How alarming that an investigator for the state’s auditors was able to breach the security of the Kansas Health Policy Authority’s computer and filing systems and building, giving him access to the private information of Kansans on Medicaid and other programs. Marcia Nielsen, executive director of the authority, said it would implement the auditors’ recommendations and already has begun security training programs for employees. “The KHPA is very aware of the sensitive information we have and use to purchase health care for 360,000 Kansans,” she said. Kansans are counting on the authority to handle their personal information with greater care.
Are the days of Big Pharma’s excessive freebies for physicians truly numbered? That seems to be the intention behind the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America’s revised code of conduct, effective Jan. 1. Of all the places to cut back on spending within health care, this has long seemed the most obvious — pharmaceutical companies spend $4.8 billion a year pitching their drugs one-on-one to doctors.
Nationally, the numbers of Americans without health insurance decreased during the most recent reporting period, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But the good news doesn’t extend to Kansas, where the percentage of Kansans without health coverage rose from 11.3 percent in 2005-06 to 12.5 percent in 2006-07. Only nine other states saw increases over the latest two-year period. “This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita, recently said of the Legislature’s efforts toward health reform. But it also should be a growing priority for lawmakers.
Talking to Emporians last week about what ails health care, Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, pointed to a personal experience: When he needed treatment three times in three different locations, the same tests were run at each site. “If I could have taken my records with me, I could have cut costs by a third,” he said. Among his other proposed solutions: Allowing small companies to transcend state borders to collaborate on affordable health insurance, and offering a tax credit for health club memberships.
Nearly two-thirds of city clerks and government board members in 57 Kansas cities want public smoking bans implemented locally and statewide, according to a new survey by the Sunflower Foundation. Previous surveys have found overwhelming public support for a statewide smoking ban. So if both local leaders and the public want a statewide smoking ban, why doesn’t the Kansas Legislature take action?
Kudos to the Sunrise Rotary Club of West Sedgwick County and sponsoring businesses and donors for building the new wheelchair-friendly playground in Sedgwick County Park. The playground — the first of its kind in the state — is designed to be fun for all children and includes slides and swings accessible for children with disabilities. The project has been a long time in the works and still isn’t completed. Thanks, Sunrise, for persisting and for caring about these children.
In my column Friday, I support the growing trend of walk-in medical clinics in retail outlets like Walgreens and Wal-Mart.
Many doctors and medical groups don’t like them, but retail clinics — staffed by nurses and physician assistants — provide quick, affordable and convenient service on routine medical tasks. And there is great potential for partnerships with traditional providers such as hospitals and doctors.
What’s not to like?
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., accused Democrats of playing political games with Medicare and said that the bill preventing funding cuts that passed the Senate Wednesday was “controversial.” If this was such a partisan, controversial bill, why did it pass the Senate 69-30 and the House 355-59? And why was Brownback the only member of the Kansas delegation to vote against it?
Many people were surprised by news that 24-year-old singer Amy Winehouse had been diagnosed with “signs of emphysema” — isn’t that the kind of smoking-related disease usually associated with older chain-smokers?
But doctors say Winehouse’s condition isn’t uncommon: The cardiovascular damage from smoking can start early, even among teens with a five-cigarette-a-day habit, and the diminished lung capacity can be permanent.
Teenagers who think they’re immortal need to understand that they will pay a heavy price for smoking, and perhaps sooner than they think.
A Washington Post story noted an emerging trend: “pro-life pharmacies,” which refuse as a matter of conscience to distribute products the pharmacists find objectionable — such as birth control pills, morning-after pills and other forms of contraception — on grounds that they promote promiscuity and sexually transmitted diseases.
“This allows a pharmacist who does not wish to be involved in stopping a human life in any way to practice in a way that feels comfortable,” said Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life International.
Maybe this is a reasonable reflection of society’s diverse beliefs on reproductive ethics.
But don’t consumers deserve access to legal health care products? Critics ask why such pro-life pharmacies carry Viagra for men but don’t address female reproductive needs. What if a “pro-life pharmacy” is the only pharmacy around for miles?
What do you think, bloggers?
Now that the constitutionality of private gun ownership is settled, can we talk about the frequent use of guns for suicides? According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, suicides accounted for 55 percent of nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005. Not that 2005 stood out: Suicides by firearm have outnumbered gun homicides and accidents for 20 of the past 25 years. Suicide by gunshot, often involving depression and substance abuse, also is the most used method in Sedgwick County, far outnumbering hanging and drug intoxication among 2006’s 53 suicides.
It should worry adults that the percentage of teenagers who smoke leveled off between 2003 and 2007, after earlier years of steady decline in tobacco use, according to a new study of data by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Are teens not getting the message about the health risks of smoking? Maybe not, according to health experts, who say many states have scaled back high-profile anti-smoking campaigns aimed at youths that have proved very effective in reducing smoking.
Meanwhile, “The tobacco industry never stopped promoting its products,” said Terry Pechacek of the CDC. “They have increased their effort and maintained a very active effort to promote tobacco while prevention efforts have lost funding.”
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board did good work identifying the causes of the explosion last year at the Barton Solvents chemical storage unit in Valley Center and in making safety recommendations to the industry and government regulators. The board determined that the explosion resulted from a buildup of flammable vapor-air mixture inside a storage tank that was ignited by a spark from a measuring float inside the tank. The tank explosion then set off a chain reaction of explosions in other tanks, which likely could have been prevented if the tanks hadn’t been so close together and had been better ventilated.
Though this explosion was large and required widespread evacuations, it was fortunate that no one died and that the chemical plume went straight up instead of spreading out over the town, lead investigator Randy McClure told The Eagle editorial board. Here’s hoping that the lessons learned in this accident can help prevent other explosions and the loss of life in the future.
Democrats are trying to label Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., as a lapdog for the Bush administration, especially on the war in Iraq and intelligence issues. But Roberts’ latest campaign commercial highlights one disagreement he had with President Bush — though the ad doesn’t point this out or explain the context. The ad spotlights how Roberts “voted to cover 34,000 more Kansas kids.†That vote was part of a bipartisan effort to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which Bush vetoed. To his credit, Roberts was a vocal supporter of the expansion and critic of the myths and misinformation that the Bush administration and some Republican opponents, including Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, spread about the expansion.
“Only one thing ever makes me feel ashamed — citizens who pay taxes buy me . . . and U.S. senators health insurance, and they can’t pay for health insurance for their own families. If the government can buy me insurance, we ought to be able to be active in trying to help solve this huge problem of access for 47 million largely working people.†— Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, touting Barack Obama’s health care plan on “Fox News Sundayâ€
The federal Women, Infants and Children program is meant to ensure a healthy diet for low-income women and children. So it’s never made much sense that the food vouchers can’t be used to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, which nutritionists tout as pillars of a healthy diet.
It’s good news, then, that the state-administered WIC program is changing this rule to allow mothers to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables with the money, beginning in late 2009. It’s also good that the program will provide more incentives for mothers to breast-feed babies, a practice with proven health benefits for children.
Among other benefits, the restaurant smoking ban approved this week by the Wichita City Council could help discourage teenagers from taking up the habit.
That’s according to a Massachusetts study indicating that teens who lived in towns with strict restaurant smoking bans were 40 percent less likely to become regular smokers.
“When kids grow up in an environment where they don’t see smoking, they are going to think it’s not socially acceptable,†said Michael Siegel of the Boston University School of Public Health, the study’s lead author. “If they perceive a lot of other people are smoking, they think it’s the norm.â€
A string of motorcycle accidents in Wichita earlier this week that left three dead seemed to have common elements: The cyclists were speeding and weren’t wearing helmets. It’s a deadly combination — bikers who recklessly push the limits of safety are asking for trouble.
It’s not just China and India who are building scores of new coal-fired plants. Despite their green image, European countries are planning to build some 50 coal-fired plants in the next five years, according to the New York Times.
Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic and Great Britain — lured by rising oil and natural gas prices and cheap coal — all have new “clean†coal-fired plants in the works, despite scientists’ growing alarm over climate change.
Like their U.S. counterparts, the plant owners tout “clean coal†technology, but the reality is that commercial technology for capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide remains years away — and may never be feasible.
Without a moratorium on new coal plants, warns prominent climate scientist James Hansen of NASA, controlling climate change may be impossible.
Kansas claimed sixth place on an unenviable top 10 list this week: drunken driving. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 21.1 percent of Kansas drivers 18 and older said they’d been impaired by liquor at least once in the previous year while driving. That compares with the national average of 15.1 percent. Among Kansas’ neighbors, only Nebraska scored worse, with 22.9 percent. A Kansas Department of Transportation spokesman suggested to the Topeka Capital-Journal that the state’s alcohol numbers are improving, but leaders should seek other ways to drive down this dangerous number.
A statewide smoking ban appears dead for the legislative session, the arguments for business rights and local control having prevailed. But clean-air proponents are calling for it to be a campaign issue. They’re also calling it inevitable. “Ultimately we’ll have a smoking ban, and we’ll have one as soon as a majority of Kansans and elected officials see it in terms of a health question,†predicted state Sen. Pete Brungardt, R-Salina, to Harris News Service.
The Kansas Health Institute News Service sounded the alarm this week in reporting that the state hospitals in Larned and Osawatomie have had budget problems and operated recently at or over their licensed capacities — 465 and 176 beds, respectively. Osawatomie State Hospital had 32 admissions over the weekend. “We’re just out of money, basically,” Greg Valentine, superintendent at Osawatomie, told the KHI News Service. Full beds also mean 16-hour shifts for workers, who cover them for “comp time” because there is no money for overtime. Larned can’t afford to fill the 100 full-time jobs it has open. As our editorial today argues, before final adjournment, lawmakers need to work with the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services to assess and meet the hospitals’ needs. They also need to factor in the state’s community mental health agencies, which recently have seen their funding cut under a new payment system; the governor’s 2009 budget left the centers $15.8 million short of what they say they need.
No doubt most people are prepared to do whatever it takes to help someone who has collapsed and is not breathing, including administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
But it’s also no secret that many people have qualms about performing CPR, fearing germs or just the “ick†factor.
That’s why it’s good to learn that hands-only CPR works just as well in most cases of cardiac arrest, according to the American Heart Association. One notable exception is drowning victims, who may still need air blown into their lungs.
Because more people are likely to use the hands-only approach, more lives will be saved each year. It’s also easier to do: Simply press deeply on the victim’s chest, about 100 times a minute, until paramedics arrive with a defibrillator.
Trustees for Social Security and Medicare issued a critical warning this week that both programs are headed for insolvency. Without reforms, the trustees estimate that Social Security and Medicare will deplete their surpluses by 2041 and 2019, respectively. But the budget impact starts much sooner than that. That’s because the surpluses from these programs aren’t sitting in a bank vault somewhere; they’ve been used to help cover overspending by Congress. So once Social Security and Medicare begin paying out more than they take in in payroll taxes (which starts this year for Medicare), the government will have to pay back this money and won’t have surpluses to help pay its bills.
To his credit, President Bush tried to reform these programs, though his approach was too partisan. Both parties, and the presidential candidates, need to commit to working together to preserve these programs. The longer they wait, the fewer and worse the options.
The 2009 budget passed by the Kansas House this week would deliver on some important priorities for Wichita, including aviation research and training. But among the items deferred for the wrap-up session is one of huge benefit to the whole state as well as Wichita — a proposed $50 million bond issue for an expansion of the University of Kansas pharmacy school. To its credit, the House has approved $1 million to get the planning started for the expansion. But time is short: Seven counties in the state have no pharmacy, and another 30 have only one each. KU now has more applicants than places in its pharmacy school, which would grow by 45 students at the Lawrence campus and by 40 in Wichita under the expansion. “This is a priority not just for KU, Lawrence and Wichita, but for the whole state,†said state Rep. Raj Goyle, D-Wichita.
How alarming that an investigator for the state’s auditors was able to breach the security of the Kansas Health Policy Authority’s computer and filing systems and building, giving him access to the private information of Kansans on Medicaid and other programs. Marcia Nielsen, executive director of the authority, said it would implement the auditors’ recommendations and already has begun security training programs for employees. “The KHPA is very aware of the sensitive information we have and use to purchase health care for 360,000 Kansans,” she said. Kansans are counting on the authority to handle their personal information with greater care.
