Health Reform that Works for Kids

Congress has set the stage for further steps toward providing affordable coverage for all Americans with the reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program and significant investments in health care infrastructure in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009. As the nation’s attention turns to systemic health reform, one challenge will be to ensure that all children enjoy stable, affordable coverage.

Leaders of the push for health reform appear committed to ensuring that all children enjoy the health benefits and enhanced financial security of health coverage. Yet proposals currently under development in Congress will not automatically achieve this goal. Current proposals pay more attention to expanding coverage for uninsured working-age adults than for uninsured children, while delivery system reforms may not necessarily benefit pediatric patients. Congress must ensure that systemic health reforms work for children. Children’s advocates will need to identify and pursue opportunities embedded within health care reform proposals to ensure that all children will have affordable, meaningful coverage that meets their unique needs.

Congress is now weighing new approaches to providing affordable coverage for all Americans. Congressional committees have not yet released initial legislation, but it is already evident from option papers and other materials that the legislation will build on the framework of “shared responsibility,” also embraced by President Barack Obama’s campaign plan. This approach seeks to expand health coverage and reform the health care delivery system through a combination of public insurance program expansions, subsidies for private coverage, restructuring the health insurance market, and investments in delivery system improvements.

How well these reforms will work for children is an open question. Policymakers must carefully consider their choices to ensure that all children can enjoy the benefits of health coverage.

Psychiatric Drug Use on the Rise

Psychiatric drug prescriptions have soared amongst Americans, with 73 percent more adults and 50 percent more children using such drugs in 2006 compared to a decade earlier.

Seniors citizen prescriptions have doubled in the same time period.

The researchers, Sherry Glied and Richard Frank, attribute the increase in prescriptions to primary care doctors becoming more familiar with psychotropic medications, not to a trend in over-prescribing medications for concerns that in the past would have been treated by other methods (or simply left untreated).

The researchers also suggest that lower-cost drugs have become more widely available and that their data reflects an overall trend in improved access to mental health care.

“Greater availability of medications to treat conditions like Alzheimer’s and increased access to prescription drugs through the Medicare Modernization Act may have also played a role in doctors’ prescribing drugs to seniors,” said Sherry Glied, Professor and Chair of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health, at Columbia University.

The researchers examined national prescribing data from 1996 to 2006.

Rather than a trend toward overprescribing, this trend reflects improved access as more insurance companies are offering mental health services and more psychiatrists are accepting health insurance, according to the authors.

Children’s access has grown through the expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The number of children diagnosed and treated for mental health conditions during primary care visits doubled between 1996 and 2006.

In addition, more people with serious mental illnesses are imprisoned or incarcerated. The authors estimate that 7 percent of people with persistent mental illnesses are put in jail or prison every year.

In a related study, Richard Frank, Professor of Health Economics at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues found that mental health care spending grew 17 percent from 2001 to 2003, exceeding historical averages, which the authors attribute to increased spending on new prescription drugs.

Source: Health Affairs

Don’t toy with children’s health – Parents told

Mr. Justice Quansah, Project Co-ordinator of Compassion International (CI), a Non-Governmental Organization, has advised parents and guardians of beneficiary children of the child development project being implemented by the NGO to take good care of the diets of their children.

He said parents could use vegetables and other locally-produced items to prepare balanced diets for their children instead of relying on imported ingredients.

Mr. Quansah was addressing parents and guardians of beneficiary children at an orientation course at Kasoa Pentecost Child Development Centre.

He disclosed that over 200 children have been registered under the Compassion International Child Development Project since it commenced work in the area.

Mr. Mark Zutah, project health worker, reminded participants that it was only when their children were properly fed that they could absorb what their teachers impart to them.

He said whereas the NGO and the Church were doing their best to promote the spiritual and educational well-being of the children, parents and guardians of the beneficiary children must also play their part to protect their good health.

Mr. Patrick Ozor and Mr. Francis Donkor, both workers of the project, stressed the need for participants to adopt prudent financial measures in whatever business they pursue to ensure maximum returns to supplement what the NGO is providing for their children’s development.

Earlier, Mr. J. Y. Owusu-Kwarteng, Public Relations Officer of the Awutu Effutu Senya Mutual Health Insurance Scheme (AESMHIS) had taken participants through the various aspects of the health insurance policy.

Mr. Owusu-Kwarteng reminded Ghanaians who have not as yet registered with the Scheme of the need to avail themselves of the immense benefits the policy provides, and counselled such people not to waste anymore time to register with the Scheme.

He also urged all premium holders of the Scheme to ensure that their Health Insurance ID Cards were renewed in good time to avoid embarrassments during critical times.