With the most recent Olympics and now Major League Baseball marred by reports of the use of banned performance-enhancing drugs, a new nationwide survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation examines the influence of sports figures in kids’ lives today. Based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,500 children ages 10-17 years old (and 1,950 parents), the survey found that many American kids are mirroring the behavior of famous athletes – the good and bad – both on and off the field.

SexSmarts – Decision Making

A nationally representative survey of teens on the complex issues influencing their decision making about sex and relationships, developed by the Kaiser Family Foundation and seventeen magazine.

• Survey Snapshot: seventeen, SexSmarts: Decision Making
• Toplines

Journal Supplement

This special supplement of includes: original research tracking trends in disparities in health coverage and access to care over two decades; literature syntheses focused on medical treatment and the decision-making process; legal analysis of civil rights laws in the context of managed care; and findings from a national survey of public awareness of racial inequities in care.

The supplement is comprised of work commissioned by the Foundation for its 1999 national policy roundtable, Race, Ethnicity, and Medical Care: Improving Access in a Diverse Society, along with other independently submitted papers.

Note: This publication is no longer in circulation. However, a few copies may still exist in the Foundation’s internal library that could be xeroxed. Please email order@kff.org if you would like to pursue this option.

Summarizes the coverage of outpatient prescription drugs by Medicaid. Many low-income seniors and other Medicaid recipients rely on this benefit as their only means of drug coverage. Information on the drug rebate program and utilization management procedures is included, as well as data on who uses the benefit, how much is spent per enrollee, and what the data says about future trends.

• Fact Sheet
• : An Overview

Prescription drugs have become an integral part of medical practice – they help keep people healthy and save lives. But rising prescription drug costs have placed a growing burden on consumers, employers, and public programs. The issue of drug coverage for seniors under Medicare has moved to center stage in the Presidential election. This Public Opinion Update summarizes key findings from several surveys conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in conjunction with other partners on topics such as Medicare prescription drug coverage proposals, opinions on importing lower-priced prescription drugs from other countries, views of pharmaceutical companies, and general information about prescription drug usage and coverage.

• Public Opinion Update

Prescription drugs have become an integral part of medical practice – they help keep people healthy and save lives. But rising prescription drug costs have placed a growing burden on consumers, employers, and public programs. The issue of drug coverage for seniors under Medicare has moved to center stage in the Presidential election. Findings from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health “National Survey on Prescription Drugs,” a Public Opinion Update summarizing key findings from several surveys conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in conjunction with other partners, and several other background documents address topics such as Medicare prescription drug coverage proposals, opinions on importing lower-priced prescription drugs from other countries, views of pharmaceutical companies, and general information about prescription drug usage and coverage.

Medicaid for Children and CHIP Guidelines and Eligibility for Enrollment

• Report

A Comparison of Proposals

This report presents basic, nonpartisan information to help readers compare the leading presidential candidates’ proposals on health care issues, including health coverage for the uninsured, managed care and patients’ rights, Medicare reform, prescription drug coverage for seniors, and long-term care. Part of a joint effort of the League of Women Voters and the Kaiser Family Foundation to educate and engage the public on key health policy issues, this side-by-side comparison is a companion to Join The Debate: Your Guide to Health Issues in the 2000 Election, which provides basic facts about major health policy issues.

• Side-by-Side Comparison

While significant efforts have been made to increase minority representation in the medical profession, very little information about minority medical school graduates and minority physicians has been available to evaluate progress towards this goal. This report, prepared by the Association of American Medical Colleges, provides both trend information in minority medical graduates, as well as the current practice characteristics of minority physicians. It is the first product from a unique database developed from the archives of medical schools, the AAMC’s own data sets, and files from the American Medical Association. They conclude that most minority groups remain underrepresented in medicine. Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans-approximately 25% of the population-accounted for less than 15% of medical school graduates in 1998 and all minority graduates of US medical schools taken together comprise only 9% of the nation’s total physician workforce.

Free copies of this report are available from AAMC by contacting the Diversity Policy and Programs office at (202) 741-6478.

• Introductory Letter

NEW SURVEY SHOWS MOST YOUNG ADULTS HAVE STRONG OPINIONS ON TOP CAMPAIGN ISSUES, BUT MANY STILL NOT PLANNING TO VOTE

MENLO PARK, CA Despite holding strong opinions on many of the issues in the upcoming presidential election, less than half of eligible voters under 25 are planning to cast a ballot this November, according to the results of a survey of 18-24 year-olds released today by MTV s “Choose or Lose” and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

At least three out of four 18-24 year-olds say they support tougher gun control, giving patients the right to sue their health plans, funding comprehensive sex education in public schools, expanding health coverage for the uninsured, and expanding hate crimes protections for gays. But only half (50%) of those surveyed say they are registered to vote and less than half (46%) say they are “absolutely” certain they will vote. In contrast, approximately 80% of all adults say they are registered and 64% say they are certain to vote in the November general election. More than 800 young people ages 18-24 were interviewed for the survey, titled Youth, Voting and the 2000 Election.

The survey documents some of the reasons young people may be avoiding greater voter participation. Seven out of ten say politicians are out of touch with the concerns of people their age, and the same percentage believe the results of the election will have no more than a small impact on them personally.

Those who are not certain they will vote cited three top reasons: a lack of information on the candidates, cited by 60%; the belief that they can make more of a difference getting involved in their community than voting (58%); and the sense that “politics is just about money and lying and I don’t want to involve myself in it” (39%). Other possible reasons for lower participation among this age group include their general sense that things are already “going in the right direction” in this country (60%), and the fact that their positions on the issues don’t put them neatly into either the Democratic or Republican camps.

“It’s clear that young people have strong opinions on the issues being debated in this campaign, but many of them don’t see the election as the way to express those opinions or have an impact on public policy,” said Vicky Rideout, Vice President at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “The connection hasn’t been made between voting and what happens on the issues they care most about.”

“Throughout this election campaign, we’ve seen that young adults today feel strongly about the issues they face as part of their daily lives but do not necessarily feel the candidates are effectively addressing their concerns,” said Dave Sirulnick, Executive Vice-President for News and Production at MTV. “Through our first presidential forum of this election, we hope to raise awareness that young voters not only have a powerful voice in the political process as a voting block but that their issues matter to this election.”

MTV s Choose or Lose to air youth forum with Vice President Gore: Youth issues in the election will be discussed at a Town Hall Forum with Vice President Al Gore, which will air on MTV on Tuesday, September 26 at 8:00 pm EST/PST. The Vice President will ask and take questions from 150 college-age young adults. The Forum, co-presented by TIME Magazine, is part of MTV s ongoing Choose or Lose campaign.

The survey revealed a number of strongly held and often surprising opinions on many of the issues in the current campaign. The results make it difficult to categorize these newly eligible voters along traditional ideological lines. For example:

• They favor tougher gun control (84% support mandatory waiting periods and criminal background checks) but a majority (54%) opposes legalization of marijuana for personal use.
• Eighty percent support comprehensive sex education in schools, but they are split on abortion rights. Fifty-one percent say government shouldn’t interfere with a woman’s right to choose, while 44% say abortion should be prohibited except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. There was virtually no difference in how young men and young women responded on the abortion issue.
• When it comes to civil rights, 77% percent favor expanding hate crimes protections for gays and 61% favor providing legal rights to gays and lesbians forming civil unions, but they are closely divided on affirmative action. Fifty percent say affirmative action is still needed to counteract discrimination, as long as there are no rigid quotas, while 44% say affirmative action programs should be phased out because they unfairly discriminate against non-minorities.
• Seventy-three percent of young adults favor giving parents more options through school vouchers, but more than half (53%) oppose giving workers the option of putting a portion of their Social Security benefits in the stock market.

Young people share all voters priority for education in the upcoming elections, but unlike older voters they are more interested in civil rights. The top five issues cited by 18-24 year-olds as “very important” in determining their vote for president are education (86%), jobs and the economy (79%), crime and violence (74%), health care (68%) and civil rights (67%).

On the topic of how to best spend the surplus, the largest proportion (44%) of 18-24 year-olds want to see it used to provide funds to improve education. Only 13% favor using the surplus to protect Medicare and Social Security and 10% want it used for tax cuts.

On health care, nearly nine out of ten (88%) support efforts to expand health insurance coverage. Fifty-one percent support a limited effort that wouldn’t involve a tax increase, while 37% favor a major effort that would require a tax increase. More than three out of four (76%) favor giving patients the right to sue their health plans. On other health issues, a majority of young people consider it “very important” to provide prescription drug coverage for seniors (64%), make Medicare financially sound (58%), and provide long term health care (56%).

“Despite their youth, this generation clearly cares about issues like health care that we traditionally think of as appealing primarily to older voters,” noted Vicky Rideout of the Kaiser Foundation. “They have enough perspective to see the importance of issues like Medicare, long term care, and prescription drug coverage for seniors.”

Methodology

Youth, Voting & the 2000 Election reports on the results of a national random sample telephone survey of 813 adults ages 18-24. The questionnaire was designed and analyzed by staff at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, MTV: Music Television and Princeton Survey Research Associates (PSRA), and was conducted by PSRA August 9-27, 2000. The margin of error is plus or minus 4%.

A copy of the full questionnaire and topline data are available online at http://www.kff.org, at MTV s http://www.chooseorlose.com, or by calling the Foundation’s publication request line at 1-800-656-4533 (ask for #3058).

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, based in Menlo Park, California, is an independent national health care philanthropy and not associated with Kaiser Permanente or Kaiser Industries.

MTV s “Choose or Lose 2000” is a multi-dimensional on-and-off air campaign designed to engage and inform young people about their stake in the future of this country by encouraging them to register and vote.