Tuesday, January 11, 2005

NAMI Submits Comments to CMS on Medicare Formulary GuidanceAnnouncement at the NAMI web site - "Efforts to implement the upcoming prescription drug benefit under Medicare have picked up pace in recent weeks with the publication of new guidance for prescription drug plans on formulary guidance and access restrictions and the publication this week of final guidelines for the model therapeutic classification system. Taken together, these two announcements establish important standards for the private sector drug plans that will be offering drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries beginning in January 2006..." See also the CMS formulary guidelines (Adobe Acrobat format) and NAMI's comments.  
  

More Transparency Offered in Drug Trials   AP story reprinted at PsycPORT - "The embattled pharmaceutical industry announced its intention Thursday to publish more data about clinical drug trials, despite skepticism about whether the initiative will really increase transparency and improve drug safety. The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, along with three other industry associations covering Europe, the United States and Japan, said they will disclose a free, detailed registry of current and completed drug trials on the Internet. The decision comes amid revelations that the industry muzzled negative data about some of its products and growing questions about drug safety."  
  

Applying Brakes to Benefits Gets Wide G.O.P. BackingNew York Times story - "In his budget request to Congress, President Bush will try to impose firm, enforceable limits on the growth of federal benefit programs, and the chairmen of the Senate and House Budget Committees say they strongly supported that effort. Administration officials and Congressional aides said Mr. Bush would also seek cuts in housing assistance for low-income families, freezes or slight increases in most domestic programs, and larger increases for domestic security. The spending plan for 2006, like the appropriations enacted for this year, would give priority to military operations and domestic security over social welfare programs. ... A legislative proposal drafted by the White House would make it more difficult for Congress to pass legislation increasing the 'long-term unfunded obligations' of benefit programs like Social Security, Medicare, Civil Service retirement and disability, veterans disability compensation, and health benefits for retired federal employees. A White House document describing the proposal says that Medicaid, the health program for low-income people, can be added to the list as soon as federal officials devise a reliable way to estimate its long-term costs. Medicaid spending has shot up 63 percent in the last five years, so that federal and state outlays together now total more than $300 billion a year." [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

Human rights imperative for mental health reformsAmnesty International press release - "The only way to ensure respect for human rights in mental health systems and in-patient facilities is through effective enforcement of international human rights standards, principally through rights-based national legislation, Amnesty International said on the eve of the World Health Organization's (WHO) European Ministerial Conference on Mental Health in Helsinki, Finland, on 12-15 January 2005..."  
  

NHS faces mental health ethnic survey (UK)Story in The Guardian - "The government will this week order the NHS to introduce comprehensive ethnic monitoring of all mental health patients in England after evidence of persistent racial discrimination against black and minority ethnic groups. Rosie Winterton, the health minister, will publish a long-delayed response to an official inquiry into the death of David 'Rocky' Bennett, a 38-year-old Jamaican-born Rastafarian who died in a psychiatric ward in Norwich in 1998. ... She is expected to order all primary care trusts in England to conduct an ethnic census of mental health patients and compare the results with the ethnic make-up of the local area. Each trust will be required to produce an action plan to tailor mental health services more closely to local demographic needs."