from its current level of coverage to 100 percent of poverty level by 2014, and then work their way up to 138 percent.
“Whoever becomes president," Henneberry said, "either one will want to work to make it as right as they can with states."
Monday, October 15, 2012
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Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Monday, October 8, 2012
Political Notes – Hill compares hospital tax to ‘pimps’ and ‘crack’ The Georgia Report
Political Notes – Hill compares hospital tax to ‘pimps’ and ‘crack’
By TOM CRAWFORD | Published: OCTOBER 5, 2012 The Georgia
As we reported earlier this week, Georgia
That tax expires next June 30 unless the General Assembly votes to reauthorize it, and conservative lawmakers are already being urged not to extend the tax.
Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist sent a letter to legislators this week instructing them to kill the tax and warning that a vote to extend it would violate the “no new taxes” pledges that many of them signed with Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform.
Norquist found a receptive audience in state Sen. Judson Hill (R-Marietta), who voted against the hospital tax when it passed in 2010.
In an interview with the Marietta
“I call it federal crack dollars,” Hill said. “The federal government pimps us with federal dollars — and they’re doing it again with Obamacare — and then along the way they reduce the federal allocation after the state has chosen to participate in the program or expand their program based on receiving federal dollars, and politically it becomes even more challenging to ‘just say no.’
Several of Hill’s Cobb County
Reps. Ed Setzler (R-Acworth), Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs), Sam Teasley (R-Marietta), and newly elected Charles Gregory (R-Kennesaw) appear to be “no” votes at this point.
Rep. Don Parsons (R-Marietta), who easily defeated a tea party opponent in this year’s GOP primary, said he is “inclined” to vote for reauthorizing the tax.
Rep. Rich Golick (R-Smyrna) and Rep. Matt Dollar (R-Marietta) did not take a hard stance either way on how they will vote.
One of most interesting responses to the MDJ came from Rep. John Carson (R-Marietta), who was elected last year to replace the late Bobby Franklin in the House:
“I did not sign the pledge, or any pledges, because I serve my constituents in northeast Cobb and southeast Cherokee, not Grover Norquist,” Carson
“I am very much a fiscal conservative, but I work for and answer only to my constituents. Having said that, I am becoming familiar with the bed tax, which was more or less a temporary plug in the budget several years ago, and I am eager to look for ways to eliminate it.”
Sunday, October 7, 2012
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Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Birth Rates Hit a Record Low
Birth Rates Hit a Record Low
By Caitlin McGlade, CQ Staff
The percentage of American women having babies hit an all-time low last year, including a demographic that astounded researchers: teenagers.
The teen birth rate dropped 8 percent from 2010 to 2011 — from 34.2 per thousand girls age 15 to 19 who had a child in 2010 to 31.3 per thousand teens who gave birth in 2011. Those rates are about half of what they were a decade ago.
“These trends over all have been tremendous and to see continuing decline is really very heartening,” Leslie Kantor, vice president for education at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in an interview. “This tells us that this is, in fact, a solvable problem.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center
Brady Hamilton, a statistician who wrote the report, said the numbers reflect a birth rate decline in 19 states. The remaining 31 states, including the District of Columbia and U.S. United States
But this doesn’t mean that women are foregoing motherhood — the percentage of women ages 40 to 44 having children has been steadily rising since the 1990s.
“These could be births that have been postponed,” Hamilton
But for teenagers?
Kantor said typical 15 year old girls aren’t thinking about the economy — but more of them are thinking about birth control. In 1988, about 33 percent of girls aged 15 to 19 used no method of contraception, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But decades later, from 2006 to 2010, the number dropped to 21.7 percent. Male teens, too, have used contraceptives at higher rates. Fourteen percent fewer male teens neglected to use contraception in 2006 to 2010, compared to the figures in 1988.
Kantor attributed the trends to a shift in sex education quality and parental involvement. More schools are engaging in programs that require intellectual participation over multiple classes and more parents are talking to their kids, she said.
About $180 million in federal funding started being dispersed in 2010 for evidence-based sexual education programs, she said.
“It’s not so much quantity as it is quality . . . we really have a better sense of what we need to do with young people,” she said. “Rather than doing the one-time 45-minute assembly and thousands of kids are in there and that’s it, I think folks, with me, really fight schools when they call us and ask us to do that. Give me a program with eight sessions and I can teach people to wait to have (intercourse) or use contraception.”
With fewer and fewer women bearing children, the U.S.
Other countries with declining populations are faring worse, Hamilton Japan
“One-point-nine births per woman . . . that number is below what we call the replacement level, which is about 2.1, but don’t forget that you have a high level of immigration that makes up for that,” Hamilton said. “I don’t think we’re going down the same patch as Japan
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
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