John Koster, a Republican running for Congress in Washington, became the latest candidate to opine on abortion exceptions in cases of rape and incest over the weekend at a fundraiser with Rep. Tom Price (R-GA). Koster said he would support abortion only if the woman’s life was in danger, but would not extend the same right to women who are survivors of incest or “the rape thing,” as he casually termed it. To justify his opposition, Koster insisted that incest is rare and argued that abortion would only further hurt rape survivors:

Incest is so rare, I mean, it’s so rare. But the rape thing…you know, I know a woman who was raped and kept her child, gave it up for adoption, she doesn’t regret it. In fact, she’s a big pro-life proponent. But on the rape thing, it’s like, how does putting more violence onto a woman’s body and taking the life of an innocent child that’s the consequence of this crime, how does that make it better? You know what I mean?

Koster’s comments are similar to those of Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (R-IN), who recently said that rape pregnancies are “a gift from God,” and Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), who claimed women could not get pregnant from “legitimate rape.” In fact, Koster is very much in the Republican mainstream, as a growing number of Republican candidates call for tighter restrictions on the reproductive rights of rape victims.

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) convened a press conference today to announce the creation of a fully state-funded Women’s Health Program for Medicaid recipients, but his political theater only served to obscure the truth about women’s health services in Texas.

Earlier this year, Texas announced its intention to fund the Medicaid providers in its Women’s Health Program solely through the state as a method of defunding local Planned Parenthood affiliates. Since states are not allowed to withhold federal Medicaid funds from qualified providers like Planned Parenthood, Texas legislators needed to find a workaround to continue to exclude the national health organization — which they chose to target as an “abortion affiliate,” even though abortion services represent just three percent of its total medical care — from the Women Health’s Program.

But even though Perry claimed his state is “ready” to begin fully funding the Women’s Health Program today — and even rolled out a new logo for the program — the Associated Press confirmed that they will not actually do so until Medicaid providers stop receiving federal funding. Since federal funding is guaranteed through the end of this year, Texas’ Planned Parenthood affiliates will continue to receive their full Medicaid funds until December 31. In a press release, Planned Parenthood officials celebrated the fact that their organization will be able to keep its doors open to the thousands of low-income women it serves:

Despite confusing statements from state officials, today’s announcement means that Planned Parenthood can continue to be a part of the Women’s Health Program as long as the “Affiliate Ban Rule” remains blocked by court order. Planned Parenthood and WHP patients expressed relief upon the announcement that tens of thousands of Texas women will not yet experience a disruption in WHP services, including breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, and testing for sexually transmitted infections.

“Today’s announcement is an important victory for every woman who relies on the Women’s Health Program for basic, preventive health care,” said Ken S. Lambrecht, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas. “Our doors remain open today and always to every Texas woman in need of affordable, high quality health care.”

Planned Parenthood filed a state lawsuit last week that blocks Texas from shutting down the Women’s Health Program altogether and preserves the organization’s federal funding for now. But thanks to the complicated legal battle that the national health organization is currently embroiled in, the future of the funding for its Texas affiliates remains unclear. Planned Parenthood officials say that Texas state law clearly stipulates that the Women’s Health Program needs to be funded federally — not on a state level, as Perry and his HHS Department are pushing for — so Texas lawmakers’ politically-motivated attacks on women’s health clinics will fall flat in court. Planned Parenthood’s next court date is set for November 8.

Ultimately, Perry is only serving to confuse the low-income women in Texas about the health care providers they can access through their Medicaid plans. Planned Parenthood is currently Texas’ largest Medicaid provider, serving tens of thousands of women across the state who often have no other means to access health insurance, and women deserve to know they can continue receiving critical health services at Planned Parenthood clinics in 2012.

While New York struggles to restore power and transit after extensive damage by Hurricane Sandy on Monday night, some of the storm’s greatest losses will take years to recover. Years of research and thousands of lab mice were lost when NYU Hospital’s generators failed and forced a mass evacuation during the storm.

The New York Daily News reports that the black-out destroyed many special enzymes, antibodies, and DNA strands that had been painstakingly produced in NYU’s research laboratories and stored at extremely cold temperatures. Scientists are trying to salvage what they can. Additionally, lab mice that were vital to ongoing experiments drowned in the flooding:

Even more alarming, thousands of mice that are used by scientists for cancer research and other experiments, drowned during a flood. It is unclear how the mice died, but the source told the News that many of these mice are genetically modified for certain research and took years to produce. It will likely set back several scientists’ work by years, the source said.

The storm flooded seven hospital buildings with up to ten feet of water on Monday. When the generators failed, roughly a thousand medical staff carried 215 patients, including the hospital’s chairman, Kenneth Langone, down many flights of stairs by flashlight. The patients are now being housed in other New York hospitals including Mount Sinai, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and St. Luke’s Hospital.

New Yorkers reeling from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy potentially have one more problem to deal with: the diseases carried and transmitted by the city’s overwhelming rodent population.

The Huffington Post reports that biologists such as the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies’ Rick Ostfeld have warned that if Hurricane Sandy’s waters — which have penetrated New York’s expansive subway system — end up displacing rats instead of killing them, the animals could spread a variety of pathogens through bites and waste:

“Rats are incredibly good swimmers,” said Ostfeld. “And they can climb.”

In other words, Sandy is unlikely to knock off the resilient rodents, but rather displace them.

According to Ostfeld, this could result in increased risk of infectious diseases carried by urban rats, including leptospirosis, hantavirus, typhus, salmonella, and even the plague.

“One of things we know can exacerbate disease is massive dispersal,” he added. “Rats are highly social individuals and live in a fairly stable social structure. If this storm disturbs that, rats could start infesting areas they never did before.”

And it’s not only the bite of a rat than can transmit disease. Rodent feces and urine can spread hantavirus, for example. Still, Ostfeld suggested that the huge volume of water Sandy is expected to bring should dilute the pathogens and lessen risks to public health.

Luckily for New York residents, all signs suggest that Sandy’s sheer force may have killed off the critters rather than move them up to the city streets. One spokesman for the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene told Forbes that he has “not seen an increase in rats above ground caused by Hurricane Sandy,” and several rodentology experts have suggested that the storm likely killed off vulnerable, younger rats, thereby actually reducing New York’s overall rat population.

Scientists are developing a new HIV test that they hope to bring to developed nations struggling to combat high rates of HIV without adequate resources for their low-income populations.

Lead researcher Molly Stevens told Reuters that the new HIV test is ten times cheaper that the tests currently on the market, and can help bring sophisticated technology to areas that cannot afford the most accurate forms of HIV testing:

Simple and quick HIV tests that analyze saliva already exist but they can only pick up the virus when it reaches relatively high concentrations in the body.

“We would be able to detect infection even in those cases where previous methods, such as the saliva test, were rendering a ‘false negative’ because the viral load was too low to be detected,” [Stevens] said. [...]

“Unfortunately, the existing gold standard detection methods can be too expensive to be implemented in parts of the world where resources are scarce,” Stevens said.

Early HIV detection is critical in fighting against the global AIDS epidemic, since it ensures that those infected with the virus can begin treatment as well as helps researchers track the effectiveness of different treatment methods. But the new test, which relies on nanotechnology to test serum from blood samples for the presence of an HIV biomarker, can also test for other diseases like sepsis, Leishmaniasis, tuberculosis, and malaria that can pose serious public health risks in developing nations.

Stevens told Reuters that the lead researchers plan to partner with not-for-profit global health organizations to distribute the new test in low-income countries. Gains in HIV research over the past several decade have remained stratified among racial and class groups, both in the U.S. and abroad, where sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 1.2 million of the global 1.8 million HIV-related deaths.

According to two new public health studies, smoking bans can lead to a dramatic reduction in heart attacks, strokes, and heart- or stroke-related hospitalization rates.

The first study compared health statistics in the time before and after two separate smoking bans — a workplace ban in 2002 and a bar smoking ban in 2007 — were instituted in a Minnesota county. The second study scoured dozens of reports on anti-smoking laws across multiple countries and U.S. cities to assess their impact on public health trends. And according to CBS News, the results from both indicate that regions that take action against public smoking experience substantial health benefits:

For [Dr. Richard Hurt's] study, published in the Oct. 29 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers at the Mayo Clinic looked at the number of heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths that occurred in the 18-month period before and after smoke-free laws were passed in a particular town. [...]

By comparing data from before and after both laws were implemented, researchers found heart attacks fell by 33 percent from about 151 to 101 heart attacks per 100,000 people due to the laws, and the incidence of sudden cardiac death declined by 17 percent from 109 to 92 incidents per 100,000 people. [...]

The next study, published Oct. 29 in the American Heart Association’s journal, Circulation, looked at the link between smoke-free legislation and hospitalization rates. [...]

They found comprehensive smoke-free laws were associated with a “rapid” 15 percent decrease in hospitalizations caused by heart attacks and a 16 percent drop in stroke-related hospitalizations. The laws were also tied to a rapid 24 percent fall in rates of hospitalizations caused by respiratory diseases like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The most comprehensive laws — such as those that applied to workplaces, public areas, restaurants and bars — were linked to the greatest health benefits.

Researchers from both studies conclude that public officials should pursue stringent anti-smoking policies to reduce the incidence of smoking-related illnesses, hospitalizations, and emergency room costs. Dr. Stanton Glantz of the University of California study went as far as to say, “The public, health professionals and policy makers need to understand that including exemptions and loopholes in legislation — such as exempting casinos — condemns more people to end up in emergency rooms… These unnecessary hospitalizations are the real cost of failing to enact comprehensive smoke-free legislation.”

And as ThinkProgress has previously reported, states that pursue aggressive anti-smoking efforts — such as California and Washington — experience significant returns on their investments through lower health care costs. Since cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in America, public smoking bans and other anti-smoking efforts present lawmakers with a simple means for reducing health care costs and increasing Americans’ well-being.

A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that in the month before the presidential election, President Obama maintains a lead over Mitt Romney on health policy issues.

According to Kaiser, about a third of voters rate health issues — including health care reform, Medicaid, and Medicare — as their top priorities in November. And when participants were asked which candidate they trusted to implement the best policies on those issues, they preferred Obama by narrow margins:

Obama particularly trumps Romney when it comes to issues regarding women’s health, an area where Kaiser found nearly a 20 point gap between the two candidates. Kaiser’s results corroborate similar findings from a USA Today/Gallup poll earlier this month that found Obama has a significant edge on birth control policy. Polls continue to confirm that the Obama administration’s birth control mandate — a provision of Obama’s landmark health care reform law that attempts to cut down on the large disparity between men’s and women’s health costs by providing contraceptive services without a co-pay — remains popular among voters.

Kaiser also found that Democrats and Republicans tend to give health policy issues different weight compared to the economy. While Democrats ranked economic issues on par with Obamacare, Medicaid, and Medicare — with about 40 percent of participants reporting that each of those four issues is at the top of their mind — Republicans prioritized the economy over health policy by almost 20 percentage points, 67 percent to 49 percent. But health policy issues are actually intrinsically linked to economic issues, particularly for the millions of low-income Americans who rely on the health reform law to extend them the coverage they otherwise would not be able to afford. And even aside from the direct impact on vulnerable Americans’ financial situations, Obamacare will also benefit the economy by creating millions of jobs and lowering costs for business owners.

Findings from a new Stanford University survey demonstrate that while Americans have a vague understanding of the health reform law’s specifics, most remain uncertain about what Obamacare’s specific provisions actually do.

The survey asked over 2,000 participants to decide whether 18 statements about Obamacare provisions were true or false, and rate how certain they felt about their decision. Although participants generally knew which twelve policies were part of the law and which six weren’t, they had high levels of uncertainty about whether their understanding of Obamacare was accurate. Respondents were able to confirm just one of the twelve actual Obamacare provisions — the portion of the health reform law that allows children to remain on their parents’ insurance until age 26 — with high certainty:

Respondents correctly identified five of the six false statements about Obamacare, but also with low levels of certainty. They were also largely off the mark on whether or not Obamacare mandates free health care for illegal immigrants — it does not. But accurate knowledge of the health law tended to be divided along partisan lines, with Democrats knowing more about the law than Independents and Independents knowing more than Republicans.

And survey respondents with correct information about Obamacare provisions were also far more likely to approve of the law, in keeping with past evidence on Americans’ attitudes toward health reform. Before the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the health law this past summer, one poll showed that while 56 percent of Americans reported they disapproved of Obamacare as a whole, the majority actually supported its individual provisions. Although consistent misinformation campaigns about the health care reform law have successfully confused a large swath of the American population about Obamacare’s actual policies, this type of polling suggests that Americans will approve of the health reform law by increasing margins as they become better informed about what it actually does for them.

The highest court in the United States dealt a blow to the far-right “personhood” movement yesterday when it declined to hear an appeal from Personhood Oklahoma, an anti-abortion group seeking to challenge a lower court’s ruling that struck down their proposed ballot amendment.

Far-reaching personhood amendments would endow fertilized eggs with the same constitutional rights as people, and could also serve to outlaw invitro fertilization and some forms of contraception. In April, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that personhood is “clearly unconstitutional,” blocking a proposed personhood amendment from the state’s ballot because it would have gone too far to limit women’s right to choose. Personhood Oklahoma attempted to appeal their case to the Supreme Court, hoping to overturn the lower court’s decision — but as the Hill reports, the Supreme Court declined to hear Personhood Oklahoma’s appeal yesterday, putting a definitive end to personhood advocates’ quest to advance the ballot issue in that state:

By rejecting the appeal, the justices left in place a lower court’s decision that found a personhood measure in Oklahoma would violate the Constitution.

Only four of the nine justices have to agree for the court to take a case, so Monday’s rejection could be a sign that the court’s four conservative justices aren’t interested in wading into personhood, a concept that has divided opponents of abortion rights. [...]

The justices do not explain their decisions to accept or deny cases, and did not offer an explanation for declining to hear the personhood suit.

Even aside from yesterday’s decision, personhood activists have not had much recent success. Oklahoma lawmakers failed to bring a personhood initiative up for a vote in their House earlier this year, effectively killing the legislation. And in other states across the country, personhood groups have repeatedly struggled to advance their agenda, failing to collect enough signatures to land personhood amendments on the ballot in Nevada and Florida and losing the popular vote in Colorado and Mississippi.

Medical professionals evacuated over 200 patients from two different New York City hospitals late last night after the hospitals’ backup generators failed in the midst of a widespread blackout. As Hurricane Sandy — now classified as a “superstorm” — tore through the mid-Atlantic region, hospital employees worked through the night to transfer patients to alternate locations once it became clear that Sandy’s damage was more serious than they had anticipated.

Hospitals across the East Coast prepared for the impending storm by paring down non-essential health operations and stocking up on supplies, but CNN reports that NYU Langone Medical Center was also forced to evacuate its entire facility when the storm worsened last night:

NYU didn’t anticipate such heavy flooding from Sandy, the superstorm that hit Monday, and chose not to evacuate all its patients before the storm, as they did with Hurricane Irene a year ago. But between 7 and 7:45 p.m. Monday, the hospital’s basement, lower floors, and elevator shafts filled with 10 to 12 feet of water, and the hospital lost its power, according to Dr. Andrew Brotman, senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.

“Things went downhill very, very rapidly and very unexpectedly,” he said. “The flooding was just unprecedented.”

Emergency generators did kick in, but two hours later, about 90% of that power went out, and the hospital decided to evacuate. [...] Four of the newborns were on respirators that were breathing for them, and when the power went out, each baby was carried down nine flights of stairs while a nurse manually squeezed a bag to deliver air to the baby’s lungs.

“This is a labor intensive, extremely difficult process,” Brotman said.

About 1,000 staff members — including doctors, nurses, residents, and medical students — worked to evacuate the remaining patients by flashlight, along with the help of firefighters and police officers. Brotman noted that NYU’s facility is designed to withstand floods, and only one building flooded during Hurricane Irene. But Sandy left seven hospital buildings flooded with between seven and ten feet of water.

Now that the current deadly meningitis outbreak — which has infected an estimated 337 Americans across 18 different states, and caused 25 deaths so far — has put a spotlight on compounding pharmacies that currently fall outside the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration’s safety regulations, state officials are beginning to crack down on the pharmacies that produce compounded drugs.

In Massachusetts, where tainted steroid shots produced at the New England Compounding Center (NECC) first exposed thousands of Americans to a rare strain of fungal meningitis, local officials are taking a more serious look at compounding pharmacies that remix and repackage drugs for widespread sale. As the New York Times reports, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) is working to address the public health risks posed by compounding pharmacies in the absence of FDA regulatory oversight, and recently shut down the third compounding pharmacy in his state that did not meet inspection standards:

Gov. Deval Patrick last week directed the state’s Board of Registration in Pharmacy to immediately start unannounced inspections of compounding pharmacies that prepare sterile, injectable medications. There are 25 such pharmacies in Massachusetts, and Mr. Patrick has acknowledged that the state rules governing them were insufficient. Although the Food and Drug Administration can inspect compounding pharmacies and issue warnings, the agency says states have ultimate jurisdiction.

At the news conference on Sunday, Dr. Lauren Smith, the interim commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said the state was bringing on five additional inspectors to help with unannounced visits to compounding pharmacies. The goal is to inspect all of them by Jan. 1, she added.

Smith told Reuters that the statewide inspections are part of “a series of aggressive and necessary actions to protect public safety and enhance oversight of this industry” after the contaminated steroid shots from the NECC brought on the national meningitis epidemic.

Although public health advocates have called for strengthened FDA regulatory power over compounded drugs for decades — warning that since compounding pharmacies are not currently subject to the FDA’s health and safety guidelines, they are able to distribute products like the tainted steroids that pose serious public health risks — the pharmaceutical industry has lobbied to prevent the agency from having any additional oversight in that area. Some members of Congress have already called for a criminal investigation into the meningitis outbreak.

The Obama Administration is preparing for the federal government’s impending role as the primary sponsor of two new multistate health insurance plans that will be available for individuals and small businesses to purchase under Obamacare’s statewide insurance exchanges in 2014.

Although they are not exactly the same, the nationwide plans do somewhat resemble the government-run “public option” that some congressional Democrats advocated during the Obamacare debate. As the New York Times reports, the plans represent an opportunity for the federal government to contract with large-scale providers and inject marketplace competition into Obamacare’s insurance exchanges:

The national plans will compete directly with other private insurers and may have some significant advantages, including a federal seal of approval. Premiums and benefits for the multistate insurance plans will be negotiated by the United States Office of Personnel Management, the agency that arranges health benefits for federal employees. [...]

The federal standards will pre-empt state rules in at least one respect: the national health plans will automatically be eligible to compete against other private insurers in the new exchanges, regardless of whether they have been certified as meeting the standards of those exchanges.

The administration has promised to “work cooperatively with states.” But it is unclear whether the government-sponsored plans will have to comply with all state laws and consumer protection standards; whether they will have to comply with state benefit mandates; and whether they will have to pay state fees and taxes levied on other insurers to finance exchange operations. [...]

“Multistate plans have real potential benefits for consumers,” said Ronald F. Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a liberal-leaning consumer group. “But there is also potential trouble if the multistate plans are exempted from some consumer protection standards.”

State health commissions, private insurers, and consumer protection advocates alike want to see the nationwide plans compete on a level playing field so that benefits standards and competitive pressures are both fair and consistent throughout state exchanges. If implemented properly, however, the new multistate health plans could drive down health costs while offering consumers coverage approved directly by the federal government.

Health insurance CEOs haven’t always been the biggest proponent of President Obama’s health care reform law, but that doesn’t mean they’re excited about the possibility of Mitt Romney repealing Obamacare in its entirety if he wins next week’s election. In fact, as the Associated Press reports, insurers are increasingly wary of the prospect of a Romney victory.

Despite the false conservative talking point that Obamacare puts a strain on the economy, industry analysts predict that the health reform law will be good for insurers’ bottom lines once it is fully in effect. Obamacare’s expansion of the Medicaid program, for example, could be a huge boon for the private insurance industry as new Medicaid beneficiaries enroll in plans with commercial insurance companies. And now that major insurers like UnitedHealth Group and BlueCross Blue Shield have already invested millions of dollars in implementing Obamacare — and expect to profit off that investment when they gain additional customers under the health reform law — they aren’t eager to see the law repealed.

Most troubling for the insurance industry is the uncertain prospect of a partial repeal. If a Romney administration repeals just some of Obamacare’s key provisions while leaving others in place, insurers worry that the health reform law will be entirely unsustainable, causing premium costs to skyrocket:

Things could get grim for the industry if Republicans succeed in repealing the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies and mandates, but leave standing its requirement that insurers cover people with health problems. If that’s the outcome, the industry fears people literally could get health insurance on the way to the emergency room, and that would drive up premiums.

“There are a lot of dollars and a lot of staff time that’s been put into place to make this thing operational,” G. William Hoagland, until recently a Cigna vice president, said of the health care law.

Insurers “are not going to be out there saying, ‘Repeal, repeal, repeal,’” said Hoagland, who oversaw public policy at the health insurance company. “They will probably try to find the particular provisions that cause them heartburn, but not throw the baby out with the bath water.” [...]

“I spend a lot of time in executive offices and board rooms, and they are good Republicans who would like to see Romney win,” said [Robert Laszewski, an industry consultant and blogger]. “But they are scared to death about what he’s going to do.”

Industry officials’ primary concern about a potential Romney administration is that the presidential candidate has offered few details about what his alternative to Obamacare would look like, despite the fact that he has pledged to repeal the law on his first day in office. There is no consensus on the issue among Republicans in Congress, either.