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Health Reform: Good For Small Business, According To President's Economic Advisors
A report from President Obama"s Council of Economic Advisers finds that "health care reform would be good for small businesses because it would enable them to obtain better insurance coverage for less money," The Denver Business Journal writes. "Small businesses pay up to 18 percent more than large businesses do for the same coverage because of high broker fees, administrative costs and adverse selection, according to the CEA"s report." Christina Romer, chair of the CEA, "said the health care reform bills moving through Congress are specifically designed to address the burden the current health care system places on small businesses. The legislation would create insurance exchanges, where individuals and small businesses could "choose among a multitude of plans that would provide better coverage at lower costs than they could find in the current small group market," the report said." But, The Journal notes: "Many small business groups also doubt that health insurance would be cheaper under the House bills or the Senate HELP Committee bill. Including a government-run plan in the insurance exchange would undermine private insurers, ultimately driving premiums higher, they contend. Not all small businesses would be able to access the exchange. Plus, the bills call for the federal government to establish minimum coverage levels for insurance plans, which could be pricier than what small businesses now provide. (Hoover, 8/3).

Internists Support Broad Goals Of House 'Tri-Committee' Proposed Health-Reform Legislation
Agreeing with the broad goals and most of the underlying policies contained in a comprehensive draft bill on health care reform legislation, the American College of Physicians (ACP) has praised the House "tri-committee." Made up of the House Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Education and Labor Committees, the "tri-committee" unveiled its proposed legislation on June 19.
News of the day
'Pro-choice Community' Should Find New 'Way Of Talking About Reproductive Freedom,' Opinion Piece Says
"Most of the push-back" from antiabortion-rights advocates to a recent e-mail message from author Judy Blume on behalf of Planned Parenthood -- which asked mailing list subscribers for donations -- was generated by an article in the antiabortion-rights publication LifeNews, columnist Meghan Daum writes in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece. The article put a "heavy, misrepresentative spin" on Blume"s message, which urged donors to "do all [they] can to support" the increasing number of women turning to Planned Parenthood centers for health care during the economic downturn.The LifeNews article said, "Blume notes how more women are seeking abortions from Planned Parenthood because of the difficult economy, and she urges readers of the e-mail to use that as a reason to support the abortion business." According to Daum, "this is just the kind of thing that makes abortion-rights advocates apoplectic," noting that abortion-rights advocates "fired-back" in the "blogosphere ... imparting the statistic about abortion making up only 3% of Planned Parenthood"s services and pointing out that many of the women being yelled at by picketers in clinic parking lots aren"t even pregnant but, rather, trying to avoid getting pregnant." Daum continues that the organization, much like Blume, "occupies a clear position on the post-Roe cultural map," adding, "Generally speaking, if you"re on board with abortion rights, you"re on board with Planned Parenthood." In addition, if you are against abortion rights, the "organization is the headquarters of Godlessness," she adds. Daum writes that it is not difficult to see why Planned Parenthood enlisted Blume -- an "icon of 1970s-era feminism and its efforts on behalf of sex education and women"s health" -- because she conjures "nostalgia for the early days of the fight that makes pro-choicers want to keep fighting today."Daum writes that as she watched this "saga unfold in [her] inbox," she was "struck by a troubling question. Even though Blume may not be associated with abortion in and of itself … is there something about her persona that signals a lack of dispassion about its ramifications? Is she reminding people of a time when, in the relief of Roe being decided, there was a cultural perception that abortion was a simple procedure that needn"t come with attendant emotional baggage?"Daum adds that there is "no denying that the language and overall tone around abortion has changed. Despite what many pro-life groups seem to think, most abortion-rights advocates prefer "safe, legal and rare" to "no big deal."" According to Daum, President Obama, "pro-choice though he is, is hardly strident -- and even a little evasive -- on the issue." She adds that Obama favors language about reducing the need for abortions and "finding common ground with the other side." Daum notes that the pop cultural arena "has become downright allergic to the issue" of abortion, with a recent movie coining the term "shmashmortion" because the characters "can"t even get the word out." Daum adds that although Blume "was undoubtedly effective" at bringing in funding for Planned Parenthood, perhaps what might have been "even more radical is if the pro-choice community could find a way of talking about reproductive freedom that neither reverts to the perceived casualness of the 1970s nor panders to the "shmashmortion" dialect of today. "Safe, legal and rare" comes close. But "safe, legal, rare and a big deal" might be even better" (Daum, Los Angeles Times, 5/14).
Cardiovascular

Exploring The 'Ecosystems' Of Influenzas

Predicting the infection patterns of influenzas requires tracking both the ecology and the evolution of the fast-morphing viruses that cause them, said a Duke University researcher who enlists computers to model such changes. A single mutation can put a flu virus on a new-enough path to re-infect people who had developed immunity to its previous form, said Katia Koelle, a Duke assistant professor of biology. For example, a commonplace Influenza A virus known as H3N2 emerged in 1968. But since then fully one-third of the component amino acids in its hemagglutinin protein -- the "H" in H3N2 -- have changed. "That"s a huge amount of evolution," Koelle said. "If there"s a new escape mutant that can actually so change the protein"s configuration that our antibodies can"t recognize the virus anymore, that means it"s going to have a huge advantage and infect more of us. "How much of an advantage the new virus strain has will depend on how many people have gotten infected in the past. So the epidemiological dynamics will shape the evolutionary dynamics. And vice versa, the evolutionary dynamics will shape the epidemiological dynamics because mutations of the virus will allow people to become re-infected." Koelle"s group at Duke has developed a two-tiered model to simulate that interplay in such viruses, allowing scientists to "quantitatively reproduce the patterns we observe," she said. Koelle described her work Aug. 5, during a symposium (http://eco.confex.com/eco/2009/techprogram/S4132.HTM) at the 2009 Ecological Society of America annual meeting in Albuquerque. "We"re interested in having a flexible and simple model that would not only be able to reproduce the dynamics of H3N2 but also help us understand how flu evolves differently in different hosts," Koelle added. For example, H3N2 (not to be confused with the H1N1 "swine flu" virus) also has been circulating in pigs, with the virus showing distinctly different evolutionary patterns in these hosts. One of her group"s models is focusing on that difference, which she suspects is linked to man"s and animals widely disparate lifespans -- about 80 years for humans versus under 2 for farm-raised hogs. "The virus doesn"t have to evolve rapidly to avoid being wiped out by the pigs" immunity to it," she said. "That"s because there are always many more susceptible new hosts coming into the pig population." Another challenge is Influenza B, a comparatively mild virus that infects mostly children but is complicated by the fact that two genetically distinct strain lineages circulate in human populations. During any given flu season, only one B sequence predominates, presenting a challenge for vaccine makers who must choose between them. "They have to make an educated guess about which influenza B lineage is going to be the main one that season," Koelle said. "Sometimes there is a big B outbreak when it turns out to be the one not included in the vaccine." Monte Basgall Duke University


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