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In The News is a concise digest of health care news in Vermont and the nation. VMS is not responsible for the content of the articles.
VERMONT NEWS
VTDIGGER: Welch: Vermonters’ health care vulnerable under Trump
Rep. Peter Welch painted a dire picture Wednesday for Vermont lawmakers over the future of health care funding under the incoming Trump administration. In briefings to the Senate and House, as well as Gov. Phil Scott, Welch highlighted two major concerns: First, if the Affordable Care Act is repealed without a sufficient replacement, he said, thousands of Vermonters would lose their health insurance. Some key benefits of the ACA — including requirements that insurance be offered to those with pre-existing conditions, elimination of lifetime caps on insurance claims, and clearance for children to stay on their parents’ policy until age 26 — would also go away, he said. The second issue he warned about was the push by the Republican-controlled Congress, and supported by President-elect Donald Trump, to change Medicaid payments to the states from reimbursements for each procedure to set amounts in the form of block grants. More »
VTDIGGER: Planned parenthood defunding would affect Medicaid patients
As Republicans in Congress vow to defund Planned Parenthood, leaders in Vermont warn access to basic health care for thousands of Vermonters could be affected. The organization is the only federally designated family planning provider in Vermont. Planned Parenthood has more than 18,000 patients at 12 different health centers, and serves a large proportion of women of reproductive age in Vermont communities. More »
VTDIGGER: Complex “surgery” prescribed to fix Vermont Health Connect
The two insurance companies that sell products through Vermont Health Connect are warning about the risks associated with fixing the health care insurance website. Representatives from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont and MVP Health Care told the Senate Health and Welfare Committee on Wednesday the state needs to be prepared to take on substantial risk. The insurers responded to a report from Strategic Solutions Group that suggests fixing the exchange is the best path forward for the state. A consultant from the group called that fix “a complex bit of surgery.” More »
NATIONAL NEWS
WASHINGTON POST: Pressure mounts on GOP for post-Obamacare plan following CBO report
A new analysis that at least 18 million people could lose health insurance in the first year if Congress repeals the Affordable Care Act without replacing it intensified the battle this week over the landmark health-care law as President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans try to figure out how to dismantle it. Trump waded into the fray over the weekend when he declared that his own replacement plan is nearly complete — touting the goal of “insurance for everybody” and promising “much lower deductibles” for consumers. More »
NY TIMES: Fear Spurs Support for Health Law as Republicans Work to Repeal
President-elect Donald J. Trump and congressional Republicans appear to have accomplished a feat that President Obama, with all the power at his disposal, could not in the past seven years: They have galvanized outspoken support for the Affordable Care Act. Thousands of people across the country held rallies over the weekend to save the health care law, which Republicans moved last week to repeal with a first but crucial legislative step. More »
NY TIMES: Trump Health Secretary Pick’s Longtime Foes: Big Government and Insurance Companies
It was 1 in the morning, and the orthopedic surgeon on call was preparing to operate on a woman whose foot had been shattered in a car wreck, after hours of tending to other patients. The woman’s husband, Jeff Anderson, asked him, “Are you too tired to do this?” “He looked me straight in the eye — very quiet guy — and said, ‘I was born to do this,’” Mr. Anderson recalled. The surgeon that night more than 20 years ago was Representative Tom Price of Georgia, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, the cabinet official who will lead the new administration’s efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Many who knew Mr. Price as a doctor here in Atlanta’s affluent northern suburbs praise his commitment to his patients. But his legislative record shows that over eight years in the Georgia Senate and 12 years in Congress, he has advocated at least as much for physician groups and health care companies — seeking to limit damages in malpractice cases, for instance, and voting against legislation that would have required the government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries. More »
BBC: 'Huge leap' in prostate cancer testing
The biggest leap in diagnosing prostate cancer "in decades" has been made using new scanning equipment, say doctors and campaigners. Using advanced MRI nearly doubles the number of aggressive tumours that are caught. And the trial on 576 men, published in the Lancet, showed more than a quarter could be spared invasive biopsies, which can lead to severe side-effects. The trial, at 11 hospitals in the UK, used multi-parametric MRI on men with high PSA levels. It showed 27% of the men did not need a biopsy at all. And 93% of aggressive cancers were detected by using the MRI scan to guide the biopsy compared with just 48% when the biopsy was done at random. More »
NY TIMES: Cervical Cancer Taking Deadlier Toll in U.S. Than Had Been Thought
The death rate from cervical cancer in the United States is considerably higher than previously estimated and the disparity in death rates between black women and white women is significantly wider, according to a study published Monday in the journal Cancer. More »
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