51ÊÓƵ

The mood at a White House Rose Garden reception with President Barack Obama on April 22 was jovial. Advocates celebrated the signing a week earlier of a Medicare law that included two years of continued federal funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program along with a little-discussed but dramatic boost in aid to states. Starting in October, states will get a 23-percentage-point increase in the share of the coverage costs that the federal government will pick up. ...[But] advocates say that the $5.6 billion net increase for CHIP for the next 11 years won’t do much to expand coverage for kids. That’s largely because states are free to use the money they save as they see fit. (Adams, 6/22)

Carl Buher was a 14-year-old in Mount Vernon in 2003, when the high-school freshman was hit with a sudden illness: high fever, pounding headache, disorientation and purple splotches over his face and arms. Within a day, he’d been diagnosed with bacterial meningitis, a rare and fast-moving infection, and flown by helicopter to Seattle Children’s for lifesaving antibiotics. ... Within months, he had lost three fingers and both legs below the knee, amputations forced by the ravages of the disease. ... On Wednesday, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which sets U.S. standards, is expected to decide whether a new vaccine to prevent meningitis strain B — the type Buher contracted — should get the nod for widespread use.(Aleccia, 6/22)