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University Of Maryland Dental School Helps Doctors, Nurses Halt Infant Tooth Decay
Across the state of Maryland, there are now doctors and nurses, freshly trained in pediatric dental health care, who can help stem an alarming number of 3-year-old children who arrive for their first dentist visit with teeth "just melting away."

South Africa Launches HIV/AIDS Research Initiative
South Africa"s Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor on Tuesday announced a government-sponsored research initiative that "aims to combat HIV and AIDS through scientific and technological research, the development of new drugs, diagnostic tests and vaccines," SAPA/IOL reports (7/28). "[K]ey focus areas" of the South Africa HIV/AIDS Research and Innovation Platform (SHARP) will be prevention and therapeutics, according to BuaNews (7/28).
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Insured Immigrants Have Lower Medical Costs Than U.S.-Born Citizens, Study Finds
Insured immigrants have lower medical expenses than insured U.S.-born citizens after taking into account their health status and other characteristics, according to a study released on Thursday and published in the American Journal of Public Health, Reuters Health reports. For the study, Leighton Ku, a health policy researcher at George Washington University, and colleagues examined data on adults ages 19 to 64 from the 2003 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, and found that about 44% of recent immigrants and 63% of established immigrants were insured.After controlling for possible contributing factors, researchers found that medical costs averaged about 14% to 20% less than those who were born in the U.S. The finding was the same even after taking into account lower insurance levels among immigrants. Ku said, "When you control for their health status and all sorts of characteristics like age, they actually have medical expenditures that are far below those of U.S. citizens." According to the study, "Being a recent immigrant or an established immigrant was independently associated with both a reduced likelihood of using any medical care in the year and with lower total medical expenditure levels, compared with U.S.-born adults" (Reuters Health, 5/14).
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Administration Could Find Compromise In Co-Op Plan

"With Republicans fighting the idea of a government-run health insurance plan, members of President Barack Obama"s team said Sunday that they are open to a compromise: a cooperative program that would expand coverage with taxpayer money but without direct governmental control," the Associated Press reports. The non-profit, health insurance cooperatives were suggested in Congress by Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the concession could be a path to bipartisan health reform legislation (Elliott, 6/15). "But Senate Democratic leaders have been cautious in their appraisal of the plan and have said the co-op option would be acceptable only if it works in the same way they envision a public health insurance plan working - as a competitor to private insurance companies that also lowers health care costs," Roll Call reports. Even as Conrad"s proposal gained traction with Republicans last week, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., demanded that "any co-op would have to be national in scope, would need a large infusion of startup cash from the federal government, and would need to bar insurance industry insiders from servicing on its board." The GOP said those demands were problematic (Drucker and Pierce, 6/15). In a Sunday talk show spree, Republicans "continued to express strong concerns over the Obama administration"s plan to reform health care and its call for a public insurance option," the New York Times reports. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on CBS"s "Face the Nation": "We know that, if the government gets in this business, pretty soon nobody else will be in the businesṣ€¦ There are a whole lot of other things we can agree to do on a bipartisan basis that will dramatically improve our system." Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, on "Fox News Sunday": "There is a lot of waste in government-run programs generally, and a lot of waste and fraud and misuse of money in Medicare and Medicaid that can be saveḍ€¦ But right now, I could not put a figure on that amount of money. There is some savings there that can be made and ought to be made, whether or not we are doing things for health care reform or not." Kaiser Health News looks into the Puget Sound-based health co-op, a model for Sen. Conrad"s proposal , with an interview with Group Health Cooperative"s Pam MacEwan: "We are a coordinated care organization like an HMO. We began as a cooperative 60 years ago, so that we"re actually capitalized by the members and they set up cooperative governance ... We have 23 clinics. We have doctors. We have nurses. Then we also do the financing of health care, so we have the insurance mechanisms as well. That whole operation is governed by consumers, and that"s the part that"s really unusual about Group Health" (Gold, 6/15). This information was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at kaiserhealthnews.org. © Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.


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