Monday, May 09, 2005
Experts Poles Apart on How To Reform Troubled System Psychiatric News story - "Market and regulatory reform coupled with tax credits for the uninsured is pitted against a Canadian-style, single-payer national health insurance program. It was the leading physician group advocating for publicly funded national health insurance versus the voice of organized American medicine that has for decades crusaded against "socialized medicine." And their divergent visions for health system reform could not be more starkly at odds: tax credits for the uninsured in a free-market, multipayer system offering a wide range of health plan options tailored to the individual, or a Canadian-style, publicly funded, and government-run single-payer system. Those two visions clashed when psychiatrist Jeremy Lazarus, M.D., speaking for the AMA, countered Steffie Wool-handler, M.D., co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, in a debate sponsored by the American Medical Student Association in Washington, D.C., in March. .."
Bill Would Improve PTSD Services For Soldiers, Vets Exposed to Trauma Psychiatric News story - "Soldiers returning from overseas and veterans with mental health problems will have better access to treatment under the legislation. APA, the National Mental Health Association, and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill support a comprehensive bill to help active-duty military members and veterans exposed to trauma receive the mental health care they may need. Rep. Lane Evans (D-Ill.), the ranking Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, introduced the bill in the House of Representatives last month. .."
Drug Makers Reap Benefits of Tax Break Sunday
New York Times feature story - "A new tax break for corporations is allowing the biggest American drug makers to return as much as $75 billion in profits from international havens to the United States while paying a fraction of the normal tax rate. The break is part of the American Jobs Creation Act, signed into law by President Bush in October, which allows companies a one-year window to return foreign profits to the United States at a 5.25 percent tax rate, compared with the standard 35 percent rate. Any company with profits in other countries can take advantage of the law, but drug makers have been the biggest beneficiaries because they can move profits overseas relatively easily, independent analysts say. The money the companies are bringing home has come from many years of using legal loopholes in the tax law to aggressively shelter their profits from United States taxes, tax lawyers say. While the companies' tax returns are private, fragmentary information about their tax payments is buried inside their annual financial statements..." [Viewing
New York Times resources requires registration, which is free].
States Propose Sweeping Changes to Trim Medicaid by Billions Lead, front page article in the
New York Times - "Governors and state legislators have devised proposals for sweeping changes in Medicaid to curb its rapid growth and save billions of dollars. Under the proposals, some beneficiaries would have to pay more for care, and states would have more latitude to limit the scope of services. The proposals, drafted by separate working groups of governors and state legislators, provide guidance to Congress, which 10 days ago endorsed a budget blueprint that would cut projected Medicaid spending by $10 billion over the next five years. Many of the proposals resemble ideas advanced by President Bush as part of his 2006 budget. In some cases, the governors embrace Mr. Bush's proposals but go further. At the same time, they also reject some of the president's recommendations that they believe would shift costs to the states." [Viewing
New York Times resources requires registration, which is free]. Abbreviated versions of this story are available at a number of sites that do not require registration, among them
The Argus(California) and Vermont's
Times-Argus. See also
States face "meltdown" over Medicaid (
American Medical News).
Pay-for-Performance Could Better Align Incentives in Behavioral Health Care Drug Benefit Trends story at
Medscape - "The Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) 2001 report, Crossing the Quality Chasm, portrays the quality of health care delivered in the United States as falling far short of established benchmarks. According to the report, "Quality problems are everywhere, affecting many patients. Between the health care we have and the care we could have lies not just a gap, but a chasm." The IOM report attributes many of the problems to fundamental financial misalignments. For example, physicians, who are not payers, and patients, who may be partial payers, drive treatment decisions. The report also cites issues of rapidly changing technology, limited consumer knowledge, and the reluctance of health care organizations to implement improvements that are unaccompanied by adequate financial compensation. It seems that delivering high-quality care in the current US health care system does not always pay. One solution is to promote change with financial incentives to providers and provider organizations. Such a typical American free-enterprise initiative has recently developed and even has a name: pay-for-performance (P4P)." [Viewing
Medscape resources requires registration, which is free].
Mental Fight Club (UK) As noted in CMHA/Ontario's
Mental Health Notes, "Inspired by a book-length poem about facing challenges, a group of consumers, family members, caregivers and friends have created Mental Fight Club, an initiative that performs and talks about the arts. ... Mental Fight Club is open to the public, and according to the club’s website, over half of its 400 or so members are consumers or caregivers."
Families Are the Experts In Child MH Programs An April 15
Psychaitric News story that was overlooked (and brought to our attention by CMHA/Ontario's
Mental Health Notes) - "Two innovative programs in the Seattle area are addressing the needs of youth with severe emotional disorders by empowering families and engaging them in fundamental aspects of treatment. Together, the Blended Funding Project and Project TEAM, which stands for Tools, Empowerment, Advocacy, and Mastery, have served hundreds of children and adolescents and their families who have been failed by traditional mental health and social service systems in King County, Wash., according to Charles Huffine, M.D. .."
Mental Health Canada Mental Health Canada is a privately owned company that provides "a national comprehensive directory of Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Psychoanalysts, Counsellors, and Psychotherapists searchable by professional designation, gender and location."
Study: Treat Depression, Pain Separately WebMD story - "Depression often accompanies chronic pain, but the two conditions may best be treated separately, a study in May's
Arthritis & Rheumatism shows. The study centered on people with fibromyalgia -- a syndrome characterized by a history of chronic, widespread pain and tenderness to touch. Many of these patients also may suffer from depression."
Mental Health Center Threatened with Losing Medicaid Eligibility (Wisconsin) WBAY story - "The Brown County Mental Health Center's adolescent unit isn't up to par. That's according to a new report from the center for Medicare and Medicaid services. The report issued a warning to the center. It must fix the cited problems by July 17 or lose Medicaid eligibility. County Executive Carol Kelso told Action 2 News the inspection and report come every two years. She said the county has submitted an action plan to make changes, but since the unit only treats an average of three kids at a time the unit is simply too expensive for the county to run."
New poll results offer mental health policy direction (Canada) Canada Newswire press release - "Canada's political parties are polling voters on a daily basis these days, and for National Mental Health Week, the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) did some polling of its own. The results of this recent study, conducted by Ipsos-Reid, offer important mental health policy direction to the poll-watchers on Parliament Hill. The CMHA/Ipsos-Reid study confirms that for the vast majority of Canadians, health is health, no matter what part of the body is involved. The results reveal that mental and physical health are equally important to nearly all Canadians (with 81% strongly agreeing and 17% somewhat agreeing). A similar number say that they make a conscious effort to take care of their mental (91%) and physical heath (95%) on a regular basis. "
State lawmakers must ease crisis in mental health (South Carolina) Opinion column in
The State - "When there is a a big pothole on your road that doesn’t get fixed, the failure of government services can be painfully obvious. Sometimes, the failure of our state to support human services isn’t so plain to see. But that is changing in our community, as state lawmakers’ failure to adequately support and fund mental health services is fostering a crisis in communities. The crumbling mental health system in our state needs shoring up as much as or more than any tangible structure..."
Depression gene may weaken mood-regulating circuit Medical News Today story - "A brain scan study suggests that a suspect gene may increase susceptibility to anxiety and depression by weakening a circuit for processing negative emotion. People with the depression-linked gene variant showed less gray matter and weaker connections in the mood-regulating circuit. How well the circuit was connected accounted for nearly 30 percent of their anxious temperament, researchers at the National Institute of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) found..."
Demand insufficient to staff inpatient mental health unit (Kansas) Lawrence Journal-World story on part-time psychiatrists at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, which "probably couldn't attract the needed number of psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses and other professionals needed" to reopen its inpatient mental health unit, closed last May.
