Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Democrats See a New Urgency in Health Care
New York Times feature story [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free]. - "Ten years after the political collapse of President Bill Clinton's health plan, the Democratic Party's presidential candidates are proposing, once again, major new programs for guaranteed, affordable health insurance, setting the stage for one of the starker contrasts with President Bush in the general election campaign. The nine candidates for the Democratic nomination disagree, often sharply, on how they would expand coverage, how they would pay for it, whose plan would work best and how many of the more than 43 million uninsured Americans they would try to reach. But beneath these disagreements is a consensus that a health care crisis of soaring costs and declining coverage has returned..."  [Editor's note - From time to time, readers will find links here to news stories and articles on proposals and positions put forth by various political candidates. The inclusion of such material is not intended to advocate for or against any particular candidates or views, and should not be understood as such, but rather as part of an effort to distribute information of interest to readers and to help contribute to the overall quality of discourse on issues related to mental health. - BD]  
  

Democrats: HHS spins health report
Atlanta Journal-Constitution story - "Eight congressional Democrats charged Tuesday that the Department of Health and Human Services watered down a report by its own scientists that cited racial and ethnic disparities in health care. In a letter to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, they said the revisions 'alter the report's meaning, undermine efforts to address disparities, and fit a pattern of the manipulation of science by the Bush administration.' HHS scientists said in their June 2003 draft summary that the inequalities are 'national problems' that are 'pervasive in our health care system' and carry a significant 'personal and societal price.' The final report, released Dec. 23, included none of those conclusions..."  
  

Crackdown Falters as 2 Rulings Favor State Adult Homes (New York)
New York Times story - "In the last two years, the Pataki administration has worked to toughen its scrutiny of the state's adult homes for the mentally ill, dispatching squads of inspectors to determine whether residents are being neglected and demanding fines as high as $55,000 for health and safety violations. ... The collapse of the enforcement efforts is a significant setback for the Pataki administration, which has often cited its stepped-up inspections and stiff fines as evidence that it was cracking down on abuses. Advocates for the mentally ill called the flawed inspections another unfortunate chapter in the history of the homes." [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

Vouchers for drug-abuse care await funds (Arizona)
Story in the Tucson Citizen - "State vouchers could soon be available for people who need substance-abuse treatment if Congress funds President Bush's Access to Recovery initiative during budget discussions next week. The vouchers, which would be distributed to people referred by schools, emergency rooms and other places, would 'authorize care, as much as the patient needs, in a self-directed way for as long as the patient needs,' said Dr. Andrea Barthwell, associate director for demand reduction at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy."  
  

Community in crisis:Cash-strapped agencies struggle to cooperate (California)
The second part of a series in the Times-Standard (Eureka) - " Social stigma combined with a scarcity of available treatment have added to the existing stress of mentally ill people in Humboldt County. Mental health advocates are trying to encourage better collaboration among agencies, and better public awareness of mental illness. Those who treat others' depression, anxiety and psychosis are themselves under a great deal of stress. Virtually all the local psychiatrists in private practice can't take new patients, and the already overburdened county mental health system is steadily losing funding." See also the first article in the series, Families struggle to deal with mental illness, which ran on January 7. The next article, scheduled for January 21, will focus on mental health and the criminal justice system.  
  

Suicide rate among soldiers up in Iraq
MSNBC story - "The Army’s suicide rate in Iraq has been about a third higher than past rates for troops during peacetime, the Pentagon’s top doctor said Wednesday. advertisement Also, the military still has about 2,500 troops waiting for medical care after returning from overseas, said Dr. William Winkenwerder, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. The Pentagon is preparing for even more soldiers on 'medical extension' after tens of thousands of troops are rotated home from Iraq this spring, Winkenwerder said. The issue of suicides so worried the military that the Army sent an assessment team to Iraq late last year to see if anything more could be done to prevent troops from killing themselves..."  
  

NIAAA to Shelve Alcohol-Research Database
Feature story at Join Together - "The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) plans to discontinue a specialty database dedicated to alcohol research, saying it is largely duplicative of other information repositories. But many researchers and librarians say that NIAAA's ETOH Alcohol and Alcohol Problems Science Database is a unique resource that cannot be duplicated elsewhere. Diane Miller, a spokesperson for NIAAA, said that ETOH is currently indexing about 400 publications a month; to stay current would require adding more mainstream journals, which increasingly are publishing alcohol-related research..." See also the NIAAA web site, their publications database, and other public sources noted in the artice at the National Library of Medicine and the National Clearinghouse on Alcohol and Drug Information (NCADI).  
  

Grants address mental health 'crisis' in SW Washington
Story in the Puget Sound Business Journal - "The Southwest Washington Medical Center Foundation has awarded two grants to address what it calls "an immediate crisis" in mental health services in Southwest Washington. ... Columbia River Mental Health Services will receive $100,000 to hire support and clinical staff to provide treatment and triage services to low-income patients no longer covered under Medicaid. ... The foundation will also issue $67,532 to Mental Health Northwest to help establish a mental health free clinic and training center in Vancouver." .