Ankara - Turkey’s social services board filed an official compliant Thursday against a British television documentary in which the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson bluffed her way into state-run orphanages for disabled children and secretly filmed sce…
Lawmakers have signaled their intent to craft health care legislation early next year, and the insurance industry's support would make passage easier. That legislation is expected to closely track the proposals of President-elect Barack Obama. However, Obama separated himself from his Democratic challengers by opposing an individual mandate for adults to buy health insurance.
More lawmakers may agree to a mandate if it means the insurance industry will back those efforts. They'll remember it was the industry's opposition 15 years ago that helped scuttle former President Clinton's health plan.
The board of directors for America's Health Insurance Plans agreed to the trade-off Monday night. The board endorsed the proposal after a series of hearings in various states.
"We hope this will be a contribution to help members of Congress fashion their proposal," said Karen Ignagni, president and chief executive officer of the trade group. "We're going to provide all the technical background that we have assembled, all the experience we've assembled at the state level, and we're going to work very hard with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. We want to make sure that whatever reforms are advanced, no one falls through the cracks."
Obama's health plan calls for a health insurance exchange, a sort of government-run shopping center where customers could go to select from private plans or a plan administered by the federal government. Any insurer that wants to participate in that exchange must accept all customers regardless of pre-existing health conditions, such as diabetes or heart disease.
Insurers will want to participate in the exchange because government subsidies will make it easier for millions of people to buy coverage from them. But the insurers say experience in the states shows the coverage guarantee often makes it harder for people to find coverage. That's because insurers raised premiums to meet the expense of covering all applicants with chronic health conditions.
"They ended up making the problem much worse," Ignagni said of the state efforts. "The data is clear about the need to have everyone part of the system."
Analysts say Massachusetts is an example where the coverage guarantee has worked well, but it's also a state that requires everyone to buy health coverage or suffer a tax penalty.
Some key Democratic lawmakers have already expressed support for an individual mandate. The concept was a centerpiece of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care plan. It was also part of the blueprint offered last week by Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
Chris Jennings, senior health care adviser in the White House during the Clinton years, said it remains to be seen whether the industry will support other key components of health care reform. Nevertheless, he called it an important contribution to the coming debate.
"It sends the signal that broad health reform can happen," Jennings said. "There are so many in Washington who are the gloom and doom prophesiers who believe it's impossible."
However, Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocacy group, called the insurers' position self-serving.
"If consumer's can't afford coverage or refuse to buy it, they'll face tax penalties. Turning the U.S. government into a collection agency for for-profit health insurers is not universal health care, its full employment for HMO executives," said Jerry Flanagan, the group's health care policy director.
© 2008 The Associated Press.
As she was being released Wednesday from a Miami hospital, the shy teen seemed in awe of what she's endured. Since July, she's had two heart transplants and survived with artificial heart pumps - but no heart - for four months between the transplants.
Last spring D'Zhana and her parents learned she had an enlarged heart that was too weak to sufficiently pump blood. They traveled from their home in Clinton, S.C. to Holtz Children's Hospital in Miami for a heart transplant.
But her new heart didn't work properly and could have ruptured so surgeons removed it two days later.
And they did something unusual, especially for a young patient: They replaced the heart with a pair of artificial pumping devices that kept blood flowing through her body until she could have a second transplant.
Dr. Peter Wearden, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh who works with the kind of pumps used in this case, said what the Miami medical team managed to do "is a big deal."
"For (more than) 100 days, there was no heart in this girl's body? That is pretty amazing," Wearden said.
The pumps, ventricular assist devices, are typically used with a heart still in place to help the chambers circulate blood. With D'Zhana's heart removed, doctors at Holtz Children's Hospital crafted substitute heart chambers using a fabric and connected these to the two pumps.
Although artificial hearts have been approved for adults, none has been federally approved for use in children. In general, there are fewer options for pediatric patients. That's because it's rarer for them to have these life-threatening conditions, so companies don't invest as much into technology that could help them, said Dr. Marco Ricci, director of pediatric cardiac surgery at the University of Miami.
He said this case demonstrates that doctors now have one more option.
"In the past, this situation could have been lethal," Ricci said.
And it nearly was. During the almost four months between her two transplants, D'Zhana wasn't able to breathe on her own half the time. She also had kidney and liver failure and gastrointestinal bleeding.
Taking a short stroll - when she felt up for it - required the help of four people, at least one of whom would steer the photocopier-sized machine that was the external part of the pumping devices.
When D'Zhana was stable enough for another operation, doctors did the second transplant on Oct. 29.
"I truly believe it's a miracle," said her mother, Twolla Anderson.
D'Zhana said now she's grateful for small things: She'll see her five siblings soon, and she can spend time outdoors.
"I'm glad I can walk without the machine," she said, her turquoise princess top covering most of the scars on her chest. After thanking the surgeons for helping her, D'Zhana began weeping.
Doctors say she'll be able to do most things that teens do, like attending school and going out with friends. She will be on lifelong medication to keep her body from rejecting the donated heart, and there's a 50-50 chance she'll need another transplant before she turns 30.
For now, though, D'Zhana is looking forward to celebrating another milestone. On Saturday, she turns 15 and plans to spend the day riding in a boat off Miami's coast.
© 2008 The Associated Press.
In 1967, Kantrowitz performed the first human heart transplant in the United States, three days after the world's first was performed in South Africa.
But the transplant, on an infant who died several hours later, was only a small part of his life's work to solve the problem of heart failure, his wife said.
Adrian Kantrowitz invented and for decades continued to improve the left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, which would later lend its name to his Detroit-based research company, L-VAD Technology Inc.
The device is designed to be permanently implanted in patients with otherwise-terminal heart failure, helping their hearts circulate blood and allowing them to leave the hospital.
Kantrowitz also invented other lifesaving cardiac devices, including the intra-aortic balloon pump.
He never retired, and "he never lost his mental alertness," said Jean Kantrowitz. He was an avid pilot, motorcyclist and sailor.
Adrian Kantrowitz was born Oct. 4, 1918, in New York City and attended New York University and the Long Island College of Medicine, now part of the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center.
After serving in the Army Medical Corps during World War II, Kantrowitz entered the emerging field of cardiac surgery. He practiced and conducted research in the 1950s and '60s at Brooklyn's Maimonides Medical Center.
In 1970, Kantrowitz moved his federal funding and entire team of residents and other staff to Sinai Hospital in Detroit to better accommodate his research. Sinai Hospital later merged with another hospital and is now known as Sinai-Grace Hospital.
© 2008 The Associated Press.