Nearly 90,000 inmates were sexually abused last year at the hands of guards and fellow prisoners, the government reported Thursday.

The report has added fuel to a years-long push by prison reformers and human rights advocates for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to adopt stricter standards to rein in prison rape — rules the agency was supposed to put in place in June, but has delayed largely due to pressures from the prison industry.

Thursday's report, issued by the DOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), reveals that a failure to act can have serious consequences, with roughly 88,500 inmates found to be victims of sexual assault last year. About 64,500 of those inmates were being held in prisons — representing 4.4 percent of the nation's prison population — and 24,000 in jails (3.1 percent of the jail population).

The average victim was abused between three and five times over the course of the year, BJS found. 

A similar youth survey, released in January, found that the abuse in juvenile facilities is even worse, with 12 percent of detainees reporting sexual assaults.

It's not that policymakers are unaware of the problem. In 2003, Congress passed bipartisan legislation to examine the frequency of prison rapes and install new guidelines for preventing them. An expert committee spent more than four years studying the issue, and sent recommendations to the DOJ in the summer of 2009.

Among the proposed reforms, panel members suggested that prisons isolate vulnerable inmates from more violent offenders; that facilities don't allow guards of one gender to perform physical searches on inmates of the other gender; and that independent inspectors be allowed to audit prisons every few years.

Based on those recommendations, DOJ was charged under the 2003 law with finalizing new rules by June 2010. 

It didn't happen. 

Instead, Attorney General Eric Holder said earlier this year that the agency has delayed the process, largely over concerns from the prisons that the proposed guidelines would be too expensive to implement. 

“When I speak to wardens, when I speak to people who run local jails, when I speak to people who run state facilities, they look at me and they say, ‘Eric, how are we supposed to do this?’ ” Holder told members of a House Appropriations subcommittee in March. “ ‘If we are going to segregate people, build new facilities, do training, how are we supposed to do this?’ ”

A DOJ spokeswoman said earlier this month that the agency will issue proposed standards this fall — meaning the final rules likely won't take hold for months afterward. 

Prison reform advocates don't like the delay, and they're pointing to Thursday's BJS report as reason the agency should quicken its pace. 

"Every day that the Attorney General doesn’t finalize the national standards is another day of anguish among prisoner rape survivors, of preventable safety breaches in prisons and jails, and of significant spending of taxpayers’ money on medical treatment, investigations, and litigation that could have been avoided," Lovisa Stannow, executive director of Just Detention International, a prisoner-rights group, said Thursday in a statement.

Of note, more prisoners reported sexual assaults involving facility staff (2.8 percent) than other inmates (2.1 percent). The same trend held true in jails, where 2.0 percent of inmates reported sex or sexual contact with staff, versus 1.5 percent reporting incidents involving jailmates. 

Among the other key findings: 

• Female prisoners (4.7 percent) were much more likely than male prisoners (1.9 percent) to be assaulted by other inmates.

• Some facilities are better than others at controlling assaults. Of the 463 facilities surveyed, eight male prisons, two female prisons and six jails were deemed "worst offenders" based on the frequency of inmate-on-inmate assaults. Four male prisons, two female prisons and five jails were identified as “high rate” based on the number of staff-related incidents.

• Among male inmates (prison and jail) who reported staff-related incidents, two-thirds involved female staff. 

The findings are based on a survey of more than 81,500 inmates in 167 state and federal prisons, 286 jails and 10 special confinement facilities. It was conducted between October 2008 and December 2009.

Stem cells on the docket when Congress returns? So says Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), a member of the Energy and Commerce panel and a vocal supporter of expanding embryonic stem cell research. A federal judge this week blocked President Obama's efforts to expand federal funding for such research, leading DeGette to call for legislation overturning that decision.

"This is going to have to be addressed very, very quickly," DeGette told TPM Wednesday, adding that Democratic leaders already have the issue on their radar. "It's gone up to the top of the list for leadership, and it will happen shortly after we get back."

The issue hasn't been lost on Democrats in the upper chamber. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has called a hearing on the topic the week lawmakers return from their summer break. http://bit.ly/buQbAQ

Good news for long-time smokers: The White House on Wednesday expanded Medicare to cover more counseling services for seniors trying to kick their tobacco habits. 

Previous rules limited Medicare coverage of tobacco-cessation counseling only to those who'd already developed a tobacco-related disease (or symptoms hinting at one). The new guidelines will expand payments to include counseling services — up to eight sessions per year — for all Medicare smokers.

"Most Medicare beneficiaries want to quit their tobacco use," Health and Human Services Department (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement announcing the move. "Now, [they] can get the help they need." http://bit.ly/dwbSUm

The lobbying power of half-a-billion bad eggs: The recent egg recall continues to ignite the push for Congress to bolster the nation's food safety rules this year. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) became the latest advocate, urging lawmakers to "act quickly … and protect the public from future harm."

“The first responsibility of government," Klobuchar said Wednesday in a statement, "is to protect its citizens. This massive recall is just another example of the broken system that continues to allow contaminated food to make it to our store shelves."

The Marine Corps battles mental illness: The Associated Press highlights the steps taken by Marine commanders to combat a suicide rate that's doubled in the past year. http://bit.ly/9pmuN2

It's money, stupid: Healthcare experts at Atlanta's Emory University Medical School say there's only one way to ensure that more med students fill the primary care spots that have gone empty in recent years: Pay them what specialists make.

"The income of primary care physicians as a whole is half or less than that of most specialists," the professors wrote in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. "To fix inequities in compensation, we need simple, but politically difficult decisions to adjust reimbursement so that it is reasonably equivalent for primary care as for specialist physicians. This has been argued but has never proved politically possible." http://bit.ly/a02duz

McCain vows repeal of healthcare reform: After soundly defeating his GOP primary opponent this week, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) went out on a limb, predicting Republicans will win back control of Congress in November — and use their new majority status to "repeal and replace Obamacare.” http://bit.ly/du5JnR

A nasty battle for Florida governor could focus on Medicare: Before this race, GOP contender Rick Scott was best known for heading Columbia/HCA — then the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain — amid charges that his facilities were committing massive Medicare fraud. (The company ultimately pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and paid a $1.7 billion fine — the largest ever of its kind.) 

Scott was never charged and has insisted he knew nothing about the fraud. But his Democratic opponent, Alex Sink, is vowing to make the episode a high-profile issue on the campaign trail.

"It’s important for Floridians to understand what the past experience of the potential future governor is," Sink told the St. Petersburg Times, "And so, obviously, is his experience and what he's been involved in." http://bit.ly/9d34zo

The Obama administration on Wednesday expanded Medicare to cover more seniors hoping to kick their tobacco habits.  

"Most Medicare beneficiaries want to quit their tobacco use," Health and Human Services Department (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement announcing the move. "Now, [they] can get the help they need."

Under previous rules, Medicare covered tobacco-related counseling only for beneficiaries already suffering from a tobacco-related disease. 

Under the new policy, Medicare will cover as many as two tobacco-cessation counseling tries each year, including as many as four individual sessions per attempt.

The move is the latest in a string of White House efforts to shift the nation's healthcare system toward prevention, in lieu of simply treating diseases after they've developed.

If successful, the new tobacco policy could pay dividends. Of the 46 million Americans estimated to smoke, about 4.5 million are seniors older than 65, HHS says. And nearly 1 million more smokers are younger than 65, but eligible for Medicare benefits. 

They aren't cheap. Tobacco-related diseases are estimated to cost Medicare about $800 billion between 1995 and 2015.

Donald Berwick, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the expansion lends seniors valuable help "to avoid the painful — and often deadly — consequences of tobacco use."

The change affects Medicare Parts A and B — hospital care and physician services — but not Part D, which already covers smoking-cessation drugs for all beneficiaries. 

Traffic accidents cost the nation more than $99 billion a year — with teenagers and young adults representing about a third of that expense, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported Wednesday. 

The figure reflects about $17 billion in direct medical care, with the remaining costs attributed largely to production loss as victims recover from their injuries (or don't). 

"Every 10 seconds, someone in the United States is treated in an emergency department for crash-related injuries, and nearly 40,000 people die from these injuries each year," Grant Baldwin, director of CDC’s Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention, said in a statement. The costs related to those numbers, he added, "are staggering."

Those riding in vehicles represented 71 percent of crash-related costs ($70 billion), while motorcyclists accounted for $12 billion, pedestrians added $10 billion and bicyclists represented $5 billion, CDC reported.

Among the other key CDC findings:

• Males represented 70 percent of all fatalities and 74 percent of all costs.

• Teens and young adults, though only 14 percent of the nation's population, represented 28 percent of all injuries and fatalities, resulting in 31 percent of the total crash-related costs ($31 billion).

• Costs related to fatal accidents totaled $58 billion, while those resulting in non-fatal hospitalizations accounted for $28 billion. 

CDC is quick to note that traffic accidents — and the subsequent medical costs — are preventable. Child safety seats, stronger seatbelt laws and more sobriety checkpoints are just a few of the strategies the agency is promoting to reduce both. 

The study was published in the latest issue of Traffic Injury Prevention. 

Big pharma is pushing back against a new report indicating that drug prices skyrocketed last year.

New rules surrounding Medicare's prescription drug benefit could force more than 3 million seniors to adopt different plans next year, according to an analysis by a leading healthcare group.

Republican critics of healthcare reform are already pointing to the report as evidence that the White House was disingenuous in its claims — heard often during the health reform debate — that consumers who like their plans can keep them.

At issue are new "meaningful differences" rules issued in April by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Next year, under those guidelines, CMS will accept Part D bids only for plans that differ dramatically from other plans offered by the same company. 

As a result, "many Part D sponsors will have to reduce their plan offerings and potentially make changes to the benefit package and cost sharing in order to meet the new requirements and continue to offer multiple plan offerings," according to analysts at Avalere Health, a Washington-based healthcare consultant group.

Specifically, the group estimates:

• About 2.75 million seniors in basic Part D plans will have to choose a new plan next year because the new rules prevent sponsoring companies from offering more than one basic plan in any one region.

• About 350,000 seniors in enhanced Part D plans without gap coverage will be forced to shift into new enhanced plans — the result of new rules limiting companies to two enhanced plans per region.  

• An additional 645,000 beneficiaries in enhanced plans with some 2010 gap coverage "may" have to choose new plans in 2011, "depending on whether or not those enhanced plans meet the CMS definition of 'meaningfully different,'" Avalere writes.

The group was quick to note that its figures are approximate estimates, given that analysts didn't have access either to details about 2010 out-of-pocket costs or to information about 2011 plan offerings. 

"Given those limitations," Avalere said, "our estimates represent a conservative approximation of the potential impact of plan changes to meet the new requirements on beneficiaries." 

Still, the office of Rep. Dave Camp (Mich.), senior Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, shot out the analysis to reporters Wednesday.

Avalere's figures were based on an examination of Part D beneficiaries who, as of last February, were enrolled in standalone plans offered by the top 10 Part D sponsors.

Prescription drug prices for seniors jumped more than 8 percent last year — the steepest increase in the last six years, according to an analysis by AARP released Wednesday.

The cost of every one of the 25 most popular branded drugs among Medicare patients rose higher than inflation in 2009, according to AARP, the 50+ lobby. Of the 217 best-selling branded prescriptions among seniors, the group found, 211 saw retail price hikes exceeding general inflation.

On average, the retail price of those 217 drugs rose 8.3 percent last year — higher than the jump in any of the previous five years, which ranged from 6.0 percent to 7.9 percent, AARP said.  

“These are increases that hit the wallets of every American, whether through their own health care bills or the costs of programs like Medicare and Medicaid,” John Rother, AARP's executive vice president, said Wednesday in a statement.

AARP has long followed the cost trends in the prescription drug market, but this year's analysis marks the first time the group has focused on retail prices for consumers, rather than the cost to manufacturers to produce the drugs. 

The drug lobby has criticized past analyses, saying the manufacturers' price doesn't take into account the rebates the companies give to seniors at the drug counter. It won't be able to make the same argument this year, Rother said.

“For the first time, we know that brand name drug retail prices are growing just as quickly as manufacturer prices,” he said.

Among the notable price hikes, the cost of Flomax (0.4 mg capsules), the prostate drug, jumped 24.8 percent in 2009; Provigil (200 mg), which treats sleeping disorders, jumped 22.7 percent; and Prevacid (30 mg), a popular antacid, leapt 23.1 percent. 

"Unless something is done to bring down their skyrocketing price increases, life-saving medicines will be out of reach for too many.  The health care law made some progress by closing the Medicare doughnut hole, but Congress and the industry must bring more competition and transparency to the marketplace."

The pharmaceutical industry perennial ranks among the most profitable in the country. In 2008, instance, Forbes, drug companies reported profits of 19.3 percent relative to revenues — third highest among all industries, Forbes found. 

It's still August; Congress is still out of town; and healthcare reform continues to play a bit role to the economy on the campaign trail.

Perfect time to launch a widget: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Tuesday launched a new Web tool allowing anyone managing a blog or website to embed the agency's insurance finder. http://bit.ly/bkdCw7

Better reception in Portland: Fresh off a confrontation visit to Libby, Mont., on Monday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius found a more sympathetic audience in Portland, Ore., a day later. That reception was rewarded with compliments. "You may be further ahead than other parts of the country," Sebelius told Oregon health officials. http://bit.ly/a5196c

In Minnesota, a conservative governor is reluctant to take more Medicaid funding: Minnesota state lawmakers are urging Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty to apply for additional Medicaid funds as part of the $26 billion state aid bill passed by Congress earlier this month, Reuters reports.

"Failure to accept the funds would result in residents paying federal taxes to pay for Medicaid programs in other states," leaders of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party wrote to Pawlenty Tuesday. 

But the governor, who's eying a presidential run in 2012, has been critical of the new funding. "The federal government should not deficit-spend to bail out states and special interest groups," he said. 

The $26 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said, was fully offset. http://bit.ly/cbpn1A

DME competitive bidding saga rolls on: House lawmakers are pushing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to expedite its announcement of the first-round winners of the agency's competitive bidding program for durable medical equipment (DME). 

"Without knowing the identity as well as the appropriate overall qualifications of these providers, we cannot evaluate the program's impact in terms of quality and access to care for seniors we represent," 136 lawmakers representing both parties wrote to CMS Administrator Donald Berwick. 

CMS, so far, is sticking to its original September timetable. http://bit.ly/auct97

In Oklahoma, tax to fund Medicaid is shot down: The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that a new tax designed to raise nearly $80 million for Medicaid violates the state constitution. The 1 percent tax, which would have been applied to private insurance claims, was passed by the Legislature without the supermajority vote needed to create new taxes, the court ruled. http://bit.ly/8Xbghy

For pampered pets: California lawmakers on Tuesday advanced legislation providing greater protections for residents buying healthcare coverage for their pets. http://bit.ly/bNO3fF

Dems want legislation to overturn court's stem-cell ruling: Rep. Diana DeGette is pushing Congress to pass legislation allowing scientists access to embryonic stem cells. The statute, says the Colorado Democrat, would prevent the courts from blocking the federal funding of such research, as a federal judge did Monday. That ruling DeGette said, marks "the case of one judge ignoring the scientific fact that research on pluripotent stem cells is not the same as research on an embryo." http://bit.ly/armqqx

Nation's capital is "way ahead" on healthcare reform: Healthcare officials in Washington have plenty to cheer, Kaiser Health News reports. http://bit.ly/aevw00

More pressure to pass a permanent doc-fix: The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) is urging a permanent fix to the sustainable growth rate formula that's threatening Medicare doctors with a 23 percent cut in December, Modern Healthcare reports. 

"The uncertainty faced by faculty physicians and all other Medicare providers because of the continuous cycle of looming payment reductions followed by short-term patches is unsustainable," AAMC says. http://bit.ly/91rqDZ

Monday's injunction blocking government funding for new embryonic stem cell research should spur Congress to pass legislation guaranteeing scientists access to those cells, Rep. Diana DeGette said this week.

A failure to overturn the court's ruling, the liberal Colorado Democrat warned, will set the country back years in the fight against debilitating disease.

"Our nation already lost valuable time over the last decade, when we could have been bringing our massive resources and expertise to bear, expanding stem cell research and helping 100 million American patients living with devastating and debilitating diseases," DeGette, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement. 

"[The] ruling underscores why we must pass common-sense embryonic stem cell research legislation, placing these regulations into statute and once and for all, ensuring this critical life-saving research can be conducted for years to come, unimpeded by political whims or naysayers."

It's hardly the first time the Democrats have pushed for stem cell legislation. In 2006, then-President George W. Bush vetoed a Democratic bill expanding federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. 

The bill, Bush said at the time, "crossed a moral boundary."

While Bush allowed the study of some embryonic stem cells under his tenure, he limited that research to existing lines of cells — a move President Obama reversed last year. 

On Monday, a federal judge ruled that Obama's 2009 executive order expanding embryonic stem cell research violates a ban on the federally funded destruction of human embryos. 

The decision was cheered by anti-abortion groups, who have long argued that such research snuffs out a human life.

But DeGette said the judge got it wrong. "By definition, embryos and stem cells are two entirely different organisms," she said. "Today’s ruling is the case of one judge ignoring the scientific fact that research on pluripotent stem cells is not the same as research on an embryo."

Many scientists agreed, saying the medical benefits of studying stem cells can't be duplicated with adult cells. 

Susan L. Solomon, CEO of The New York Stem Cell Foundation, warned that Monday's decision will "slow the progress of advancing revolutionary new therapies" targeting ailments no less serious than cancer, AIDS, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's. 

"This court decision allows a vocal minority to hold science hostage to a narrow political agenda," Solomon said.