Officials at Oklahoma State University did not go to the police with several reports of rape or sexual assault on campus in 2011, falesly believing that they were following procedures protecting the information of the purported assailant.

According to a report by an OSU Board of Regents task force, university representatives “misinterpreted the Federal Education Rights Privacy Act.” The university believed that purported rapists’ educational records might have been involved in the case, and so, to protect those records, decided sexual assault fell under the purview of the school, not law enforcement:

Friday’s report cites a provision in FERPA that allows institutions to contact campus police to ask them to investigate possible crimes on campus. The report notes that members of the news media brought the provision to university officials’ attention.

According to the report, OSU officials rejected that argument, saying a different provision in FERPA wouldn’t have allowed them to turn over educational records, including those generated in student conduct hearings.

But that provision wouldn’t have applied in this case, according to the report. When officials learned of the incidents, no student conduct hearings were pending, meaning no such records had been created.

“OSU could have notified the police immediately after it became aware that the sexual assaults had been committed,” the report states.

Universities like Oklahoma State are struggling to come up with adequate sexual assault policies. OSU’s Board of Regents’ task force was actually created as a response to the child molestation case at Penn State University. Often, rape (on campus and elsewhere) goes under-reported, both on the part of the victim and the university. Victims often report feeling too ashamed to go to the authorities with what’s happened to them. For obvious reasons, universities have a vested interest in maintaining low numbers of sexual assault reports on their campuses.

During a Budget Committee Hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) announced that the Affordable Care Act — which had been projected to reduce the deficit by billions over 10 years — would actually increase long-term debt by $6.2 trillion, undermining administration claims that the law would expand coverage to millions of Americans and help reign in federal spending.

“A new government report dramatically proves that the promises made assuring the nation that the largest new entitlement program in history since Medicare — the president’s health care program — would not add a dime to the long or short term debt of America was false,” Sessions said, referring to a recently released study from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

“The results of this report confirm everything critics and Republicans have been saying about the health care bill and reveal the dramatic falsehoods that were used to push it to passage.” He went on:

SESSIONS: According to the GAO under a realistic set of assumptions the health care law will increase the deficit by 7/10th percent of GDP or roughly $6.2 trillion over the next 75 years. $6.2 trillion unfunded liability of the United States. In other words, the GAO reveals that the big tax increases in the bill come nowhere close to covering the massive spending.

Watch it:

How is it possible that one report — requested by Sessions — conflicts so starkly with almost all other government assessments to confirm Republican talking points about the law? It’s simple: Sessions designed it that way.

The Alabama senator asked the office to estimate would would happen if the cost containment provisions in the law — the Independent Payment Advisory Board, excise tax on high-cost plans, and reductions in Medicare payments to providers — are “phased out over time” while the coverage provisions remain. Unsurprisingly, the GAO concluded that if the portions of the law that were specifically designed to keep costs under control don’t go into effect, then the law won’t be effective in lowering health care costs. Sessions is touting the government expenditures included in the law — the affordability credits and Medicaid expansion — while ignoring its cost savings. The same report concluded that if “both the expansion of health care coverage and the full implementation and effectiveness of the cost-containment provisions” are sustained, “there was notable improvement in the longer-term outlook.”

To be sure, economists disagree on how best to implement the law’s cost containment provisions. The GAO report notes that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Office of the Actuary has found that providers will not be able to “improve their own productivity to the degree achieved by the economy in large,” proving the savings to be unsustainable. Other economists, however, contend that the actuary doesn’t score savings from preventive care and system modernization and estimate that if those factors are included, the annual growth rate in national health expenditures falls significantly.

The responses of individuals, employers, insurance companies, and Exchange administrators may be hard to predict and Congress may have to adjust the law and its cost containment mechanisms. But for a senator to design a study that purposely underplays the law’s cost controls is not only disingenuous, but also fundamentally misleading and dishonest.

Update

Page 13 of the report shows how the law’s efficiencies can lower spending on major federal health care programs in the out years:

While answering constituents’ phone calls on C-SPAN Tuesday morning, Rep. Reid Ribble (R-WI) — who is a member of the influential House Budget Committee — bucked his party’s usual line on public health care entitlements by praising the idea of allowing Americans aged 55 and older to buy into the public Medicare program for seniors.

When the Wisconsin caller asked Ribble about the reform proposal — commonly referred to as a “Medicare buy-in” — for Americans between the ages of 55 and 64, Ribble complimented the idea and asserted that the U.S. must engage in a robust and similarly innovative debate over lowering health care costs:

CALLER: Good morning. For Medicare, why can’t instead of raising the age, let people buy in at 55, at $450 a month, and then go back to $100 [a month], approximately, at 65, and you would have more money put into Medicare, and it would help the small businesses that are insuring the older people?

RIBBLE: Hey Harold, that’s a great idea. Thank you for calling from Wisconsin, I hope it’s not snowing there today. Those are the types of ideas we need to get on the table and start talking about. We recognize that the Medicare program will continue to grow based on sheer demographics of the country aging. There are fewer workers replacing those that are retiring, and so there’s gonna be pressure put on these critical programs. And ideas like yours should have a hearing and voice in the halls of Congress, and I really appreciate you coming up with suggestions like these, because these are the types of debates that have to happen. Thank you for weighing in this morning.

The $450 per month the caller suggests that individuals between 55 and 64 buying into Medicare should pay is a monthly premium that would go towards funding Medicare Part B, which is the supplemental medical insurance that covers beneficiaries’ doctors’ fees, outpatient hospital visits, and various other non-prescription drug benefits. Under the caller’s plan, that premium would eventually be reduced to the standard Medicare Part B insurance premium for Medicare beneficiaries who are 65 and over, which is about $105 per month in 2013. Medicare Part A covers inpatient hospital stays, as well as hospice services and nursing care, and does not require the vast majority of seniors to pay any premium.

While the proposal is obviously just a rough sketch, it does represent a far more progressive vision for reforming entitlements and lowering health care spending than smokescreen strategies to shift costs onto consumers such as GOP proposals to raise the Medicare eligibility age — and it could substantially lower both older Americans’ premiums and employers’ health care cost obligations to their older workers.

Ribble’s apparent endorsement of the idea comes as a surprise, as he conspicuously states on his congressional website that he voted to repeal Obamacare and obstruct several of its funding measures — although he does admit to supporting certain reform elements in the landmark health law. Nonetheless, Ribble’s comments this morning set him apart from a significant swath of the Republican Party and conservative advocates of more “free-market” approaches to health care reform that curtail, rather than expand, public insurance pools like Medicare.

Indiana lawmakers sparked controversy last week when they proposed a forced ultrasound bill that would go even further than similar measures in states across the country: it would require women to undergo two potentially invasive ultrasounds, both before and after taking the RU-486 abortion pill. State lawmakers are now walking that back, conceding that the legislation doesn’t need to stipulate a second ultrasound — but the first ultrasound requirement remains in place as the full Senate prepares to vote on the legislation on Tuesday.

Indiana senators approved the revision by a unanimous voice vote. The state lawmakers acknowledged that medical professionals themselves should be able to make the decisions about what type of tests are best for their patients, and requiring doctors to perform a second ultrasound is an unnecessary overreach. But even though the exact same logic also applies to the bill’s first forced ultrasound requirement, Republicans weren’t willing to engage in the political fight to drop the anti-choice provision altogether:

Sen. Ron Alting, R-Lafayette, sponsored the move to drop the second ultrasound and replace it with a requirement that doctors perform “appropriate testing.” Alting said that would give doctors the option of performing blood or urine tests on their patients.

“I think that physicians know a little bit more about that particular area than legislators,” Alting said.

But when asked why his amendment didn’t remove the requirement for a pre-drug administration ultrasound, Alting said: “I just know that I didn’t have the votes for that to happen.”

The full bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Travis Holdman (R), didn’t object to removing the requirement for the second ultrasound. Still, he stood firm in his belief that the same type of political interference into women’s medical decisions is “essential” before the administration of the abortion pill.

Holdman also brushed aside concerns that requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before taking the abortion pill would necessitate an invasive transvaginal probe — according to the GOP state senator, women’s health advocates’ concerns about mandated transvaginal ultrasounds are simply “a lot of hype.” But, even when legislation like Holdman’s doesn’t specifically stipulate a transvaginal ultrasound requirement, that certainly doesn’t mean the issue isn’t relevant.
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The quest to improve patient care, maximize medical efficiency, and curb wasteful spending by digitizing Americans’ patient records, insurers’ claims, and providers’ treatment requests just gained a powerful new ally: “Watson,” IBM’s revolutionary data-mining supercomputer that made national waves when it defeated reigning Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings at his own game.

American Medical News reports that health insurance giant WellPoint has struck up a deal with IBM and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York to use the supercomputer — which has spent its post-Jeopardy days amassing and “learning” massive amounts of data about the American health care, insurance, and public health industries — for two pioneer programs to automatically process, review, and pre-authorize medical claims and treatment requests, as well as a third program dubbed “Interactive Care Insights for Oncology” that will “identify individualized treatment options for cancer patients, starting with lung cancer” in order to advise oncologists on the latest and most effective treatment regimens by incorporating up-to-the minute longitudinal medical studies and cancer data into its suggestions.

In an email to ThinkProgress, Cindy Wakefield, a Regional Director for Public Relations at WellPoint, pointed out that the new technology has the potential to have a big impact on the health care industry. “We believe the IBM Watson technology can improve the efficiency and quality of treatment, potentially eliminating unnecessary testing, enhancing the consistency of actions, and accelerating the time to treatment via expedited decision-making processing,” Wakefield explained. “We are continuing to train Watson, and we are teaching Watson by ‘feeding’ it information such as our medical policies and clinical guidelines.”

Using Watson’s technology to automate claims processes could be a potent catalyst for a more efficient American health care industry — which is often bogged down by poor inter-provider communication, incomplete and non-centralized data, and archaic paper records. The supercomputer could also advise providers on the most efficient and appropriate use of treatments based on each individual medical claim, patients’ specific insurance benefits, and patients’ medical histories by analyzing health care data from across the country.

Interestingly, if Watson concludes that a physician or provider’s treatment request is not the most effective one based on a patient’s history and medical benefits, the computer can register its disagreement — but as Wakefield explained to ThinkProgress, it cannot override the provider’s decision or deny treatment requests. Instead, a human nurse would have to review Watson’s alternative suggestion, and then make a judgment call along with the provider on whether or not to comply with it.

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If sequestration is allowed to take effect as scheduled on March 1, $1.2 trillion will be automatically removed from the federal budget in across-the-board spending cuts that would potentially reverse our economic recovery. These cuts — which take money out of critical investments in education, public health services and research, disaster preparedness, and national security — would have devastating consequences in communities around the country and would harm all Americans in a number of ways.

Sequestration also institutes several cuts to key public investments that would disproportionately harm women. Low-income women and women of color will be hit hardest by the sequestration. Here are the top five ways in which the sequestration harms women:

1. Sequestration cuts $424 million from Head Start and Early Head Start.

More and more women and single mothers are heading their households, and they are struggling to balance work and motherhood in the absence of a universal child care system. Head Start and Early Head Start provide education, health, and nutrition services to low-income women and their families, and they are critical child care providers for women who could not otherwise afford care for their children. These programs aim to ensure that limited parental income does not get in the way of a child’s early education or inhibit women from being able to work. As soon as sequestration takes effect, however, 70,000 children will be cut from Head Start and Early Head Start programs due to the eliminated funding for the program.

2. Sequestration cuts $86 million from key women’s health programs.

Between two and three women die each day from complications of giving birth. Black women in the United States die in childbirth at three to four times the rate of other racial and ethnic groups. The infant morality rate in the United States is twice as high as that of other wealthy nations, and rates are highest for low-income women of color, who often lack access to quality health care.

Sequestration cuts $4 million from the Safe Motherhood Initiative, which helps prevent pregnancy-related deaths; $8 million from the Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening Program, which provides cancer screenings to low-income women; $24 million from Title X family planning and reproductive health services; and $50 million from the Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant. The cuts to the Maternal and Child Health Services Block grant alone would mean 5 million fewer low-income families would be provided with prenatal health care and other services that help eliminate disparities in infant mortality and maternal health.

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Lindsay Rosenthal is a Research Assistant with the Women’s Health and Rights team and the Health Policy team at the Center for American Progress.

Former surgeon general C. Everett Koop has passed away at the age of the 96. Koop — who described himself as “the health conscience of the country” — was a surprising advocate of comprehensive sex education, despite the fact that he was a staunch social conservative, as a method of combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He also championed anti-smoking campaigns and hoped to reach a day when smoking was completely eradicated in the United States.

Appointed under Ronald Reagan in 1981, Koop brought valuable exposure to an HIV epidemic that Americans were only slowly becoming aware of. In 1988, he orchestrated the largest public health mailing in history by sending an educational AIDS pamphlet to more than 100 million U.S. households — without the Reagan administration’s blessing. Although Koop himself remained “opposed” to homosexuality, he insisted that Americans deserved accurate medical information to safeguard their sexual health and avoid preventable deaths from AIDS.

Koop’s legacy lives on, and the public health campaigns he pushed have seen huge successes over the past few decades. Teen smoking rates have recently dropped to record lows, and the United Nations now believes an end to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic is “in sight.”

A college sophomore at the University of North Carolina is being sent to the school’s “Honor Court” and may be expelled for speaking publicly about her rape.

University officials are alleging that Landen Gambill is being “disruptive” or “intimidating” her alleged rapist by going public with her story of sexual assault, despite the fact that Gambill has not even publicly identified the assailant.

Most likely, UNC’s action against the student is revenge. Gambill’s story first came to light as part of a case against the school in which a former assistant dean accused UNC of intentionally under-reporting cases of sexual assault. Gambill was one of three students providing evidence to prove the dean’s case. After it went public, Gambill publicly addressed the failings of UNC’s system, reporting that they “were not only offensive and inappropriate, but they were so victim-blaming… They made it seem like my assault was completely my fault.” The school even tried to leverage her suicide attempt, which happened after her sexual abuse, against her.

Calling her into the Honor Court can be seen as the latest attempt to silence the young girl. Jezebel reports that Gambill received her first threat from a school attorney about one month ago, on January 29th. On February 22nd, Gambill received a formal accusation calling her in to the court:

Accordingly, you are being charged with the following Honor Code violation(s):

II.C.1.c. – Disruptive or intimidating behavior that willfully abuses, disparages, or otherwise interferes with another (other than on the basis of protected classifications identified and addressed in the University’s Policy on Prohibited Harassment and Discrimination) so as to adversely affect their academic pursuits, opportunities for University employment, participation in University-sponsored extracurricular activities, or opportunities to benefit from other aspects of University Life.

This decision was reached because the evidence provides a reasonable basis to believe that a violation of the Honor Code may have occurred. Please note that being charged with a violation does not imply guilt. It simply means that sufficient evidence of a possible violation exists to warrant a hearing before the Undergraduate Honor Court.

The Honor Code may also specify that rape falls under “the University’s Policy on Prohibited Harassment,” but Gambill’s rapist remains on campus. In fact, Gambill lives across the street from her assailant.

But while UNC’s administration’s reaction couldn’t be worse, Gambill’s peers are trying to bring attention to the issue. Students have organized protests at the school, and have vocally defended Gambill in college papers. Their power might not stand up against institutionalized biases, but they spark a much-needed conversation. After all, UNC is not alone in its mishandling of rape culture and its ineffective sexual assault policies; colleges across the country are failing on these same fronts.

Republicans have made Planned Parenthood into a top target in their ongoing War on Women, repeatedly attempting to strip funding from the national women’s health organization because some of its affiliates provide abortion services. Despite the fact that the Hyde Amendment already prevents taxpayer dollars from funding abortion — which means that Planned Parenthood’s federal and state funding simply goes toward providing preventative health care for women who often aren’t able to access those services elsewhere — GOP lawmakers still aren’t convinced. They’re still eager to find a reason to defund Planned Parenthood, and they’re willing to waste time and money to search for one.

Nearly 70 Republicans have signed onto a letter asking the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to take a closer look at the way Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers use taxpayer dollars. Even though there’s already a federal law that stipulates exactly how those funds may be used, they still claim the study is “critically needed to shine a bright light on how taxpayer funds are allocated” — but the GOP proponents of the effort admit their real goal is to justify stripping funding from Planned Parenthood:

Those spearheading this effort — Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas) and Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) — are hoping the study confirms their suspicions that these groups are focusing more on abortion and less on other healthcare services. Black said this finding could be used to justify a reduction in federal funds to abortion providers. [...]

Black added that Planned Parenthood showed in its latest report that they are providing more abortions, and fewer other health services, all while federal funding has increased. “An independent study of the federal funding for abortion providers is necessary to further expose the truth of how these precious taxpayer dollars are truly being used,” Black said.

House Republicans are already tripping over themselves to attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, introducing two identical bills at the beginning of the legislative session that both target the nonprofit organization. They’re unconcerned about their doubled efforts because, as Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) explained to the Huffington Post, “The fact that there are multiple members interested in this issue proves that Planned Parenthood is not going to be let off the hook.”

But that message may not be particularly well-received by the American people. Post-election polling confirmed that women’s issues, including lawmakers’ stance on whether Planned Parenthood should remain fully funded, were decisive factors in the presidential election: 64 percent of all voters said they heard something about Mitt Romney’s intent to defund Planned Parenthood, and 62 percent disagreed with that position.

That’s apparently not enough to dissuade Republicans in Congress, who have a long track record of focusing on the same pointless issues — the 112th Congress unsuccessfully attempted to repeal Obamacare over 30 times, for example — rather than tackling their long to-do list on important polices like disaster relief, job stimulation, deficit deals, and resources for sexual assault victims.

A breakthrough in cancer treatment could potentially have a big impact on women who are battling advanced stages of breast cancer. The New York Times reports that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new drug that, when used in conjunction with the popular breast cancer treatment drug Herceptin, will more effectively kill cancerous cells and appreciably extend late-stage metastatic breast cancer patients’ life expectancy while possibly alleviating some of the chemotherapy’s more debilitating side-effects:

The main clinical trial leading to approval of Kadcyla involved 991 patients with metastatic breast cancer that was worsening despite treatment with Herceptin and a taxane chemotherapy drug, like paclitaxel. Half the women were given infusions of Kadcyla and the other half took two pills now commonly used for such patients: Tykerb, also known as lapatinib, and Xeloda, also known as capecitabine.

The patients getting Kadcyla lived a median of 30.9 months, compared with 25.1 months for those getting the two pills. The median time before the disease worsened was 9.6 months for those getting Kadcyla, compared with 6.4 months for those getting the other drugs.

While having greater efficacy, Kadcyla also had fewer side effects. About 43 percent of patients on Kadcyla had serious side effects compared with 59 percent of those getting the two pills.

Kadcya is a first-of-its-kind drug for Americans suffering from more advanced and aggressive breast cancers, and holds great potential for increasing patients’ longevity and reducing suffering. But the drug is likely to cause considerable sticker shock, as “it would cost about $9,800 a month, or $94,000 for a typical course of treatment” — twice the amount of money that treating advanced breast cancer with Herceptin alone would cost.

The fact that Kadcya is so expensive underscores the importance of early testing and prevention efforts, hopefully before diseases worsen and health care costs spiral out of control. The exorbitant cost of American medical care — including staggering fees for everything from simple blood work, to drugs, and to more advanced procedures — makes preventative care more important than ever.

But engaging in that sort of forward-thinking and preventative care is particularly difficult in the face of conservative lawmakers’ war on women’s care facilities such as Planned Parenthood, which is one of the main resources for breast and cervical cancer screenings — particularly for low-income women. While Obamacare mandates that mammograms and similar preventative screenings be provided free of charge, American women may have a difficult time finding adequate resources for such services in the absence of adequate facilities providing them.

2012 was a banner year for new state-level abortion restrictions, yet not a single state enacted a law to improve access to family planning services or comprehensive sex education. Although the nation’s rate of unintended teen pregnancies is dropping, the U.S. still has the highest teen birth rate of any nation in the developed world — yet 26 states still require high school health classes to emphasize ineffective abstinence education, rather than prioritizing comprehensive sexual health instruction that includes accurate information about methods to prevent unintended pregnancy and STD transmission.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any attempts to move the country forward. A national bill to expand access to LGBT-inclusive, gender balanced sex education was recently introduced by 34 Democratic politicians. And on a more localized level, these five states are also taking important steps to help ensure that teenagers have all of the information they need to better understand their bodies and their sexuality:

1. COLORADO: Lawmakers in Colorado are advancing a bill that would move the state away from its current abstinence-only curricula to include comprehensive sexual health instruction, including requiring health classes in public schools to use inclusive language about LGBT issues. As openly gay state Rep. Dominick Moreno (D) argued on the House floor, traditional sex ed programs don’t often have adequate resources to help students who are struggling with their sexuality. Republicans largely opposed the provision of the legislation that would require the state’s sex ed classes to be LGBT-inclusive, and the anti-gay Focus on the Family lobbied hard against the bill — but despite their objections, the measure was approved by the House on Friday.

2. HAWAII: The state’s House Committee on Education is currently considering a measure that would incorporate comprehensive sexual education into all of Hawaii’s public schools. The bill would require Hawaii’s public elementary, middle, intermediate, high, and alternative schools to include medically accurate sexual health instruction in their curricula. Rep. John Mizuno (D), who introduced the measure, pointed out that unintended pregnancies currently cost the state an estimated $22 million each year — and more comprehensive sex ed would be a better investment. “Comprehensive sex education will equip our young people with the knowledge and tools necessary to be conscious of their decisions when it comes to sex,” Rep. Mizuno pointed out.

3. ALABAMA: Alabama’s first openly gay legislator, state Rep. Patricia Todd (D), is doing her best to update the standards for sexual education for the teens in her state. At the beginning of the new legislative session, Todd re-introduced a measure to repeal Alabama’s 1992 abstinence-only education law, an outdated piece of legislation that requires health classes to teach students that homosexuality is illegal. Todd’s bill would put the Department of Education in charge of establishing more comprehensive, medically accurate sex ed classes — an important update, since the state legislature currently sets the standards for sex ed and has the power to turn students’ basic health instruction into a politicized battlefield.

4. ILLINOIS: The Chicago public school system is considering an overhaul of its sexual education program that would require health classes to discuss sexual orientation and gender identity for the first time. The city’s chief health officer notes that if the new policy is enacted, Chicago’s public schools would comprise the largest urban U.S. school district with a required minimum of sex ed instruction and a specific curriculum for each grade level — a move spurred partly by the fact that over half of Chicago teens are sexually active. Under the new program, students below fifth grade would learn about anatomy, healthy relationships, puberty, and HIV transmission. After fifth grade, students would receive age-appropriate, LGBT-inclusive instruction about human reproduction, healthy decision-making, bullying, and contraception.

5. NORTH DAKOTA: Republicans in North Dakota are currently advancing several attacks on women’s health, and at the beginning of this month, it looked like abortion opponents might also successfully block sex ed resources for at-risk youth. After North Dakota State University won a three-year federal grant to partner with Planned Parenthood to provide sexual health services for at-risk teenagers, anti-abortion activists threatened to derail the program simply because Planned Parenthood was participating. The school faced significant pressure to back out of the grant — but fortunately, now that the state’s Attorney General has confirmed that partnering with Planned Parenthood doesn’t actually conflict with state law, the program will be allowed to move forward. University officials are celebrating the victory, which will allow teens between 15 and 19 years old to receive the comprehensive sexual health and family planning resources they need.

69-year-old Rebecca S. Tomczak suffers sarcoidosis, a condition that leads to lung scarring and can devolce into a terminal disease if left untreated. The doctors told her that without a full lung transplant, her prognosis would be dire — and while Tomczak could have qualified for transplant lists at several hospitals, she had to scour through several providers before finding one that would take up her case, since she’s a practicing Jehovah’s Witness. Her adherence to her faith prevents her from receiving blood transfusions, which are typically necessary for transplant surgeries.

As the New York Times reports, Tomczak was finally able to track down Dr. Scott A. Scheinin of the Houston-based Methodist Hospital, who agreed to treat her on her own terms. The hospital had conducted several successful bloodless lung transplants before — specifically tailored towards Jehovah’s Witnesses — and had developed an innovative, seemingly safe medical approach to treating these patients while also respecting their closely-held tenets. As Dr. Scheinin put it, “At the end of the day, if you agree to take care of these patients, you agree to do it on their terms.”

Critics might balk that tailoring medical procedures towards a patient’s religious beliefs is impractical and costly. But the new system that the doctors at Methodist developed was more cost-effective than regular transplant procedures — and arguably more safe, as there has been some evidence that blood transfusions may actually be risky in certain cases:

The economy is also helping the blood management movement. Processing and transfusing a single unit of blood can cost as much as $1,200, and many hospitals are trying to cut back. Administrators at Methodist said their bloodless lung transplants typically cost 30 percent less than other lung transplants, partly because careful management of hemoglobin levels before surgery has resulted in fewer complications and shorter stays.

Experts say they are beginning to see a measurable impact on blood usage, although the data to support it are not yet available. Dr. Richard J. Benjamin, the chief medical officer of the American Red Cross, predicted that the numbers would show the first decline in use since the AIDS scare began in the 1980s, perhaps by one million units.

“We’re changing this culture, this knee-jerk transfusion reaction,” Dr. Scheinin said. “And I think that’s been a good thing for all our patients.”

While Tomczak’s story is intriguing for its implications on medical innovation and reducing health care costs, it also highlights a positive way to reconcile the tensions between modern medical technology and religious dogma. Rather than being a case in which a doctor imposes his or her conscientious biases on a patient — such as the Irish medical team that incited global outrage after denying a life-saving abortion to a woman who later passed away — Tomczak’s experiences are an example of a doctor keeping his patient’s health at the forefront while also respecting that patient’s ethical choices through creativity and innovation. That may not be achievable in every single case — but this particular story shows that it certainly is possible.

After Dr. George Tiller was murdered in 2009, his Wichita-area abortion clinic closed its doors — and ever since, women in the area have had no choice but to travel up to 200 miles to get to the nearest clinic. Now, women’s health advocate Julie Burkhart wants to change that.

But that decision isn’t without its risks. There is perhaps no greatest symbol of the dangers of anti-abortion harassment than Dr. Tiller, who was gunned down simply for providing Kansas women with reproductive services — and that type of violence hasn’t dissipated in the years since his death. As Burkhart works to re-open Tiller’s former clinic as the South Wind Women’s Center, security is one of her top concerns:

Safety and security have played significant roles in the decision to reopen this clinic and provide abortion services in Wichita for the first time since the murder of Dr. George Tiller in 2009.

“We will have a security company working for us after we open. We also have other security measures in place, just the typical things that businesses have these days,” say Burkhart. She is reluctant to provide to many details because of concern about possible threats from anti-abortion activists in the community.

Burkhart says during the long process of reopening the clinic she’s been scared at times. In recent weeks demonstrators have twice camped outside her home. She says her passion helping women make their own reproductive health decision outweighs any fear.

Anti-abortion groups are already doing their best to block Burkhart’s group from opening the clinic, attempting to delay construction by complaining to city officials that the building’s zoning contracts weren’t issued correctly. Some of the contractors working on the building have already been harassed. The site of the clinic, as well as Burkhart’s own home, have been picketed by abortion opponents.

And Burkhart has struggled to find abortion doctors who will agree to relocate to Kansas to put themselves in the middle of the fight. In areas like Wichita, where there are already tight abortion restrictions and a lack of women’s health resources, abortion doctors often aren’t willing to wade into a hostile environment to provide reproductive care. Rising levels of anti-abortion harassment, as well as increasing numbers of restrictions placed on abortion doctors that aren’t required for other types of medical professionals, have contributed to a problematic abortion provider shortage across the country.

Nonetheless, Burkhart is committed to finding a way to open the South Wind Women’s Center sometime this spring. Women have already been calling the clinic to ask when they can schedule appointments, and Burkhart — who used to think she would “never want to step foot back in the state of Kansas again” after her colleague Dr. Tiller was killed — is ready to take a risk to ensure those women get the care they need.

A top Republican is suggesting that President Obama delay health care services to millions of middle and lower-income Americans to offset the automatic across-the-board budget cuts that will go into effect on March 1 if Congress does not reach a spending deal.

Appearing on Meet The Press on Sunday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) advised Obama to put off implementing the Affordable Care Act’s health care exchanges that are due to go online in 2014 and the expansion of the Medicaid program to offset the looming sequester cuts:

JINDAL: Just delay the Medicaid expansion, delay the health care exchanges so they can work with states on waivers, on flexibility. You can save tens of thousands of dollars there and you’re not even cutting a program that’s started yet — just delaying.

Delaying implementation of these key coverage expansion provisions would throw the law into chaos and deny health services to millions of Americans, many of whom are at or just above the federal poverty line and are struggling with medical bills. 771,600 adults and 124,200 children currently go without health care coverage in Jindal’s home state of Louisiana, for instance. The governor has declined to move forward with a state-run exchange for consumers to buy insurance, leaving its operation to the Department of Health and Human Services, and opted out of the Medicaid expansion under the law.

Defunding the Affordable Care Act has become a popular sequester offset on the right. Last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the government should protect the Defense Department from automatic spending cuts by slashing $1.2 trillion from the law. “Well, all I can say is the Commander-in-Chief thought — came up with the idea of sequestration, destroying the military and putting a lot of good programs at risk. It is my belief — take Obamacare and put it on the table,” Graham said.

Avik Roy — who advised Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on health care policy — and Doug Holtz-Eakin published an op-ed for Reuters earlier this week in which they outlined their vision for a “free market” approach to health care reform. It’s a serious proposal, albeit one that makes the same fallacious argument as Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s assertion that Switzerland’s health care is more “entrepreneurial” than Obamacare is. Unfortunately, that claim is simply the least worrying aspect of a plan that is riddled with benefit cuts and shifting health care costs onto consumers.

First of all, mentioning Switzerland in the piece at all is essentially a red herring, as the duo’s proposal doesn’t actually shift American health care in the direction of the Swiss system — quite the opposite, in fact. While Switzerland shares important aspects with Obamacare, particularly its federally-subsidized health insurance marketplaces — a fact that Roy and Holtz-Eakin acknowledge, to their credit — the country’s health care program can hardly be described as a less regulated system, since it actually provides more generous insurance subsidies, requires insurers to offer at least one “nonprofit plan” akin to a public option, and imposes stricter price controls and negotiations between the government, drug makers, and health care providers.

Instead, what Roy and Holtz-Eakin want to see is a modified, and far more regressive, version of the proposal that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and former Sen. Michael Bennett (R-UT) proposed first in 2007 and then again in 2009 during the health care reform debate. Under Roy-Holtz-Eakin, Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries would be shifted away from public insurance into private plans on Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces, consumer protections and regulations governing the marketplaces would be rolled back to encourage “innovation,” federal insurance subsidies would be limited to Americans up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) instead of the Obamcare-mandated 400 percent FPL, and the Medicare eligibility age would be raised by three months every year indefinitely.

These are really poor ideas that would shift costs onto consumers and force many to forgo care, cut Americans’ health benefits by depriving them of Medicaid’s unique benefits, and create costlier private insurance premiums by siphoning seniors out of Medicare — all while doing absolutely nothing to lower the actual cost of American health care, which is the only real way to reduce national health expenditures.

Roy-Holtz-Eakin also caps federal insurance subsidies at 300 percent FPL rather than 400 percent FPL in an effort to contain government expenses. In the op-ed, the authors implicitly justify this by citing the example of Massachusetts — the birthplace of Obamacare — where reform has been working pretty well. But that ignores the fact that Massachusetts is a relatively wealthy state with unemployment and poverty below the national average. For the rest of the country, that cap would be pretty devastating, pricing millions of Americans out of the health care system. Roy and Holtz-Eakin also do not want subsidies to increase faster than inflation, even though that provision is meant to address the well-established reality that health care inflation tends to accelerate faster than regular inflation.

Although Roy-Holtz-Eakin may be an honest proposal for curbing costs, it is largely based on the dishonest notion that relinquishing more responsibility — a euphemism for shifting costs — onto consumers and making them pay more for their care will somehow magically curb the cost of health care. It won’t — but it will make Americans avoid receiving treatment, leading to a form of self-rationing that is particularly ironic given Roy and Holtz-Eakin’s goal of preventing government rationing of health care.

Oklahoma already prevents women from using their insurance plans to help cover abortion services, but Republicans aren’t stopping there. One state lawmaker wants to continue stripping insurance coverage for reproductive health services, advancing a measure that would allow employers to refuse to cover birth control for any reason — based solely on the fact that one of his constituents believes it “poisons women’s bodies.”

Under State Sen. Clark Jolley (R)’s measure, “no employer shall be required to provide or pay for any benefit or service related to abortion or contraception through the provision of health insurance to his or her employees.” According to the Tulsa World, Jolley’s inspiration for his bill came from one of his male constituents who is morally opposed to birth control, and wanted to find a small group insurance plan for himself and his family that didn’t include coverage for those services:

Jolley said the measure is the result of a request from a constituent, Dr. Dominic Pedulla, an Oklahoma City cardiologist who describes himself as a natural family planning medical consultant and women’s health researcher. [...]

Women are worse off with contraception because it suppresses and disables who they are, Pedulla said.

“Part of their identity is the potential to be a mother,” Pedulla said. “They are being asked to suppress and radically contradict part of their own identity, and if that wasn’t bad enough, they are being asked to poison their bodies.”

The bill has already cleared a Senate Health committee and now makes it way to Oklahoma’s full Senate. It is unlikely that either Jolley and Pedulla themselves rely on insurance coverage for hormonal contraceptive services — but if the measure becomes law, the two men could limit the health insurance options for the nearly two million women who live in Oklahoma.

Of course, contraception does not actually poison women. The FDA approved the first oral birth control pill in 1960, and that type of contraception is so safe that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends making it available without a prescription, as it is in most other countries around the world. Furthermore, considering that over 99 percent of women of reproductive age have used some form of birth control, the Oklahoma women who rely on insurance coverage for their contraception would likely disagree with Pedulla’s assertion that it “suppresses and radically contradicts part of their own identity.”

In reality, access to affordable birth control is a critical economic issue for women. When women have control over their reproductive choices, it allows them to achieve economic goals like completing their education, becoming financially independent, or keeping a job. But birth control can carry high out-of-pocket costs, and over half of young women say they haven’t used their contraceptive method as directed because of cost prohibitions. Nonetheless, Republican lawmakers have repeatedly pushed measures to allow employers to drop coverage for birth control.

Guam is being overrun by millions of snakes. The U.S. Government hopes air dropping drugged, dead mice can solve the problem.

Brown tree snakes came to Guam, naturally, on a plane (and on boats). In the 60 years since they arrived, the Brown Tree Snake has “ate almost all the birds.” There are only a few hundred birds left on the island.

The decimation of the bird population, in turn, has lead to an explosion in the spider population. During rainy season there are “40 times more webs” on Guam than on nearby islands.

The snakes — which can grow to 10 feet long — have also been “biting residents and even knocking out electricity by slithering onto power lines.” The poisoned mice targeting the snakes with be attached to “little parachutes” which the hopes that they get caught up in the trees where the snakes live.

The National Wildlife Research Center is working on developing a more sophisticated solution:

As a first step in development of an artificial attractant, NWRC scientists successfully characterized the odor of dead and decomposing mice. The next step will be to develop a suitable matrix in which this “mouse essence” can be embedded. Chemical cues involved in brown treesnake behavior, however, are complex and cues that elicit strong responses in the laboratory often have diminished effects in the field. So far, artificial matrix compounds as diverse as tofu, plaster-of-paris, and gelatin have shown promise as attractive lures but snakes have shown only limited interest.

Why is so much effort being poured into solving this problem? The Brown Tree snake could be headed to Hawaii next. Despite extensive screening efforts, “eight brown tree snakes have been found on Oahu since 1981, hitch-hiking on aircraft from Guam.” An economic analysis found that proliferation of the Brown Tree Snake in Hawaii could cost over 2 billion annually from “from medical incidents, power outages, and decreases in tourism.”

The problem illustrates the substantial economic and health risks posed by invasive species in an increasingly global economy. Other risks include the Emerald ash borer on imported Valentine’s Day flowers, the brown marmorated stink bug on citrus fruit and killer algae that grows in tropical fish tanks.

In the two centuries since vaccines were first developed, over a dozen of what used to be the most common infectious diseases have practically been eradicated, according to data compiled by the Centers for Diseases Control. The dramatic impact of vaccinations on Americans’ health is illustrated in an infographic compiled by designer Leon Farrant (“morbidity” refers to the number of people getting sick from, but not necessarily dying of, the diseases):

Of course, vaccines only safeguard Americans’ health when they’re taken effectively. Although children typically have to stick to a vaccination schedule in order to attend school, there’s no system currently in place to ensure that adults get their recommended vaccines — and the CDC warns that “unacceptably low” numbers of American adults are getting their shots for diseases like influenza, pertussis, and HPV.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the CDC, the EPA, and doctors and scientists around the world all agree that vaccines are safe. But some pockets of resistance still remain, and persistent myths about vaccines may dissuade some Americans from getting the shots they need.

(HT: Forbes)

The teen birth rate is nearly one-third higher in rural areas of the United States than it is in more populous areas of the country, and teen pregnancy rates have been much slower to decline in rural counties over the past decade, according to a new study from The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. The advocacy organization notes that while no single reason explains the difference in teen birth rates across regions, adolescents in rural areas likely have particular barriers to contraceptive services.

“The prevailing stereotype is that teen parenthood is primarily an urban and suburban phenomenon,” Bill Albert, the chief program officer for the National Campaign, told USA Today. But the group’s new data suggests that’s not actually the case.

As the nation has increasingly focused its efforts on preventing unintended teen pregnancies, there has been significant progress. Although the U.S. still has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the developed world, teen birth rates have plunged to record lows as adolescents have begun to use more effective forms of birth control when they become sexually active. But that trend has been slower to take root in rural areas. Between 1990 and 2010, the birth rate dropped 49 percent for teens in major urban centers and 40 percent for teens in suburban areas — but just 32 percent for adolescents who live in rural counties.

While teens across the country have largely been having less sex and using more contraception, teens in rural areas have actually been having more sex and using birth control less frequently. It’s not clear why that’s the case, but it could partly be because teens in rural areas still lack access to a range of comprehensive contraceptive services. There just aren’t as many sexual health resources in rural counties, where teens may have to travel farther to the nearest women’s health clinic. And deeply rooted attitudes about sex — including school districts that continue to cling to abstinence-only health curricula that don’t give teens enough information about methods to prevent pregnancy — may also play a role. Urban school districts, particularly in New York City, have made significant advances in expanding teens’ access to sexual education and resources, but there often aren’t similar pushes in rural places.

The United States’ culture of sexual repression has also created an environment where teen sexuality is stigmatized, and adolescents may feel too embarrassed to seek out the resources they need. The National Campaign points out that teens may feel like they can’t buy condoms in their rural town where everyone knows their name.

Missourinet reports that state Sen. David Pearce (R-Warrensburg) has introduced a bill into committee that would “mandate health insurance coverage for Missourians with eating disorders that would cover the diagnosis and treatment of the eating disorder as well as residential, medical, and psychiatric treatment.”

While Pearce’s proposal is capped at $30,000 per beneficiary — to be paid for out of the state’s general fund — it still represents one of the most comprehensive approaches to addressing a public health concern that often goes ignored:

Pearce says funding for the coverage would stem from the state’s heath plan. “The funding, I would assume would come from general revenue. A lot of this would be done by the Missouri consolidated health plan,” he said. “So a lot of that could be taken from existing information, statistics, that the state already has.”

Pearce says that by having this coverage, it can ward off the possibility of long-term hospital stays, or even death, by posing the questions, how much money can be saved in the long run and how many lives can be saved? “Eating disorders is treatable if it’s caught early,” he said. “And how we can save lives and improve the lives of folks, and yet, if we don’t catch it early eating disorders has the number one fatality of all mental illnesses.”

Pearce rightfully calls eating disorders what they are — mental illnesses — but it’s a bit more complicated than that. Eating disorders are extraordinarily complex conditions to treat, as effective regimens address the intertwining physical and mental components of the disease. That’s easier said than done in a health care system that does not assume parity between mental services and more “traditional” treatments. And while Obamacare will require insurance plans to offer some form of mental health coverage as one of its “essential health benefits,” states still have most of the discretion when it comes to determining how generous those benefits will be.

That’s also what makes Pearce’s bill important. Lack of adequate funding for comprehensive eating disorder coverage prevents nine out of ten Americans suffering from the condition from receiving treatment — $30,000 in comprehensive benefits could significantly shift that dynamic in Missouri.