Vice-President Joe Biden and vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan covered a lot of ground in last night’s debate. But one program that didn’t come up is Medicaid, the joint state-federal program that provides health coverage to 31 million children, 1.9 million seniors, and millions of other disabled and low-income Americans. It’s worth correcting the omission because Ryan’s plans for Medicaid, laid out in the budget he engineered for the House Republicans, are arguably even more radical than his well-known plans for Medicare:

Ryan transforms Medicaid into a block grant. Right now, both the states and the federal government must provide the funding to meet the benefits outlined in the Medicaid program. Block grants would change the federal contribution into an annual lump sum, leaving state budgets to make up the shortfall in times of economic hardship. Other countries’ block grant programs appear to work well, but their history in American politics is not encouraging. In the case of welfare reform, which Ryan often touts as a model, funding was sometimes diluted and states often failed to meet families’ increased needs during the depression.

Ryan cuts Medicaid by a third in ten years. While he tends to focus on the block grants in defending his Medicaid plans, this is what hides behind them: A hard cut to how much the federal government will provide the program, by about $810 billion over ten years. The rates at which Medicaid reimburses health care providers are already extremely low, meaning the cuts will probably come out of the eligibility roles. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated this would kick 14 to 27 million people off Medicaid, depending on how the cuts are carried out. Another 17 million people who gained coverage under Obamacare would also lose it if Ryan repealed that law, as he says he would. And on top of all that, Ryan’s cuts to Medicaid go even deeper beyond the ten year window:

Sources: White House 2013 budget, CBO analysis of Ryan's 2013 budget

Ryan’s cuts harm current seniors. He’s often defended his alterations to Medicare by claiming the changes won’t harm current seniors. He has no such out for his Medicaid cuts. 1.9 million seniors rely on Medicaid to support their long-term care, and under Ryan’s plan they would immediately start seeing losses to their benefits in the realm of $2,500 a year.

Ryan offers Orwellian justifications for these cuts. His own budget scolds current Medicaid for its extremely stingy reimbursement rates, which drive away providers and risk the health of Medicaid’s enrollees. But to offer further cuts and the “efficiencies” of block grants as the solution is perverse. Medicaid’s provider payment rates are already a third lower than Medicare’s, and even further below those of private insurers. Ryan admits improper payments within Medicaid are only 10 percent of its budget, so even if all these inefficiencies were eliminated and the reclaimed funds plowed into reimbursement rates, Medicaid would still be well below Medicare’s rates — and that’s before accounting for the new cuts. Ryan also criticizes Medicaid for a spending trajectory that’s unsustainable over the long-term. That’s a fair point, but this is because Medicaid must keep up with rising health care costs in order to keep fulfilling its role in the social safety net. The bluntness and extraordinary size of Ryan’s cuts completely ignore these complexities.

It’s also worth mentioning that Mitt Romney’s budget plan, which Ryan must now defend as part of the ticket, is less detailed, but arguably even worse. By keeping government spending under 20 percent of GDP, while holding defense at 4 percent, and not touching Medicare or Social Security, Romney would force a 40 percent cut in every other program — including Medicaid — by 2022.

As New York department store Barneys gears up for its annual holiday campaign, they’ve announced something for the kids: A runway display that will feature classic Disney stars like Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

But, to make the mouse duo more “appropriate” for the runway, the characters will be taller and skinnier than their actual size — a decision that has some people outraged because of the message it sends to young children about body image:

Barneys’ creative director, Dennis Freedman, explained the decision to make Minnie Mouse 5″11 and significantly skinnier by saying that Minnie would otherwise not “look so good”:

“When we got to the moment when all Disney characters walk on the runway, there was a discussion,” Freedman recalled. “The standard Minnie Mouse will not look so good in a Lanvin dress. There was a real moment of silence, because these characters don’t change. I said, ‘If we’re going to make this work, we have to have a 5-foot-11 Minnie,’ and they agreed. When you see Goofy, Minnie and Mickey, they are runway models.”

Barneys’ move is reminiscent of a similarly problematic marketing tactic from another department store. Last month, JCPenney drastically altered the size of its mannequins, slimming them down to the point where the mannequins’ legs were actually skinnier than a human arm.

Eighty percent of 10 year-old girls in the United States say they have been on a diet. And Disney, who often uses the imagery and language associated with magic, might know that “the number one magic wish for young girls age 11-17 is to be thinner.” Such a fashion campaign associated around children’s play figures, then, might have further negative repercussions for these young girls.

A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds that public health messages on Facebook can help encourage teenagers on the social media site to make healthier sexual choices, like using condoms. In light of other studies that find parents are failing to effectively communicate about sexual health with their teens — coupled with the woeful lack of comprehensive sexual education in high school classrooms across the country — social media tools may be the best avenue to reach young adults with medically accurate information about sexuality.

Over 1,500 young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 participated in for the University of Colorado study, which split participants into two groups on Facebook. One group ‘liked’ a sexual health Facebook page called Just/Us that shared information about STI testing and condom use, while the other subscribed to a page that provided general news items. When the researchers surveyed the participants two months later, they found that 68 percent of those who were receiving sexual health information from the Just/Us page reported they used condoms during their last sexual experience — over ten points higher than the young adults who weren’t subscribed to that group, for whom the condom use rate was just 56 percent.

Dr. Elizabeth Schroeder, who runs a sexual health website for teenagers that includes resources on topics ranging from birth control methods to locating health clinics, told ThinkProgress that the study’s results reflect the fact that “using social media to reach young people is absolutely brilliant.” As Schroeder explained, “You have to go where the clients are in order to reach them effectively. [...] And social media is where young people hang out.”

However, the effects from the study were relatively short-lived. After six months, participants resumed their sexual behavior as normal and researchers stopped registering any additional impact from Facebook for the group subscribed to the Just/Us page. Schroeder pointed out that, while social media tools do help “make health advocates relevant and important to young people,” tactics for engaging youth must constantly evolve to ensure their attention doesn’t drop off.

“First, you have to keep the discussion going, and you need to keep it fresh,” Scroeder told ThinkProgress. “You can’t hope that it will maintain itself on Facebook or Twitter — you have to constantly change it up, switch up the format, and keep young people interested. Try a video chat or an online forum.”

RH Reality Check points out that texting is yet another tool that some medical professionals are using to connect with teenagers on sexual health issues, since texts can help remind teens to schedule appointments for STI testing or start conversations about alcohol and sexuality they may not feel comfortable bringing up in front of their parents. Certainly, in a society that has neglected to adequately educate young adults about the tools they need to ensure healthy sexual practices, new technologies may be teenagers’ best source of information when their parents and their classrooms continue to fall short.

Our guest blogger is Eleni Towns, a Research Assistant with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress. For more on this initiative, please see its project page.

Caring for the sick and vulnerable is a core value in all major religions. That is one reason why faith-based organizations have played such a crucial role in providing health care in this country. From community clinics to large hospitals, they have long been on the front lines when it comes to caring for those in need. And in addition to providing direct services, faith leaders have advocated for health care reform, providing a moral vision that undergirds economic arguments for repairing a broken health care system.

With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, we saw the challenges of transforming religious values and beliefs into legislation. The process was difficult at times, as faith communities had to reconcile their theological beliefs with the different views and beliefs of those with whom they work and serve. They also had to contend with hard-edged politics, clashing constituencies, vested interests, and political power.

The process of discerning how to be faithful and also serve the common good led to fierce debates within faith communities and the larger society. Some of those debates are still playing out more than two years after passage of the Affordable Care Act. Faith communities continue to champion health care reform, however, and are key actors in the public education and implementation of this law in the states.

Faith-based groups have long provided health care, especially to those who are poor, uninsured, and disenfranchised. Catholic hospitals today account for more than one-fifth of all admissions in the country. Muslim-run clinics in Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles serve all who come, regardless of ability to pay. In Washington, D.C., faith-based Columbia Road Health Services provides care to the area’s most vulnerable residents, regardless of their ability to pay. Likewise, Christ House, also in D.C., serves as a holistic infirmary that ministers to the needs of homeless men and women.

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Government regulators have upped the number of Americans who they believe could be at risk for contracting a deadly strain of fungal meningitis — which originated from contaminated steroid shots from a Massachusetts-based compounding pharmacy outside of the FDA’s regulatory power — to 14,000 people. FDA officials, who continue to investigate the outbreak, say they expect Congress to work with them to create a better regulatory system for overseeing compounded pharmacies in order to prevent future public health crises.

Since the thousands of U.S. pharmacies across the country that practice compounding — an attempt to keep down prescription costs by recombining medications and repackaging them for sale — do not technically count as drug manufacturers, the FDA currently has no authority to oversee them to ensure that their compounded drugs meet the agency’s safety guidelines. On a call with reporters, FDA officials said they expect lawmakers to recognize the need for additional regulations that will empower the agency to oversee this often-overlooked area of the pharmaceutical industry:

The outbreak resulted from contaminated vials traced to a compounding pharmacy in Framingham, Massachusetts that mixed the drug and sold it to 75 hospitals and pain clinics in 23 states. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will work with Congress to create new regulations allowing the agency to better oversee the actions of such pharmacies in the future, said Deborah Autor, a deputy commissioner at the agency.

“We want to sit down with pharmacists and lawmakers and think about a scheme that recognizes that the industry and practice of pharmacy have evolved over time, and put in place a risk-based scheme,” said Autor, of the FDA’s global regulatory operations and policy unit, on the call. [...]

The outbreak highlights the need to ensure product safety, [Todd Weber, who is overseeing the federal probe for the Centers for Disease Control] said on the conference call. “We want patients to be confident that they’re not going to get a potentially devastating disease as a result of their care,” he said.

This week’s meningitis outbreak has led to the deaths of 14 Americans so far. Public health advocates have been calling for strengthened FDA regulations in this area for years, warning that the country will see more outbreaks like this in the future if regulations are not put in place, but the pharmaceutical industry has brought repeated lawsuits against the FDA over the past decade to chip away at the agency’s power over compounded drugs.