Obama's Alzheimer's plan focuses on treatment, care

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Obama administration's plan to fight Alzheimer's disease aims to harness the nation's expertise to find real treatments by 2025 and improve the care and treatment of the 5.1 million Americans already afflicted with the brain-wasting disease.

The draft plan, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday, makes treatment a top priority, but it also focuses on the burden the disease places on families and caregivers.

"Alzheimer's disease burdens an increasing number of our nation's elders and their families, and it is essential that we confront the challenge it poses to our public health," President Barack Obama said in a statement marking the plan's unveiling.

The White House earlier this month said it would divert an additional $50 million this year from HHS projects to Alzheimer's research, and seek an extra $80 million in new research funding in fiscal 2013.

"These investments will open new opportunities in Alzheimer's disease research and jumpstart efforts to reach the 2025 goal," HHS said in the draft document.

Obama also plans on an additional $26 million in spending on programs to support people who care for Alzheimer's patients.

Current drugs help manage symptoms but so far no therapy can stop the progression of Alzheimer's, which can start with vague memory loss and confusion before progressing to complete disability and death.

Some researchers have criticized the plan and its 2025 target, saying it is too ambitious given that researchers are still just beginning to understand the disease, which develops silently for 15 to 20 years before any memory problems begin to show.

The best hopes for a treatment at this stage lie with two drugs under development: one from Eli Lilly and another from Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer. But some experts worry these drugs are being tested in patients whose disease has already progressed too far for them to benefit from the treatments.

Experts predict that without effective drugs, the number of Americans with Alzheimer's will double by 2050 and related healthcare costs could soar to more than $1 trillion a year.

HHS is planning a scientific summit in May to set research priorities. It seeks to increase participation in Alzheimer's clinical trials, with a special focus on ensuring minority representation, and to shorten the time it takes to develop drugs.

Eric Hall, president and chief executive of the Alzheimer's Foundation of America and a member of the advisory council that has been working with HHS, said it addresses many of the concerns that have been expressed by the panel.

"Given the current economic environment that limits much-needed resources and the scientific unknowns of this disease, we believe that defeating Alzheimer's disease will likely happen in a series of small victories," Hall said in a statement.

He was especially pleased that the plan focuses on educating healthcare providers on how to detect early signs of cognitive impairment and linking newly diagnosed families with appropriate support services.

But George Vradenburg, chairman of USAgainstAlzheimer's and a member of the advisory panel, said the draft plan did not go far enough.

"This first draft fails to present a strategy aggressive enough to achieve the goal of preventing and treating Alzheimer's within 13 years," he said, noting that the plan lacks specific timelines and does not hold any high-level officials accountable for meeting the plan's goals.

The plan is open for public comment through the end of March.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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Political Memo: Obama’s Tax Policy Targets Slice of His Base: The Affluent

You would not know it from Republican cries of class warfare swirling around Mr. Obama’s new budget, which reiterates his calls for higher taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 and households earning more than $250,000. Conventional understanding of election-season populism assumes that the president will be looking to stick it to die-hard Republicans.

In fact, affluent Americans have represented a growing portion of the Democratic Party for a generation. Even though Jimmy Carter won the presidency in 1976, for example, he trailed the Republican incumbent, Gerald Ford, 62 percent to 38 percent among voters in the highest income group (those earning more than $20,000, the equivalent of roughly $80,000 today) that were measured by people conducting exit polls.

By 2000, Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee, trailed George W. Bush 54 percent to 43 percent among the highest income group (those earning more than $100,000). In winning the presidency four years ago, Mr. Obama defeated Senator John McCain by 52 percent to 46 percent among voters in the top income group, those earning more than $200,000.

The conservative author Charles Murray, in his new book “Coming Apart,” which is about the nation’s widening class divide, identifies “Super ZIP codes” that the “hyper-wealthy and hyper-elite” call home. Even as he proposed higher taxes on the wealthy in 2008, Mr. Obama beat Mr. McCain in 8 of the top 10 such ZIP codes — by a ratio of 2 to 1 in communities like Atherton, Calif., Gladwyne, Pa., and Chappaqua, N.Y.

Mr. Obama also continued the Democrats’ progress among the much larger group of upper-middle-class voters. In counties with above-average incomes that the research organization Patchwork Nation calls Monied ’Burbs, Mr. Obama received 55 percent of the vote, up from the 49 percent President Bill Clinton received in 1996, the 43 percent that the Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis received in 1988 and the 36 percent Mr. Carter received in 1980.

To make the point that he is not lashing out at opponents, Mr. Obama often notes that his proposals would raise his own taxes or those of allies like Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor. But the Democratic Party’s increasing electoral success in upper portions of the income scale points to something broader: an argument that people like him have a civic responsibility to bear more of the burden of deficit reduction and to pay for government spending priorities.

“It is the opposite of a pander,” said Dante Chinni, the director of Patchwork Nation. And it carries risks as well as potential rewards.

Some fallout appears evident in donations from Wall Street executives, who feel particularly aggrieved by Mr. Obama’s criticisms and policies. After besting Mr. McCain four years ago with donations from the securities, hedge-fund and banking sectors, the president has seen the former Bain Capital executive Mitt Romney amass far more cash from each of them, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

And in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, Mr. Obama is supported by 43 percent and Mr. Romney by 47 percent of voters earning more than $100,000, even as he leads by six percentage points over all in a head-to-head matchup. In 2008, Mr. Obama split voters in the $100,000-plus category evenly with Mr. McCain. Yet Democratic strategists consider that fallout relatively modest and ascribe it more to frustration over gridlock in Washington than ire over potential tax increases. They see Mr. Obama as more vulnerable to defections among economically pinched working class voters than among higher earners whose taxes he would raise.

In large part that owes to the cultural influences that turned a large chunk of well-educated baby boomers toward the Democrats beginning in the 1960s. Those include support for activist government in areas like education, training and job creation, which Mr. Obama argues are necessary to spur growth and stem widening inequality of income and wealth.

“The types of affluent voters who have been going to vote for Democrats are unlikely to be driven away” by the prospect of higher taxes, said Geoff Garin, a pollster for Democratic candidates and for the “super PAC” backing Mr. Obama. “They have an appreciation for what those higher taxes pay for.”

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The Lede Blog: Catholic Bishops React to Obama's Change to Birth Control Rule

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that he and other bishops were waiting to see the details of proposed changes to a federal rule on birth control that President Obama announced Friday before deciding whether to embrace them. The rule would require religiously affiliated hospitals and universities to provide free contraception to their female employees.

As my colleague, Helene Cooper reports, the “accommodation” made by the president would allow such institutions and organizations to avoid paying for contraceptive care. Female employees, however, would be able to gain free access to birth control through their insurance plans, Mr. Obama said.

For months, Catholic bishops have been preparing a huge campaign to fight the new rule, my colleague Laurie Goodstein reported Friday.

In addition to reading letters from bishops about religious freedom at Masses across the country last weekend, the bishops also turned to YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to make their case that the dispute was not about birth control but government interference with religious freedom.

“The government has no right … to make you obey something that is contrary to your conscience.” – Archbishop Dolan ow.ly/8YiRD

— USCCB (@USCCB) February 9, 2012

This week, Speaker John A. Boehner promised legislation aimed at banning the rule. On Friday, some members of Congress used Twitter to dismiss Mr. Obama’s compromise approach, including Representative Marlin Stutzman, Republican from Indiana. Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat from Missouri, welcomed the change.

POTUS might have shuffled the deck but he’s playing the same game. His #HHS announcement changes nothing. bit.ly/xBeZ93

— Rep. Marlin Stutzman (@RepStutzman) February 10, 2012

Glad this got worked out today.Women get access to birth control, and Catholic Health Assoc agrees with new policy.

— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) February 10, 2012

Some people on Twitter are using the hashtag, #iusebirthcontrol, to voice their dismay over seeing politics and religion entering the discussion about the delivery of women’s health care services.

I was raised Catholic & #iusebirthcontrol It’s none of yr damn business why. Women shouldn’t have to justify sex,health,reproductive rights.

— Andrea Bronson (@AndreaBronson) February 10, 2012

Another Twitter user wondered if Catholic leaders would now turn their attention to other government laws and policies that are not consistent with church teachings.

#altuniverse Starting tomorrow, looking fwd to the same level of anger from @USCCB to pressure Republicans on #DeathPenalty and #DreamAct

— Christopher Duffner (@chrisduffner) February 10, 2012

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