KHN: Kaiser Health News

The Department of Health and Human Services awarded Tuesday more than $103 million through its Community Transformation Grants program, which was established by the 2010 health law. A total of 61 groups as well as state and local government agencies, spread across 36 states and one territory, will receive funding to promote healthy living and prevention locally over the next five years.

The grants are funded by the law’s Prevention and Public Health Fund. President Barack Obama recently proposed cutting $3.5 billion from the fund as part of his deficit reduction plan, leaving $13.8 billion. The fund could be targeted by the ‘super committee’  in its pursuit of savings, and has also been eyed by congressional Republicans.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Thomas Frieden said the transformation grants will “do exactly what the name says: change the way communities promote health.” Project managers at the CDC will work with individual grantees now through early 2012 to finalize their plans.

Key focuses include discouraging tobacco use, promoting healthy eating and activity and encouraging preventive medicine. Success will be measured in terms of changes in weight, nutrition, physical activity, tobacco use and emotional well-being, said Ursula Bauer, director of the CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

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As health plan enrollment season gears up, premiums for federal employees and retirees will increase on average about 3.8 percent – less than half of the increase they saw last year.

Photo by feck_aRt_post via Flickr

Last year, plan costs increased an average of 7.3 percent. But an official at the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said today that “lower than anticipated utilization of health care services by our enrollees and, to a lesser extent, moderation in prescription drug costs due primarily to brand name drugs coming off patent and thus greater use of generic drugs” kept health costs down and allowed the rise in premiums to moderate.

The federal government is the largest employer in the country. More than 8 million federal workers, retirees and dependents are enrolled in the Federal Employee Health Benefits program (FEHB). The plan next year will offer 206 health plan options.

According to information released by OPM today, the new rates mean that individual coverage will increase, on average, $2.32 per bi-weekly paycheck and family coverage $6.18.  However, in the most popular plan, Blue Cross and Blue Shield standard, the individual coverage premium will fall on average $0.81 and family coverage will be down $0.72 per pay period.

No significant changes in benefits were announced, but the federal government share of premiums will increase by 4 percent.

Open season, or the period when federal workers can change their coverage or sign up for new coverage, runs from Nov. 14 until Dec. 12.

Source: Archives of Surgery

Dr. Adil Haider, a trauma surgeon and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, thought trauma would be the one medical area free from racial disparities — emergency rooms don’t check insurance, and they are required to treat anyone who comes through their doors.

“With trauma, you call and the ambulance comes. We think we treat everyone the same when they come into the Emergency Department,” he said. But he and his research colleagues found Hispanic and black trauma patients faced a higher risk of death compared to whites—especially if they are served in hospitals with a high percentage of minority patients.

“Patients treated at hospitals with higher proportions of minority trauma patients have increased odds of dying. … Differences in outcomes between trauma hospitals may partly explain racial disparities,” the researchers wrote in the study, which was published this month in the Archives of Surgery. The study also found that “minority patients, whether black or Hispanic, did not have worse outcomes at predominantly majority hospitals. Similarly, there was no difference in odds of mortality for whites, blacks, or Hispanics at predominantly minority hospitals.”

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Americans have little faith the bipartisan congressional “super committee” will reduce the federal deficit, according to a survey released Friday.

Sixty-two percent of respondents said they either trust the super committee “just a little” or “not at all” to make the right recommendations to cut the deficit, according to the poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KHN is an editorially-independent program of the foundation).

Just 5 percent of respondents said they had “a great deal” of trust in the committee. More people believe the right recommendations would be made by President Barack Obama (23 percent), Democrats in Congress (13 percent) and Republicans (8 percent).

Forty-one percent of Democrats said they either had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the committee, compared to 31 percent of Republicans.

Members of the super committee have until Nov. 23 to make recommendations and Congress must vote on them by Dec. 23. If Congress doesn’t act, spending cuts totaling $1.2 trillion over 10 years would automatically be triggered.

The survey of 1,207 adults was conducted Sept. 7 to Sept. 12 and has a +/-3 percent margin of error.

The federal government could save $125 billion over ten years by requiring all people who get both Medicare and Medicaid – dual eligibles – to enroll in team-based coordinated care programs, according to a report written by Emory University’s Kenneth Thorpe and funded by America’s Health Insurance Plans. States could save $34 billion, and the savings would be less at both the federal and state level if dual eligibles were allowed to opt out, Thorpe wrote.

The report comes as the deficit reduction supercommittee contemplates how to save more than $1 trillion. Health care interests, fretting over the prospect of big cuts, are beginning to point members of the committee toward proposals that would save money by creating efficiencies.

This proposal also would improve the quality of care, Thorpe writes. As of 2010, more than 9 million people were eligible for both programs, yet fewer than 2 percent were in coordinated care programs that managed all of their Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

Coordinating their care would save money because dual eligible have high rates of chronic illness. Over half are in treatment for five or more chronic conditions. Some of these conditions, such as diabetes, pulmonary disease and hypertension could be managed with team-based care, which has been successful in reducing hospitalizations, readmissions, and nursing home admissions, he wrote.

Patients might benefit from health coaching and patient education to help them achieve goals set out in personalized care plans. Nutrition, exercise and smoking cessation could be part of the plan, for example.

States could design their own models, and dual eligibles would be automatically enrolled unless they specifically opt out.