KHN: Kaiser Health News

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) introduced a bill Thursday that would provide health insurance coverage for abortions to Peace Corps volunteers in the case of rape or incest.

The Peace Corps Equity Act of 2013 echoes the Shaheen Amendment, which President Barack Obama signed into law in 2012. That law provides military women coverage for abortions in these instances. The new bill, also co-sponsored by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D.-N.H.), would extend coverage to women volunteers – who make up about 60 percent of those serving abroad – and overturn a 1979 appropriations bill that banned the Peace Corps from offering this benefit in its federal health plan.

Peace Corps volunteers “face inherent risks to their safety and security,” according to a statement by Lautenberg. More than 1,000 Peace Corps volunteers reported experiencing sexual assault between 2000 and 2009, including more than 221 rapes or attempted rapes.

The bill does not yet have a House sponsor.

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Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced Wednesday that he would back expansion of the Medicaid program under the federal health law. At a hastily-called press conference, Scott, a Republican, said he supported expanding Medicaid for three years — the amount of time the federal government picks up the whole cost.

“Expanding access to Medicaid services for three years is a compassionate, common sense step forward. It is not the end of our work to improve health care,” Scott said. “And, it is not a white flag of surrender to government-run health care.”

The move makes Scott the seventh Republican governor to back Medicaid expansion.

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Updated on Oct. 13 at 9:35 a.m.

Just hours after posting it Monday, the Food and Drug Administration removed from its website a list of hospitals and doctors that had received products from the compounding pharmacy now at the center of the fungal meningitis outbreak, saying data may be incorrect.

The agency said it is working to correct the list and will repost once it is completed. Data had been supplied to the agency by the pharmacy, the New England Compounding Center in Massachusetts.

The original list included more than 1,000 hospitals, clinics and doctors nationwide, including some well-known facilities such as Brigham & Women’s, Beth Israel, the Mayo Clinic Health System, Children’s Hospital Boston and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

Contaminated steroid injections shipped from the New England Compounding Center are suspected in the meningitis outbreak that has been linked to 23 deaths nationwide. A second list on the FDA website detailed the many different types of medications shipped and has also been removed.

Hundreds of surgical centers, doctor’s offices and hospitals are named as recipients, illustrating the wide reach of the products shipped since May 21 by the pharmacy.

Federal law allows compounding, but generally only to fill individual prescriptions for products that are not commercially available. The FDA, however, has warned some pharmacies during the past decade that their efforts have crossed into mass production, sometimes of products that are made by commercial drug manufacturers.

States must provide details to the federal government by Nov. 16 – just 10 days after the presidential election – on how they will run online insurance marketplaces, according to guidance released Wednesday.

Those that don’t meet the deadline – or that can’t operate their own marketplaces, called exchanges  – will have it done for them by the federal government, starting in January 2014.

The marketplaces, which are mandated by the 2010 health law, are designed to increase competition among insurers and to make coverage more affordable. States can choose to run the exchanges, elect to perform only some services or cede control to the federal government, officials said Wednesday.  The Department of Health & Human Services “will seek to harmonize … policies with existing state programs and laws wherever possible,” according to a separate report offering a few details on what a federal exchange might look like.

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Medicare is proposing a significant change in how it decides on hospital reimbursements, adding two measures of patient safety and a financial assessment of whether hospitals are careful stewards of Medicare’s money.

The changes represent a broadening of the way Medicare plans to pay hospitals through its value-based purchasing program, which is set to begin in October. Medicare has already decided that in the initial year of the program, it will pay more to hospitals that follow clinical guidelines for recommended care and do better than average in patient surveys of their experiences.

Hospitals that fall short will get less money, initially losing up to 1 percent of their regular Medicare reimbursements, with even more at stake in 2013 and beyond.

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Planned Parenthood branches across Texas have filed a federal lawsuit to prevent Gov. Rick Perry’s administration from excluding them from a women’s health program.

A month ago, Texas was dropped from a federal program that helps subsidize contraception and reproductive check-ups for poor women. Even though the program has nothing to do with abortion, Perry wanted to exclude Planned Parenthood affiliates from participating.

Now Planned Parenthood is fighting the move in the federal courts.

Melaney Linton, the new president of Planned Parenthood’s Gulf Coast chapter, said of the filing, “It’s really unfortunate that we had to take this step, but we know that women are depending on us to do everything in our power to help preserve access to family planning services and to preserve their access to be able to go to the provider that they trust.”

Planned Parenthood leaders say that without the funding, clinics in low-income areas like the Rio Grande Valley will have to shut down.

Pete Schenkkan is an Austin attorney who filed the suit, and he says it doesn’t matter how Texas pays for the program: It can’t exclude medical providers simply because they advocate for reproductive rights, or associate with other organizations that do so.

“Even if Texas does a 100 percent state funded program, they don’t get to say ‘Everyone can be in this program as long as they give up their rights to free speech and freedom of association.’ They can’t say that,” Schenkkan said.

But a Perry spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, says Texas will not roll over for this lawsuit.  ”We certainly will fight it,” Frazier said. “We believe we’re on the right side of this issue. Planned Parenthood has no entitlement to taxpayer dollars any more than any other private or non-profit organization.”

The lawsuit requests a preliminary injunction by the end of April, which is when Planned Parenthood affiliates will start to lose their funding.

This post is part of a reporting partnership between KUHF, and Kaiser Health News.