News in brief - Feb. 21, 2000

Clinton budget favors health, drug initiatives

Washington -- Federal public health programs fared well in the president's fiscal 2001 budget request, delivered to Capitol Hill earlier this month.

The National Institutes of Health was a big winner with its proposed $1 billion increase to $18.8 billion. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received an additional $35 million to support community-based projects aimed at ending racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes.

At the Food and Drug Administration, the White House would provide $10 million for an Internet pharmacy initiative designed to protect consumers. Also, the administration will seek to enhance FDA's Internet oversight authority.

Additionally, the Clinton budget promised to create a new Medicaid eligibility option for states to cover uninsured women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer or cervical cancer through the CDC's early detection program. Under this option, patients would receive a full Medicaid benefits package for the entire time they require cancer treatment.

Washington -- Nearly a dozen specialty societies have become co-plaintiffs in an AMA challenge of the Health Care Financing Administration's calculation of physician payment updates, which the AMA estimates brought a $3.2 billion loss to doctors during fiscal 1998 and 1999.

The lawsuit, filed late last year against Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, PhD, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, asks the court to direct HCFA to adjust a future portion of the physician pay rate known as the sustainable growth rate to reimburse physicians for the undercalculations.

"The law states that this money is owed to physicians; there is simply no justification for HCFA's and this administration's unresponsiveness," said Ken Tuck, MD, president of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, which joined the suit.

The other additional plaintiffs are: the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Surgeons, the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine, the American Assn. of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons, the American Osteopathic Assn., the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the American Urological Assn. and the Illinois State Medical Society. The medical society in the state where the suit is filed is always included as a plaintiff.