During his tenure as New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg (I) has had no qualms about cracking down on products that pose a public health risk, tackling everything from sugary sodas, to salt in snack foods, to illegal guns. Now, the three-term executive has his sights set on the tobacco industry, pushing legislation that would raise cigarette pack prices in the city to at least $10.50 and end tobacco companies’ ability to offer coupons or special discounts on their products.

The recently-announced initiative comes at the heels of another Bloomberg-endorsed plan to limit cigarette makers’ ability to publicly advertise their products in city store fronts. Combined, the two proposals would constitute something of a public health coup for Bloomberg, targeting smokers’ bad habit where it hurts the most: their wallets. And as the New York Times reports, the effort is targeted at teens and low-income Americans:

“This is kind of a landmark set of proposals here,” said Kurt Ribisl, a professor of public health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, whose research on tobacco control influenced Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal. “For someone like me, who’s spent 18 years studying point-of-sale issues, this is kind of big.”

Dr. Ribisl studies what happens at the retail counter, where a customer at a typical convenience store sees a colorful array of signs, packaging and “shelf talkers” — the small tags that flutter from shelves — promoting two-for-one, dollar-off and other types of deals. According to a Federal Trade Commission report issued last year, the tobacco industry spent $6.5 billion on discounts in 2010, and Dr. Ribisl said they are one of the major ways cigarette makers encourage price-conscious customers like teenagers and low-income smokers to buy.

New York’s price-regulation bill would, in effect, close off the remaining means of access to cheap cigarettes and little cigars, which make it easier for teenagers to experiment with smoking, and progress to smoking regularly, said Brett Loomis, a researcher at RTI International, a nonprofit institute that offers research and technical services to governments and businesses.

Poor Americans are more likely to smoke, but less likely to be able to afford the habit and its associated health care costs. In fact, one study showed that low-income New York City smokers spend as much as a quarter of their income purchasing cigarettes — Bloomberg’s initiatives have the potential to price them out of the deadly habit altogether. While encouraging poor people to stop smoking is undoubtedly good from a public health standpoint, doing so through a commodity-based financial regulation has the potential to further drain their disposable incomes.

And Bloomberg’s legislative push won’t address all aspects of the problem. As cigarette prices rise nationwide and smoking rates plummet in the aggregate, studies have shown that low-income Americans — particularly, low-income women — are still smoking at higher rates than average, and turning to less costly alternatives such as loose leaf tobacco to get their fix on the cheap. Raising cigarette prices even further could propagate even more of that kind of behavior.

A 10th grade science teacher in Idaho is being investigated by his school after parents complained that he included the word “vagina” in his lessons, taught the class about the female orgasm, and showed Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Some of the allegations are more serious, including that “he shared confidential student files with an individual other than their parents,” and “told inappropriate jokes in class,” but science teacher Tim McDaniel suspects that the complaints originated because of his discussions about issues considered controversial in the largely Mormon community where he teaches:

“I teach straight out of the textbook, I don’t include anything that the textbook doesn’t mention,” McDaniel said. “But I give every student the option not attend this class when I teach on the reproductive system if they don’t feel comfortable with the material.”

The science teacher said he has taught Dietrich’s science classes for the past 18 years without receiving a complaint from parents or students.

According to McDaniel, the commission is also investigating a complaint that accuses him of using school property to promote a political candidate. The complaint was because he showed the climate change film “An Inconvenient Truth,” also in his science class.

McDaniel said he includes the film to spark a discussion on climate change among the students. After watching the film, he asks students to write a response paper explaining their thoughts on climate change.

Idaho is a state that has no requirement for sex education and no mandated HIV education. It does have a requirement that students be allowed to opt out of sex ed classes, to which McDaniel says he adhered.

(HT: Raw Story )

Last month, Indiana Republicans proposed a measure intended to shut down a Planned Parenthood clinic in the state. The original SB 371 legislation also contained a clause that would have required women taking the RU-486 abortion pill to undergo two invasive transvaginal probes — one before taking the pill, and one after. But ever since the transvaginal ultrasound provision first erupted into controversy, the state’s GOP has been working to scale it back, hoping to assuage public outrage and quietly shepard the rest of the anti-choice legislation’s passage into law.

At first, the Indiana Senate removed the bill’s second ultrasound requirement to ensure its passage. And now, a House committee has removed the first ultrasound requirement too, dropping that aspect of the legislation altogether. According to an Associated Press report, “Indiana Right to Life president Mike Fichter says the group agreed with the decision to drop the ultrasound requirement because debate over it in the state Senate had taken focus away from its goal of tightening regulations on clinics that provide abortions.”

Now that abortion opponents have conceded to public pressure on the invasive forced ultrasound measures, the rest of SB 371 could seem moderate in comparison. But the anti-choice legislation would still have far-reaching consequences for women’s reproductive rights in the state.

Indiana lawmakers are pursuing a popular right-wing strategy for limiting abortion access: Indirectly restricting abortion by imposing costly, unnecessary requirements on abortion clinics with the intention of forcing them to close their doors. SB 371 would force health clinics that prescribe the abortion pill to adhere to the same standards as surgical clinics, even though medication abortions are not actually surgical procedures. It’s a direct attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic that provides the RU-486 to patients seeking to terminate a pregnancy during the first trimester, since that clinic would likely not be able to comply with the new restrictions.

Women’s health advocates consider these type of abortion restrictions to be some of the most dangerous assaults to women’s health — because they can take effect fairly quickly, they effectively limit women’s abortion access, and they often fly under the radar without inspiring the same kind of outrage that other laws, like transvaginal ultrasound requirements, do. That’s exactly why Indiana Republicans are willing to sacrifice mandatory ultrasounds to focus on their real “goal.”

As the Supreme Court takes up two landmark cases for marriage equality this week, the impending decisions have sparked comparisons to another one of the Court’s rulings on a so-called “social issue” — the Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion rights exactly 40 years ago. Since a politically contentious battle over abortion rights has continued throughout the four decades after Roe, some pundits argue the Justices moved too quickly to grant legal rights to reproductive care, and a similar move toward marriage equality before the country is ready could incite the same kind of public backlash.

But the idea that Roe created the Religious Right — fueling public outrage over abortion that spurred religious conservatives to mobilize across the country — is actually a myth. As Sally Steenland, the Director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress, explains, religious conservatives actually began organizing to prevent the IRS from revoking tax-exempt status from a Christian college that was practicing racial discrimination. Evangelicals didn’t welcome what they perceived as “government intrusion” into privately funded, faith-based institutions, and a movement began brewing. In fact, abortion wasn’t added to the Religious Right’s agenda until several years after Roe, when the movement’s leaders began seeking to expand their issues.

And it wasn’t necessarily political backlash from the Religious Right that began chipping away at reproductive rights in a post-Roe nation. In many cases, it was actually the Court itself. In 1980, Harris v. McRae upheld the Hyde Amendment, which bars low-income Americans in the Medicaid program from getting abortion services covered by public insurance. In 1992, Planned Parenthood v. Casey narrowed Roe‘s broad abortion protections to a less rigid standard — specifying that states may restrict abortion as long as they don’t impose an “undue burden” on women seeking to terminate a pregnancy — which paved the way for today’s state-level restrictions, spanning everything from mandatory waiting periods to forced ultrasounds.

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In 1951, a black tobacco farmer and mother of five named Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer at the age of 31. But before she died, the doctors treating her at Johns Hopkins took samples of her cervical tumor — and without her knowledge or consent those samples went on to become the most prolific human cells in medical research.

The cells, commonly referred to as HeLa cells, have helped research treatments for everything from HIV to cancer. But they have also become a cautionary tale about the importance of ethical standards in research: Lacks’ own family didn’t even know about her research legacy for over 20 years. When European researchers published the full genome transcript of HeLa cells without the knowledge or consent of her family earlier this month, they started a new chapter in that tale about the complex relationship between researchers and the privacy of genetic information.

It’s a complicated chapter, as Dr. William Pewen, Assistant Professor of Public Health and Family Medicine at Marshall University, and a former top health care adviser to the now retired Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), noted to ThinkProgress:

“The release of Henrietta Lack’s genome illustrates the fact that genetic information isn’t an individual matter — it impacts family members as well. This underscores the need to ensure the rights of individuals and preserve the confidentiality of research data. Once patient privacy is lost, problems are simply compounded. Just how can today’s family members give consent for the next generation?”

It’s easy to argue that HeLa cells have saved lives, that their net result was good — but to say so without acknowledging that they are also the result of a highly suspect act that demonstrated disregard for the privacy and consent of a patient ignores the ethical standards that should define scientific research. Similarly, with genetic information, many concerns are raised: It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to guarantee the long-term confidentiality of genetic information and it can reveal much more about an individual and their relatives than basic medical records.

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Gov. Bill Haslam (R-TN) announced on Wednesday that he will not pursue Obamacare’s optional expansion of the Medicaid program, which would extend health coverage to an additional 140,000 uninsured Tennesseans and bring in $1.4 billion in federal funding in the first year.

Eight of Haslam’s fellow Republican leaders have come out in support of this provision of the health care reform law, as partisan opposition to Obamacare’s state-level reforms is finally beginning to give way. But the Tennessee governor is standing firm in his opposition to extending public health insurance to additional low-income Americans. Instead, Haslam will seek to extend coverage to the expanded population by using federal funding to buy private insurance, an alternative to Medicaid expansion that’s enticing a growing number of Republican leaders. The Tennessee governor said he won’t push for expansion until the federal government approves that plan.

Haslam’s announcement comes on the heels of reports about the dire state of Tennessee’s Medicaid program, known as TennCare. Since there are a significant number of low-income Tennessee residents whose annual incomes put them above the cut-off for TennCare coverage, but whose expensive medical bills make them unable to afford to purchase private insurance on their own, the state holds a “health care lottery” twice a year to allow those residents to call in for a special application for TennCare. The phone lines are flooded, and many people are unable to get through. Many of those people would be eligible to gain public health insurance coverage under the Medicaid expansion, and would no longer have to desperately dial a state number in the hopes of winning an elusive lottery to access the care they need.

Despite the fact that Tennessee is a deeply Republican state with a GOP-led legislature, Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion has won some support from business and labor leaders. The state’s largest business organization, the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce & Industry, came out in support of Medicaid expansion earlier this week, explaining that ensuring health coverage for poorer Tennesseans will have a “substantial economic impact benefiting our overall economy.”

A group of students has been distributing contraceptives and information about safe sex in 18 Boston College dorm rooms for two years. But on March 15, the school decided it was time to put an end to the practice, and sent a letter threatening disciplinary action to the safe sex network, dubbed ‘Safe Sites.’ The letter said that the contraception distribution violated their “responsibility to protect the values and traditions of Boston College as a Jesuit, Catholic institution.”

Boston College itself offers contraception as part of its student health plan, as required by Massachusetts law. But students who run the Safe Sites program can’t follow their school’s precedent, and must discontinue distributing condoms, or face the school’s office of student conduct, the Boston Globe reports:

The letter, signed by Dean of Students Paul J. Chebator and George Arey, director of residence life, says that “while we understand that you may not be intentionally violating University policy, we do need to advise you that should we receive any reports that you are, in fact, distributing condoms on campus, the matter would be referred to the student conduct office for disciplinary action by the University.”

Safe Sites are sponsored by the Boston College Students for Sexual Health (BCSSH), a group that works to improve sexual health education and resources for students at BC. The group is not recognized by the university.

The American Civil Liberties Union has said that it might consider bringing a legal complaint against the University if it chooses to proceed with disciplinary action. They claim the school “may be violating student rights.”

Studies have shown that condom distribution, at least at the High School level, does not increase the amount of intercourse young people have. It does, however, lead to a rise in condom use and thus encourages safe sex practices that not only limit unintentional pregnancies, but also cut down on the amount of sexually transmitted infections — a big problem on college campuses, including Jesuit ones.

Fighting contraception access has been a bit of a hobby horse for religious universities in recent years, particularly with the controversy over the birth control mandate that was a part of Obamacare. One Catholic university is even dropping its student health care coverage altogether to avoid potentially offering contraception to students one day down the line.

On Tuesday, the Associated Press (AP) published an article recounting a Society of Actuaries (SOA) study that finds health insurance premiums “will jump an average 32 percent for Americans’ individual policies under President Obama’s overhaul.” That titillating claim formed the basis of multiple news agencies’ headlines Wednesday morning, including NBC News, Fox News, and U.S. News and World. But as several other analyses show — and the report’s own authors admit — these assertions are based on an extremely narrow interpretation of the health care law that assumes rising costs in perpetuity while ignoring its very real cost-cutting measures.

In essence, SOA argues that Obamacare provisions extending health coverage to all Americans regardless of their pre-existing medical conditions will dramatically raise costs in the individual insurance market — especially since sicker, older Americans will have guaranteed access to insurance and cannot be charged more than three times the premiums of younger people. The Society’s projections are quite dramatic, finding that premium rate increases by 2017 “would be 62 percent for California, about 80 percent for Ohio, more than 20 percent for Florida and 67 percent for Maryland.”

Corporate insurance giants have used many of these same arguments to dishonestly justify double-digit rate hikes on their customers, despite soaring profits. But these claims are founded on a baseline that assumes current health care cost trends to be set in stone, and ignore — even by the SOA’s own admission — almost all of Obamacare’s most important consumer protections and market regulations aimed at lowering overall costs. Rick Foster, a retired Medicare actuary, admitted that, although the study’s projections are consistent with certain health care trends, they don’t necessarily reflect the bigger picture:

“Having said that,” Foster added, “actuaries tend to be financially conservative, so the various assumptions might be more inclined to consider what might go wrong than to anticipate that everything will work beautifully.” Actuaries use statistics and economic theory to make long-range cost projections for insurance and pension programs sponsored by businesses and government. [...]

Kristi Bohn, an actuary who worked on the study, acknowledged it did not attempt to estimate the effect of subsidies, insurer competition and other factors that could mitigate cost increases. She said the goal was to look at the underlying cost of medical care.

In fact, more comprehensive studies of the health reform law that incorporate all of its provisions — rather than just the potentially negative ones — have found that “[m]ost young adults and families will be largely shielded from the full effects of the narrower age rating bands thanks to the ACA’s increased eligibility for Medicaid and tax credits offered through state health insurance exchanges or through access to employer-sponsored insurance,” and that Americans between the ages of 21 and 27 purchasing insurance through the individual market “will be protected by Medicaid/CHIP or exchange-based subsidies under reform.”
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On Tuesday, North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) approved a package of strict abortion restrictions, including an unconstitutional six-week abortion ban and a measure intended to force the state’s last abortion clinic to close its doors.

In an interview with the Associated Press, the governor admitted that he didn’t sign the legislation based on “any religious belief or personal experience” that compels him to oppose abortion — instead, he’s simply trying to entangle the state in a legal battle that could eventually have big implications for Roe v. Wade:

“Although the likelihood of this measure surviving a court challenge remains in question, this bill is nevertheless a legitimate attempt by a state legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade,” Dalrymple said in a statement, referring to the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion up to until a fetus is considered viable — usually at 22 to 24 weeks. [...]

Dalrymple seemed determined to open a legal debate on the legislation, acknowledging the constitutionality of the measure was an open question. He asked the Legislature to set aside money for a “litigation fund” that would allow the state’s attorney general to defend the measure against lawsuits.

He said he didn’t know how much the likely court fight would cost. But, he said money wasn’t the issue.

It’s no secret that the anti-abortion community is hoping to use a state-level strategy to strike down the constitutional protections in Roe, imposing increasingly stricter bans they hope will eventually lead to a Supreme Court challenge. But Republican lawmakers haven’t typically been quite as open about their ultimate goals, instead choosing to couch their language in messages about women’s health and safety. This legislative session, however, anti-choice legislators are less concerned about tiptoeing around their intentions for Roe — despite the fact that 70 percent of Americans currently oppose overturning the court decision.

Whereas the legal fights over the past several years have largely centered on 20-week abortion bans, which shave about 2 to 4 weeks off of the constitutionally protected window for legally terminating a pregnancy, the goalposts have now been moved significantly. North Dakota and Arkansas have practically been tripping over each other to see which state can undermine Roe with the harshest restriction on abortion — Arkansas pushed back the cut-off for legal abortion services to just 12 weeks of pregnancy, and North Dakota topped that with its 6-week ban.

Elizabeth Nash, the states issue manager for the Guttmacher Institute, explained to Bloomberg that states are displaying a new boldness, even in the face of clearly unconstitutional abortion bans. Although grassroots efforts like the push for “personhood” — which seeks to ban abortion altogether by defining life at conception — have always pushed the envelope, state legislatures have typically been more wary to advance laws that are likely be struck down in court. But that’s not necessarily the case anymore. “There’s this sense of one-upmanship going in the states,” Nash said. “If you asked me two years ago would a state do something like this, I would have said no.”