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What We're Reading: Hawaii Passes Bill to Protect Transgender Patients
What we're reading, April 27, 2016: Hawaii passes bill to protect transgender patients; childhood obesity has plateaued, not declined; and HHS awards $5 million to Puerto Rico to fight the Zika virus.
Hawaii has taken a different approach to transgender patients compared with Mississippi and Tennessee. The Hawaii Legislature has passed a bill that prohibits insurance companies from discriminating against transgender patients by denying, canceling, or limiting coverage based on the person’s gender identity, reported The Washington Post. The bill has already passed the state senate and is now going to the governor. One of the bill’s opponents expressed concern that it could mandate coverage of gender reassignment surgery, which would be costly for everyone.
Despite optimistic reports, there hasn’t been a decline in childhood obesity. However, NPR reported that the prevalence of obesity among US children has plateaued. From 1999 to 2014 there was a consistent increase in obesity. But there have been success stories and promising efforts placing more attention on preventing obesity among primary care physicians and pediatricians may lead to some declines, according to researchers.
While Congress has yet to approve the requested funding to combat the Zika virus, HHS awarded $5 million to Puerto Rico to fight the spread of the virus. The money will go to 20 health centers to use to expand voluntary family planning services, outreach, education, and to hire more staff, according to a press release. So far 474 cases of Zika in Puerto Rico have been reported and the number is expected to continue rising.
Urticaria Diagnosis Challenged by Overlapping Pruritic Skin Conditions
April 23rd 2025Urticaria is complicated to diagnose by its symptomatic overlap with other skin conditions and the frequent misclassification in literature of distinct pathologies like vasculitic urticaria and bullous pemphigus.
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New Research Challenges Assumptions About Hospital-Physician Integration, Medicare Patient Mix
April 22nd 2025On this episode of Managed Care Cast, Brady Post, PhD, lead author of a study published in the April 2025 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care®, challenges the claim that hospital-employed physicians serve a more complex patient mix.
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Personalized Care Key as Tirzepatide Use Expands Rapidly
April 15th 2025Using commercial insurance claims data and the US launch of tirzepatide as their dividing point, John Ostrominski, MD, Harvard Medical School, and his team studied trends in the use of both glucose-lowering and weight-lowering medications, comparing outcomes between adults with and without type 2 diabetes.
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ACOs’ Focus on Rooting Out Fraud Aligns With CMS Vision Under Oz
April 23rd 2025Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are increasingly playing the role of data sleuths as they identify and report trends of anomalous billing in hopes of salvaging their shared savings. This mission dovetails with that of CMS, which under the new administration plans to prioritize rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse.
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