TASK DEFINITION: Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
PROBLEM: The study could scratch one item off a long list of complications plaguing President Barack Obama’s launch of his sweeping health care law, also known as Obamacare, which kicked in January 1. About half of U.S. states have opted to expand Medicaid eligibility to poor Americans under the law, raising concerns those states could attract low-income people from elsewhere, increasing the burden on state budgets. “This is known as the welfare magnet hypothesis,” according to the study from the Harvard School of Public Health, which said its research into previous state medical aid expansions “found no evidence of significant migration effects.”  The Harvard study used U.S. migration data from 1998 to 2012 to focus on the impact of medical insurance expansions in Arizona, Maine, New York, and also Massachusetts - whose own health care reforms served as a model for the Affordable Care Act. “These results suggest that migration will not be a common way for people to obtain Medicaid coverage under the current expansion and that interstate migration is not likely to be a significant source of costs for states choosing to expand their programs,” according to the study. “Our findings are relevant for forecasting the cost and coverage consequences of states’ decisions about expanding Medicaid eligibility,” it said, noting four states - New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Utah - are still considering whether to expand Medicaid under the law. Arguments in favor of expanding Medicaid eligibility have tended to focus on improving access to medical care for the poor and bringing in federal dollars to bolster states’ social programs, while counterarguments have focused on the potential unintended costs to state budgets. A joint Harvard-MIT study released last week focusing on Oregon’s expanded Medicaid program, for example, showed adults covered by Medicaid used emergency rooms 40 percent more than those in similar circumstances who are uninsured. MIT led another study in 2013 focusing on Oregon that showed “Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes in the first 2 years” but “did increase use of health care services, raise rates of diabetes detection and management, lower rates of depression, and reduce financial strain.”  The latest Harvard findings come after a rocky start for the Affordable Care Act, which relies on a website that suffered repeated crashes, glitches, and security concerns that hampered enrollment. After some fixes, more than 2 million people have been able to enroll for coverage under the law, the most sweeping social program since the 1960s. President Obama has also been criticized for telling Americans they would be able to keep their old insurance plans under the new law if they wanted to - an assertion that turned out to be false in many cases. The law was passed in 2010 to help millions of uninsured and under-insured Americans, but Republicans have opposed the reform as an unwarranted expansion of the federal government and say it is too costly and eliminates healthcare choices for many.

SOLUTION: Americans unlikely to move to get better Medicaid benefits: study.

PROBLEM: A spokesman for California State University, Los Angeles, said Saturday that 106 staff members and 550 students have been told to stay at home and avoid contact with others. Thirty students and employees from the University of California, Los Angeles, remain quarantined. Those under quarantine were possibly exposed to a person with measles on each campus earlier this month. Many people have been cleared after proving their immunity with medical records or tests. The quarantines mark one of the most sweeping efforts by health officials to contain the nation’s measles outbreak, where cases have reached a 25-year high .

SOLUTION: Nearly 700 from LA universities still in measles quarantine.

PROBLEM: Pre-clinical testing by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), comprising injecting ferrets with two potential vaccines, was underway at its high-containment biosecurity facility near Melbourne. The first phase testing would take around three months, CSIRO’s director of health Rob Grenfell told Reuters, adding that any resulting vaccine would not be available to the public before late next year. “We’re still sticking to the optimistic 18 months for delivery of vaccine to the general consumers,” Grenfell said from Melbourne in an interview over Skype. “Now this, of course, may change. There’s a lot of technical challenges that we’re having to go through.”  Grenfell said scientists were working at a “remarkable” pace, reaching the pre-clinical testing stage in about eight weeks, a process that usually takes up to two years. “So, this is the speed that’s going on at the moment.”  More than 850,000 people have been infected with the novel coronavirus across 207 countries and territories, killing more than 42,000. Australia has reported around 5,200 cases and 24 deaths. Grenfell said he expected human trials of one of the two vaccine candidates being tested to begin later this month or early next month. CSIRO said its testing would cover both efficacy and evaluating the best way to administer the vaccine for better protection, including an intra-muscular injection and a nasal spray. CSIRO was the first research organisation outside of China to successfully develop a lab-grown version of the virus to enable pre-clinical studies on COVID-19. In February, it confirmed ferrets reacted to the coronavirus as they shared with humans a particular receptor on their respiratory cells that the virus binds itself to. “If we can stop that virus binding to the ferret receptors in the respiratory system, there’s a very good chance it (vaccine) will work in humans,” Grenfell said. Moderna Inc is the closest publicly known facility to human testing, announcing plans to start a trial in Seattle last month. The U.S. government has cut deals with both Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, and is in talks with at least two other companies, to produce massive quantities of vaccines. Israel has begun testing a COVID-19 vaccine prototype on rodents at its bio-chemical defense laboratory, a source told Reuters on Tuesday. In Australia, thousands of healthcare workers last week entered a trial to see if a century-old vaccine for tuberculosis can fight off the novel coronavirus.

SOLUTION:
Australia begins pre-clinical testing for coronavirus vaccine.