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National HIV/AIDS Advocate, Physician Joel Weisman Dies In California
Joel Weisman, "one of the first physicians to detect the AIDS epidemic and who became a national advocate for AIDS research, treatment and prevention," died on Saturday at his home in Westwood, Calif., the Los Angeles Times reports. Weisman was 66. Weisman was a general practitioner in southern California when in 1980 he first saw three ill gay men with a set of mysterious symptoms. He later contributed to the June 5, 1981 CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which "signaled the official start of the epidemic that the federal agency later named acquired immunodeficiency syndrome," according to the Times. Weisman was the founding chair of AIDS Project Los Angeles in 1983, helped organize the first dedicated hospital AIDS unit in Southern California and was an original board member of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research (Woo, 7/23).
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Foreign Patients At Biggest Risk From NHS Jargon
After last Wednesday"s revelations that NHS jargon could be affecting patient health, Thames Translations" MD Simon George raised concerns that the needs of foreign patients could be missed in the rush to remove jargon from communications and replace it with plain English. Drugshop to buy zoloft online and other pills.
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Long-Term Care Program Would Provide Revenue - At First
A long-term care program could produce some needed dollars, at least in the short range, CQ Politics reports: "A new insurance program for long-term care that Democrats have included in a Senate health overhaul bill would produce about $58 billion in revenue for the government over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, helping to offset the cost of the legislation. Democrats acknowledge that spending in the long-term care program would increase after 10 years and that it likely would not remain a very profitable enterprise for the government. It is even possible, they say, that the program could become insolvent; in that case, the secretary of Health and Human Services would be authorized to close its enrollment. "The CBO says that premiums would have to rise significantly higher than Democrats have assumed for the program to remain financially sound."
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Key Senate Panel Struggles To Reach Consensus

"The Senate Finance Committee, which is seeking a bipartisan compromise, has failed to reach an agreement" on health care reform, Bloomberg reports, "even as two House committees and a Senate panel cleared their versions of the legislation with only Democratic approval." The open-ended question of when, and what, the Finance panel will propose, has become the focus of Senators and the administration as the August recess nears with no deal in sight. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the Finance chairman, said a deal could come this week "at the earliest," a month after he originally planed to finalize a version of the bill, Bloomberg reports (Litvan and Jensen, 7/20). Whether the Senators will arrive at a bipartisan agreement, or even a partisan one with cost-wary Democrats falling in line, could determine whether the Democratic leadership can use special budget rules to fast-track the bill, Roll Call reports. " "Democrats gave themselves a choice this year between keeping the bill open to filibuster - which requires 60 votes to overcome - or using fast-track budget rules, known as reconciliation, to push a measure through with a simple, 51-vote majority. But the rules governing reconciliation are so complex and restrictive that the Senate Democratic leaders" backup reconciliation plan could become mired in the same 60-vote problem they currently face as liberals, centrists and a handful of Republicans battle it out over the direction of a final Senate bill" (Pierce, 7/20). Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a senior Republican on the Finance Committee, for instance, "is sounding like he"s persuaded that taxing high-cost employer-provided health benefits could be an answer to funding health care reform," Politico reports. Hatch also that if the debate drags out, it will become more difficult for the administration to sell the reform proposal to lawmakers because "it"s so expensive and costly" (Gerstein, 7/19). Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., another Finance member, rejected the idea of taxing the employer-provided benefits, a proposal President Obama and labor unions have staunchly opposed, even as it has gained traction among some high-ranking Democrats in Congress, Bloomberg reports in a separate story. Schumer also said Democrats would pass a partisan bill in the Finance panel if members fail to reach a bipartisan consensus, and that a "wacky" cost assessment by the Congressional Budget Office wouldn"t mean Republican support is out of reach (Litvan, 7/18). 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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