Healthways shares fall on CMS medicare program worries
(Recasts, adds analyst comments, updates share movement)
By Niveditha Ravi
BANGALORE, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Shares of Healthways Inc (HWAY.O: Quote, Profile, Research) plunged about 20 percent Wednesday after a medicare pilot program, in which the healthcare provider is involved, showed it did not meet certain norms.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which conducted the study, said on its Web site that phase 1 of its Medicare Health Support (MHS) program, which will end this year, did not meet some statutory requirements necessary to expand it into next stage.
The requirements include improvement in clinical quality and beneficiary satisfaction and achievement of savings targets.
"This medicare pilot has been flawed from the day that it was started," Arthur Henderson, an analyst with Jefferies & Co., said terming the news "not surprising."
Health experts fear HIV crisis for uprooted Kenyans
By Laura MacInnis
GENEVA (Reuters) - Thousands of uprooted Kenyans are not getting the HIV medicines they need to survive, and rising sexual attacks in camps stand to further spread the disease, public health experts say.
About 15,000 of the more than 250,000 people who have fled political, ethnic and revenge attacks in the month since Kenya's disputed presidential election are HIV-positive, according to Kenyan Health Ministry figures cited by UNAIDS.
Of that group, 2,550 were taking anti-retroviral therapy to suppress the virus that causes AIDS before escalating violence forced them out of their homes and cut off their access to the drugs that must be taken continuously to work.
An unknown additional number of HIV patients are marooned in their homes, missing treatments because local health clinics are closed, or because they are too afraid to risk the journey.
"We don't know where our patients are," Florence Muli-Musiime, deputy director-general of the Kenya-based African Medical and Research Foundation, said in a statement.
Feeling fat may be worse for you than being fat
By Anne Harding
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Obesity's health effects could have more to do with feeling bad about being fat than actually being overweight, a new study shows.
Researchers who looked at a nationally representative group of more than 170,000 US adults found the difference actual weight and perceived ideal weight was a better indicator of mental and physical health than body mass index (BMI).
"The obesity 'epidemic' might have a lot more to do with our collective preoccupation with obesity than obesity itself," the study's lead author, Dr. Peter Muennig of Columbia University in New York City, told Reuters Health. "We still need to focus on healthy diet and exercise as public health officials, but we need to take fatness out of the equation. Were we to stop looking at body fat as a problem, the problem may well disappear."
Some researchers have suggested that stress due to stigmatization could be a factor in the health problems obese people have, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, he and his colleagues note in the March issue of the American Journal of Public Health.